Hm, something happened with a phone call coming in.
Twitter kind of sucks about kicking you out if you get a phone call and you're the host.
If something happens, it doesn't always stay connected.
Um, you can get this reconnected.
It's kind of a work phone call, too, so I could not answer it.
Ears, can you hear me now?
Let me switch this stupid thing to wife, but like, I don't know.
When I get phone calls, it's like, you never know if this is going to drop us or not.
Yeah, it's very annoying.
Yeah, so what was Bruce saying before I left? Before I dropped?
Uh, we were talking about multiverse theory and killing infinite people on two different tracks, but different types of infinite people.
Did you catch any of that?
Hmm, I can't hear you again.
Hello, my baby. Hello, my honey. Can you hear me?
Or just me that can't hear you.
Drop off and come back real quick.
Something's wrong with this thing.
Yes, you're back. Okay. Hopefully we're good now.
Here's a question for you ears.
Is there, have you heard through the grapevine, any like major fud that would be like, that would crash the entire crypto space anytime soon?
Like do we have a same banking free like coming?
Yeah, the people kicked me off.
I'm eating, I'm eating a sausage.
I had sausage yesterday in a taco. Have you ever heard of such thing?
No, but that sounds really interesting.
Like a taco, it's like a corn tortilla type thing.
And then you put like, you know, then the sausage sits inside that and you eat that.
What do you have apart from the taco and the sausage? What kind of like sauce?
Oh, I don't remember what it was. It was some kind of like, you know, some Mexican thing, something spicy.
Was it like a soft tortilla or a heart one?
It was a soft, like, yeah, soft corn tortilla with sausage.
That's a good one, you know.
That's a pretty, pretty good combination.
That sounds really good. That sounds phenomenal, actually.
Yeah, does anyone have any like really, really good source of FUD?
Some really, something, something nasty that's going to happen.
You start by allowing Zara to speak and then try and keep her here.
Zara is a good challenge.
And then if she leaves, it means you've been a bit too boring.
And if she doesn't, I'm doing good.
Okay, let's see what happens.
What are we trying to get her to do?
You know, you know, there's stories about Edison and Tesla and famous
inventors where they'd hold up a ball bearing or a ball of some kind.
By the way, is there someone specific that did that?
It's a myth of sorts that got spread through lots of different people.
But yeah, obviously, if anyone has never heard this before, it's
like the idea was they held up a ball in the air with a straight arm,
perpendicular to the bed, up in the air.
And if they fell asleep, then the ball, the hand dropped and the
ball dropped on the floor, made a loud sound, woke you up.
And the idea was that you would try and be as relaxed as you could
and allow the start of sleep to happen, the hypnagogic states to be
as creative as you can and have vivid imagery, but while not
allowing the ball to fall down.
To stay on the edge of sleep is arguably, according to some
people, and especially according to bullshit self-development books,
is the most creative point to be in.
Similar to that, it's like you're holding up Zara and trying not
The most creative place to be.
Yeah, she's extremely unreliable.
She's worse than a ball bearing.
I disagree with all of that.
The most creative place to be is after you've finished your
first pint, but you haven't finished.
You're maybe halfway through your second pint.
That's the Goldilocks zone.
That's where your brain neurons are activated to their maximal effect.
That's like the zone where you can imagine you have friends
but you haven't been romantically rejected yet.
It's where you can play darts.
Really, really average, but better than normal.
Yeah, it's like the world is your oyster.
Everything's actually all right.
Then you finish your second pint, and then it all goes wrong.
You just can't stop drinking.
That's what everybody faces, I think.
Then you're really sick, and then you wake up the next morning
and drink more to feel better.
I think everyone feels the same.
It's a good feeling, not just me.
I've been considering drinking every single day.
Yeah, it's a good experiment.
There's a movie about this.
It's with that weird guy who was a villain in a Bond movie.
It's about him being a teacher.
He's a group of teachers in Denmark.
They're drinking, and they're saying you perform better
if you have just a bit of booze in your blood.
You're more relaxed, and you make better decisions.
They drink a little bit every single day,
and then one of them dies because he's so drunk.
He takes his boat out, and he falls off, and he dies.
The ending of the movie is about them going to a party.
I don't know what the moral of the movie is,
Did they have a good time, or what?
Yeah, they had a great time.
and a few other things that happened that are bad,
overall, it looks pretty positive.
A divorce and a band, and drinking every day.
You'd recommend it, then. I should drink daily.
Yeah, at least it helps you to grow your man boobs.
Yeah, it does fuck up your hormones.
It does fuck up your insulin resistance,
and probably not the best move
if you don't want to look like a ball of bread
Bruce, when you went to the trip for extending your leg length,
did you research any of this boob-length maxing?
No, I only did limb length.
You can stretch almost anything, it seems like.
No, I just did femurs and tivias.
How much taller did they?
How much taller did you get?
I wanted six inches, but only four in the end.
The reason was because the longer it is,
the more the risk of infection.
That's basically the deal.
So you're like six foot eight now?
The longer it is, the more chance,
the bone healing in the middle,
because what you have to do is you have to extend about one inch a day,
and then you let the bone heal in the interim gap,
and then you extend another inch,
and then you let the bone heal.
In fact, the way I did it was a quarter of one millimeter
every single eight hours.
So I'd be turning the screw one little bit,
it's like one right angle of the Allen key every eight hours or so,
and then you wait for the bone to fill in the gap,
and you keep doing this again and again and again.
But the more you do that,
the weaker the bone in the middle becomes,
so it can be a little bit difficult.
And also, the other problem with my goal,
which was six inches, was that as you get your bones longer,
even if the bones themselves are structurally fine,
and you have a rod through the middle of the bone as well,
so chances are they'll be structurally fine.
One of the risks is the incisions,
because when you're turning the thing,
the metal rod connecting to the extender,
the part of the rod in your bone that extends it and screws open,
They've managed to counteract this somewhat now
with some of the new devices
that use a magnetic thing that you hover over,
and then they have a little,
it's like a little motor inside the bone itself
But the one I had was directly through the flesh
and around the incision spot,
because you have like an open wound essentially,
it needs to be kept very, very clean,
otherwise it can be infected.
The other second thing that was really difficult
But you're stuck in bed for what, six inches?
They get you up very soon.
It's the same as any surgery.
In fact, pretty much universally with surgeries,
the longer you're in bed,
the higher your risk of dying.
The biggest issue with probably limb lengthening stuff
and the surgeries I had was the fact that
even if your bone can grow at a significant rate,
your tendons, your muscles,
especially the Achilles tendon, everything like that,
is very hard to stretch over time.
So in many ways, it's like you get the bones done,
you get them extended very quickly,
and they can go even quicker than the usual course of treatment.
But it takes a year to stretch all of the peripheral tendons,
all of the peripheral tissue and stuff.
That was the main issue for me.
I still sort of, I'm almost like,
as I'm walking, I'm almost on my tiptoes a little bit,
Here's an article I just picked up,
because like Noob made me think of it.
So brentwoodmd.com, I don't know who this is,
but they said, the question is,
how do you get rid of man boobs, advice from a doctor?
If you're one of the millions of men feeling insecure
and disappointed by gynecomastia,
this expert advice can help you learn how to get rid of it.
why did you ask me about this leg stuff
because I'm just not gonna talk about it.
No, because I figured because you're in the center
that probably like boob extension
was something that you might have a little,
you've heard of, heard of maybe peripherally, right?
Like limb lengthening and bone surgery
is very different from anything related to soft tissue
So you don't believe that like the same center
It's more of an orthopedic type of thing.
No, this is pure orthopedic.
Got nothing to do with that.
Incidentally, I've never heard of the word moobs before.
Man boobs, moobs, M-O-B-S.
I'm gonna use that more frequently now.
Yeah, some people have moobs.
Other people like me have very strong pectoral muscles,
but we still have gynecomastia.
So we have like puffy nipples.
On top of our large, well-developed chests.
So like, you know, there's two flavors.
Like some men have large chests because lots of fat,
just like the moob sort of look.
Other men have more like defined chests,
but then large puffy nipples that lactate.
One site recommends in order to produce man boobs,
you should eat things that increase testosterone levels.
I don't even know if this is true,
but it touches eggs, oysters, asparagus, figs, nuts,
brown rice, salmon, and avocados.
Your piss is gonna stink if you follow that diet.
You never had the asparagus diet,
or tried an asparagus-only diet?
It's gonna make your urine smell?
But is it like other people are gonna notice this,
or are we talking about just like me?
Well it depends on how close you are to people.
Because you can see your pants.
Yeah, like that piss my pants,
like people are like, ooh, that guy had so much asparagus,
he kinda reduced his man boobs.
If you ate, if you only ate asparagus for like a week,
then you were in a crowded room or like an elevator.
You know, you're going up to the top of the World Trade Center,
a bad example, the new one, World Trade Tower, whatever,
and you were in a packed elevator,
and then you pissed yourself,
they would definitely smell it.
I categorically guarantee that they will smell that piss.
It's not good for you at all.
Wait, Cephi, have you never eaten asparagus?
I've had asparagus, I just don't recall it making my urine hair.
You just didn't pee within 12 hours after that.
It's within like 30 or, it's remarkable,
like 30 or 40 minutes after your pee will smell quite a lot.
I'll eat asparagus, I'll pee in a glass, and you know.
Now I feel like I should maybe fry some asparagus
We did that when we were younger.
We tested how long it takes, and it was like 45 minutes to an hour.
You tested and sniffed each other's pits.
There's some really creative ways, like if you hate your neighbor.
When I was living in my last house.
Every time I come on a space lately, I can't hear people.
Somebody say to Phil though, yes.
Yours is telling a really great story.
Yours is telling a great story, Phil.
So, I wanted to get revenge.
I wanted to have a creative way to punish her
in a way that she would never have imagined it was me
while our houses happened.
We're talking about your neighbor again, not your sister, right?
Yeah, so she got trapped in the washing machine.
So, the neighbor basically was away for the day.
What I did was I pissed in a frying pan,
and then I froze it in the freezer,
and then I made like a frisbee out of piss,
and then I threw the frisbee under the door of our house.
So, now it's like, where has this piss come from?
Like, who's peeing in the house?
Oh, the frisbee, like it hit right under the door.
There's like an air gap under the front door.
And I frisbeeed it under the door,
and then there was just like a big pile of piss
in her house, and then she was like,
how the fuck did this happen?
And this was after the asparagus.
This is an asparagus, piss frisbee, and APF.
That's actually against the Geneva Convention, APS.
And that identified flying piss frisbee, mine.
It's like a mine, almost.
It's like pretty much Geneva Convention,
non-compliant, I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, imagine you could put it through like Windows,
you could put it down chimneys.
You could make like a conical or like a cylinder
Maybe if you piss into a like a jam jar,
and then you freeze that,
and then you could like take out the cylinder
and you could drop it down the chimney.
Now you've just got piss in your chimney.
So how has this happened?
Like, what the fuck is this?
So you can get really creative with this stuff
then putting it into people's houses.
I think it's a pretty good idea.
I'm more into explosive when it comes to neighbors.
We probably shouldn't get into that too deeply.
Has anyone else here punished their neighbors
in creative and really, really cruel sort of ways
but for the first time I tried to use,
I grilled some like a rolled like pork tenderloin
with a like kind of a kind of like a cream cheese type thing
That's not a combo I've tried.
Yeah, just cooked it in the grill for like maybe 30 minutes
and it came out quite nicely.
If you don't cook your pork correctly,
you get infested with parasites.
Yeah, you don't want parasites.
Yeah, all kinds of weird stuff happens.
You turn into like a worm man.
Have you ever had someone come in like the ER
who is infested by parasites and shit from pork
Not in our region, but there's definitely places
where you don't want it to support.
Bruce, have you ever like gone down this urine odor rabbit hole
like trying to create urine odor?
Have you ever had a space with girls in it?
There's no actual legitimate girls on Twitter.
Even the ones that show up here that sound like girls,
I'm highly questioning whether it's some voice change
I don't know why they wouldn't join this space.
Yeah, like why would they?
You guys, we're just talking about peace and that shit
and I just saw them living, saying bye-bye.
Hey, it's an asparagus thing.
This is Phil and Ears' fault.
I don't know anything about it.
But Ears, do you actually know about the some infinities
are bigger than others thing?
Is it just like the, well, have you done this stuff?
I mean, I read it like a book when I was 12,
you know, that kind of thing.
Like I read a lot of stuff about like the different
qualities of infinities and sets and stuff,
but I haven't ever had it like a good,
clear mathematician to put in it.
I think Nube was hinting at this
and there's some like meme or something about it too.
Nube, like it's kind of a...
You know when you read something in a really try-hard,
but then somebody can actually explain it
I haven't had the really clear visual explanation
I would like it if somebody could do it.
I think it's hard to explain this stuff
that is not really easy or possible to visualize.
Like, yeah, I don't know.
I would also like that explanation though.
If anybody could explain.
Someone did like a TV show or movie about this recently.
It's like an infinity hotel or something.
That would be an extrapolation of whatever book I read when I was 12.
You have something about cleaning all the rooms
and then like, you know, you're never done
because there's always one more room or something.
There's some sort of story there.
It's like what Nube was going to say is like,
oh, like some Greek dude was thinking like,
hmm, well, you know, the arrow,
if the arrow, if you like fire an arrow,
And you aim at the target.
If you like try and calculate the time it takes
for it to travel like one meter
and then you calculate the time it takes to travel like half the meter
and then you just keep splitting this thing down
and down and down forever, forever, forever.
It's like, wait, it takes infinite time
for the arrow to travel one meter
because you can keep splitting down
one second into smaller and smaller chunks infinitely.
So there's infinite, like real numbers of time
that is denominated in seconds between like naught
and one second, let alone time.
It takes to travel one meter.
So how does it, then the arrow even arrives
at the other side, at the other side,
if there's actually infinite real numbers or something?
It's like kind of weird shit
that I don't really want to talk about.
Most people can't really make a difference
between a catenary arc and a parabolic one.
especially in this line of work.
Cryptocurrency has nothing to do with anything.
This is about community and social coordination.
I don't care about cryptography.
None of us can explain cryptography.
If in a curriculum or a teenager
they are released in a crypt or a program,
I heard about 30% of what you said.
You asked what would be in the national curriculum
if it was for people to get into crypto.
Yeah, imagine if you're raising a child
and you don't let your child come on Twitter
until he's 18 or she's 18
and you also don't let your child invest in crypto
Imagine that you have two years before their 18th birthday
from 16 to 18 to educate them in some way
to give them a training or an education
in how they can make as much money as they can
and also how they can run a Twitter account
up to as big a following as possible.
What would that education involve?
It's basically a question,
what is a good education for the modern world
if you assume crypto is going to be a huge thing?
Whatever Mario Narfwal did,
yeah, run up the account with bots
and try and get the biggest Twitter space as possible
by coming up with crazy shit,
that's basically it, I think.
Sometimes I think about the concept of the devil,
like what is the devil in 2024?
And the closest I can maybe get
is the devil is blindly following
what the algorithm wants you to do short-term.
The temptation of the devil
as in posting things that are divisive,
that cause moral outrage,
that are lowly enough to appeal to dumb people
that are, like if you take an example of crypto,
like what do you need to post to get crypto retweets?
Typically, you need to wait until a cryptocurrency
or is anything going to happen?
Typically, you need to wait until a cryptocurrency gets enormous traction
or is an active, very accelerating narrative,
reaching its crotch or its peak,
and then you need to post about it.
And you need to basically sell the top,
Probably what instills the most emotions, right?
What triggers the most emotions in the audience?
Yeah, it's like a combination of like
the widest umbrella you can capture.
Like if I'm posting about some cryptocurrency when nobody has it,
even if there is the most money to make at that point.
Whereas if I post like when, say, I don't know,
like with the lunk stuff, when it was peaked out,
then I would get the most engagement by saying lunk for a dollar or whatever.
Like it's like you need to,
if you want to get max engagement in crypto,
you basically need to show the top.
Like it's kind of a weird thing.
And you see all of the influence and people turn up at the top.
You see the YouTubers turn up at the top.
You see all of these guys turn up at the top.
So it's like this weird thing where
if you blindly follow the algorithm on a short-term basis,
you are compelled to write really divisive,
sort of disgusting, ugly, low-nuance stuff
that is no good for anyone
and generally creates a lot of division, a lot of conflict, a lot of judgment.
And also if you're in crypto,
you're very incentivized to just show the top
rather than do anything moral, ethically.
So it's sort of a weird thing.
It's like what is the devil?
it's like the algorithm is whispering to you
and the algorithm says if you do X, Y, Z,
then you can get followers as quickly as you can.
I think the algorithm just mirrors the human mind.
Well, I mean, it mirrors the mind.
Yeah, but it mirrors a lot of things.
It's like the ongoing march of capitalism.
It's a reflection in some ways of like the baseline
limbic system state of mankind, whatever.
but it's like you have as a person who's navigating that world,
you have a choice, right?
It's like, do you take the short-term thinking,
follow a growth, sensationalist path
where you activate people's limbic system
or do you see that algorithm
and what it wants from you short-term
as much like the devil whispering to you
or tempting you and then go a different path?
So I sort of see it that way.
It's like what is the algorithm really?
It's like the short-term.
The algorithm is a challenge, right?
It's a challenge to be better than...
Well, you can pay that...
The point is you can play that game if you want to,
but probably you will become a disgusting person.
Probably you will take moral shortcuts.
You will lose your integrity in a lot of ways,
and you will also end up speaking to people you don't like
and you don't even like interacting with.
You will end up in hell, basically, through doing...
You're selling your soul.
Yeah, you end up in a sort of hell, like a hell realm,
if you follow that sort of march of averageness
and limbic system activation.
Whereas if you see it as like a devil,
like a thing that tempts you in every moment,
then you will head a different path.
So you're saying you have a chance
to actually learn and better yourself
or become at least arbitrage something positive
out of your interaction with it?
Yeah, I would say if you look at...
It's almost like a lot of the old religious texts
don't really apply too well now,
and it's like, well, what is the temptation?
And what is making the best of your journey
And I think from that perspective,
you look around and you see like,
well, probably the biggest temptation
is to follow exactly what the algorithm
wants me to do short-term,
and you see a lot of people do this,
and you see how like, I don't know,
like soulless they become.
Yeah, it feels cold, right?
and it has no real integrity to it at all.
Yeah, but Bruce, don't you think like,
the algorithm is actually sending stuff
to the people that are more in tune with you?
Like if you visit different,
like crypto Twitter accounts
or crypto Twitter worlds in a way,
you will find like viral messages
that are, you know, quite from the heart,
and then you find also the people,
like I get what you're saying,
like people who are trying to gain the algorithm
or trying to create stuff specifically for an audience,
but they don't actually resonate
with those principles versus those people
that post whatever comes from their heart
and people resonate with it,
but they also can become like viral.
I think it all depends on the people
that you're trying to attract, right?
Like let's say like this Mario guy
who's trying to go for the lowest denominator of people,
he's gonna definitely post, you know,
shit that is gonna make people just fight between them,
but then you also see like some kind of posts
that actually feel and are like true to themselves,
and because of that, they also resonate with it,
so it's kind of like a both kind of side of things
from the algorithm in the way that I see things.
Like whenever you're posting like true stuff
that you believe and you just wanted to make,
you know, perhaps a funny comment about whatever you found
that resonates with other people and also goes viral,
but then you have like these guys
that are trying to like get very mainstream,
and since the mainstream is usually this kind of like
narrow-minded guys that will just follow whatever,
you know, their influencer is telling them,
or the newspaper or whatever the media is telling them,
like they resonate with that,
so he's appealing to the lowest denominator of people,
but if you're good and you're doing like stuff
on a higher level, you will also track those kind of people.
I think like the algorithm in a way is giving you back
whatever you're sending to that.
Even another way to see it is like there is like
a sort of an overpowering algorithm
that wants you to do really dumb shit all of the time,
but the more you choose a different path,
the more you create the world that you want,
and the trade-off is like you may not get good short-term engagement
and you may not get your metrics up,
and you may not even get like any appreciation early on,
but if you carry on doing your smart content
and your honest, authentic content
and being true to yourself in some ways,
eventually you will find your people, right?
Eventually you will carve out your personal world
with people and ideas and qualities that you do appreciate.
You can definitely carve out like algorithm spheres of yourself,
but it's a very long game,
and it takes a little bit of faith as well.
it's often the case that a lot of the best writing on Twitter
has been largely disregarded or doesn't go viral
or doesn't get much reach,
and you can find real treasures.
I know in the past, like some of the best,
probably some of the best,
I don't really, I wouldn't call myself like a writer,
but sometimes I write what I think are good things,
and they sort of come out of the heart
and they feel a bit inspired.
Some of the best things I think I've written
have just like not had much appreciation,
and it's largely because the sphere of this account is crypto, right?
And it's like crypto people see it, they're like,
what the fuck is that? How does that mean my token go up?
Like, how is that pumping my bags?
And then it, for some reason,
it just doesn't really reach whoever might appreciate it,
maybe someone more like me, right?
it would be very easy to sort of give up at that point.
So it's like if you want to carve out or create your own sphere,
you really need to have a long-term mindset of like,
if I just carry on, then I'll eventually reach my people.
It's like a, almost like a, I don't know,
like a pilgrimage mindset or something.
It's like you're walking each step,
each post is a step of your pilgrimage,
and you have to walk through some bad areas,
some rough areas, some ghettos, some shanty towns,
some derelict places, some outbacks, whatever.
But the more you carry on,
the more likely you are to eventually find your people.
But it's a trade-off because at any point,
you can sort of go right,
and you can choose the path of engagement.
You can choose the path of stupid posting.
You can choose the path of like shilling some bullshit, right?
It's like, yeah, so I agree with you.
There's like this big overpowering thing.
like from the negative perspective,
like a big sort of overpowering gravity field almost
that can pull you in and that you can choose.
But if you stay on your own lane
and you clarify your principles within yourself
and you write from that place again and again
or create from that place again and again
or speak from that place again and again,
then eventually you stumble into your people,
Another interesting thing about Twitter
that I've been thinking about lately
and based on messages I've got
do you know like the 99 and 1 law of the internet,
this idea that in any given community
or any given forum or website,
be it Reddit or Twitter or anything else
or even any like more specialist forum
around a specific topic like, say,
selfies into audio kit or whatever.
The law is basically that in any given community,
90% of people are lurkers.
They just will scroll the forums
and they'll do it a lot even.
Many of them will do it a great deal,
but they will never participate.
They'll never create anything, comment,
make an original post, make a thread.
They'll never do any of that.
And then 9% are the commented types,
the ones who give input onto other people's ideas
They're sort of like the reply guy types,
the ones who will never really author anything original,
never really come up with a great idea or something,
They're sort of like the chair leaders, right?
Or maybe they paraphrase what other people say
And then the 1% are the ones
who are authentically creating stuff on the website,
who are writing, who are creating videos,
who are producing the core of content
that then gets paraphrased and parroted
and commented on and stuff like that.
So it's sort of interesting to think about that.
It's really about 1% who are producing anything
And there are lots of studies on this stuff
around the internet, like any given forum.
It's like 1% are the power users,
the ones who create the content, who drive the thing forward.
About 9% are the ones who just comment.
And then the rest are just lurking.
I sometimes think about this stuff because it's like
it would be easy to get discouraged
on the idea that people don't comment
or they don't write back to you or say,
like, I really appreciate your writing.
I really appreciate your content, something like that.
In reality, the case might be
that you have a great deal of listening.
You have a great deal of reading.
You have a great deal of appreciation.
I will write and I will go to the wake-up
and I'll see you in the books.
I've read your book for a couple of years.
Yeah, yeah, he's breaking.
The AA is starting to fill out his whole body.
Okay, when did I break up? I don't know.
I was saying that the interesting part of this law
is that there are lots of people out there
who read and appreciate things,
but you wouldn't really know they're there.
They're sort of like an invisible mess.
And I've received a lot of DMs over time
of people who just sort of appear out of nowhere
and say, oh, by the way, I've read your posts
or listened to your stuff
or listened to your space for ages,
It's like, hang on a minute.
It would be easy to take the ones who say something
as like the bulk, but they're not.
It's like there's this big mess out there
who are benefiting in some way
or appreciating or laughing or whatever.
And that's kind of a cool thought as well.
It's like, who are you writing to?
Sometimes nobody says anything.
Sometimes nobody likes your posts or whatever.
But there is a great deal of people out there who do,
even if they say nothing.
It's like the silent messes sort of thing, isn't it?
I know in the UK, like politics,
there were small parties that were like people
were really vocal about supporting.
And then the majority basically just come out
and voted and didn't say jack shit
and they essentially got their party into power,
Like, especially for someone like me,
I'm sort of motivated by...
Can you hear me all right?
Sometimes what happens is you'll notice that like
the silent lurker will say something
like there's something that
encourages them to speak out for some reason
and they'll come out of nowhere
and they've been following for a long time or something.
And all of a sudden they have some comment
about some thing you said.
And usually, I don't know,
there's something about kind of,
if you post something generic,
it doesn't irritate enough people
or it doesn't convince enough people to come and respond.
So some people really focus a lot
on the kind of engagement farming thing
where they just try to get some fraction
of their viewership to be triggered by something
so they'll go and say something and post.
It's almost like you don't feel anything
unless someone does 100 likes on your post.
So you peer out if they do something stupid
to check and see if make sure that someone's
actually watching or listening.
Like you have to get feedback eventually.
Is anyone actually reading this stuff?
And so it's like a test post almost.
It's like there's an element of faith
that people are out there who appreciate your stuff.
Like if you're writing from the heart
or in an intelligent way or in some kind of effortful way,
you need a degree of faith that yeah,
there's like a big silent majority out there.
You also need a degree of faith
that eventually you will find appreciation
or find like your sphere that the algorithm creates
It's kind of interesting.
Like I've been seeing social media lately
more under the lens of like more of a,
like a classical religion
and how things would fit in relation to it.
And also like the long-term qualities you would need
to sort of go far and find your people.
Things like your like long-term conviction,
your baseline assumptions
of who you assume is out there reading.
Your basic faith in humanity
that people are out there
who are going to appreciate similar things to you
who aren't just like money man.
Like the historical religions and whatever,
they formed in the same way pretty much.
Groups of people connecting together
for some reason or the other
and the next thing you know,
they codify it somewhere.
they kind of pass on some ritual
or some sort of like dogma or something
and then it just becomes a group.
I think a lot of people have forgotten
that humans are capable of dying for a cause.
Like they've almost given up on the idea
that people can be rallied
towards a really strong idea or cause.
Like I've often sort of thought something
you can't really say there's a true crypto cult
or maybe an AI cult until people really suicide for it.
Because that's what people did in history, right?
Like if you look at all of the history of cults
and like great tribes and civilizations and things,
people were authentically willing to die for these things.
And so enraptured with an idea or a leader
that they literally dragged the kool-aids for it.
Yeah, they dragged the kool-aid, they did it.
Like they believed in it so strongly they did.
And we haven't really seen that yet.
It's kind of interesting.
It's like there's been a sort of,
I don't know, like nobody really believes it's possible,
Like the brain hasn't changed that much.
You think it's because like people are so used to like
their short-term delayed gratification,
the gratification circuits being triggered all the time
playing around in the cell phones and on the internet
if you think about like what's the most delayed gratification
it's like dying and then finding your actual benefit
And like the group you've left behind is made better for it
because now the harvest can happen because, you know,
you've been sacrificed at the temple or something.
So it's kind of like dying for a cause is very much
like the most extreme form of delayed gratification.
You can imagine in a sense
in that you can't even imagine the universe you'll be in
when that satisfaction arrives,
but you're willing to take the leap of faith anyway.
Like it doesn't even help you in this life sort of thing.
or maybe it's like you're helping the group somehow,
It's kind of like when people go off and fight for a war
or die in a war or something for some like nationalism
or religion or something like that.
You think there's going to be like crypto wars
like something like that or social media wars
this actually starts to become a thing.
Maybe it's also like the dominant worldview
of the time is like materialism and mechanism
and reductionism in this stuff,
where it's like there's not much room for that stuff anymore.
or willingness to die for an idea
or even sacrifice the entirety of your life
and your energy for an idea.
when I talked about the guy who digged the tunnel.
Yeah, or these people are around,
but the question is like,
are you exposing yourself to that kind of people
Maybe the answer is you have to almost like,
you have to seek out those people
and spend some time with something to experience it.
I've always imagined that the dynamic of crypto
could really encourage that more if it existed.
I think there must be ways to hook crypto
into very traditional sort of devotionally cultish ideas
to the degree that people really develop.
Encourage what exactly more?
I said encouraging what exactly more?
Well, I mean, just this idea that like
having skin in the game and something financially
makes you even more of an advocate,
makes you even more of a fundamentalist.
If you take like some of the traditional cult dynamics
and how enraptured people became
and then you add crypto on top of it,
For me, it seems to be more powerful.
I have seen that like when Jesus is on the cross
and he's screaming at God saying things like,
you know, why have you forsaken me and whatnot?
You definitely see that behavior among crypto crowds.
Like, for example, I saw it just this week.
like these chain link people are releasing shit left and right,
like amazing world changing shit that like, you know,
if even a fraction of it materializes,
like even a little bit of it materializes,
the fucking coins gonna moon and like,
it's everyone's gonna be happy, whatever.
And then you see the fudders and they're like,
oh, but Sergey said this and he got upset with the community
because he said that the committee is fucking insane
and asking for stuff that doesn't make any sense
and like his impatient or whatever.
And there's always this concept of like,
there's some God figure at the center
and that God figure has forsaken us
or hasn't made number go up and all this stuff.
That behavior is definitely there.
This like immediate ability sort of blame the system
or the blockchain or the developer or the founder
or the chiller or something,
like this blame game is really beautiful to watch.
It's like, and it happens again and again and again.
It doesn't matter how good or bad the project is.
It doesn't matter if it's like-
Basically you're talking about the same thing
like you and Bruce is like,
just you were talking from the site
that's underwater with their position
and Bruce is advocating for the guys
that actually are in the plus way.
I'm just kind of like a different parallel about like,
to what level are we witnessing religiosity
Yeah, it's like it's definitely everywhere.
Like the wiring is there.
I'm just saying it's sort of weird.
It's like there's a certain limitation of debt
that is like unusual relative to history
Nobody has yet like slit their own throat
for the blockchain yet, I think.
I mean, maybe a few have, but they were-
Unless Satoshi did it, like he killed himself or something.
Yeah, but it's not like patriotism 300 years ago
where all the men would willingly
or feel it was their duty to go to war or something,
or they would believe an idea so much that
maybe in some cult setting that they would drink
some Kool-Aid to unite with aliens.
We haven't really seen this yet.
People back then had different opinions of destiny, right?
I mean, that's something that got lost nowadays.
But if you read what the old Greeks wrote, for example,
they really believed that everything
was already predestined for them, right?
So no matter what, just what came to be
had to be was decided like when you were born,
Yeah, I mean, yeah, people still have different-
There's definitely a sort of a rising amount
of the dominant science religion these days,
materialism, mechanism, reductionism, this stuff.
Like the universe is a big thing of bowling balls
that doesn't really have any inherent meaning,
and everything goes back to the dirt or whatever.
That sort of contributes.
But I read some very interesting stuff.
Even the last few years about how reprogrammable
our base existential feelings are around death.
Like there's a tribe in the Brazilian rainforest
called the Zuru'aha tribe.
And the interesting thing about the Zuru'aha tribe
is I think on average they live to about 30.
But the reason is that around, I think something like
around 90% of that tribe die by suicide.
And the reason for that is that they believe
that when they commit suicide,
that they are instantly reunited with their loved ones
and can protect them, can look after them.
So they willingly and happily commit suicide.
They slit their own neck or whatever.
I'm not exactly sure how.
But they willingly commit suicide to reunite
because they feel it's the most loving thing to do,
and they're absolutely convinced in this afterlife
that has more significance than this life.
The reuniting and also the protection of the loved ones.
So there are interesting cases of this,
and it's like they have no real base,
like limbic system fear of death on a physical level,
because conceptually it's just been completely overridden
It's kind of interesting.
These things don't exist.
I mean, social media is just the worst form.
Just imagine what the Catholic Church did
for a couple of hundred years
to those poor people in Europe, right?
It's like they told them like,
yeah, you just have a shitty life,
and once you die, you're in paradise and whatnot, right?
And that was just the fact of the case.
Then came Luther, printed the Bible,
and told people, well, it's not always an old story,
but the point I'm trying to make here is today,
social media is basically your shortcut, right,
on preaching or interpreting the story in the Bible
or whatever religion you're into, right,
in the way that fits best to you.
And if you have an intelligent algorithm,
it just turns that into whatever fits the person
that's on the receiving end, right?
They had a good system of controlling people
where you could buy less time in purgatory, I think,
but you give the church money,
and you spend less time in purgatory, apparently.
So they were just making money off people's fear
of essentially going to hell.
Yeah, probably you get the name of that.
Yeah, there's like you pay away into heaven type of thing.
Like purchase of virtue sort of thing.
Yeah, Bruce, that's another thing.
We haven't introduced like, so in crypto,
is that like, if you buy the coin,
you have now purchased your virtue,
or do you have to like, you know,
buy coins on a periodic basis or something?
Like, how does that work?
Just found that the thought.
Have you ever read about coin?
I'm just reading this article.
So, yeah, if you look at the top,
it's very interesting because it's like,
we assume certain things about life,
like the base terror of death
or the base acceptance of a worldview.
Like a lot of people believe that like,
scientism or materialism is how life is now.
And it always has been, and that's just how it is.
But there's a huge amount of like,
base negotiability or reprogrammability
in our nervous system and also in our worldview.
And mostly, we just don't see it
because we go through our life as like,
an n equals 1 scenario, right?
We feel life is a certain way,
we have certain fears, and that's just it.
But like, all of this stuff from the ground up
There are tribes out there where 90% of people
commit suicide because they feel it is the right
or the loving or the more absolute thing to do.
It's remarkable that that number is like 85% or whatever percent,
So it's like, even the base level of them,
they just, they lack the fear because they feel like
it's an honor, it's like you do your duty in this life
and then you go on to protect them,
they have a different cosmology.
It's an interesting case of like,
the conceptual framework of life
can completely eclipse like what you might assume
to be normal survival fears.
Like, interesting and common.
You can do it in the other way too, right?
Like, a belief system can completely activate
Yeah, it's like you would have to live in this
sort of society, I guess, your whole life
taught to you since you're a baby or something.
So just like, the normalizing of that would be interesting.
Like, how does that happen on a day-to-day basis?
And not like that, but what was the magic event
that convinced somebody to tell all their friends
in that society that this is the way to go?
Yeah, well, just everyone around.
Someone type that had some experience
or some epiphany or something
and then all of a sudden they're telling all their friends
Well, this is just like everyone around you
the knowledge that's passed on is your world.
I like it as an example of how reprogrammable
our base limbic system associations
to things are, like concepts like death
or dying or the dangers of different things.
It can be reprogrammed really, really deeply,
which is really interesting.
And worldview can determine it.
All of these things are really interesting to me.
It's also an example of depth of belief.
It's almost like there was a conceivable world
where you could argue that there is
a societal framework that would have been
the descriptive Garden of Eden.
That if people are willing to kill themselves
to protect others in some suicide thing,
then it wouldn't be completely out of the question
that there was probably groups
that believed things like acquisition of new knowledge
may not be a good thing either.
I guess some of the Luddite type groups
and these Amish or whatever that they go
and they stay away from technology,
things like that are an interesting framework.
It requires a lifetime of plan
going against the grain of outside society to do this.
I'm wondering if this suicide group
that you described there had other groups nearby
There are loads of tribes in the Amazon, Brazil and stuff.
I wonder if adjacent to this group
there was groups that didn't do this way
and they were able to build this concept
and do so even though other people behave differently.
It'd be different if it's like an isolated village
and this became the norm.
It's different if it's like you can see other people outside
this behaving in a different way.
For example, right now, there's Amish or whatever.
They build their houses by hand.
Maybe they use mostly wood and normal tools
and they try to reduce their technological exposure.
But those people are very much aware that the internet exists
or they're aware that there's people out there
that drive cars, but we don't.
But it's different if you have this...
You're in a bubble and you're looking out
and you know other people do this shit,
but you are going to live this way
knowing full well that other people live differently.
It's different if, let's say, you're this suicide village
and they don't have any access to outside anything.
That's just how they are internally.
That's a slightly different thing, those two different groups.
It doesn't require a greater level of mental control
or brain modeling to do this to yourself as a group
when there's no outside frame of reference
or is it easier to do it when there's an outside frame of reference?
It's easier, but in this case, if you want to be specific here,
I think this study was from 1980 to 1995,
and this particular tribe, the Zoroaha,
was relatively isolated until 1960 or so
and then had a lot of ongoing Western contact
or tourist adventurers and missionaries
and various people tried to come and save them, whatever.
They did have a lot of contact with the outside world.
I'm not sure how convincing it was.
It was just idiots trying to convert them or whatever.
And then you have a lot of cases
where people do really extreme things in the midst of society.
If you look at a lot of the cult stuff in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s,
like, I don't know, the Heaven's Gate cult
where a lot of people committed suicide,
they were all embedded in regular life,
but they ran away from their life
when they got intoxicated with this idea.
The whole belief system was like, you need to purify yourself.
And in order to purify yourself,
you need to sort of detach yourself
or have a period away from your family and friends,
and you need to come and live somewhere else.
A lot of people have done this isolation thing,
and it's like when you get in an isolation scenario,
yeah, you can accelerate it.
But people are very capable of plucking themselves
out of a regular life that is very enmeshed with society
and after an upbringing of very conventional ideas
and still taking themselves out of it
and still entering some cult
and still developing a crazy depth of belief.
I think one of the interesting questions for me is like,
where is the deepest belief right now?
If you look around the internet and crypto,
I don't think it's that deep yet.
I don't think there's much depth for you to do a depth chart,
Deep in means of being powerful
or deep in being most influential?
No, deep in your subjective sense
of this is true, and I really believe in it,
and I'm willing to devote my entire time,
energy, and even my life for it.
So it's kind of this Luke Dasher style or something.
Some people, like, maybe like...
I mean, it's interesting to think about it.
What will be the first great AI goal?
The depth of seriousness that people behave in this way.
Yeah, your depth of sincere belief in it.
And people get sincere to the degree that they really will
give their lives or at least all of their time for this thing.
And people get sincere to the degree that they will say
goodbye to their entire families and their friends
and isolate themselves completely for an idea.
It has been in history forever.
One interesting thing is,
what will the first great AI goal look like
that is just constructed out of AI
that people come to believe in in some way?
Like, what will that look like?
It's interesting to know.
What would it want, right?
Maybe it just has the quality of, like,
one of those original viruses.
Another interesting thing would be,
would one of these things be so compelling
and so interesting that you would decide to join one?
Like, us here talking about this,
like, on an academic level,
it's one thing to talk about it just, like,
as an interesting thing to look at other people doing.
It's another thing to say, wow, that it's, like,
it's so impressive and so convincing
that, you know, fuck it, I'm in.
It's like when you see these people
that seem like they're pretty smart people
then they're in the, like,
Scientology or something like that, right?
I'm curious, like, even people in this room,
like, what would be that cult for you?
Or does such a thing exist?
You might just, like, not notice it for what it is.
Yeah, I think that's what it would be.
it would be something so pervasive
and you just don't even realize
how much time you spent on it.
It's very easy to enter worlds.
I mean, you find this out
when you're dealing with cryptocurrencies and things.
It's like, okay, you buy a token, right?
And you think you buy a token,
you think of yourself as an investor.
I'm an investor in ex-cryptocurrency.
And then because you're an investor,
you want to find information about the cryptocurrency.
When is it going to go up?
When is it going to go down?
Is this a good time to accumulate more?
Is this a good time to sell?
What are the main people in this blockchain or project?
What are they doing right now?
Are there any announcements coming up?
Can I try and talk to some insiders,
And you go through this process
of, like, information collection
and nurture your financial position over time.
And then through this process,
you find yourself, like, stepping into a world.
And people are talking about only this world, right?
And updates about this world.
And you get to know all the dramas.
And then you find yourself, like, participating
in maybe arguments about the thing.
Like, does X matter or does Y matter?
What about X update to the blockchain?
You know, it's very easy to step inside.
And it's like, hang on a minute, is that the world?
Like, how did you get inside there?
You got inside pulled by some kind of financial incentive.
But you got inside very quickly.
Like, it was very, like, subtle
and slippery and quick that you got inside there.
And suddenly you start caring about, like,
the opinions of other people in this cryptocurrency community
and you develop people you like
and people you don't like.
And suddenly it's the world.
It's like you've transplanted
the tribal brain onto that thing very quickly.
I think that to some extent
there has to be some repetitive pattern
that you can actually get hooked on.
You know, it's like to program you.
I think that's necessary in the first stage.
I think from a one-time exposure,
you won't get any results.
I don't think there's anything that's strong enough
that just by experiencing one time
that you get hooked on it,
so there has to be some kind of mechanism.
It's like watching the waves of the ocean or something.
It's like there's a rhythmic pattern.
Yeah, it's just like how your brain works, you know.
Well, I mean, you have to repeat the stimuli
of your neurons to get that thing working, right?
even having $100 of a cryptocurrency can do it,
like, by pure financial incentive.
Even if the thing itself is incredibly boring,
and you end up entering that world a lot.
And that's kind of interesting,
because, like, you slip in, right?
You don't really notice you're slipping into the world.
and then you think you're an information guy,
a guy who, like, looks at information
to make rational choices.
And then before you know it, you're in.
You're in that world, right?
You're in whatever the cryptocurrency hashtag world is.
You're listening to these spaces.
It's like, how did you get in there?
The stuff that is coming, it'll be even quicker.
And you get exposed to a lot of the irrationality indirectly.
Like, even if you wouldn't normally
delve into irrational things,
like, there's something about kind of that crowd
or that irrationality that permeates
the air around you and increases your exposure,
whether you like it or not,
if I'm not sure if that makes sense.
Yeah, and then you add to all of this stuff
like the massive potency of online echo chambers
where you're brought towards people who believe the same thing.
Then it's like, well, okay,
you're pouring gasoline onto the phenomena
Sethi doesn't adjust the leverage
on the ventilators of his patients.
Interesting thing is, too,
it's like the sheer brutality of sort of like
your investment going down by like 95%,
that's a really remarkable thing to watch
and how like the layers of sort of like,
I guess maybe Kubleras or whatever,
like the blame game is very fascinating
You get to adapt the belief through volatility as well,
which is interesting, right?
It's like, to start with, you're a token holder
and an invest and you're like, go up,
doing this, and then it goes up.
Hey, you just started kind of going in and out.
Yeah, I might have to disconnect or something
or could be your cell connection or something.
Yeah, it's kind of like these...
I was noticing this in particular
with like these chain link people.
I don't know too many of them that well,
but I just thought that recently I'm like,
holy shit, this is one of the most prolific fucking companies
It's like almost nobody holds a candle
to the amount of shit these people are doing.
And this Sergey Navarov character,
you watch him trying to present something on a stage
and he's like totally autistic.
He's not like a Steve Jobs or whatever.
He's not the kind of guy that like he hops on
and he's like, oh, you're just completely inspired.
He's got that kind of like nerd energy, right?
Like he's not like exceptionally gifted
to speak out in an audience or whatever.
And I'm like, geez, like this is the most autistic dude.
The guy wears plaid all the time
and he doesn't give a fuck about anything.
And the reality is like that's like type of guy
that is like doing a lot of work to make this system work.
And I can understand why like there's people
where he's just relentless.
Like year after year after year doing this thing.
then you look at like number go down
or maybe like the price didn't go up
as much as some coin or something.
And it's like, oh God, why have you forsaken us?
And like, why haven't you released all the shit
you said you're going to release next week
And the entire process is funny.
What's particularly funny is like if you're not heavy
in that group, you can sort of see it from the outside
in like you're looking into that bubble from outside
and you're sort of new to that group
and you can see it for what it is.
But like the people within the group are like,
I don't know, it just becomes like this weird noise chamber
where probably you don't notice that like the group is,
their thoughts are being modified by this behavior.
In some way, it's really interesting.
Like the negativity type people are fascinating.
I think another thing to notice is like how uninspiring
a lot of the leaders are and the ideas are
and yet an incredibly strong cult forms anyway
just through the token bond and through volatility.
It's like for me, it's almost like you have
so few of the potential factors of a good cult
and has like such a depth already to it.
There's something funny about this particular stage
of crypto where it's like you can add so much
to so many factors and have it be so much more powerful
and yet it still works already in a very intense way.
Yeah, put it in another way.
If you take Sethi's example of changing,
so there's so much in it and they're developing so much
and there's so little trust from the outside audience.
It's almost like they don't know that this is probably
the one thing that has the earliest cash flows
that you can discount on your investment.
But people don't see that and they don't care about it.
It seems like all they care is like there's a charismatic leader
and they follow them into the seven circles of hell
If you happen to buy something and you picked it up
so it's at $100 and it goes down to $10
and you have a different world view
and if you've got it at $10 and it goes to $100
you have a different world view.
It just depends on where you are in that.
Where you happen to show up has everything to do with what you believe in a thing.
It's kind of interesting that way too.
Or the people that are like they did the right thing.
I did the correct thing. I did what God would approve of,
which is I diamond handed this thing because I was a loyal follower
and I rode the thing up to $53
and then I rode the thing down to $5.
So therefore it's like some people look at that as a form of like,
okay, I am like absolutely elite at this point.
I'm OG because I was able to hold from $1 to $55 to $5, whatever.
I'm still doing well but I wasn't one of you people that kind of like came and went.
So that's an interesting paradigm.
The kind of like the ultra loyal type who that's part of their identity at that point.
That's pretty interesting.
Like, okay, I've held this thing for 10 years. I paid my dues.
We still haven't gotten one woman to show up, which is very funny.
Perhaps if you ask like elements join like that's the best way to have someone not join.
Yeah, you need to change it to the no woman allowed or something.
That's funny. Yeah, that's probably work actually.
She must be upset today or something.
Yeah, I think the nearest thing you guys are talking about to like an online cult, I suppose, is like an MMO RPG or something.
That's what that's the nearest thing I've found like.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I don't know if they could be like a crypto Wow or some shit.
Who knows? Yeah, you know, there will be stuff.
Yep, you know, there will be. In fact, that's interesting thing is like in Asia, in particular, South Korea and Japan.
And hold up a second. I'm getting a call. So I might get dumped again. Hopefully not.
Let me message him back. Hold on.
Just fight race, MMO RPGs just to make us truly repulsive to women. That was okay.
No, but in Japan and South Korea, it's interesting, like, there's a whole bunch of like, TV shows and like,
and this and that that revolve around people that believe that like their video game world is
like the real world or somehow bleeds into it and like become somewhat indistinct indistinguishable.
It's like a really popular sort of like theme in both television and in animations and this and that.
So that's kind of fascinating. Is that one called Second Life? I think a whole bunch of them.
But they're making this stuff even in like live action type things.
No, we're not talking about just like, anime cartoons and stuff.
We're really talking about like, just even like TV serials and stuff.
That's how pervasive like video gaming and such has become in both South Korea and Japan
to the point where it's just you're you literally have shows about people playing games
or who believe the games are real or like the game is so pervasive that it's affecting their like regular lives
to the point where like imagine it would be like what's the best way to describe this case?
So like imagine you have people that like to like watch YouTube or TikTok.
Imagine having a show about watching other people who like to watch YouTube or TikTok.
That's the extent that like the gaming cults have basically permeated society there.
It's really pretty remarkable. It's like China, South Korea, Japan.
Very weird like to the extent that that's permeating even the television culture on top of that.
Have you seen this stuff, Bruce, with the agents?
I think he might have gotten disconnected or something.
Or can I just not hear him?
I'd be like on hold or something.
But anyway, you've seen this stuff, Willie.
I'm talking about like...
I've seen like reaction videos and shit like that and streamers.
It reminds me of like the really early days of the internet.
They had like these Russian...
The streamers is a whole funny thing too, right?
Like you have people playing games and other people like watching them play.
Yeah, like really young kids watching them.
It's like, well, just don't understand.
They don't even want to play it themselves.
They just want to watch other people play.
Yeah, but then there was like some videos circulating on the early days
of like Russian games, like TV shows.
And they used to go and like kidnap people and things like that.
And it was all like a game.
But I don't know if it was real or not.
But yeah, I just remember that.
Anyway, I might jump off and get back on later.
I've got some work calls and they keep hammering me with them.
Let me go take care of these.
And I'm probably going to get disconnected anyway.
Bruce, bye if you can hear me.