What If It Did Work?
What If It Did Work?
Deep Tech, Real Impact
What if our best tools weren’t built to sell ads, but to save lives? We sit down with hacker, inventor, and futurist Pablos Holman to chart a pragmatic path for deep tech—one where cryptography protects freedom online, AI helps eradicate disease, and automation buys back human time for higher purpose.
Pablos takes us behind the curtain of the 90s cypherpunk movement to clarify why decentralized money mattered in the first place: not speculation, but liberty. He connects the dots from BitTorrent to Bitcoin and onward to a web where payments, compute, and messaging escape walled gardens. Then we pivot to the work that rarely makes headlines: AI-driven models that simulate outbreaks, optimize vaccine campaigns, and help countries cut off polio and malaria at the source. Think SimCity for public health, with millions of lives at stake—and real wins already logged.
We also challenge the myths around work and meaning. As robots absorb dangerous and dull jobs, more free time is coming, and it won’t fulfill us by default. Pablos argues for choosing bigger problems over shallow distractions, from clean energy to next-gen manufacturing and sanitation. His simplest, most actionable idea might be the most powerful: pick one kid and mentor them consistently. If we care about education, let’s deliver the one-to-one attention schools struggle to provide and help curiosity compound.
If you’re hungry for technology that matters—decentralization that expands freedom, AI that heals, and engineering that lifts the basics for billions—this conversation is your blueprint. Grab Pablos’s book Deep Future on Amazon or Audible, then share this episode with a builder who needs the nudge. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what problem will you aim your tools at next?
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I've never done that. My whole life I've been holding back every time.
SPEAKER_02:All right, everybody, another day, another dollar. Another one of my favorite episodes of my favorite podcast. I'm a little biased. What if it did work? Got with me a legend in his own right. I've got Pablos Holman. He's a hacker. He's an inventor. He's a futurist. Not only a futurist, but he's got over 70 patents. Worked on projects ranging from early crypto and AI systems to building spaceships at Blue Origin and developing mosquitoes, zapping lasers to combat malaria. Pablo is also the author of Deep Future, Creating Technology That Matters, where he explores the emerging field of just deep tech, advanced technologies poised to solve the world's most pressing challenges through his venture firm Deep Future. Baxon conventional inventors tackling big problems with bold ideas. Also, Pablo's spoke, not TED X like myself, but the actual TED, over 30 million views. The UN Davos Google zeitgeist. You can tell I'm Hispanic and not German. So how's it going, man? I'm rocking that intro. Thank you for being on the show, man. Yeah, I'm excited. This will be fun. I I gotta ask, uh, somebody like you, just just reading that, and to me, a young guy, where'd you find the time to do all that, man?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm getting old, so I had a lot of time over.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, were you were you like were you like a a genius in in school, like like a regular Doogie Hauser? You got like your oh my god, your your first degree like at 12, 13.
SPEAKER_01:No, it was not like that. I'm not I'm not that kind of guy. I I think uh school was sort of less interesting to me, and playing the school game didn't I mean I didn't go to college, so I just I just really no I was interested in computers from a really young age, and I got one of the first computers you could have at home, and and so I just you know learned in a pretty autodidactic fashion, just like crash the thing and reboot it and try different stuff, and that's how I learned a lot, and and so that was just a weird thing for those days, and so I got an early start on computers, and that ended up getting me into technology very early and kept going.
SPEAKER_02:That that's just uh the only thing I have to say is that's amazing completely. Uh so you're self-taught, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I had to learn everything on the job. I mean, I learned from a lot of other smart people, but that's uh you know, I didn't learn in a formal sense almost anything, even now.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, you know now now were were you like this genius in high school that you know everybody's like you know AP classes and I because I I was always like a straight C guy. Nobody ever thought anything of me. They they weren't thinking like you know, that this guy's gonna do anything with his life.
SPEAKER_01:No, I think I think people saw that I had potential, but they were mostly disappointed that I was also you know not getting great grades, or at least not the good not the grades they thought I should get, and uh wasn't applying myself to school so much. So uh but I think people thought I was smart just probably just because I was wearing glasses all the time, but and talking about computers and stuff people associated with smart, but uh it's not clear that I'm actually uh any smarter than you.
SPEAKER_02:So well, but dude, uh talk about being humble. I just the other day, I think I mastered the abacus and the the word process. Oh, that's super cool. Yeah, so when it comes to tech, you know, I I know how to I know how to turn things on and but pretty much outsource everything.
SPEAKER_01:That's a huge skill in and of itself. A lot of people never figure it out, especially really smart people. They don't think anybody else is smart enough to do things well, and so they try to do it all themselves.
SPEAKER_02:Well, the the the thing is, like entrepreneurs, I mean, we're a lot of times that this is something that you're you're clearly you you're humble, but most of us are like just narcissists. Most of us just think you know, just because I'm good at one thing, you know, just because I I'm good at marketing or I can talk, then I I must be amazing at everything. And everybody just it instead what happens is you become you know, you know a little about every a dabbler, but you're you're not a master of anything.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I know a lot of smart people, and I don't know anybody who's good at everything.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, you'd you'd be support that that's that's probably because you go you go in rooms where people people are looking to excel. I uh I on the other hand, it's always been like, hey, look, you know, where we when you deal with like small business owners and whatnot, they they they feel like they're like ready to cure cancer, and it's like well, I I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I think it is an important part of being an entrepreneur, you gotta be believe that you can pull it off, and you've got to be willing to do everything, whether you're good at it or not. You know, as an entrepreneur, which you know, I'm I mean, I'm essentially an entrepreneur in different ways, and you know, now I run a venture fund, but but that's still a startup, and it's in a way, and I have to do everything. You know, I'm anybody working for me, you know. I spend my Sunday digging up receipts from 2004 or 2024 for the accountants, you know. I mean, there's just no, you know, so you still have to do everything. And the best entrepreneurs figure out how to find somebody better than them at each thing, right? And and so you're almost all as an entrepreneur, you're almost always doing something you're not good at because you have to do the thing you haven't found somebody else to do. And and so it's very limiting if you can't do that. And I think that is kind of what separates you know small business owners from uh maybe more successful entrepreneurs that who have a business that's growing, because you you can't scale. You need to you need to get other people to do things that that you suck at or it it's I I've gotta ask you this too, man.
SPEAKER_02:Reading everything that you know you were heavily involved, you were a b most people, I didn't even know what crypto was in the 1990s. I I was one of those like 10 years ago when people were like telling me to invest in it. I'm like, I that I I don't understand.
SPEAKER_01:They were early. They were early.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah, I mean, talk about an early adopter. Uh you you to be in the 90s and you know go from the cryptocurrency, and then you you you're way ahead of the curve. Even in a AI right now is in its infancy, but I'm sure you'll tell me, man, you you were knee deep in that for what 20 years before all of us even like it'd be like like today, it's like one of those words like saying, like I even my mom's heard of AI, and my mom's not exactly cut cutting edge when it comes to tissue.
SPEAKER_01:She's got some Bitcoin and she uses Chat GPT.
SPEAKER_02:If she has if she has Bitcoin, it's because it's it's in a mutual fund. No, my mom, my mom would definitely not uh yeah, well, oh yeah, no, no. Most people what when it they they will pretend that they they invest in in crypto or they know, but in general, I mean, yeah, here I'll I'll give you a funny story. And this this shows you this was like okay, my my oldest is 18. She started um socplaying travel soccer. That this this is a Bitcoin story, okay. Back in, I'd say like 10 years ago. Yeah, and now this is for parents that vicariously want to live through their children, yeah. And it I remember it was a practice, and all these guys, it was like 10 years ago, were walking around laughing and going, We we don't invest in crypto, yeah, we invest in girl stuff, girls, soccer. And I'm and then like years, years go by, and every time I I saw the prices of like you know, any like okay, we'll go with the major ones Ethereum, Bitcoin, and even at its lowest, that those guys would have invested in anything 10 years ago, they would really they'd truly be, you know, walking around like alpha males.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, how's girls' soccer playing out?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. And and all all the girls, none of these girls became me a ham, none of these girls became household names because my my oldest, she's a sophomore now in college, and her and all her teammates and everybody she ever played for just got offers like small colleges somewhere, and most got burnt out, and you know, they invested all that money and all that time and vicariously, and it was like, oh my gosh, it I've I know they don't feel bad because it's still way over their head, but that's like when you hear this the story about the guy that paid um pizza and Bitcoin like 15 years ago.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, I think another thing to keep you know to keep in mind, like I'm not a Bitcoin investor, right? I I probably lost more Bitcoin than most people ever have just because it wasn't worth anything when we're when we were working on it. So I think there's a kind of um, you know, there there's a very small number of people in the world who are sort of qualified to be currency speculators. I'm not one of them. Those soccer guys aren't. They're probably oh don't don't worry.
SPEAKER_02:I yeah, I I I wasn't one of them either. Yeah, I I bought Ethereum like uh 2021 at its high. Hang on to it. I'm one of those investors buy high, sell low.
SPEAKER_01:Buy high. Yeah, well, you know, that's a that's a skill too. Somebody's gotta do it.
SPEAKER_02:Of course, of course. And and you know, and anything like that, yeah. I uh you know, I would say anything crypto or whatnot, hey, you know, well, I'm in my 50s, so have you know, have a small portion, unless you're you know you're 18, 19, 20 and and let it ride. But I mean, I don't see a problem like with some of these mutual funds and whatnot, because you should always have exposure on on everything. But since you're one of the innovators, though, uh, of Bitcoin, did you ever see or crypto, did you see any of these coins just go parabolic in the movement of it of this of the share process? Just to be clear.
SPEAKER_01:So I worked on when I was working on cryptocurrency, no one had heard of it. This is the 90s, and what we were trying to do was not we weren't trying to get rich. What we're trying to do is make these protocols where you could do things online that we can do in the real world. And so one of the things you can do in the real world is cash. You know, you can still pick up a dollar bill off the street, walk into 7-Eleven, buy a Red Bull, and it's a completely anonymous transaction. It's instantaneously settled, meaning, you know, the 7-Eleven has your money and you don't, and there's no, you know, there's no other part of the process, and the transaction cost is essentially very low. Um, and there's, you know, little to no fraud. I mean, there's counterfeit cash and stuff. But basically, we wanted to be able to get the positive properties of cash and put it online. And to do that, we could use cryptography to create these uh essentially uh, you know, very fair protocols where nobody can cheat. And the point of all that is really to bring what we think of as you know fundamental freedom, liberty to the internet. You know, we don't want to be on an internet where Kim Jong-un controls it, or where Putin controls it, or where some other asshole controls it. We want to be on an internet where it's free for everybody. And you know, we don't have to agree on things, but we all get to do whatever we want. And so that's very important if you believe in any you know version of freedom. So that's why we were working on these things. And it's really hard to do. Uh, it's been long and slow, but the ultimate goal is to make protocols that allow you to decentralize everything you do online so that it's so that nobody has a major advantage. Right now, Facebook and Google and Apple have a pretty major advantage over you and me.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it's a monopoly, dude. I don't care what people say.
SPEAKER_01:Right, there you go. So we want to decentralize AWS, and the first part, one of the first parts of that is you've got to decentralize payment. Like, how do you pay people to contribute resources to decentralized networks? We don't need to get too technical, but the but this is a very uh important vision for the future of how the internet works that comes from the 90s, and that's what cypherpunks were working on. That's what I was working on. And we were not getting very far, but the first the big success stories um first BitTorrent, which was a way to share files in a decentralized way, and then Bitcoin in 2008, we finally were able to get the current get transactions decentralized. And and so now there's this been all these opportunists and people speculating and trying to make money off shit coins. I'm not, I don't have anything to do with any of that. Um, and then going forward, what's exciting is we've been building up this toolkit for making better cryptographic protocols. And pretty soon you're gonna be able to really decentralize everything on the web. You know, all of AWS can be decentralized, WhatsApp can be decentralized, and so you don't have to um you know run into a big wall garden every time you want to do something online.
SPEAKER_02:Well, what I find fascinating too, Pablos, is just uh everything about you is when uh it there was nothing anything like your ego, like nothing is like it wasn't like money driven because I yeah, I I I mean, yes, we we prop up like the Steve Jobs uh but or uh Bill Gates, but I mean uh to me I I believe their vision was always uh to be super wealthy.
SPEAKER_01:I'm I mean you're thinking they're different they're different kinds of motivations in people.
SPEAKER_02:You know, I'm I'm trying to say you're it's not your motivation. I reading any everything about you. Yeah, no, no, I'm here.
SPEAKER_01:Oh some cut out. Oh no, no, no.
SPEAKER_02:No, it it's just uh it's I can see you, but I can't hear you. Oh don't worry, that that's a lot of people. I I wish they could see me, but no problem.
SPEAKER_03:Something's wrong. I can't hear you. You can't hear me? You can hear me?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, perfect. Uh weird. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing on everything's plugged in, everything's weird. Uh let me yeah, no, no. The the only thing is though, I mean, i if on the surface, before reading and and doing a deep dive in you, you'd be like, oh my gosh, this guy's probably like, you know, like you were thinking about you know, uh a world of wealth in your pocket, right? But you're you're really trying to your your idea of the future is not for every it's a better world, literally a better world. There was nothing about you that's like, man, you know what? I want, I want, I want there's nothing like that. And and and I I want to give you that as the biggest compliment.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thanks. I you know, look, I'm I'm um trying to yeah, I think I'm just driven a little differently. It's not that we don't want to get rich. I you know, I run a venture firm, venture capital. My job is to make a lot of money, and but the point of making that money is to do more of these projects. So yeah, I think there's a um, yeah, I I I don't necessarily know that I think being motivated to make money is a can be really good because you can kind of aim it at anything, but you then you need to choose what you aim it at. And and I think a lot of people are setting their ambition a little low because all they want to do is make money, and that's that tends to get kind of extractive. Like there are a bunch of ways you could make money without making anything better, and I don't know why you would choose to do that if you had a choice. Again, some people you you you gotta let them do what they gotta do. I'm not trying to disparage anybody's choice, but if you can, you know, if you can reasonably expect to succeed well enough financially that you're not gonna, you know, become destitute, then take on a bigger problem, you know, take on a bigger challenge, take on something that that could make a difference in the world because there's so many cool things, especially right now, that you could do that. So that's that's a lot of what we try to focus on. I think there's a huge opportunity here. We're at the precipice of like this huge opportunity for humans to just get way more awesome and build a future that's just killer. So let's do it, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Well, Paulo, it's even like in your book. Uh yeah, okay, everybody, deep future. It's on Amazon, came out in July, best month of the year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Now well, I don't know if that is true, but it it's like uh yeah, it worked out pretty well. The book's doing really well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, man. And but it it's it says right there, deep tech. Now, not not only is that you know the name of of the book, the deep future, but right off the bat, you give your meaning to to what you feel the deep future is, which is deep tech. And then you also discuss right off the bat the difference between shallow, which most of us acknowledge and most of us feel is like you know, you know, and there's a big difference between like what people think of, they think we live in this world full of technology, but when they you say that to them, what they're thinking about is the iPhone apps.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. It's not that's not what technology means. I mean, it just the term got co-opted in the last 20 years to where it doesn't mean much anymore. What we mean when we say deep tech is not iPhone apps, it's all the other technologies that we haven't been working on that could make industries better. And so that's what's exciting to me is that now, you know, we for a while computers were just where all the low hanging fruit was, but we've done all the easy shit with computers. So now is the time when we kind of get to take the superpowers we got from our computers and then get Go aim them at solving energy, food, sanitation, construction, manufacturing, the things that every single human on earth relies on. And that's what deep tech is about, and that's what's exciting.
SPEAKER_02:Well, also, I I mean you answered it in a way that I was never expecting you when it when it came to uh crypto. You uh cut and dry, you're like, hey, you know, we I just we're just trying to make it cut, you know, an easier form of payment where everybody everybody's a winner. Nobody gets stiffed with like you know, a fake bill. Yeah. That's right. And then you you you even had that like discuss, like all those shit coins out there. I mean, and granted, you're right, because how many people literally got hurt facing like night coins?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, they kind of get what they deserve because they're going after what are those shit coins? None of them had uh brought any new technology to the world, none of them made the world better, right? Now you could say Ethereum did because it brought something Bitcoin could do. That was the next evolution, technically. Things like Zcash. There's a bunch of crypto projects that are trying to advance on Bitcoin and advance on Ethereum and make the world better. But most of the shit coins are out there just that's just assholes trying to be opportunists. And and you know, some of them made money off it. Right. That's always true. You kind of got to have that hype cycle because it attracts people to a new technology. You know, the hype cycle around Bitcoin, you know, of people making a lot of money off it is an important part of the site of the life cycle because that's how you get the user adoption, that's how you get it to have staying power, that's how you get a whole lot of people invested in it. They think they're gonna make money, so they come to it. And that worked well enough with Bitcoin that it's you know, it's uh I think it's a permanent fixture now. But you know, and maybe you could say that it worked well enough with Ethereum, but most of these other things, um, probably not.
SPEAKER_02:Well, no, and people weren't looking at the mechanics, people were literally, oh well, it sounds cute, it sounds cool. I had I I heard from Joe Bob, my my neighbor, that Shibu was gonna be like you know, uh a penny of a penny a coin in a month or two. And I I just remember like people dumping money after money, and then it kept on going and going up, and then all of a sudden, oh lo and behold, there was nothing really there. And now, you know, you see all these people uh you know what it's human nature, Paulos. People will touch the hot stove, and then they'll forget that they touch the hot stove. There you go, and they'll touch it again.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, look, I mean, human nature is a tough one. I don't have a I don't have any technology for solving that one. But you know, over time you sort of get get to figure out which parts of it you can put to good use and people get more predictable and you can figure out how to how to navigate that way.
SPEAKER_02:No something else, though it it's in the book too. Your book Deep Future.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:Plugging it, promoting it. Thanks. Great. And it's also we also touched it, touched upon it on your in your intro. Is just um that this the just eradicating just like disease.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Now was there something like in your past or your parents or your family that like what drove you to having that be like so important?
SPEAKER_01:Well, that actually yeah. So at the time uh I was working at the Intellectual Ventures lab, which we started with Nathan Miravold. Um Nathan's a super smart and interesting character uh who has done a whole lot of invention work and he wanted to make a lab to invent stuff, and so that's what we were doing. But um, you know, Nathan got Bill Gates involved, and Bill would hang out at the lab and invent stuff with us, and Bill brought problems. You know, the great thing about Bill is because he he had the Gates Foundation working on all these different, you know, problems in the world, mostly fixated on anywhere that kids are dying. That's kind of the North Star for them, and they're looking for places where if kids are dying, they want to figure out why and figure out what we can do about it. Well, malaria is taking you know half a million to a million lives a year in our lifetime. Half of them are kids under five years old who just never had a chance. And so I got into you know disease eradication because Bill Gates, you know, asked me to work on it, you know, that he asked us to work on that. And we came up with a bunch of inventions and different ways to try and help. And the the one that people love the most is this machine that finds the mosquitoes and then shoots them down with laser beams. But the you know, that isn't the most useful one. Uh other inventions that we came up with turned out to be much more important and have a huge effect and and are working to help reduce infectious disease, not just malaria, but HIV, tuberculosis, uh polio, Ebola, you know, these are these are things that are still a big problem for most of the world. And you know, we don't have to worry about it in the US too much, any of those really. But in most of the world, these are really life-threatening problems that take millions of lives a year. Lots of them are kids, and you know, I think we could we could help, you know, we could do something about that. We have all these amazing technologies and lots of people with PhDs and giant computers. Like, why don't we go after this stuff? And so that's really what we've been working on in that context.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's crazy too, though, Paulos, is it's it's always I feel like here in the US, it's always out of sight, out of mind. Yeah, right. Like, oh yeah, that we're like mal we still have malaria, no yeah, and polio. And I I mean, I've I'm one of those nerdy guys that's always reading everything. So I I I know like uh something that we take for granted, like clean water here, it's everywhere in the United States, but there's parts of the world where it's you know, you they they risk every day that's right taking a chance, just not only just bathing it, but just taking a simple sip of water, it it can be their their last sip. But yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And at some point you could say, All right, what problems do we have left? You know, iPhone battery doesn't last all day. That's kind of the extent of it.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's real world issues, right?
SPEAKER_01:That's real world issues, and then you know, relationship problems, some of that stuff, but we don't have the same kinds of existential problems. We don't have, you know, of course malaria coming after you. So you could say, all right, well, you know, what am I gonna do with my life? Am I gonna go, you know, work on trying to figure out how to sell more shit on Instagram, or maybe take on a problem that, yeah, I don't have to worry about malaria, but what if I did? What if I could? Because the world has invested so much in us, or you know, I don't know about you, but even though I didn't go to college, the world spent a lot of money on my education, all the all the jobs I got, all the investors who put money in companies that failed. I mean, that's a lot of money spent on my education. So I hope to do something commensurate with that investment in me. Like, let's go after big problems. And and I think a lot of other people can do that too.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, for sure. And it it's funny because if if you speak to people with these real issues, yeah, they would look at us like we're crazy. Yeah. If we discuss if we told them something like that, like, yeah, I I've this I've got this phone, and you know, I've been doing lives and I've I'm doing all these reels and whatnot, but my phone battery just keeps on dying, like in the middle of something crazy, and it's like, oh my gosh, I'm so embarrassed. Or when you talk about relations, like I I can only imagine talking to someone that you know they don't have clean water, and like, you know what, man, I'm I'm I'm this I'm with this toxic chick, man. And you know what?
SPEAKER_01:I mean I'm with this toxic water, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but no, you don't know, yeah, you you got that water, but dude, like we post our problems like on on on Instagram and on Facebook, and it's it's like you know, I I just just the other day I I put stat you know, status unclear or complicated. And you know, yeah, it it it's like that. And when it if we just quit looking within, and like this is our ego, and this is like uh this is also the uh we we all have a little that that we all think the world revolves around us, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And that's I think that is a human nature thing, you know, you get that for free when you're born, but like a lot of other things that are that are human nature, you have to decide to work on getting a handle on it. You know, you gotta get control of that. You gotta decide how much of that is helping me and how much is too much. And you know, it's like it's like candy and sugar and alcohol and cocaine and all the other stuff that you can, you know, you can overdo it. And most people do for a little while, but then they figure out, okay, this is too much. This is, you know, a little bit is okay or whatever. You know, same thing for Instagram, same thing for entrepreneurship, right? Same thing for all you know, these things. You want to at some point decide what why is it the world, why is it that I get air conditioning and an iPhone and a Tesla and all the things that only the top 1% of people in the world have? Well, it's that's the world investing in you. So let's add it up. All right, does the world need you to go dig coal out of a coal mine? No. Do you have to sew Nikes in a factory dungeon? No, right? You could do whatever you want, so choose to do something that that you care about that matters.
SPEAKER_02:Well, also, like when you put things in perspective like that, people wouldn't be so bent and twisted, or people wouldn't be so if if they just reflected once in a while and lived in gratitude and go, man, we were born. I mean, oh, I'm not as lucky as you know, such and such. Man, you're luckier than like 98% of the people in this world just by being born here. And yeah, and and okay, you you weren't a trust fund butt baby, but you have the opportunity that, like what you said, it wasn't like they're like, Okay, you're four, you're five, it's time to go to a factory to you have little hands. We we can we really need you in the factory, and it's like yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Your worst case scenario is probably that like you have to go sleep on your mom's couch for a couple months back on your feet. Exactly. Like we all started out there. How bad is that? You know, like it's doable. Whereas, you know, if your worst case scenario is like, oh shit, there's no clean water today, gotta drink something, and the next thing you're dying of amoebic dysentery, you know, like it's just to it's crazy. So look, I don't mean to vilify anybody if you're in a tough spot, then you do what you gotta do, but you know, take stock and figure out like, all right, you've watched Netflix season 14 three times. Maybe, you know, maybe you could find something more constructive to do at that time.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly, exactly. And and it's dude, you just gave people reality. And and if anybody has blowback, it's because when the truth hurts, it's like, well, screw you, man. You you you don't you you don't know my my situation because you know everybody right has unique situations that nobody's ever overcome, like nobody's ever overcome way worse situations than such a well.
SPEAKER_01:I think one of the ways to think about that is you know, if if anybody else can do it or has done it, then it can be done.
unknown:Right?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. And so if and so if you just start with that and say, well, you know, okay, that dude who did it, what did he have? Did he have a trust fund? Is he seven foot tall and so therefore he can do the NBA, whatever. Okay, maybe you got some disadvantages, fine. But look around, a lot of the people who accomplish shit start out with less than you. So, you know, that means it can be done, can be done by someone like you. So go for it. I mean, that's what I think. But look, people can do what they want. I just think the other thing people are missing out on is they don't realize we're just evolved to work. You know, free time is a very new invention. Up until like a century ago, no, everybody just had to work all the time just to keep from dying and to keep everybody going. And the and the industrial revolution was really what made it possible for the first time for a person to survive or for most people to survive on less than nonstop work. And so, you know, we live in this world where we have all this free time and we don't know what to do with ourselves. You know, going back to the, you know, the psychological makeup of a human, you're born with this, uh, all these cognitive biases, you're born with all these, you know, things like you don't actually have a good answer for what to do with yourself if you're not working. And so we keep trying to make entertainment, and that's books and movies, and music, and elections, and video games, and all the things that people do to fill their free time, but you know, then they leave depressed, unfulfilled, lots of anxiety. You know, what what what people are evolved to do is work, they're evolved to get satisfaction from seeing how they're useful to other people. And so, you know, I think there's a chance to find that.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you made such a valid point because, yes, clearly, if you have all that excess time to have anxiety and whatnot, it's because you're sitting on your couch watching season 10. It I always tell people if you have time to stream, you have time to work on your dreams.
SPEAKER_01:And nobody in a coal mine has anxiety, exactly, or like what you said before the industrial revolution.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, their definition of free time was okay, we're gonna have dinner, we're gonna wash up, go to sleep, and we're gonna work another 14, 15 hours tomorrow on the farm. Yep. And you know, we and have having a family wasn't, oh my gosh, we're we're gonna have two two kids, 2.5 kids, and a picket fence. No, you had as many kids as you you could because some were gonna die. That was free labor. Yeah, and it was free labor. You needed all those people to survive.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, kids are a fashion accessory for a lot of people now, very expensive. One, and I'd you're right.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think anybody back like 120 years ago were like on the farm and and brothers were talking, and he's like, you know what, John? I just don't know, man. I'm I'm sitting here and I'm I'm just just really depressed.
SPEAKER_01:You're on a farm, you know how your work is affected. I think I saw that girl next door.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I could have been someone else, or oh my gosh, you have time to think about this. Oh gosh, I'm really sad, baby.
SPEAKER_01:Well, look, I mean I would have a BMW, yeah, and you could still gotta be compassionate with people who are struggling with these things because they don't know how they ended up in this spot, they don't know how to steer themselves out. They got, you know, but but I think that if you if you start with a you know, what's your philosophy of life? You know, do you believe that you should be able to feel fulfilled and happy by sitting on the couch, you know, scrolling TikTok? Or do you do you really do you really believe that? I mean, because it's doesn't seem to be working out that well for most people. So go, you know, probably overdoing it a bit, go to AA, get a you know, get get off TikTok for a bit, go cold turkey, and then see if you can make something a little more constructive with your life. Right.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'm making this up, but no, no, no, you're you're but you're making it up because it's true, though. I I mean, if somebody would have told me 40 years ago when I was a little kid, and you know, when it came to information, mom bought the encyclopedia Britannica from the the encyclopedia salesman that knocked door to door, yeah, and they never gave you a through z, and it wasn't like they gave you a, b, c, you know, it was random, they would give you like X, and then next month or six weeks or whatever was the R. And you know, by the time you got it all, it was outdated information, or you had to go to the library. If somebody would have been like, Hey, yeah, you know, if if Marty McFly and Doc Brown or whomever came in, you know, in a DeLorean with the flux capacitor, and they were like, Here, and showed me like you know, the capabilities, information super highway, and and you know, there's these phones that you can take a picture, but yeah, that that's it though. Mainly the capabilities are you you you can do you could look up anything, you can become anything, it's just knowledge, whatever knowledge you want.
SPEAKER_01:It's so easy now.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'd be like, Oh my gosh, I would have thought that it that our future would be like somewhere like in between, like the good aspects of like Blade Runner, like the flying cars and whatnot, and everybody would be like so evolved, and it we wouldn't be doing like dancing videos on on TikTok. That that that's what the the 12-year-old kid in me would have thought 40 years ago.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's like idiocracy became the most prescient movie of all time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that that was like a true it's like everything about it.
SPEAKER_01:You watch it now, it looks like a documentary.
SPEAKER_02:It's exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And if if somebody's like, no, there's these things, and and I'm like, But there's lots of good stuff going on too. It's just that people people acclimate to it so quickly, and you know, you're and again the cognitive biases in your brain make it so that the it's only the it's only the scary stories that matter. You don't have to memori you don't have to remember that like blue. Blueberries are yummy, you do have to remember that tigers might kill you. And so it just you know it's the there's an imbalance in that, and so it makes it so that people really, really focus on the scary stories and they and the negative stories, and that's what sells. That's why Hollywood only makes dystopian movies now that it figured out that Disney endings don't sell, and so it's a really weird, you know, difficult thing to navigate because even when people's lives are objectively getting better all the time, they're still focused on whatever the worst thing they can find is. And now we got really good at you know, like our ability to spread bad news around the world has like gone up by several thousand X. Um, what and and you know, the bad news in the world has gone down by like a hundred X. And so it's just this weird dynamic where everybody thinks things are worse, but they're actually way better.
SPEAKER_02:Although we do need to start telling people not to pet tigers anymore because I've been seeing like tigers, I yeah, grow a growing trend of people thinking I I don't know whether we're just lacking more or more common sense, but I just keep on seeing videos of like people hopping fences and well, was the tiger king not a cautionary tale?
SPEAKER_01:Like what happened there? I mean, I thought I thought that we put I thought Tiger King basically showed everybody that not to mess with the tigers at this point.
SPEAKER_02:No, but what I think people got out of the tiger king was it was probably like one of the most watched, yeah. Because it gave everybody I I love this. I'm I'm sure you if you'll laugh at this, but before the lockdown, everybody's like, you know what? If I had more time, I'd write a book, right? I'd be so shredded, right? I'd find a cure for cancer. Exactly. I would do all this. I just need more time. And Uncle Sam gave everybody literally more time. Everybody watched uh the Tiger King, and everybody like power loaded and carbo loaded on all their snacks that they called it.
SPEAKER_01:You called it. That's exactly what happened. Cancer is not cured, nobody's shredded.
SPEAKER_02:There's no more books, yes. Yeah, no, no, nobody, you know, but it that's what it just goes to show you, you know. In human nature, we we create the story, you know. There the future, yeah, all those future movies, dystopian. In fact, I used to love watching them like my 20s, and then the more I I'm like, man, this is but the because you know it's all so edgy and but so bleak. And then after a while, I'm like, holy shit, man. Maybe that this this is becoming our reality, so I I quit watching it.
SPEAKER_01:But every good boycott dystopia. Yeah, we've had enough of that shit. They're so creative, like let's see a let's see a movie about how the future is more awesome.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's especially like a guy like you that that wants to push things to create a better humanity. You have you ever I can't recall a movie where the future is bright, where everything is like, holy smokes, man. I I can't wait for you know 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. Instead, it's like it all of them are like similar to like Mad Max. Yeah, nuclear.
SPEAKER_01:Well, there's a couple things I think, you know, in our when we were kids, the Star Trek was the one where you know there's still drama, but like it's actually like a pretty cool future that they were envisioning. It's like, oh, we're gonna build these spaceships and go explore the universe. Pretty cool stuff. And it was a more positive vision for things, but we don't really have those anymore, you know, like nobody's making those. I think science fiction novelists are have all just leaned into this dystopian side of things, probably because it sells better. But look, it does, you know, we don't we don't need more of it. Like we've had enough of that for several lifetimes. So let's hear some positive practical visions proud technology can make things better. And you know, even if you so a good example of this, I think, was um there's a show called The Expanse, which is also futuristic, but it but what but the technology they don't blame the technology for all the problems, right? There's drama in this show, but the technology and the technology is there, but it's not the re it's not the cause of all their problems. That's what's you know, Hollywood calls me and asks me what technology is coming because we need a boogeyman for our movie. That literally happens, you know. They just want me to give them new things to make scary movies out of, and I think it's a terrible thing to do.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I mean, that that that's because I'm I'm glad there's pe there's people like you, the outlier out there that's like pushing it, that that wants to see oh my gosh, a world without polio, without malaria, without all these things. And it's like that cheesy, you know, everybody laughs, like that commercial by Koch, you know, the world to sing in perfect harmony.
SPEAKER_01:But so here's an example with that. So, and this is there's more detail in the book, but basically, you know, polio keeps coming back, it kept coming back in different spots of Africa, and this is a really nasty disease, you know, it's really sad. You still rarely but occasionally will see somebody who survived and was saved from polio but is in a wheelchair, you know. Or I mean that's we have some of those folks still around in the US, but it's pretty rare. Most people have met one, maybe. But the butt this is a disease that five-year-old kids are still getting in Africa. Like that's just come I think it's completely unacceptable. So we had this team working on using AI to create what we would call computational models. So this is essentially like SimCity, but for polio. And so we have like SimCity for polio in Africa, and in the computer, you can run all these simulations, so you can try playing games of SimCity, Simpolio, let's call it. You can play Simpolio in the computer thousands of times until you figure out what's actually gonna work the best, and then go do it in the real world. And we've done that, so there's been no wild type polio, meaning uh uh polio in the wild in Nigeria for the last eight years now, I think. In part because we were able to use these AIs to optimize the the um the response effort to go and contain the disease. And that wasn't possible before we were just sort of guessing, spitting in the wind and guessing. Now, because of the comp because of the AIs, we're able to really optimize that. We have like 75 different countries that are using those AIs now to optimize vaccination campaigns and the things they do to contain disease. And so this is a really exciting time because we get to run this victory lap with eliminated polio. Now imagine okay, job's not done. Still got tuberculosis, that's uh a lot of lives, uh, still got malaria, that's a lot of lives. Still got these other, you know, these uh diseases cropping up, COVID, that's a lot of lives. Let's let's this is what's possible with those diseases too. So now we have this toolkit where we can go after it. And that's I think it's super exciting. I think that is one of the most important things. I mean, look, we're rich, good looking, super smart people because we're Americans. No, that's not that's not enough. Like that means the world invested in you, you got great skincare products, you got to go to a better school for longer. You didn't have to worry about dying of malaria so you could actually focus on getting educated. You got a laptop when you were six, all these kinds of things add up. And so I think what we our job is to you know be the pioneers. We're good at doing new things, we're good at rounding up educated people, we're good at working on uh developing these new technologies. That's we're good at wasting a lot of money on new stuff. That's our job. So then once you've done that for Americans, then recognize okay, the job's not done. Which of these things is good, and which ones can we take for to a billion people, you know, to a billion people who have the problem, but where the world hasn't invested as much in them. And so we have these success stories. That's a success story for AI that nobody knows about. People think AI is just about chatting. No, AI is about uh disease eradication. We're gonna completely eliminate those diseases and we're gonna save millions of lives a year by doing it. So I that's what's possible, and that's what I mean when I'm talking about deep tech.
SPEAKER_02:Now, deep tech. Now, what Pablos was talking about was because you know he is the author of Deep Future, creating technology that matters. Now, Pablos, where can they find this book? This amazing book.
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh, I think it's the number one on Amazon right now. It's a pretty easy to find. Um, but it's also uh on Audible. So I read the audiobook myself. So if you like listening to me, you can listen to more. Um, and then it's I think it's gonna be in like every airport bookstore. So you'll you'll find this book.
SPEAKER_02:It's it's definitely a great read. And this is coming from I I thought like when when I heard first heard about you from Republicans, I'm like, oh my gosh. I'm like, I'm in communications, I can only understand one word and two two two syllable words I uh on an eighth grade level. That's what I I can communicate with other people. And and like what I said, when it comes to tech, you know, I I I love watching and hearing about it, but the story the the whole book is very captivating. Also, just just just you because uh on the surface, yeah, because even the cover, I I love the cover, but it's like, oh my gosh, man. Uh this this is gonna be like I I I wish I wish I would have fulfilled my mom's dream and and been like a a computer science major.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no. You're you're fulfilling your mom's dream of turning out good.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, that's what that's what I think that's what every parent, but yeah, for sure. Thank you. I you know, I that that's uh well as a parent these days, you know, that's my as long as my two daughters are happy and productive in society and not a headache to anybody, then you're exactly you know they neither one became that huge soccer star, but yeah, well, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01:We'll send them the book, it's not too late.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, my my my both of them would read it at and enjoy it. So I definitely now that I know that it's on Audible, because I'm I'm one of those guys, always two books a month. Good, you know, because either you're growing or you're dying. That because I was one of those assholes that graduated free from college after I got my master's many years. Oh, I don't need to read anything, I did that, right? And it's like looking back now, I've learned more through bookstores, all those books, Walden Books, Borders, Barnes and Noble, Audible, and and um online than I ever did in college. So and anybody you can be self-taught, you don't need to spend that crazy amount to send to college. I I know it's not gonna be a hashtag winning uh on Facebook or whatnot, but you know, nothing wrong. There's there's a become great, be amazing, yeah. Be like Paul, Pablo's is always he's helping all of us expand our vision just by everything that you do, man. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, my pleasure.
SPEAKER_02:I've got one question, man. The last the last question before we promote it one more time. And and I I've got this. Uh it's a simple question. Uh ideally, where would you like to see uh society?
unknown:Uh huh.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm not gonna say 50 years or just five years from now. Hashtag winning and Pablo's home and mine with your help, what would society look like?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, there's an exciting renaissance kind of right under our noses, and it's just you know, it's it saddens me to see people missing out on it. And really what I think it comes down to is we have the best toolkit in all of human history for building the future. So you build the future with whatever tools you got. Right now, we got better tools than humans have ever had. And chief among them is AI. Yeah, I know you know we we're doing a lot of dumb shit with AI. You gotta make, you know, make cat videos with it. But we're also gonna use that same set of technologies to do other things. We're gonna use it to do the disease eradication like we described. We're gonna use those technologies to solve energy, which is one of the biggest problems. We're gonna use this technology to figure out what the hell is going on in your body. We don't actually understand biology. Like the entire pharma industry is making drugs. Some of them work, but we don't know how they work. We don't know why they work. We just discovered that they do work, so we give you drugs. And we're gonna get to the bottom of what's going on in your microbiome and what's going on in your proteins and your DNA, and we're gonna be able to do a much better job taking care of you. Those things are coming. We're gonna be able to do a better job of feeding people because we can use these tools to figure out what's going on, but also the same set of technologies making it possible to automate a lot of things. So, all these things that are wasting a lot of time for people, dangerous, menial, boring jobs. Robots are gonna do those things. So you're gonna, in spite of what we said about free time being uh maybe not the best use of humans, you're about to get a bunch more. So there's this. So what I think is happening right now is we're at this point, we're gonna give you a bunch more free time. You're already maxed out on Netflix and TikTok. You don't need more time for that. So I'm hoping that people will see this as an opportunity to take some of that free time that don't have to spend doing the doing all the labor stuff, use that to you know, driving trucks full of Happy Meal toys around, sailing, you know, bringing cargo ships full of you know junk from China across the ocean, you know, working at a gas station. I mean, look, not driving Ubers. All this stuff is going away. So let's take if I'll give you a great example. If you care about your kids, for example, I mean you had you said your daughter's 18, other ones a little younger, right?
SPEAKER_02:Uh 19 and 17.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so in their lifetime, you know, in school, how many times did they have a student-teacher ratio that was lower than like 25 to 1 or 30 to 1?
SPEAKER_02:They went to private schools. Oh, okay, good. So yeah, 15 to 1. Great. Yeah, something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. So if you mine did too after after junior high. So, but up until then, public school was always 30 to 1. We could complain about it, maybe some years get it down to 27 to 1 or something. But look, it what you want is a one-to-one student-teacher ratio. You want a kid to get real attention from a teacher who can figure out where they're at. Put a challenge in front of them that's not too hard or too easy. That's what you would do. That's what tutoring is. That's what a good education is, is when you have somebody who cares about you, paying attention to you, helping you, guiding you. But my kid wasn't the, you know, she wasn't the best kid and she wasn't the worst kid. So she just coasting in the middle. And that's the most heartbreaking thing to see, right? Because, you know, the teachers got to teach to the lowest common denominator in the class. The smart kids are like completely bored. So either, you know, we used to put them in their own, you know, AP class or advanced class or whatever. Now that's gotten to be uh politically incorrect. So we don't even do that. So these kids are just coasting through. They're not learning, they're not challenged, they're not having fun, they're not enjoying it. I think it sucks. So when a robot takes your job, just go teach. Just pick like one kid. You know, I don't have to go to a school. Just pick like one kid, could be a nephew, could be a neighbor, could be stray kids selling drugs on the corner, whatever. Just pick one kid and be like, hey man, let's hang out for one hour a week. Like, who can't find one hour a week? Maybe try one hour a day. Look, none of us are doing this. I'm not doing this. I'm just saying that like if we actually gave a shit about the things we say we care about, we say we care about our kids, we say we care about education, but where's our time going? Netflix. Where's our money going? Netflix. You know, we're not we're not actually doing it. So I'm preaching here, but you get the idea. Like, we we I think we're at this important moment in time where we actually could make society a whole lot better pretty quickly if everybody just pitches in a little bit, and most of your excuses for not pitching in are going away. So I think that's I think that's that's my vision, at least for uh in you know, in five to ten years, what could happen?
SPEAKER_02:Let's make it happen.
SPEAKER_01:There we go.
SPEAKER_02:It it's a we. Everybody wants to change, so let's start within and we can make it happen. Pablo's Holman, he's the author of Deep Future, Cheating Technology That Matters. You can find it, download it on Audible, buy it, buy a copy on Amazon too. You can do both. It's an amazing story, it's an amazing read. Read about he's a hacker and venture, definitely a futurist, over 70 patents, the man to myth the legend. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the hour, brother.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Inside that prison or for a long time to make it happen, you gotta take action. Just imagine what if it did work.