Rabbit Hole #3 - Who Will Survive The AI Era? (cats, mostly)

1. 0:00 – 2:03

   Why Don’t American’s Use WhatsApp?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      British supremacy in messaging services. We need to try and get everybody to use WhatsApp, the superior messaging system, and Americans refuse to use it. Do you not think? We was talking about this earlier as to why Americans don't use WhatsApp more. One of the theories is that, uh, America had free SMS before anybody else, so us Brits had to pay. How much would... did it used to be for a text back in the day?

   2. NSNirav Sanjani0:24

      15p maybe.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:25

      15p.

   4. NSNirav Sanjani0:26

      10p.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:26

      10p. That would ramp up very fast.

   6. NSNirav Sanjani0:28

      But that was why people used to use Leet Speak, right? That was why you was there, like L-Y, because you were trying to snap everything to under 160 characters.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:36

      Yeah. I once, when I was 14 years old, had my first-ever girlfriend, and we would text, and we would text, and we would text.

   8. NSNirav Sanjani0:44

      You [laughs] fucking bankrupted yourself.

   9. CWChris Williamson0:47

      Well, my dad obviously-

   10. NSNirav Sanjani0:48

       Oh, really [laughs]

   11. CWChris Williamson0:49

       ... my dad comes down one day, and you know when you have like A4 that you'd stack in a printer? He just drops that.

   12. NSNirav Sanjani0:54

       [laughs]

   13. CWChris Williamson0:55

       Soaked on the phone bill and had racked up about £800-

   14. NSNirav Sanjani0:58

       It's an itemized bill

   15. CWChris Williamson0:59

       ... worth of text messages, yes.

   16. NSNirav Sanjani1:01

       Wow.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:01

       So I then sent her one-

   18. NSNirav Sanjani1:01

       That's a lot of sexting at 14.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:03

       Yeah. I then sent her one final text, which was, "Can't do texts anymore. Let's do calls." So we did calls all the time. Next, next month, so I had to pay off about 1,200, 1,300 pounds of, of debt to my father.

   20. TFTim Ferriss1:16

       Still paying it off [laughs] at 49.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:17

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   22. NSNirav Sanjani1:17

       I can't take it, man.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:18

       Payment, payment plan. "Dad, you're cock-blocking me."

   24. TFTim Ferriss1:20

       So that's how WhatsApp-

   25. CWChris Williamson1:21

       "I'm, I'm 14. I'm trying to get, I'm trying to get my cred up." But yeah, I just... WhatsApp's the superior... Tim uses WhatsApp. Tim's good on WhatsApp.

   26. TFTim Ferriss1:28

       I'm in. Look, I use every new inbox that is slowly eroding the sanity of everybody who's listening to this.

   27. NSNirav Sanjani1:33

       [laughs]

   28. TFTim Ferriss1:34

       Yeah. Slowly eroding.

   29. NSNirav Sanjani1:35

       Did you guys see the Nikita Bier tweet a long time ago? It feels like, um... He, he said something like, um, "Every time I use WhatsApp, it feels like I landed in a third world country."

   30. CWChris Williamson1:43

       [laughs] You're allowed to say that.
2. 2:03 – 3:08

   Growing Up on Long Island

   1. CWChris Williamson2:03

      you grew up on Long Island.

   2. TFTim Ferriss2:04

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson2:04

      I didn't know that. Where?

   4. TFTim Ferriss2:06

      Oh, yeah. Way out by Montauk back when there were potato farms.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:10

      That explains a lot.

   6. TFTim Ferriss2:10

      That has changed. Now there are nightclubs that make all the locals crazy, but yes.

   7. CWChris Williamson2:14

      So is that beyond the Hamptons?

   8. TFTim Ferriss2:16

      Yeah, Montauk is the end of the line. So if you take Long Island Railroad out from New York City, it will end in Montauk. And, uh, it was, it was perfectly fine place to grow up. I didn't realize how strange it was until I got older because-

   9. CWChris Williamson2:30

      Why is it strange?

   10. TFTim Ferriss2:31

       Well, when you're growing up, what is around you is normal because you have no reference point, but you're growing up in a location where you have a barbell of income and wealth distribution.

   11. NSNirav Sanjani2:43

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   12. TFTim Ferriss2:44

       Right? So you've got all of the, let's just say, the broad Hamptons that people know, which would have, like the $100 million homes on the beach and all these famous directors and financiers in little white shorts playing tennis, and then you have, on the other hand, like affordable housing. When I was growing up, like crack ep- epidemic in certain parts. So s- I didn't realize how much was missing from-

   13. NSNirav Sanjani3:06

       Mm

   14. TFTim Ferriss3:06

       ... the middle of the whole thing.

   15. CWChris Williamson3:07

       Okay.

3. 3:08 – 5:42

   Mickey Mantle’s Best Yankee Stadium Experience

   1. CWChris Williamson3:08

      Have you ever seen Mickey Mantle's questionnaire answer on the 50th anniversary of the Yankee Stadium? So-

   2. TFTim Ferriss3:16

      [laughs] This... I feel like this is the kind of question my dad would ask me. He's like, "Do you know-

   3. CWChris Williamson3:19

      All right, okay

   4. TFTim Ferriss3:20

      ... Henry Rubinstein from 1839?" I'm like-

   5. CWChris Williamson3:22

      No

   6. TFTim Ferriss3:22

      ... "Of course I don't."

   7. CWChris Williamson3:23

      Mickey Mantle describes in a, basically a yearbook for the Yankee Stadium. It's the 50th anniversary of Yankee Stadium happening. Mickey Mantle, everybody's asked, uh, "Tell us what your most outstanding experience at Yankee Stadium was." Uh, and this was sold for $242,000 not long ago, a few years ago. He said, "I consider the following my outstanding experience at Yankee Stadium." It's like, like a questionnaire. He goes, "I got a blowjob under the right field bleachers by the Yankee bullpen." And then below that it says, "This event occurred on or about," brackets, give as much detail as you can. He says, "It was about the third or fourth inning. I had pulled a groin and couldn't walk at the time. She was a very nice girl and asked me what to do with the cum after I came in her mouth. I said, 'Don't ask me. I'm no cocksucker.'"

   8. NSNirav Sanjani4:14

      [laughs]

   9. CWChris Williamson4:15

      Signed Mickey Mantle, The All American Boy, and that was sold about five years ago for $242,000.

   10. TFTim Ferriss4:21

       Wow. Speaking of-

   11. CWChris Williamson4:22

       On chain or off chain?

   12. TFTim Ferriss4:23

       Speaking of hedge fund managers [laughs]

   13. CWChris Williamson4:25

       Yeah.

   14. TFTim Ferriss4:25

       I'm sure that's in the guest bathroom of some hedge fund manager's third home.

   15. CWChris Williamson4:29

       It's a bargain. You don't think that's a bargain?

   16. TFTim Ferriss4:31

       In Montauk or thereabout, yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson4:33

       I don't know, man. I mean-

   18. TFTim Ferriss4:34

       [laughs]

   19. CWChris Williamson4:35

       ... like baseball's got a lot of superstition, but that feels like it's taking it to an extreme.

   20. TFTim Ferriss4:39

       [laughs]

   21. NSNirav Sanjani4:39

       There's like a baseball player that had never washed his helmet or cleaned it or did anything for his entire career. Literally, the, the helmet looked... I think it's Craig Biggio, if I'm not mistaken, but the helmet was just... And he, he believed in that so much that it had to be that way, never change.

   22. CWChris Williamson4:56

       You've seen the guys walk out, and they go right glove, left glove, tap, tap on the foot.

   23. NSNirav Sanjani5:01

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson5:02

       It's, it's... goes from being a preference to routine to superstition to ritual to basically something sacred. It's essentially a rain dance that every-

   25. NSNirav Sanjani5:11

       Or a mental illness.

   26. CWChris Williamson5:13

       I think those two cross over quite a bit.

   27. TFTim Ferriss5:14

       I'm gonna refer to all of my mental illness-

   28. NSNirav Sanjani5:15

       Yeah [laughs]

   29. TFTim Ferriss5:16

       ... as a rain, as a rain dance from now on.

   30. CWChris Williamson5:18

       [laughs] I'm gonna take these suckers off. That's enough, that's enough fucking poi- POV porn, which actually was the reason that we wore these when we had, uh, Bonnie Blue on the podcast so we could put POV in the title of the episode.
4. 5:42 – 8:02

   Has “Literally” Lost Its Meaning?

   1. TFTim Ferriss5:42

      one of the things that I've been fascinated with for a while, I know you have as well, Christopher. I don't know about you two gentlemen, but, uh, uh, etymologies of everything. So, um, I was trying to rank my favorite etymologies or history of certain parts of language. One of them is, um, uh, not English, but it's Malaysian. And in Mala- Malayan culture, they use double rather than plural. So rather than tables, they will use table table, which is one of my favorite things.

   2. CWChris Williamson6:10

      What if there's three?

   3. GMGeorge Mack6:12

      So it doesn't scale. So it doesn't go-

   4. CWChris Williamson6:14

      [laughs] That would be a nightmare-

   5. GMGeorge Mack6:15

      It doesn't go-

   6. CWChris Williamson6:16

      ... if you're a table factory maker.

   7. GMGeorge Mack6:17

      The same way w- we just use plural-

   8. CWChris Williamson6:19

      [laughs]

   9. GMGeorge Mack6:20

      ... we'll say tables, where you could say four tables.

   10. CWChris Williamson6:22

       Right.

   11. GMGeorge Mack6:22

       They would say, I assume, the number, then table table.

   12. CWChris Williamson6:25

       Wow. [laughs]

   13. GMGeorge Mack6:27

       Which is such a more fun way of saying things. Yeah.

   14. TFTim Ferriss6:29

       It's the same in Indonesian also.

   15. GMGeorge Mack6:31

       Yes.

   16. TFTim Ferriss6:31

       Like, orang hutan, man of the forest. Orang-orang-

   17. GMGeorge Mack6:34

       Okay

   18. TFTim Ferriss6:34

       ... is men, right? Man, men.

   19. CWChris Williamson6:36

       Man of the men. That's something different.

   20. TFTim Ferriss6:38

       Well, if you- Well, no, the man of the men, [laughs] I think that's just-

   21. CWChris Williamson6:41

       Something different

   22. TFTim Ferriss6:42

       ... is not your biopic. [laughs]

   23. GMGeorge Mack6:43

       [laughs] Man of the men. But it's, it's so much better than wo-

   24. TFTim Ferriss6:48

       A lot of heavy editing. [laughs]

   25. CWChris Williamson6:52

       [laughs]

   26. GMGeorge Mack6:52

       Um, one of my favorite ones, though, is the word soon. So the word soon, I will be there soon, was the Anglo-Saxon word for now. But because so many people kept saying, "I'll do that soon," and didn't do it then, we then created the word now to replace it, and soon is what it is today.

   27. CWChris Williamson7:13

       [laughs] It soon got shifted down in terms-

   28. GMGeorge Mack7:16

       Yes

   29. CWChris Williamson7:16

       ... of, like, how urgent it means.

   30. GMGeorge Mack7:17

       Generation by generation. What's interesting, now now has that effect, where if somebody says, "I'll do that now," you don't really take them literally unless they say, "I'll do that-"
5. 8:02 – 13:28

   Tim’s Japanese Crash Course

   1. CWChris Williamson8:02

      You speak multiple languages.

   2. GMGeorge Mack8:04

      Yeah. What's Japanese Tim like? [laughs]

   3. CWChris Williamson8:06

      [laughs]

   4. TFTim Ferriss8:07

      A lot, a lot more polite.

   5. GMGeorge Mack8:08

      Yeah?

   6. TFTim Ferriss8:09

      Cur- curses less than Long Island Tim.

   7. CWChris Williamson8:10

      Are you totally fluent in Japanese?

   8. TFTim Ferriss8:12

      Yeah, I can speak Japanese.

   9. CWChris Williamson8:13

      Amazing.

   10. TFTim Ferriss8:13

       Um-

   11. CWChris Williamson8:13

       What's the story of learning that?

   12. TFTim Ferriss8:16

       My first international trip, real international trip off of Long Island, out of the US, was to Japan as an exchange student at 15 for a year. I went from East Coast to Tokyo, and it took me about three weeks just to accept that I was in Japan, because I couldn't believe it. Um, that's how that happened, and it just stuck. I was there for a year. I went to a Japanese school, all of my classes in Japanese. I [laughs] misunderstood what I was told before getting there, which was, "You're going to have Japanese lessons." And I was like, "Oh, great," like Japanese language lessons, and they're like, "Here's your class schedule." And I was like, "I can't read any of this." And they're like, "Physics, world history." [laughs] I'm like, "Wait, what?"

   13. CWChris Williamson8:59

       My, my lessons are going to be in Japanese.

   14. TFTim Ferriss9:01

       All in Japanese.

   15. CWChris Williamson9:01

       I'm not gonna have lessons without Japanese.

   16. GMGeorge Mack9:02

       Wow.

   17. TFTim Ferriss9:03

       So that will... Especially, I, I was lucky because this was pre-smartphone, internet not much to speak of, so I could not, coming back to WhatsApp, right, I couldn't procrastinate or avoid learning Japanese by constantly communicating with anyone in English.

   18. CWChris Williamson9:19

       There was no escape.

   19. TFTim Ferriss9:20

       There was-

   20. CWChris Williamson9:20

       It was just total immersion

   21. TFTim Ferriss9:21

       ... there was no escape. Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson9:21

       That seems to be... I, I get it. People go and do, um, university courses in, in Spanish and stuff, and it's not just the language. Sometimes they're learning about the history and the culture and other stuff like that. But if you're trying to learn a language, and I, I did in school, and we have to do at least one language in our GCSEs, typically, the, uh, 11 to 16s in the UK, and I did Spanish. And a- apart from the most basic stuff that I've probably remembered because I've gone back out to the country, I basically learned nothing. It would be... If you just wanted people to learn a language, doing a six-week immersion would, what, teach you maybe the same as a year of weekly classes?

   23. TFTim Ferriss9:57

       You could do a year in six weeks, no problem. There's, um, there's a method called the Michel Thomas method, and Michel Thomas, male, uh, was Holocaust survivor, then became an intelligence officer, ended up speaking five or six different languages, and developed a method of getting people up to basic conversational fluency in a week.

   24. CWChris Williamson10:24

       Wow.

   25. TFTim Ferriss10:25

       In a rush, in a weekend, in terms of giving them the scaffolding of the graph- the, the grammar and so forth. But it's a lot like learning some type of very fine motor skill, right? If you wanted to learn how to play tennis, it's like if you're playing once a month, you're never gonna learn tennis. Even once a week, you're just not getting the density of practice and the reinforcement-

   26. CWChris Williamson10:44

       Mm-hmm

   27. TFTim Ferriss10:44

       ... for you to go from the, like, unconscious incompetence to conscious competence to et cetera, et cetera, right? You're just not getting the proper density.

   28. CWChris Williamson10:53

       Mm-hmm.

   29. TFTim Ferriss10:54

       So languages, I think you can learn languages a lot faster as an adult than you can as a kid, actually.

   30. CWChris Williamson10:59

       Hmm. Why?
6. 13:28 – 15:15

   Which Nationality is Always Late?

   1. TFTim Ferriss13:28

      now."

   2. CWChris Williamson13:28

      Actually mean it, yeah. What, uh, what do you think is the latest nationality on the planet?

   3. TFTim Ferriss13:32

      Hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson13:32

      Hmm.

   5. GMGeorge Mack13:33

      Brazil?

   6. TFTim Ferriss13:35

      The latest.

   7. CWChris Williamson13:35

      Latest.

   8. GMGeorge Mack13:36

      Or the least, least punctual.

   9. CWChris Williamson13:36

      They're just... If you were to... I'm w- I'm gonna organize a dinner with somebody, and I can pick a bunch of different nationalities, which one's going to arrive on average last?

   10. GMGeorge Mack13:44

       [laughs] I feel like they've got, like, the Olympics, but in reverse.

   11. CWChris Williamson13:47

       [laughs]

   12. NSNirav Sanjani13:49

       Have you ever, have you ever, have you ever heard of Indian Standard Time?

   13. CWChris Williamson13:51

       [laughs] Damn.

   14. NSNirav Sanjani13:52

       I'm not even joking.

   15. TFTim Ferriss13:52

       No.

   16. NSNirav Sanjani13:52

       It's actually real.

   17. CWChris Williamson13:53

       No.

   18. NSNirav Sanjani13:53

       'Cause it's one hour later than it's actually supposed to start.

   19. TFTim Ferriss13:56

       Ah.

   20. NSNirav Sanjani13:56

       So turns out a long time ago, people would go to the movies-

   21. TFTim Ferriss13:59

       Yeah

   22. NSNirav Sanjani13:59

       ... and, you know, the movie doesn't start on time.

   23. TFTim Ferriss14:02

       [laughs]

   24. NSNirav Sanjani14:02

       Which is absolutely hilarious. You're like, everybody just expects, and then the whole term Indian Standard Time came about, which is absolutely hilarious, but it's typically referred to as one hour-

   25. TFTim Ferriss14:11

       That's funny. That's pretty funny

   26. NSNirav Sanjani14:12

       ... past something is starting.

   27. CWChris Williamson14:12

       After the actual time.

   28. TFTim Ferriss14:13

       So I've heard Brazilians refer to Brazilian Time also.

   29. NSNirav Sanjani14:16

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CWChris Williamson14:16

       Oh.
7. 15:15 – 20:23

   How Vivid is Your Memory?

   1. GMGeorge Mack15:15

      this is, this is really, uh, hippie crack shit, um, but this is what we're here for.

   2. TFTim Ferriss15:19

      Oh, now we're, now we're getting into it.

   3. GMGeorge Mack15:21

      Now we're getting there.

   4. CWChris Williamson15:21

      Yeah.

   5. GMGeorge Mack15:21

      I wonder, it's like that Saphir-Whorf hypothesis of how much-

   6. TFTim Ferriss15:25

      Oh, lost me

   7. GMGeorge Mack15:26

      ... la- Well-

   8. TFTim Ferriss15:27

      That didn't sound hippie friendly

   9. CWChris Williamson15:28

      He'll get there. He'll get there

   10. GMGeorge Mack15:29

       ... the, the idea is that, um, it's the Wittgenstein quote of, like, uh, "The limits of my world are the limits of my language."

   11. TFTim Ferriss15:34

       Yeah.

   12. GMGeorge Mack15:34

       And we think that we shape language, but language shapes us, and it feels immediately, like, so trivial, so esoteric to have the conversation. Everybody kind of dismisses language as, uh, it's almost like neurolinguistic programming, that we shouldn't take it seriously, but how much the words that we use. So I wonder, um, obviously, uh, England, Australia, America, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa share this English ancestry.

   13. CWChris Williamson15:59

       Hmm.

   14. GMGeorge Mack16:00

       But how much then that they have the same language keeps the culture similar as well, versus if you fork the language, do you change?

   15. CWChris Williamson16:06

       I don't know, man. If you go and meet a South African, you compare them to a Scottish person, they're quite different.

   16. GMGeorge Mack16:10

       See, it's true. Uh, both angry. Both very angry.

   17. CWChris Williamson16:13

       [laughs] Both very angry.

   18. GMGeorge Mack16:13

       So there you go. And, uh, we had this at my birthday. I didn't-

   19. CWChris Williamson16:16

       I was in the middle of nowhere

   20. GMGeorge Mack16:17

       ... I didn't realize the spectrum exists when it comes to how people think as well. So we had my friend Billy and my friend Cameron, and Billy can't think, uh, visually at all.

   21. CWChris Williamson16:29

       Mm-hmm.

   22. GMGeorge Mack16:29

       So he can only think in words.

   23. CWChris Williamson16:31

       Yes.

   24. GMGeorge Mack16:31

       Cameron can't think in words at all. She can only think visually.

   25. TFTim Ferriss16:36

       Mm-hmm.

   26. GMGeorge Mack16:36

       And I didn't know that the spectrum exists.

   27. CWChris Williamson16:37

       Have you seen this test that you can do?

   28. TFTim Ferriss16:38

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson16:38

       Like, imagine an apple in your mind. What level of detail can you see the apple at?

   30. GMGeorge Mack16:42

       Could you pull that up, Jared? The apple visual test.
8. 20:23 – 31:28

   Why Forgetting is Actually Useful

   1. CWChris Williamson20:23

      Do you want to tell the story about the first elevator we ever got into together?

   2. NSNirav Sanjani20:26

      Oh my God, yes. [laughs]

   3. CWChris Williamson20:27

      [laughs]

   4. NSNirav Sanjani20:28

      I actually, um, [clears throat] I think there was a new appointment of an Xbox CEO, and she was like, some- I, I'd made a tweet about it, and I was like, "Wait, she doesn't really have any experience with gaming."

   5. TFTim Ferriss20:39

      Mm-hmm.

   6. NSNirav Sanjani20:40

      And, um, and then Chris and I were in an elevator, and turns out she was there. [laughs]

   7. TFTim Ferriss20:45

      Well, you're leaving out one critical footnote. That tweet was not seen by two people.

   8. NSNirav Sanjani20:50

      It was, it was seen by a lot-

   9. CWChris Williamson20:51

      Millions, millions of people-

   10. NSNirav Sanjani20:52

       You know, I-

   11. CWChris Williamson20:52

       ... saw you call out the Xbox CEO.

   12. NSNirav Sanjani20:54

       You know, I was-

   13. CWChris Williamson20:55

       We get into... [laughs]

   14. NSNirav Sanjani20:58

       I was, I was just simply remarking about culture and the way that, like, people frame this because, like, it's a unique development.

   15. CWChris Williamson21:04

       But I put my foot in it. I put my foot in it.

   16. NSNirav Sanjani21:06

       Yeah. That was hilarious.

   17. CWChris Williamson21:08

       'Cause I'm trying to big up my friend-

   18. NSNirav Sanjani21:09

       I know

   19. CWChris Williamson21:09

       ... who recognizes the Xbox CEO and goes, "Hey, you're the CEO of Xbox." And it was some unassuming lady, dressed real nice, had maybe a partner or security or something with her. I'm like, uh, y- you identify correctly, and she sort of sheepishly is like, "Yeah, yeah, I am. That's me." And, uh, y- I think you introduced yourself as some-

   20. NSNirav Sanjani21:25

       She was very nervous about it.

   21. CWChris Williamson21:26

       A little, yeah, she was sheepish about it, which was q- quite charming.

   22. NSNirav Sanjani21:28

       And she was the actual CEO. I was like, wait, d- [laughs]

   23. CWChris Williamson21:31

       Yeah

   24. NSNirav Sanjani21:31

       ... that person's usually just, like, so into it or whatever.

   25. CWChris Williamson21:34

       And I said, "Well, you should ... You, you, you ... It is signal on, on X. You, you must ... He's a fantastic writer and a tech," and all the rest of this stuff. There is a 100% chance that she saw your tweet, and immediately as soon as I said that, the fucking atmosphere in the elevator went frosty as hell. [laughs]

   26. NSNirav Sanjani21:50

       It was, um... Look, I, I... Nothing against her personally, but-

   27. CWChris Williamson21:54

       Like-

   28. NSNirav Sanjani21:54

       ... I tried to do something nice for a friend

   29. CWChris Williamson21:55

       ... your superpower-

   30. NSNirav Sanjani21:55

       No, it was wonderful
9. 31:28 – 35:49

   How Easily Do We Invent Memories?

   1. GMGeorge Mack31:28

      To play, um, to play devil's advocate on the whole, the ability of to remember everything being a bad idea, I think a lot of these conversations, rather than a light switch, it's more a di-

   2. CWChris Williamson31:40

      Dimmer

   3. GMGeorge Mack31:40

      ... dimmer, and different people, different occasions it will be good and bad for. 'Cause a lot of people look at us being able to remember everything now very similar to when writing came along.

   4. CWChris Williamson31:50

      Mm.

   5. GMGeorge Mack31:51

      So before writing, we couldn't store any information down, so that completely changed us. But I always think of... So do you guys know, um, I've forgotten the name of, of Gren- um, Grenfell Tower in the UK. Have you heard about-

   6. CWChris Williamson32:03

      Yeah

   7. GMGeorge Mack32:03

      ... what Grenfell Tower is? So it's, it's kind of... It's one of the biggest, um, tragedies that's ever happened in the UK, where a council estate, which would be the equivalent of your projects, um, was poorly designed, set on fire, and-

   8. CWChris Williamson32:17

      Can we get a photo of it up?

   9. GMGeorge Mack32:18

      ... loads of people-

   10. CWChris Williamson32:18

       Jared, Grenfell Tower

   11. GMGeorge Mack32:19

       ... loads of people, um, burned alive in it, and it was a huge, like, government inquiry. How are we gonna fix it? What are we gonna change about it? And what was the crazy thing about the day was that as this building was on fire, kind of like 9/11, a baby was picked up on the news, was dropped from the top floor of-

   12. CWChris Williamson32:36

       Look at that

   13. GMGeorge Mack32:37

       ... So a baby was picked up from the top floor-

   14. CWChris Williamson32:39

       Oh

   15. GMGeorge Mack32:39

       ... and dropped, and somebody caught it, and it was this kind of miracle in this, uh, ama- like, horrific day that happened, and it got reported everywhere. There was about five different eyewitnesses, and about six months later, after the emotion of the event settled down, a few physicists started looking at it and going, "Well, hold on. That baby at a hundreds of feet in the air, if we just ran the math here, it would just disintegrate on the catch." And as soon as they started to inquire, like, the eyewitness testimony, it was a completely hallucinated memory. So-

   16. CWChris Williamson33:11

       Mm

   17. GMGeorge Mack33:11

       ... on the one hand, will... The, the ability to store memories will mean that we can't let go of certain things, but it may also mean that we let go of complete fictions that we're telling ourselves that never happened.

   18. CWChris Williamson33:22

       Or that we would invent them as well, right?

   19. GMGeorge Mack33:24

       Mm.

   20. CWChris Williamson33:24

       Because if you're Tim, your recollection of the flames is, you know, in 4K.

   21. GMGeorge Mack33:30

       Yes.

   22. CWChris Williamson33:30

       But the m- mirage of a baby being thrown out... You know the terminal velocity of a cat is non-fatal?

   23. GMGeorge Mack33:36

       What do you mean?

   24. CWChris Williamson33:38

       The, the... I can't say it any other way.

   25. GMGeorge Mack33:40

       [laughs]

   26. CWChris Williamson33:41

       [laughs] That's, that's, there's only one... If, if I drop a cat from any distance-

   27. GMGeorge Mack33:47

       Yes

   28. CWChris Williamson33:48

       ... it's n- the speed that it reaches when it hits the ground-

   29. GMGeorge Mack33:51

       Is exactly the same

   30. CWChris Williamson33:52

       ... on average is non-fatal.
10. 35:49 – 36:30

    What Do Bachelors Actually Do at Night?

    1. CWChris Williamson35:49

       What did I get you with the other day? Oh, it was when we were talking about the fact that if, uh, if a man doesn't have a girlfriend, the way that he behaves between 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM at night can only be destructive.

    2. GMGeorge Mack35:59

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson36:00

       And, uh, I told a friend about this, and-

    4. NSNirav Sanjani36:02

       Unless there's the internet.

    5. CWChris Williamson36:03

       Uh, well, even with the internet, it's still destructive.

    6. NSNirav Sanjani36:05

       Yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson36:05

       Right? 'Cause you're just embedding bad habits and s- doom scrolling, and it's all bullshit.

    8. NSNirav Sanjani36:08

       Self, self-destructive, I suppose.

    9. CWChris Williamson36:10

       However-

    10. NSNirav Sanjani36:10

        Less on, maybe

    11. CWChris Williamson36:11

        ... I asked, I asked a friend about this, and he said, yeah, so my, my, my buddy was single, and I'm in a relationship, and, uh, apparently at, like, 8:30 PM at night, he would just receive photos of his friend headstanding, just, like, selfies of him doing headstands. [laughs]

    12. NSNirav Sanjani36:25

        Incredible.

    13. GMGeorge Mack36:27

        What could, what could go wrong?

    14. CWChris Williamson36:29

        Yeah. Yeah.

    15. NSNirav Sanjani36:29

        Oh.

    16. CWChris Williamson36:29

        All

11. 36:30 – 45:01

    How Close Are We to Living in VR?

    1. CWChris Williamson36:30

       right, Nirav, what have you brought? Come on, give me some, give me some haters.

    2. NSNirav Sanjani36:32

       Um, I think the hallucination thing is really fascinating. People have this debate on AI hallucinations, and there's a bunch of these topics that are written, and, uh, Andrej Karpa- Karpathy has written a bunch of this stuff, and, um, turns out, you know, humans hallucinate as well. Almost all the features of AI-Today that exist. Um, they exist in s- humans in some way, shape, or form, and people are often, um, really baffled by it, right? They, they, they hate the hallucinations. I think, I think of them as more of like just a replication of the human mind and how it works, and turns out people hallucinate memories all the time, people manipulate memories. In fact, if you look at things in the past, you're effectively removing... You, you, you remember often fond memories or really painful stuff. The middle kind of fades away oftentimes. I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, Tim, about like... I think about this a lot because for our product we have to like make sure these things are low and context is there and whatnot.

    3. CWChris Williamson37:26

       Do you wanna explain what you do?

    4. NSNirav Sanjani37:27

       We're building kind of, um... You know, today the, the iPhone is kind of a... When you look at it, when you go for a glance, people always tap on apps and then you have to go and pull whatever you need to know. Um, we're kind of building a, a layer on, on devices that is kind of, um, glanceable information directly on your home screen that's entirely processed by AI, what you might wanna know right now or things might be important to you. And the idea of intelligence today exi- as it exists, it's much more I'm gonna go ask it a question, create this giant prompt, do all this stuff and, you know, basically you have to do the heavy lifting, where we try to do the heavy lifting for you by making that presentation layer directly on your home screen that sort of understands what's happening already in the background and surfaces it when you need to know it. So it's kind of an agentic home screen for your iPhone. Turns out the iPhone home screen hasn't changed in 20 years.

    5. CWChris Williamson38:22

       Hmm.

    6. NSNirav Sanjani38:22

       You're roughly using the same device, the same thing since-

    7. CWChris Williamson38:25

       Widgets, I guess.

    8. NSNirav Sanjani38:27

       Yeah, and-

    9. CWChris Williamson38:27

       That's kind of new

    10. NSNirav Sanjani38:27

        ... but they're underutilized. I think we use them in a creative way.

    11. CWChris Williamson38:30

        Yep.

    12. NSNirav Sanjani38:31

        And so, and so, um, like you know, we're not gonna go... We're like two people, three people, so we can't really build a device. We can't really invest hardcore, so we have to app- operate in the application layer and utilize all the things that are affordances that the OS exposes to us as developers. So, um, creatively, we, we sort of, um, build this experience, and we're a few weeks old. Pretty awesome, but it's been so much fun to be able to think about the way that ambient AI will really work.

    13. CWChris Williamson39:01

        Hmm.

    14. NSNirav Sanjani39:02

        Imagine you go into a room. There's a screen. It has presence detection, knows who you are, what you might wanna see or know or do if you wake up in the morning. These are the things that will kind of light up over time. And so, like this stuff might be in your life persistently if you want to with your permission.

    15. CWChris Williamson39:21

        Have you thought about what to call it? It feels like sort of context-dependent something.

    16. GMGeorge Mack39:26

        Ambient AI is good.

    17. CWChris Williamson39:26

        Ambient AI is lovely.

    18. GMGeorge Mack39:28

        Good for you.

    19. NSNirav Sanjani39:28

        [laughs]

    20. GMGeorge Mack39:28

        Jor- Geordie as well, AI.

    21. CWChris Williamson39:29

        Ambient AI.

    22. GMGeorge Mack39:30

        AI.

    23. CWChris Williamson39:31

        AI. Yes.

    24. NSNirav Sanjani39:32

        We need to...

    25. CWChris Williamson39:32

        Yeah.

    26. NSNirav Sanjani39:33

        But I think, I don't know if the terminology's there. You know, it turns out all the terminology that exists in the past, right, you know, the hashtags of Twitter and whatnot are inven- invented by their users. [laughs] And people-

    27. CWChris Williamson39:42

        Yeah

    28. NSNirav Sanjani39:42

        ... were like, "Oh, we should call it that." And then-

    29. CWChris Williamson39:43

        Bottom up, not top down.

    30. NSNirav Sanjani39:44

        Yeah, exactly.
12. 45:01 – 50:17

    Can You Train a Photographic Memory?

    1. TFTim Ferriss45:02

       Do you think you would feel better or worse after six months of not being able to take photos or video of anything?

    2. NSNirav Sanjani45:08

       Hmm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss45:10

       Other than like, okay-

    4. NSNirav Sanjani45:11

       Podcasts

    5. TFTim Ferriss45:11

       ... you need, you need to take a photo-

    6. CWChris Williamson45:12

       It's gonna be very difficult to do this podcast [laughs]

    7. TFTim Ferriss45:14

       ... like a business card or a scan for like business purposes, fine.

    8. CWChris Williamson45:18

       I don't, I-- So for me, taking photos doesn't get in the way of my life anywhere near as much as just the ambient pinging and navigating of, of the digital device itself.

    9. TFTim Ferriss45:29

       Hmm. Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson45:29

        The photos, I'm in and out. I, I have seen some marathon photo sessions being taken, uh, at sunset. I went to, um, uh, somewhere on Long Island. I can't quite remember where. Uh, there was a beautiful sunset happening over a lake, and a 15, 16, 17-year-old school group, it was like, it was a endurance sport of photo taking. I'm like, okay, that's something else. Like, that's kind of almost pathological. But for me, it's, I don't know. What about you? Do you think it would make a marked difference to your life if you couldn't take photos or videos for six months?

    11. TFTim Ferriss46:06

        I think it's a useful thought exercise. Uh, I would suspect it'd be better. I mean, I have not had any real-

    12. CWChris Williamson46:12

        Says the man with the photographic memory. [laughs]

    13. TFTim Ferriss46:14

        Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    14. NSNirav Sanjani46:16

        Damn. Perfect.

    15. TFTim Ferriss46:16

        I c- I can train people to have better visual memory.

    16. CWChris Williamson46:19

        Okay. Can we do it?

    17. TFTim Ferriss46:21

        What was that?

    18. CWChris Williamson46:21

        Can you show me?

    19. TFTim Ferriss46:22

        Oh, it's not like a, you know-

    20. CWChris Williamson46:24

        Now you know kung fu

    21. TFTim Ferriss46:25

        ... an Oz Pearl-- It's not like an Oz Pearlman, like-

    22. CWChris Williamson46:26

        Okay. [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss46:27

        ... 60-second bang.

    24. CWChris Williamson46:28

        Oh, okay.

    25. TFTim Ferriss46:28

        You know, it's not one of those.

    26. CWChris Williamson46:29

        But what's the eight, like what's the Pareto, um, like basics to, to get better at a visual memory?

    27. TFTim Ferriss46:34

        Start producing. So I would have people to get a book like Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain, which is a bit of a misnomer in the way that it lateralizes things, you know, hemispherically. But if you practice, for instance, this is one tool in the toolkit, right? Practice drawing and, for instance, right, if I had a flower in a vase on this table, which would be not the most compelling way to get someone to draw, but we're all practicing drawing. What you would notice with most people is that they look at the flower, they go down to draw it, and they start drawing their mental concept of a flower. They're not actually referring-

    28. NSNirav Sanjani47:12

        Mm-hmm. Hmm

    29. TFTim Ferriss47:13

        ... to the thing in front of them. And then there are different tricks you could use. For instance, if even right now as we sit in Austin, Texas, bright outside, could have you look at a tree or a bush around here, sit down. I'd be like, "Okay, draw that, but I want you to only start with the black parts." And you'd be like, "But it's a bright day. It's a green thing." I'm like-

    30. NSNirav Sanjani47:36

        Hmm.
13. 50:17 – 53:33

    How Mirrors Have Changed Human Behaviour

    1. NSNirav Sanjani50:17

       Did you guys see that quote where, um, I think this philosopher, I forgot the name, but it was like, "Man was never meant to have a mirror"?

    2. TFTim Ferriss50:23

       Hmm.

    3. NSNirav Sanjani50:25

       Self-reflection like that is, is, is detrimental in some ways.

    4. TFTim Ferriss50:29

       Mm-hmm.

    5. GMGeorge Mack50:29

       We wouldn't have known what we looked like until... Jared, can you find out when mirrors were invented? When, when was the first one like-

    6. TFTim Ferriss50:36

       You would have known with water. You would know with water

    7. NSNirav Sanjani50:38

       Yeah, you would go to a pond, for example, and look at your-

    8. TFTim Ferriss50:40

       Like Achilles

    9. NSNirav Sanjani50:41

       ... look at your face, for example.

    10. GMGeorge Mack50:41

        As- yeah.

    11. NSNirav Sanjani50:42

        Their, their nature ex-

    12. TFTim Ferriss50:43

        Or Narcissus

    13. GMGeorge Mack50:44

        Narcissus, yeah

    14. NSNirav Sanjani50:44

        This is why, like, if you look at animals, they're, for a variety of reasons, obviously, with intelligence or whatever, but they're often very baffled by their-

    15. GMGeorge Mack50:51

        Yeah

    16. NSNirav Sanjani50:52

        ... presence in the mirror. And now we're looking at ourselves more often than ever before. The selfie camera has effectively changed the, the dynamics of everything.

    17. GMGeorge Mack51:01

        During COVID, there was something called Zoom face. There was a marked increase in people getting cosmetic surgery because they were seeing themselves more.

    18. NSNirav Sanjani51:08

        Yeah.

    19. GMGeorge Mack51:08

        Because they were spending so many hours on-

    20. NSNirav Sanjani51:09

        Now there's, there's AI filters on Google Meet and Zoom that will add makeup-

    21. GMGeorge Mack51:14

        I want my skin smoothing for my interview.

    22. NSNirav Sanjani51:15

        Exactly. You can add makeup or whatever.

    23. TFTim Ferriss51:17

        Hmm.

    24. NSNirav Sanjani51:18

        And going back to your point about the photographic memory thing, did you guys ever play that game?

    25. TFTim Ferriss51:21

        Which I don't have, to be clear.

    26. NSNirav Sanjani51:22

        [laughs]

    27. TFTim Ferriss51:23

        No, I, no, I know, I know people who can do this, and then 10 minutes later read it back to you-

    28. NSNirav Sanjani51:30

        Right

    29. TFTim Ferriss51:30

        ... from memory.

    30. NSNirav Sanjani51:31

        That's ridiculous.
14. 53:33 – 1:05:26

    How Do We Find Meaning?

    1. GMGeorge Mack53:33

       All right, Tim, you must have some heaters. What have you brought from home? Show me something.

    2. TFTim Ferriss53:36

       Yeah, I've got something. This is an article. I've got a bunch of stuff, but I'm gonna take kind of a slight left turn. It's related to a lot of the stuff we're talking about, but this caught my attention. It's an article called Riding the Leopard by Packy McCormick.

    3. NSNirav Sanjani53:53

       Hmm.

    4. TFTim Ferriss53:53

       And it was-

    5. GMGeorge Mack53:54

       He's great

    6. TFTim Ferriss53:54

       ... it was-

    7. NSNirav Sanjani53:54

       Yeah

    8. TFTim Ferriss53:55

       ... it was sent to me.

    9. GMGeorge Mack53:56

       He's the man.

    10. TFTim Ferriss53:56

        I had never read anything of his. And this was sent to me a few days ago by, uh, someone adjacent to one of the top AI technologists out there, which is part of what makes it interesting. So I'll just... I'll, I'll read a couple of sections here, and then I wanna get your sense and thoughts on things. So what a week to get to talk to a room of technology people. This is a transcribed talk that Packy gave.

    11. NSNirav Sanjani54:27

        Hmm.

    12. TFTim Ferriss54:27

        Sierra just raised at 15 billion. Anthropic crossed a 44 billion run rate and launched a new company with some huge funds that have 1.5 billion to deploy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. OpenAI did the same thing, but with four billion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, this billion, that billion. All of which raises an important question. Who gives a shit? I mean that. Why do we care? And then it goes down, and he says, "Last night, a woman who reads my newsletter reached out over Substack DM. She said she'd been diagnosed with stage four cancer. She's now in remission. She'd been confronted with the question we've all been facing: What happens to human purpose when AI removes scarcity? Uh, or in her case, the need to be productive. To answer it," this is the interesting part, right? "She analyzed more than 200 sci-fi books. Across all of the- these books, by far the most common thing left to solve for post scarcity is meaning. 59% of books were about the search for meaning. Identity was next at 17%." And then it goes on, andYou know, their question's, "If new technology is so great, why are so many people unhappy?" Right? "If we have means our ancestors couldn't have dreamed of, why is there a meaning crisis?" And then it quotes Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who wrote, "The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged, survival for what? Ever more people today have the means to live but no meaning to live for." And ultimately in the piece, he ends up talking about-- He really goes out there. Well, I would bet that dear Packy has done a fair amount of drugs. But-

    13. NSNirav Sanjani55:55

        [laughs]

    14. TFTim Ferriss55:56

        And that's meant as a compliment, Packy-

    15. NSNirav Sanjani55:57

        [laughs]

    16. TFTim Ferriss55:58

        ... if you hear this. Uh, but we get into non-duality, we get into differentiation as moral obligation. But I want to explain the, the origin of the name of the piece, Riding the Leopard, and it's from Joseph C- Joseph Campbell. And effectively, he's talking about the hero's journey, and I'll read two parts, and then I'll stop. But the goal of the hero's trip, down to the jewel point, is to find those levels in the psyche that open, open, open and finally open to the mystery of yourself being Buddha consciousness or the Christ. That's the journey. It's all about finding that still point in your mind where commitment drops away. The separateness apparent in the world is secondary. Beyond that world of opposites is an unseen but experienced unity and identity in us all. All right. Then this is the, the sort of wellspring of the name of the piece. You must return with the bliss and integrate it. The return is seeing the radiance everywhere. All right? The goal is to live with godlike composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard without being torn to pieces. And it goes on. It's worth reading. It does get a little squirrely, uh, later on. But what I'm curious about is how you guys think about, if you do, solving for meaning. Because I tend to skew, I wouldn't say dystopian, but hypervigilant and have a lot of concern for the next five, 10 years. Uh, not just with AI, but with the reaction to AI, right?

    17. NSNirav Sanjani57:26

        Hmm.

    18. TFTim Ferriss57:26

        So, so it's, it's one thing if, if AI, quote-unquote, "takes jobs," but if everyone fears it is going to take jobs, there's a, there are consequences of that in and of itself, right?

    19. NSNirav Sanjani57:37

        Mm. Interesting.

    20. TFTim Ferriss57:38

        But I'm wondering how you guys think about or solve for meaning. And I'll just add one more thing, which is, um... Actually, no, I'll save it. I'll park that for, for, for maybe injecting a little later. But how do you guys think about it?

    21. NSNirav Sanjani57:52

        You know, one thing that comes to mind, this is the weirdest thing, by the way, which is, um, I like aviation. And there's-- This is all gonna connect, which is, you know, um, turns out airplanes crash only because there's multiple systems that go wrong, whatever. And, and, um, the reason why that came to mind, Tim, was that, um, a captain has a decision to make when something bad happens. How much do you communicate what happened to the passengers?

    22. TFTim Ferriss58:17

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    23. NSNirav Sanjani58:18

        Like, what do you say? Do you, do you, like, "Hey, you know, we've lost hydraulics, we've lost stuff. You know, multiple systems are wrong," whatever. Completely transparent. You freak people out. Um, if you not share enough information, people are like, "Oh, what's going on? Why is it turbulent?" How does that marry to AI? The people who are building these systems, how much do they communicate what they think are things that might change about the future-

    24. TFTim Ferriss58:43

        Hmm

    25. NSNirav Sanjani58:43

        ... things that might have a turbulent nature to them? And that is a delicate art, which is, you know, you see Dario going on pods and saying stuff like, "Software engineering's solved. You know, software will be free." Um, once that happens, you know, you get these ripple effects, whatnot. All this stuff happens. And there's other people who are, like, much more optimistic about the world, which is like, "Hey, you know what? Every and, and every revolution has created jobs."

    26. TFTim Ferriss59:14

        Hmm.

    27. NSNirav Sanjani59:14

        Certainly, it has eliminated them, but we've progressed. And so it's really fascinating. I think this is an interesting environment where people are like, how much do you, even as a... A lot of researchers in San Francisco, for example, really believe that we've solved almost every problem, roughly. That, that, that the dominoes will fall very quickly from here on out. If you have AI self-correcting, self-researching, you get to AGI, what happens?

    28. TFTim Ferriss59:43

        How do you solve personally? How do you think about meaning? If you do. This is not a ju-

    29. NSNirav Sanjani59:47

        It's great

    30. TFTim Ferriss59:48

        ... this is not, like, a pre-judgment either.
15. 1:05:26 – 1:14:03

    Are More People Turning to Religion?

    1. NSNirav Sanjani1:05:27

       How do you g- how do you guys, um, do you guys think this is an active process in people's minds? Like, just a-

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:05:33

       Meaning creation?

    3. NSNirav Sanjani1:05:33

       Yeah. Like, do people really, like, think about it in that realm, or is it just a byproduct of existence in some sense?

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:05:41

       I think we're a natural byproduct of existence. I, I... Look, I, I would just say, I mean, may- maybe you see this, maybe you don't.

    5. NSNirav Sanjani1:05:47

       Hmm.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:05:47

       I mean, you guys all interact on the interwebs. The degree of, like, apathy and nihilism and foreboding-

    7. NSNirav Sanjani1:05:56

       Hmm

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:05:56

       ... that I think is adjacent or overlapping with a creeping dread of meaninglessness-

    9. NSNirav Sanjani1:06:04

       Hmm

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:06:04

        ... in my audience over the last five years is fucking terrifying.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:06:07

        And do you think that AI is contributing to that?

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:06:09

        I think that technology... And look, I'm not saying technology is a bad thing. Like, ever since we were, our ancestors used some stick to fish out, you know, a termite mound. It's like, I bet on technology. It's [laughs] you know, I've lived in the Bay Area for almost 20 years, still very actively involved with, um, different types of technology. But I do think that there is the equivalent of digital poison, and a lot of us are drip-feeding it every day. So it's not necessarily AI. I think AI, like money, power, alcohol, psychedelics, is an ex- it's an amplifier.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:06:45

        Hmm.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:06:45

        It's an accelerant.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:06:46

        Well, certainly most people's relationship to technology now is negative. I don't know many people, perhaps except you, who have a above 80% positive interaction with technology. I, I was on the, the treadmill in the, the gym the other day, and I was looking at, um, doing a little bit of boom scrolling on my phone, and I had a screen in front of me here, and then I had five screens here, and then another five screens there, and then there's a video wall that's got an advert here. And I'm like, "Dude, I'm supposed to be in the gym." And I'm trying to listen to a podcast. I'm trying to listen to a funny podcast.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:07:21

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:07:21

        It's just a, a safe space hang. I'm not supposed to be thinking, and I'm supposed to be tuned into this. And every single different screen had subtitles on. Some of them had adverts on. This one's My 600-Lb Life.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:07:31

        [laughs]

    19. CWChris Williamson1:07:31

        That one's the news from, from New York City. This one's that.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:07:35

        Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:07:35

        And I'm like, "Dude, I can't... It's even... It, I have to actively avoid screens now, even if I choose to go screen-free." So yeah, I think most people's relationship to, to technology is... proto negative.

    22. GMGeorge Mack1:07:48

        Mm-hmm.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:07:48

        So when they think about if this gets more, that is more of the negative-

    24. GMGeorge Mack1:07:53

        Mm-hmm

    25. CWChris Williamson1:07:53

        ... and it's already removed it from me a bit. Had a really interesting conversation with Nick Bostrom. So he did his second book, which is kind of like a spiritual sequel to Superintelligence.

    26. GMGeorge Mack1:08:01

        Mm-hmm.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:08:02

        What If Things Go Wrong? And then the next one was, What If Things Go Right?

    28. GMGeorge Mack1:08:05

        Yeah.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:08:05

        What are the problems of a solved world? And, um, he had this really interesting example where he said, basically, everything that we value in other humans can be refined down to the fact that you need to negotiate with a world that is scarce. Why do I like motivation in someone else? Why do I like discipline? Why do I like the ability to tell the truth? Why do I like prudence? Why do I like good judgment? Because you need those things to be able to navigate through a world which is going to apply pressure to you.

    30. GMGeorge Mack1:08:33

        Mm-hmm.
16. 1:14:03 – 1:17:38

    Will AI Ever Become Conscious?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:14:03

       all along.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:14:03

       Do you guys, um-

    3. NSNirav Sanjani1:14:05

       Intellectuals oftentimes, um, get in this territory where they try to use proof by counterexample, so th- they'll try to find one counterexample in something that you're saying, and then effectively void the whole thing.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:14:18

       Mm-hmm.

    5. NSNirav Sanjani1:14:18

       It's a very common thing because this is what you do in a math setting or anything. And they, they tr- tend to do that in kind of a religious setting as well, and it's like, that's not applicable here. [laughs]

    6. CWChris Williamson1:14:30

       Mm-hmm.

    7. NSNirav Sanjani1:14:30

       Just because X, Y, Z... X is not true doesn't mean invalidates the rest of it. Um, and this is why people tend to like, you know, I think Richard Dawkins is like, religion is a pick and choose kind of buffet. You know, you can, you can go pick and believe in something. That's perfectly-

    8. CWChris Williamson1:14:42

       He also did say that AI is, uh, sentient-

    9. NSNirav Sanjani1:14:45

       Sentient

    10. CWChris Williamson1:14:45

        ... the other day

    11. NSNirav Sanjani1:14:46

        With Claude, right?

    12. CWChris Williamson1:14:46

        Claudia.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:14:46

        How old's Richard though now?

    14. CWChris Williamson1:14:48

        70s. 70s.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:14:51

        I think as soon as anybody gets over 65, you've got to give them a little bit of-

    16. CWChris Williamson1:14:54

        Leeway?

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:14:55

        ... public breathing, breathing room, yeah.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:14:57

        Why?

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:14:59

        Have you been around anybody over 65?

    20. CWChris Williamson1:15:00

        Richard Dawkins.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:15:01

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:15:02

        Yeah. I was on stage with him. He, he said that he would consider trying psychedelics.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:15:06

        Oh, wow.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:15:06

        And I actually get him to admit to that.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:15:07

        Hmm.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:15:07

        That was fun. But yeah, I, look, I-

    27. NSNirav Sanjani1:15:10

        What do you guys think of that? The R- Richard Dawkins play. I mean, if anybody would go around and figure out if there is sentience associated with AI, maybe Richard Dawkins might be an okay person to go and figure that out. I don't know. I don't know how much you guys... [laughs] But I'm, I'm curious to get your thoughts on what he discovered or how he discovered it.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:15:27

        Oh, it's way above my pay grade. I have no idea. I would need people to define sentience-

    29. NSNirav Sanjani1:15:31

        Hmm

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:15:31

        ... and also, like, the, there... Whenever we get into sentience, consciousness, I'm like, let's, let's make, before we argue about what God does or doesn't like-
17. 1:17:38 – 1:21:03

    How Do We Define Meaning?

    1. NSNirav Sanjani1:17:38

       Can I ask a dumb question?

    2. CWChris Williamson1:17:40

       Yeah. Is it how to open your toothpicks?

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:17:42

       That's what we're here for.

    4. NSNirav Sanjani1:17:42

       [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:17:42

       I was g- I was watching you this year.

    6. NSNirav Sanjani1:17:44

       Send the signals.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:17:44

       Send them here.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:17:45

       Yeah. Back to the, back to the factory.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:17:48

       Here we go.

    10. NSNirav Sanjani1:17:48

        Also, I have another-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:17:48

        Let's talk to this co-packer

    12. CWChris Williamson1:17:49

        Here we go.

    13. NSNirav Sanjani1:17:49

        Oh my God. Amazing. I, I want... I have another dumb question, which is, how, how do most people or normal p- people think about meaning? Like, what, how do they define it? What is the underlying element of it?

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:18:00

        I mean, I think, I mean, the way that, like, I don't know if I'm normal. I'm probably pretty abnormal, but-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:18:04

        Yeah. [laughs]

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:18:04

        Um-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:18:05

        It's full fucking weird

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:18:05

        ... I mean, I, I mean, I do think that, like, meaning may be the wrong term to use because you can apply it to defining a term, you could apply it to, was this conversation meaningless or meaningful?

    19. CWChris Williamson1:18:17

        Yeah.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:18:17

        Well, yeah, we talked about a bunch of stuff that ha- we... is mutually intelligible. So like, yeah, sure, by definition, it's meaningful. But I think we could say purpose, like people feeling they have a purpose.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:18:27

        Mm-hmm.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:18:27

        Right? There is a point to what they're doing or their life in general. Right? Is sort of how I would think. I j- I just, the... Uh, I, I mean, that's, that's, if, if I had to put in a placeholder, that's what I would put in.

    23. NSNirav Sanjani1:18:46

        Western society always attributes... You know, when you go to a party, what do you do, Tim?

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:18:53

        What do I do?

    25. NSNirav Sanjani1:18:54

        What do you do? Like, you know, this is a canonical question that people ask. It's like-

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:18:57

        Oh, what do I do? [laughs]

    27. NSNirav Sanjani1:18:58

        What do you do? Like, I, I-

    28. CWChris Williamson1:19:00

        What do you do at a party? What do you do when you're out?

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:19:02

        Yeah, yeah.

    30. NSNirav Sanjani1:19:02

        You know, I'm-
18. 1:21:03 – 1:24:01

    Are Dating Apps Dying?

    1. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:03

       [laughs] Have you guys heard about Sniffies?

    2. CWChris Williamson1:21:05

       Yeah. No, no, no. What's Sniffies?

    3. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:07

       What? It's like a new gay sex, anonymous sex app.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:21:10

       Okay. Okay. What, what, how are they innovating on Grindr? Tell us- What, what went wrong? Yeah.

    5. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:13

       Well, I... This is what I know because I have some friends.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:21:16

       What, what were they serving-

    7. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:16

       Um, so-

    8. CWChris Williamson1:21:17

       What were they serving that the Grindr app wasn't? That's what I want to know. How do you spell that, by the way? Is it S-

    9. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:21

       [laughs]

    10. CWChris Williamson1:21:21

        [laughs]

    11. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:22

        It's exactly what you... A Match Group-

    12. CWChris Williamson1:21:23

        Come here. I've got to end this podcast. Can you-

    13. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:25

        Match Group just put in a-

    14. CWChris Williamson1:21:25

        My phone's pinging. Wait, one second. Hold on

    15. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:28

        ... um, Match Group just put in $100 million into the app. Um, and it's growing like crazy.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:21:32

        Peop- people don't talk about the mono- I used to have this thing that if, uh... One of the reasons why it was never discussed in Parliament or never discussed in Congress, um, was who owns Pornhub? What's the name, uh, name of the company? Is it MindGeek?

    17. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:46

        Yeah.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:21:46

        Yeah, yeah.

    19. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:46

        MindGeek.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:21:46

        Canadian company. MindGeek had... Whilst, whilst the Congress was talking about the monopoly that Google had, that Meta had, MindGeek had the most absurd monopoly-

    21. NSNirav Sanjani1:21:55

        It's 80% or something

    22. CWChris Williamson1:21:55

        ... of the pornography industry, which you'd argue there's a free market solution that OnlyFans came along and good old OnlyFans fixing the market.

    23. NSNirav Sanjani1:22:02

        [laughs] Democratizing porn.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:22:03

        But another example is the dating apps. If you look at who owns all the dating apps- Match.com has got a bunch ... I'm pretty sure Match... I'm pretty sure they own Match, Tinder, Hinge. I don't know if they own Bumble as well.

    25. NSNirav Sanjani1:22:13

        Pretty much everything.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:22:14

        I think-

    27. NSNirav Sanjani1:22:14

        No, no, Bu- Bumble's public.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:22:16

        Bumble's separate. Okay, so Bumble's separate. Raya maybe. Uh-

    29. NSNirav Sanjani1:22:19

        Raya's separate too.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:22:20

        Raya.
19. 1:24:01 – 1:25:05

    Is DoorDash Removing Friction?

    1. NSNirav Sanjani1:24:01

       But going back to your point, Chris, which was the idea... That capitalism removes friction, right? Like, the idea is that you have this invisible layer in society, sort of, that is, that is fixing supply and demand such that there's this equilibrium-

    2. CWChris Williamson1:24:19

       Mm

    3. NSNirav Sanjani1:24:19

       ... at all times.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:24:20

       Mm.

    5. NSNirav Sanjani1:24:21

       And turns out that reduces friction because accessibility... I mean, DoorDash, you can like... I, I can get an Amazon delivery in 15, 30 minutes or whatever. It's ridiculous.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:24:29

       You got a, a fancy dress outfit in less than an hour yesterday. Yeah, because that's what I do on a Sunday.

    7. NSNirav Sanjani1:24:34

       It's ridiculous.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:24:34

       Needed a costume. Needed a costume. Yeah. [laughs]

    9. NSNirav Sanjani1:24:36

       Right?

    10. CWChris Williamson1:24:37

        It's on these new apps. [laughs]

    11. NSNirav Sanjani1:24:39

        I mean, it was remarkable. I was-

    12. CWChris Williamson1:24:41

        I need a, I need a furry with a cape

    13. NSNirav Sanjani1:24:42

        ... stat.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:24:42

        And then went straight onto Whistler or whatever it's called.

    15. NSNirav Sanjani1:24:44

        Yeah, I was in, I was in, um, I was in like a-

    16. CWChris Williamson1:24:46

        Sniffle

    17. NSNirav Sanjani1:24:46

        ... Carmel and we... I didn't have a bathing suit because people were going in the pool or whatever.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:24:49

        Let's go.

    19. NSNirav Sanjani1:24:50

        And it was like, "Oh, I can just DoorDash it f- in 30 minutes, and somebody will bring me a bathing suit," because I didn't have a... And that's, that's remarkable. And I think going back to this, it's like, yeah, obviously, I think it reduces value of things when the, the friction goes down.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:25:04

        Mm-hmm.

20. 1:25:05 – 1:26:22

    The Many Near-Deaths of Churchill

    1. CWChris Williamson1:25:05

       I, I do think, uh, a great example is, uh, Winston Churchill. Um, I posted this the other day. Churchill's biography is so good. Like, you go, "Jesus Christ, did this man-" Which one? Um, the big... I think it's Andrew Roberts, uh, Churchill biography. First off, Jared, could you pull it up how many times Winston Churchill nearly died? He out-beats a cat. Like, the number of... I think he almost drowns.

    2. NSNirav Sanjani1:25:24

       [laughs]

    3. CWChris Williamson1:25:24

       He gets run over. What's the terminal velocity of Winston Churchill?

    4. NSNirav Sanjani1:25:27

       13 floors. [laughs]

    5. CWChris Williamson1:25:27

       Yeah. He gets, he gets ran over. But Churchill used to, and famously a sufferer of depression, as he called it- The black dog ... the black dog. He used to plant... Uh, sorry, he used to lay 200 bricks per day for a, a, a significant period of his life just to keep himself busy. What was he building with those 200 bricks? Just... Apparently, apparently he wasn't actually that good, so the stories... The actual bricklayers- Just a shit wall ... came in afterwards. But he would always do... [laughs] Yeah, you can have a look. So here we go. Like, yeah, he... Battlefield dangers in Cuba, India, Sudan, and South Africa. Escaped from... Yeah, he was es- The Boer ... escaped from the Boer prison of war camp. Yeah.

    6. NSNirav Sanjani1:26:00

       Wow.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:26:00

       Frontline combat in World War I. Got hit by a car in New York. Believed he was preserved for a purpose. Yeah. Felt he was walking with destiny. Well, well, Winston Churchill fa- famously said when he was a, I believe a teenager, that, "I will save Western civilization," which is up there with John D. Rockefeller saying, "I will become the richest man ever to exist." Called their shots. But for every Churchill, for every Rockefeller, there's a thousand dickheads. I do massive survival. We're in Newcastle

21. 1:26:22 – 1:34:46

    Does the US Struggle to Laugh at Itself?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:26:22

       right now. All right, so I, I got in trou- Speaking of the UK, uh, I got in trouble for comparing the UK to where it would rank if it was a stateAnd I thought that this was a relatively innocuous thing to say because me and George have both shit on the UK quite a bit.

    2. GMGeorge Mack1:26:34

       Mm.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:26:34

       You know, you're allowed to. You're allowed to.

    4. GMGeorge Mack1:26:37

       Right

    5. CWChris Williamson1:26:37

       As immigrants having moved from your own country, you're allowed to sort of cast aspers- Well, this is why I left, so to speak. We were the second in the world in millionaire exits not long ago, second only to China, who's got, you know, like 30 times the population or something. So, uh, I decided to post this chart, and this chart explains if the UK was a state, where it would rank on the list. Here it is. If the UK were a US state, where would it rank among 50 states? So life expectancy, first. Lowest homicide rate, first. Lowest gun deaths, first. Lowest prisoner population, first. Healthcare coverage, first. Paid maternity leave, first.

    6. GMGeorge Mack1:27:11

       A lot of high numbers

    7. CWChris Williamson1:27:12

       Statutory paid holiday, first. Years in education, first. Lowest road deaths, first. Lowest drug deaths, second.

    8. GMGeorge Mack1:27:19

       Oh.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:27:19

       Minimum wage, third. Pupil performance, fifth. Environmental performance, fifth. Human development index, ninth. Lowest obesity, 10th, and GDP per capita, 51st.

    10. GMGeorge Mack1:27:29

        [laughs]

    11. CWChris Williamson1:27:30

        Uh, so-

    12. GMGeorge Mack1:27:31

        What do you, what do you attribute that to?

    13. CWChris Williamson1:27:33

        Well, I mean, it's-

    14. GMGeorge Mack1:27:34

        The 51st

    15. CWChris Williamson1:27:35

        ... uh, the fact that it's 51st, the fact that the US just absolutely rules when it comes to capitalism. You guys are like the Sloppy Mayweather of capitalism.

    16. GMGeorge Mack1:27:42

        Well, I mean, is- it would, would, would most countries... I know that the UK is not Europe. You know, Brexit is Brexit, but like-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:27:49

        [laughs]

    18. GMGeorge Mack1:27:49

        ... would, would other, would countries in Western Europe also look like this in terms of GDP per capita? Probably, right?

    19. CWChris Williamson1:27:55

        I would, I would guess so. Well, I mean, what people on the internet got mad at me for is, "Well, these are stupid things to judge. Obviously you've got the lowest gun deaths because you cucks gave up your guns."

    20. GMGeorge Mack1:28:07

        [laughs]

    21. CWChris Williamson1:28:07

        Uh, "The paid maternity leave doesn't matter when this thing... The statutory paid holiday is pointless because, uh, the level of productivity. The road deaths are because you don't have big enough roads or something. The drug deaths don't matter because you've got no cool drugs. The minimum..."

    22. GMGeorge Mack1:28:23

        [laughs]

    23. CWChris Williamson1:28:23

        Like, there was, there was basically an American excuse for every single one of these. Uh, even the lowest obesity.

    24. GMGeorge Mack1:28:29

        Oh.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:28:29

        Um, and it was like, it was just surprising to me because for the most part, British people are very prepared to laugh at Britain.

    26. GMGeorge Mack1:28:36

        Mm.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:28:36

        Very prepared to point, and we've done-

    28. GMGeorge Mack1:28:37

        Very British thing

    29. CWChris Williamson1:28:38

        ... we've, I've done episode... I've done entire episodes on this is what's wrong, and this is what's wrong, and this is what's wrong, and this is what's wrong. But as soon as you begin to compare the US to the UK, and in some areas... Because o- the whole joke here is that there's lots of things that we're ranking better than the US in, apart from one of the most important things, which is [laughs] how much fucking money we make.

    30. GMGeorge Mack1:29:00

        Mm.
22. 1:34:46 – 1:47:37

    Could Neuromodulation Cure Depression?

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:34:46

       Well, I mean, you and I have chatted about this before, but I'm just increasingly bullish on neuromodulation-

    2. CWChris Williamson1:34:54

       Mm.

    3. NSNirav Sanjani1:34:54

       Hmm

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:34:54

       ... brain stimulation. And there was, uh, there was a piece in The New York Times, um, could at-home brain stimulation reduce psychiatry's reliance on SSRIs? And I think part of the framing challenge around... And just to def- define terms here. So brain stimulation, in this particular case, I believe in that New York Times piece is referring to something called TDCS, where you can basically use, I think it's TDCS, where you can basically use a nine-volt battery. It's a headset that you can wear at home, and it's intended to treat depressive disorder. And then you have other types of neuromodulation, and I use that term because you might not be stimulating. You might not be exciting something, you might be inhibiting something.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:35:36

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:35:36

       So that would include, uh, TMS, which I've spent a lot of time with, so transcranial magnetic stimulation. So you're using magnets with different targets depending on what you're trying to do. And, uh, I think those are just, it's the very, very, it's the Model T of what's coming-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:35:57

       [laughs]

    8. NSNirav Sanjani1:35:57

       Mm

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:35:57

       ... with, with neuromodulation, and I think there's gonna be a lot of acceleration in the next two years. I think it's gonna move a lot faster than people expect.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:36:07

        How does it work?

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:36:08

        Well, so for instance, you might have, uh, in, say, my case, right? So what I figured out, uh, took me [laughs] my whole life to figure it out but a few years ago, is that even though I had kind of d- been diagnosed and diagnosed myself prior to that as someone with some type of depressive disorder, uh, I think that it was a combination of a few, a few things. Number one was Lyme disease, which is, like, very much multiple times verified real Lyme disease, not like chronic fatigue masquerading as Lyme disease, from Long Island, which is, if you look at the CDC map, the Center for Disease Control, it is like-

    12. CWChris Williamson1:36:48

        Bullseye

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:36:49

        ... the [laughs] is the bullseye, uh, outbreak, pun intended, because you sometimes get a rash that looks like a bullseye. But I think that a lot of psychiatric conditions are downstream of acute infections that then led to chronic neuroinflammation. That's taking us a little further afield from the point I was gonna make, which is you can use these magnetic pulses in the case of something like accelerated TMS. And in my case, I realized that it was actually anxiety and rumination, so a combination. The DSM constantly changes in terms of how you would diagnose these things. Psychiatry's kind of where surgery was like 300 years ago, I would say.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:37:25

        Hmm.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:37:25

        Right? It's very early days. But if I do an FF- fMRI, right? So you're getting this imaging of the brain. You identify targets for, say, anxiety, like anxiosomatic target. You can inhibit or excite, depending on what you're trying to do, a target with these magnetic pulses. Inter- intermittent theta bursts is what it's called. And it just feels like a light tapping on your head. That's it. It's very tolerable. And in my case, you might do, for instance, in the latest round of what I've done, take something, it's a drug. So you take a neuroplasticity agent beforehand. And there are a lot of things that can increase neuroplasticity, but in this case, it's a [laughs] somewhat, uh, antiquated maybe antibiotic called d-cycloserine. So you stick it in your mouth, you let it dissolve for an hour before the stims, and then you're doing three minutes on the hour or maybe even every half hour for 10 stims. And that's it. And I got three to four months of g- going from, say, a eight or nine out of, like, generalized anxiety and just OCD rumination to, like, a zero or a one.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:38:37

        Wow.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:38:38

        Different people. I mean, those are two different lived experiences.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:38:41

        Yeah.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:38:42

        And-

    20. CWChris Williamson1:38:43

        And then, uh, after three or four months it, it-

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:38:44

        Starts to creep back in-

    22. CWChris Williamson1:38:45

        Yeah

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:38:45

        ... and then you can go get, say, a booster of some type. And, uh, I know people with depression specifically, there's a lot more data on depression of different types, who basically similarly got taken from like, "I can't move. I'm at home." Some people are cutting and they go from like ... Again, this ... I'm not a doctor. I'm not giving medical advice, and these are anecdotes.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:39:07

        Yeah.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:39:07

        But there are also published studies that people can look into. There's a great scientist named Jonathan Downar, unfortunate name for being [laughs] someone looking-

    26. CWChris Williamson1:39:13

        [laughs]

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:39:14

        ... working with someone in depression, but amazing scientist, D-O-W-N-A-R. People can look him up. Uh, I think he's at the University of Toronto. And, uh, you see durability in some people, including the, the son of a friend of mine, 18 months.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:39:29

        Wow.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:39:29

        So instead of three to four months, you get like 18 months. And so you can ... You start to wonder, it's like, all right, if we look at, let's just say SSRIs, which are miraculous for some people, but the general chemical imbalance theory of depression or anxiety is pretty much thoroughly debunked at this point, right? You're not depressed because you have low serotonin levels, by and large. And when you take pharmaceuticals, I'm sure it's true with GLP-1s. I don't think there's a, very rarely a f- a biological free lunch, but let's put that aside. Uh, with psychiatric medications, typically you have off-target effects, right? There are gonna be side effects. They could be sexual dysfunction, they could be whatever. They're weight gain. There are a million different, uh, options. And often they stop working or people don't need them anymore and then there's no plan for de-prescribing and off-ramping these people. So they just stay on forever, right?

    30. CWChris Williamson1:40:26

        Mm-hmm.
23. 1:47:37 – 1:57:46

    The Unexpected Side Effect of TMS Therapy

    1. CWChris Williamson1:47:37

       okay." You, you mentioned before, um, risks-

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:47:39

       Mm-hmm

    3. CWChris Williamson1:47:40

       ... with the, the, the TMS type stuff.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:47:42

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:47:42

       What, what are some of the risks?

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:47:45

       Uh, generally very low. I mean, I would say that, again, not a, uh, not a PhD or doctor. Don't play one on the internet, so do your homework. Talk to your professionals. But, uh, my understanding is that... Well, I can give you my personal example, right? Uh, occasionally, in the case with my target, with my brain, uh, after the treatment, you can have what's almost like a rebound exaggeration of symptoms for a short period of time-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:48:13

       Mm. Mm-hmm

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:48:14

       ... which is pretty unpleasant, where you might have insomnia for a few days, which I did. I've had that twice. And-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:48:19

       And you've done, you've done this twice?

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:48:21

        No, I've done it f- probably five or six times. And it's, it's not, it has not worked 100% of the time, which is very frustrating. It's part of the reason why, you know, I'm supporting, uh, a, a nascent brain stimulation lab here at UT Austin. Um, getting involved with a couple of the companies because I want to... Like, I actually know these machines.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:48:39

        Yeah.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:48:39

        And I've talked to the technicians and I've talked to the scientists, and I'm like, "I can actually be very, I think, helpful here." So I'm hoping to figure out how you can make that much more reliable. It's also just pure self-interest, right? I wanna be able to use this.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:48:54

        Mm-hmm.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:48:54

        And I also wanna figure out how to get durability out further, right? Instead of three to four months, it's like, look, if it's one day every quarter, like, and it goes from a nine to a one, fantastic. But if only it works once out of every four shots-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:49:06

        Yeah

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:49:06

        ... then that sucks-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:49:07

        Yeah. Yeah

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:49:07

        ... uh, in, in, in a lot of respects. So some of the side effects, the insomnia that I mentioned. Uh, in very, very rare cases, people will get, uh, temporary tinnitus. They'll get like a ringing.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:49:20

        Mm.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:49:21

        Uh, these are, these are all pretty uncommon. Uh, and I should say that the, using this for generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, et cetera, is very much tip of the spear stuff. So the sample size is not very large. The, with the depression, there's much more data.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:49:39

        Right.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:49:39

        And you can go on PubMed or elsewhere. Consensus.a- app is another, uh, decent opt- option if you want like an AI interface. And look at the published papers. Um, they're right there for you. Um, if you are, like, smacking down your sympathetic nervous system... [chuckles] Okay, this is the perfect place to talk about this on a pod- large podcast. Um-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:49:59

        [chuckles]

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:50:01

        S- after my first effective TMS treatment, the first one that worked, I could not ejaculate for like two weeks, and I fucking lost it. You can imagine.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:50:10

        [laughs]

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:50:10

        I'm just like... [laughs] I'm like, "Is this a good news, bad news situation?" Like, "Yeah, good news, you're not as anxious. Bad news, you're never gonna ejaculate again." I was like, "What the fuck?" And the doctor's like, "Yeah, we've never seen that before." And I was like, "Oh, fantastic." Uh, but eventually, mechanistically, he was like, "It could be a dosing problem where we're basically, we dialed down the volume on your sympathetic nervous system too much." Because it, like it-

    27. CWChris Williamson1:50:32

        'Cause it's parasympathetic to get erect, sympathetic to come.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:50:34

        Yeah, they say point and shoot.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:50:35

        Ah.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:50:35

        Parasympathetic-
24. 1:57:46 – 2:03:44

    Could Vagus Nerve Stimulation Eradicate Migraines?

    1. NSNirav Sanjani1:57:46

       How do you, um... I had a question for you. You know, on, on the other side of the spectrum, have you seen these devices that stimulate your vagus nerve or whatever?

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:57:52

       Yeah, I, I know a lot-

    3. NSNirav Sanjani1:57:53

       Neuro-

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:57:53

       I, I know a lot about them.

    5. NSNirav Sanjani1:57:54

       Yeah.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:57:54

       Yeah.

    7. NSNirav Sanjani1:57:54

       What, what are your thoughts on those? Like-

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:57:55

       Most of them are bunk.

    9. NSNirav Sanjani1:57:56

       Are they?

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:57:57

        Yeah. Uh, there, there's a scientist, you might want to have him on at some point, he's incredible, uh, named Kevin, uh, Tracey. He is the most credible. He wrote a book called The Great Nerve. He's the most credible, publicly, not really, uh, educating scientist, credible, very highly published, uh, scientist who talks about this. Uh, most of the non-invasive vagus nerve stimulators, or that are purported to be vagus nerve stimulators, don't, don't actually hit it the right way. Um, e- and they're, they're ne- there's neck based, right? And then there's ear based.

    11. NSNirav Sanjani1:58:38

        Mm.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:58:38

        Uh, the neck, TBD, but, uh, there are... It- they've been cleared, FDA cleared, for I think it's either migraines or cluster headaches.

    13. NSNirav Sanjani1:58:47

        Yeah.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:58:48

        Some people seem to benefit. I had a friend who tripled his HRV using a neck based device.

    15. NSNirav Sanjani1:58:53

        Wow.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:58:53

        I think it was either True Vega or it was the prescription equivalent of True Vega, and it worked really well for him.

    17. NSNirav Sanjani1:59:01

        Same-

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:59:02

        It, this can be pre-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:59:03

        You've, you've used them?

    20. NSNirav Sanjani1:59:03

        I've ne- I haven't used them. I had a friend I was talking to. I, I-

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:59:05

        Yeah

    22. NSNirav Sanjani1:59:05

        ... suffer from migraines.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:59:07

        Yeah.

    24. NSNirav Sanjani1:59:07

        And, um, so I have to carry around medication all the time.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:59:10

        Yeah.

    26. NSNirav Sanjani1:59:11

        And, um, somebody told me about these things, and they-

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:59:13

        Yeah

    28. NSNirav Sanjani1:59:13

        ... were like, "Okay, it has all these benefits of, like, HRV, you know, increase of HRV, all sorts of stuff."

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:59:18

        Yeah.

    30. NSNirav Sanjani1:59:18

        It ha- it's a temporary state, if you will.
25. 2:03:44 – 2:10:53

    Are Mind-Reading Devices Coming Soon?

    1. NSNirav Sanjani2:03:44

       Right. Speaking of those devices, by the way, have you guys seen there's some companies that are being, um, now that there's sort of reinvention of input into computers, so for example, less keyboards, more voice-

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:03:55

       Mm.

    3. NSNirav Sanjani2:03:55

       More, like, natural types of interactions with, with technology and devices in general. Um, there are these devices that are coming out. One of my friends demoed this to me. I think Apple just acquired a company where you just put sort of a, a small device that listens in this sort of region and, um, without you actually saying anything, it can detect, um, you know, as if you were talking.

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:04:19

       Hmm. [laughs]

    5. CWChris Williamson2:04:20

       Makes sense.

    6. NSNirav Sanjani2:04:20

       And roughly, it's, it's remarkable and, and, um, you can imagine a lot of scenarios with this as, as, as technology and the n- input layers become much more natural, much more, um, conversational. Um, and you know, you don't have these affordances to speak all the time, where imagine that device can effectively read what you want to say-

    7. TFTim Ferriss2:04:40

       Mm

    8. NSNirav Sanjani2:04:40

       ... without you ever having to say it.

    9. TFTim Ferriss2:04:42

       Yeah.

    10. NSNirav Sanjani2:04:42

        Um, and it lives roughly in this region, can detect all these muscles.

    11. CWChris Williamson2:04:45

        Any idea why it's sat there to detect? Is it as if you're moving your mouth but not talking?

    12. TFTim Ferriss2:04:52

        Oh, I'm not sure.

    13. NSNirav Sanjani2:04:52

        Roughly speaking, yes.

    14. TFTim Ferriss2:04:53

        Let me, let me, let me just sidebar real quick.

    15. CWChris Williamson2:04:54

        Please, yeah.

    16. TFTim Ferriss2:04:55

        Uh, just because I want to make a safety point. We're talking about the relative safety profile of brain stimulation or neuromodulation with these devices.

    17. CWChris Williamson2:05:04

        Mm-hmm.

    18. TFTim Ferriss2:05:05

        That does not mean anyone should DIY this stuff. You can- the brain-

    19. CWChris Williamson2:05:09

        With a stick and a nine-volt battery on your head

    20. TFTim Ferriss2:05:10

        ... the brain, the brain, the brain is incredibly sensitive. If you hit the wrong target, you can fuck yourself up or make your symptoms a lot worse. So do not DIY this. Go to a decent clinic. For people who want to explore it, I have no stake in any of these. Acacia Clinic in Sunnyvale in California. Salience, which I think is in Dallas. They may have other locations. Uh, Owen Muir, M-U-I-R, who's in New York. There are a couple of clinics that I know have very good reputations, but like work with somebody who knows these devices.

    21. CWChris Williamson2:05:42

        No, no nine-volt battery and a, a, one of those-

    22. TFTim Ferriss2:05:45

        No

    23. CWChris Williamson2:05:45

        ... pads that people use for their-

    24. TFTim Ferriss2:05:47

        [laughs] For the TENS unit

    25. CWChris Williamson2:05:47

        ... to give them abs. I was about to go home with a Duracell batteries and hook them up [laughs] .

    26. NSNirav Sanjani2:05:51

        With the, with the TENS unit.

    27. TFTim Ferriss2:05:52

        There's also, it's not, I don't think, indicated for migraines. It's pr- uh, I'm s- pretty sure it's specific to RA, to rheumatoid arthritis, but Setpoint Medical has an implant-

    28. CWChris Williamson2:06:02

        Wow

    29. TFTim Ferriss2:06:02

        ... about the size of a small Omega-3 that they, it's like an outpatient procedure in the neck.

    30. CWChris Williamson2:06:08

        Yeah.
26. 2:10:53 – 2:14:33

    What Are Apple Going to Do Next?

    1. CWChris Williamson2:10:53

       Um, but my... But they do have an incredible war chest. So what do you think? I don't know how cool-

    2. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:00

       Can't bet against a guy with a massive-

    3. CWChris Williamson2:11:01

       I'm g-

    4. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:01

       ... pile of money. [laughs]

    5. CWChris Williamson2:11:02

       Well, I'm just... What they can do is they can buy companies. So I'm wondering, I don't know, you have any thoughts on who they should buy?

    6. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:09

       You know, there's, there, there's a group of people that think that Apple's, like, the smartest company because they've let the world sort of play itself out, people spending a lot of money, and they're just waiting to see where it hits and then effectively, um, do what they do best.

    7. CWChris Williamson2:11:25

       Mm-hmm.

    8. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:25

       Which is never enter the market first-

    9. CWChris Williamson2:11:28

       Yeah

    10. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:28

        ... but be the best.

    11. CWChris Williamson2:11:29

        Yeah. Oh, yeah.

    12. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:30

        It's exactly what happened to cell phones or smartphones. Exactly what happened to kind of AirPods. There's all these... Some, some wireless-

    13. CWChris Williamson2:11:37

        Oh, they do with the iPod too

    14. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:38

        ... iPod too.

    15. CWChris Williamson2:11:39

        Mm-hmm.

    16. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:39

        Um, yeah. The iPod was the first e- element of it, even the computer in some sense. Um-

    17. CWChris Williamson2:11:43

        Plenty of MP3 players before that

    18. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:44

        ... and so it's like they've saved all of this cost for CapEx.

    19. CWChris Williamson2:11:47

        Mm-hmm.

    20. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:48

        Um, never spent anything like what Google-

    21. CWChris Williamson2:11:49

        Go forth and split test these products for us, my minions.

    22. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:52

        Yeah, exactly.

    23. CWChris Williamson2:11:53

        And then to ton of other companies.

    24. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:54

        They effectively let others do the R&D work to a certain extent, and then refine-

    25. CWChris Williamson2:11:59

        Mm-hmm

    26. NSNirav Sanjani2:11:59

        ... that world potentially. And, you know, there's an argument to be made that that is a, a-

    27. CWChris Williamson2:12:04

        You don't need to be first. You just need to be best

    28. NSNirav Sanjani2:12:06

        ... right. You just need to be the best.

    29. CWChris Williamson2:12:06

        They also make, what? 20 billion per year from Google.

    30. NSNirav Sanjani2:12:11

        For free.
27. 2:14:33 – 2:24:37

    Is AI Fuelling Looksmaxxing?

    1. CWChris Williamson2:14:33

       cool one.

    2. NSNirav Sanjani2:14:33

       So it sounds like you're pretty serious in meditating?

    3. CWChris Williamson2:14:35

       Yes. Yeah. Well, um, it, it was originally to fight off a skin condition, and then it ended up fixing-

    4. NSNirav Sanjani2:14:40

       Fixed that with AI

    5. CWChris Williamson2:14:40

       ... yeah, Gemini fixed that. So the story there was-

    6. NSNirav Sanjani2:14:43

       Gemini fixed your syphilis?

    7. CWChris Williamson2:14:44

       The sy- the sy-

    8. NSNirav Sanjani2:14:45

       [laughs]

    9. CWChris Williamson2:14:45

       Yeah. The, that's, uh, can be fixed, my friend.

    10. NSNirav Sanjani2:14:47

        AGI is here, man. [laughs]

    11. CWChris Williamson2:14:49

        Sniffer gave me the syphilis.

    12. NSNirav Sanjani2:14:50

        Yeah. [laughs]

    13. CWChris Williamson2:14:51

        No, um-

    14. GMGeorge Mack2:14:52

        The, I had a, I had s- subatomic dermatitis for about two years. Um-

    15. GMGeorge Mack2:14:57

        Subatomic?

    16. GMGeorge Mack2:14:58

        S- seborrheic dermatitis.

    17. GMGeorge Mack2:14:59

        Okay. [laughs] I was like, "Wait, what?"

    18. GMGeorge Mack2:15:00

        So basically my face, my face would break out like red-

    19. GMGeorge Mack2:15:03

        Oh

    20. GMGeorge Mack2:15:03

        ... and I wouldn't want to go outside the house.

    21. GMGeorge Mack2:15:04

        Oh.

    22. GMGeorge Mack2:15:04

        So I spoke to a few different doctors. A lot of them recommended topical steroid creams.

    23. GMGeorge Mack2:15:09

        Oh.

    24. GMGeorge Mack2:15:09

        Uh, a lot of them said it was because of stress, so I got deep into meditation. I stopped eating, like, so- such little sugar that I once flagged, I once got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, um, which was a complete false diagnosis.

    25. GMGeorge Mack2:15:21

        Oh.

    26. GMGeorge Mack2:15:21

        Which is another-

    27. GMGeorge Mack2:15:21

        Yeah, type 1 is pretty hard to-

    28. GMGeorge Mack2:15:22

        Which is another side story.

    29. GMGeorge Mack2:15:23

        Yeah.

    30. NSNirav Sanjani2:15:23

        That's genetic, right?

Episode duration: 2:28:09