134: A Palazzo of Some Fantastic Proportion

This week we are delving into Stu's new article on Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity. What are some of the consequences of the potential merger of our brains with superintelligent AI? Are they good? Are there any downsides? What about immortality? Should we want to live forever? 

We get into all this, while also making a comparison to a vision of a kind of immortality expressed in Mark Frost's and David Lynch's brilliant series, Twin Peaks.

Subscribe to Stu's new substack, Cybernetic Observations. 

"Ray Kurzweil's Intimations of Immortality" by Stu Watson

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

All right, everybody, welcome back. This is the end of the world with Michael and Stu. I'm Michael. And I'm Stu. And today we're talking about uh a recent a masterpiece. I don't wanna I don't wanna call my own work a masterpiece, Michael.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Well, you didn't.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Touche. Yeah, we're talking about an essay I wrote uh that came out last week, I suppose, uh, that is about Ray Kurzweil, the prophet of the tech singularity.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Before we get started on that, I just want to jump in and say that when uh it came out on can we use the word stack? Yeah. Um Stu uh Stu Watson's Dr. Stu Watson's new stack. Um just before we get into the actual piece, which is fascinating and what he's what he's writing about is also um totally in line with the with the theme of the podcast. Just wanted to give uh my friend the doctor a chance to describe the new project because I also think going forward, right? The idea is that when when Stu puts out some of these new things, we will be talking about them, maybe trying to tie them in with some other media that we're working through. Um so I just want to throw that over and give you a chance to tell people what the new uh new project is.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Great. Thanks, Michael. Uh back to you. Now, um, yeah, the the uh the subsack is called Cybernetic Observations, and it's kind of an attempt to continue my academic work, which focuses on cybernetics and the way that it connects to uh literature and specific 19th century literature, but also 19th century through uh contemporary literature in particular. Uh and so I'm just gonna be writing articles with the hope of demystifying cybernetics. I think it's useful, as we've done on a few episodes on the show, to uh talk about cybernetics because it's in the background of a lot of what's happening in tech right now. We've we've done some episodes on the connection between cybernetics and AI. This article that I will be talking about today is about uh the tech singularity, which is uh from one way of looking at it, the telos, which is to say the end goal of cybernetics. If you if you see cybernetics teleologically, which you quite frankly should not. I mean, the fact the whole point of cybernetics is that it is anti-sp that it is antiteleological, right? It doesn't have one end in mind. It's actually much more about a process that is ever moving. Uh but Ray Kurzweil and other people like Peter T. You beg to differ. Yeah, well, I mean this is kind of what I'm getting at with the whole article, not to put the cart before the horse, but you know, basically uh it's a misreading of cybernetics to imagine the goal of cybernetics is to defeat entropy and to l create immortality.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Well, before we go there, which we are just gonna go in, we're not gonna be doing any news this time. We're just gonna We're going all the way, baby. But I do just again uh don't forget, um can you tell people sort of how they can find this?

SPEAKER_00 3:47

So it's just cybernetic uh uh cyberobservations.substack.com. If you go to substack and search cybernetic observations, it should come up. You can also probably search. Uh it's pretty new. I don't know if it's been indexed by Google, although also Google is Google even indexing things anymore. This is a big point of controversy in recent days, right? Uh, but you can find it there. You can also just there's a link on my Instagram. Uh you can also find links.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

And I did just try. And if you type in Stu Watson, substack into Google, it's the first thing that comes up. So away we go.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Good, good. All right. Well, the system works. Google's not Google isn't completely cooked just yet. Um, so yeah, let's let's enough with the uh prelude. Let's dive in. Uh so for this piece, I was thinking about how you know there's been a lot of talk of biohacking. I mean, we've mentioned uh infamous biohacker Brian Johnson on the show before. He's the guy who's kind of old. He's a little bit older than me, I think. I think he's like 48 or something.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

He looks like shit, huh?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

He doesn't look great, but his goal is to be as physically young as possible, and he's been doing all sorts of biohacking. He's even translated.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Do you have a problem with that cole?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Of trying to be as young as possible.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

I don't I mean, I don't have a problem with it. It just seems like I mean it's his life, he can do what he wants, but it just seems like a waste waste of time.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Interesting. I'm you know, I'm sort of torn on this because it feels like it's not it doesn't feel that I mean, maybe we'll, you know, you'll talk. I know you're gonna touch on this stuff through the through the piece, but like sometimes it just feels like that is kind of part of trying to be healthy. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

I think there's a difference between trying to be healthy and trying to be as young as young as possible.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Um I'm sorry, I thought he was drinking his piss. No, okay. Well, now I really don't have a problem with it. I was just on the fence when I thought it was a piss situation.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Okay. Um no, I don't I don't think he's doing that. You know, but this is a whole there there are all of these influencers that are like you've got to sun your scrotum, you know, in order to get the maximum vitamin D. And there are people that drink pits.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Also, talk about icing them, by the way, for your sperm. So you're icing, you're sunning, it's just a lot of testicle play in general.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah. Uh which I I mean, I think it's good to stay healthy. I obviously uh could I walk a lot, that's the main way I stay healthy. I walk five or six miles every day.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

But uh whereas I just tend to just basically apply extreme temperatures at various ranges.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

But all this biohacking, because it goes further, you know, there are people that are you know trying to insert machinery into their bodies to like maintain their cells and connect their brains, you know, stuff like Neuralink, which we've we've talked about.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Trying to get rid of the phi in sci-fi in a way, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah, basically. I think I think that's a good way of thinking about it. And all this reminded me, of course, of the origins of sci-fi itself, which is uh Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which we did an episode uh very early on on. And, you know, I think it's something, I don't know if we talked about this, but one of the things that's interesting to me about Frankenstein is before he creates the monster and the whole story, you know, unfolds with the monster, you know, him rejecting it, it running off, etc., the cottage. His goal is actually a kind of biohacking. He wants to figure out a way to reverse cellular death and thereby bring back the dead, right? It's all brought on because his mom dies and he wants to like resurrect her. And then he gets sidetracked because he makes this creature and that you know takes this thing. But I don't get to it, mom. Jesus. Right. It's a little weird because after he makes the creature, he never he never even when he's making the creature really mentions the fact that that was his original goal. He almost gets like distracted by it. Um but I feel like in in in the contemporary moment, we're kind of coming back to that original goal of Victor Frankenstein with biohacking, but also, you know, in a more ambitious and some would say uh ridiculous way, the the um the singularity, right? This dream that Ray Kurzweil uh has been relentlessly advocating for for over 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

And you just for someone like me who uh hears it a lot, understands it only vaguely. Could you give like just a succinct description of what he's referring to or what the term is supposed to refer to?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah. I mean the singularity is the moment when technological intelligence permanently surpasses human intelligence.

unknown 8:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Oh, so like 1962.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Uh, you know, some people thought we would get there pretty early on and were wrong, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Um but Kurzwell's coming soon.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Kurzwell thinks it's gonna be here by 2045, and that very likely 2030, and that his I like that.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

I love that style of prognostications like 2045, give himself a bit of runway, but then still do the like I want to make sure that I'm ahead of everything. So I'm 2045, I'm gonna come in at 2045, but also thinking maybe 2030. Yeah, just in case either thing not happened.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Well, it's like a short position and a long position, right? Like yeah, and there's other ways you can see it happening in 2041.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

You know what I mean? Like, who knows?

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Yeah, I mean, all things are possible. Now and you think it's gonna happen. Well, who knows if it is gonna happen?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Yeah, I'm deciding with it's not going to.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Yeah, it feels uh uh I mean we'll we'll talk more about this once once we get once I get over explaining who Kurzweil is. So Kurz Kurzweil, like he's from Queens, he had a really early aptitude for uh math, for computers. He was born in 1948. He went to MIT, uh, studied with Marvin Minsky, who's kind of the guy who pioneered what we think of as artificial intelligence at these uh things that occurred in the late 50s, 56, called the Dartmouth Conferences.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Yeah, there's an we have an episode where we touched on that as well.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, the cybernetics episode. I think we mentioned the the Dartmouth stuff. Um and so he min, you know, he was kind of like a protege of Minsky. And he went into business more than academia, and his kind of most famous invention uh is actually this a synthesizer, like a Kurzweil electric piano. Uh which he yeah, that that's something he invented. He he did a lot of work on text-to-speech stuff because he wanted to create a kind of machine that could help blind people read without braille.

unknown 11:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

So I mean, and and like this is something that that Norbert Wiener, you know, hypothesized a lot about in the 40s and 50s. We I think we talked in cybernetic episodes about the hearing glove, right? Which was this glove a deaf person could wear that would attune their sense of touch and their hand to the frequencies of sound and kind of like use that as an alternative system through which to hear effectively. Uh Wiener wasn't really able to build such a thing, but he also died in 1964, 65, right? So it's uh uh and Ray Kurzweil's what's that? Yeah, I mean, did you know a computer the size of your apartment is like 12 12 kilobytes or whatever, right? It's not quite there. Kurzweil is still very much alive, right? And he still lives uh in the Boston area near MIT. He's kind of stayed in that area for most of his life. And, you know, the synthesizers are good. He they were really like, they weren't like super successful, but they were, you know, like uh a concert pianist would be like, oh, you know, for a you know piece of junk technology, this is pretty good. Concert pianists are pretty hostile towards uh electronic keyboards. Uh but the real thing, you know, he's he's kind of one of those people who's he's like an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur, but none of his visions have like fully he's not as rich as like a Brian Johnson, for instance. And I don't even remember what Brian Johnson did to make his hundred million or whatever. His real claim to fame, though, is as a futurist and as an advocate for for the text singularity. And the most recent book, which I which is kind of the topic of this article, is called The Singularity Is Nearer. It's a sequel to his 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near. Um it's that's hilarious. Isn't that funny? I mean, to his credit, I you know, I have quite a few issues with him philosophically, obviously. Most of the stuff he talks about in the Singularity is Near is on track. Like he was he was kind of right about progress in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Um, in terms of just how AI would come about and what not he didn't, it wasn't like the specifics, but just sort of the about like computing power and stuff like that. Yeah, like the timeline, like Moore's Law, and that sort of stuff. He was he's not completely crazy. He's he's got some. Um I don't really say this in the article, but like the big thing with Kurzweil is when you're reading his book, you're like, okay, there's a lot of information here, but it almost feels like you're reading uh a Wikipedia article or something. Like he has all these, he has a lot of citations, but there a lot of them are to like popular press, and like it's not like reading a real academic study where someone has developed a thesis and then draws evidence that supports that thesis or disagrees with it, and they're they're kind of moving in a dialogue with a huge bot. Like, it's more like someone who's gone through Google and is like, this article is good, let's include that, and this article's I'm not doing the best job of describing that, but it's a sense you get when you're reading him where you're like, okay, like this scene It's slightly more pop. It's definitely a it's definitely a product of his being a more of a popular writer for sure, but there are popular writers who are who are more convincingly rigorous.

unknown 15:01

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

I was thinking of the holy groly blood, holy grail people that Brown ripped off. Now that's that's some rigorous pop writing. Um, a guy who really inspired him is this guy, uh Werner Ving or Vinge, I don't know how you pronounce his name. I've never heard it. Uh, who wrote in 1993 an essay called The Coming Technological Singularity. And, you know, one thing about Kurzweil that's also annoying is he's so relentlessly optimistic. He's just like, this is gonna happen and it's gonna be great. And it's like, well, Ray, but what about this? And he's like, nope, great. Did you hear me? It's going to be great.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

And you're What does he just generally speak? What does he think happens then? If like what is great in his mind?

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Well, we'll let me talk about like the background of this first, and then we'll get into that. Um I'm just so confused by the idea of this being a- Well, we'll get to live forever, and we won't have pain, and we'll, you know, we'll be immortal. Not literally immortal, but effectively immortal.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

To be fair, touche.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

That's what he thinks is so great about it. I mean, never mind what are the consequences of that. Something he's really not that interested in.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Okay, so he's not interested in the consequences, really.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Well, I mean, he's interested in the good consequences, i.e., not dying. Um, but otherwise. So Vings is the guy who kind of popularized the coming technological singularity in the 90s. And he's quite a bit more wary than Kurzweil. There's a quote in the piece that I that I cited where he says, from the human point of view, this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control. Um, so the danger of the text singularity is that once we've been surpassed by artificial intelligence, we're just left in the dustbin of history, right? In the past, we've thought about our technology as a tool, as something that we use to make, to augment our lives, to augment our bodies, even, right? But moving forward, we'll be like lab rats to this intelligence. Kurzweil is very aware of this, so his solution is essentially that we must merge with it before we get to that point.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

It's such a great outcome that we have to merge with the machine.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Well, no, I think he's more saying if we don't merge with the machine, there is this danger that we just become it's like playthings, it's guinea pigs.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

And that's, you know, this is where you get to the sort of Rocco's basilisk and like the Zizians and all these people who are like trying to blow up servers and stuff, like because they they dread the coming of the Skynet, or I had the I have no mouth, but I must scream AI that's just gonna torture us forever in a hell if it's if it's devising, right? Um so Kurzweil's basically like, yeah, I mean, I guess this hellish hell demon AI could arise, but you know what? You know what will stop from doing all those terrible things if if we merge with it, right? And he says this is gonna happen by nanotech, nanotech, right? We're gonna hook ourselves up to the computers through these molecule size uh, you know, basically. No, I don't.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Like we're gonna hook our brains through nanotech tubes, nanotubes to computers, basically. And this is what, you know, the the Elon Musk Neuralink is like the early stages of this.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Have you tried that?

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Have I tried have I gotten a brain thing implanted in? Did you get did you try that out? Not yet, no. Did you?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

No, but I was you know what I was thinking about it? Hmm. Trying to learn Italian, and I was like, what if I could just plug this thing in? Would that would that do that? Does it do that?

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Not now, no.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Not yet, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

But that's but that is the kind of thing that they envision you being able to do.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Just rattling off every language as you're walking down the street.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Uh it would be instantaneous, right? Because you just have access to a database, in theory.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Sure. In theory. A theoretical database.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah, but uh but I mean that's not really how our brains work, right? That's not actually how when you learn a language, you don't it's not like you just drop a file called Italian into your brain. This is a persistent problem I have with these people, right?

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Because they act as though by connecting our brain to the internet, we'll just instantly become I mean, Kurzweil later in the book says, you know, our memories are like a Wikipedia page. And who doesn't want to have all of Wikipedia in their brain? Just to know everything. 100%. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

But it's like, Michael, when you're trying to remember something, uh one of your childhood experiences or something that we sometimes talk about on the show.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

But instead you just start talking about like Phoebe Bridgers' third album or something.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

No, no, I'm just saying, like, when you have that experience yourself as a person, are you do you feel like you're accessing like a database in your brain? Is that is that your subjective experience of like trying to remember something?

SPEAKER_01 20:21

I understand what you're saying. No, that's fair.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Right? It kind of comes out of nowhere, not out of nowhere. Sometimes it requires effort. You think, oh, where was I? Was I at this place? Oh no, that was 1993 because this happened.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

You only close your eyes and see like a filing cabinet.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You uh you don't see a home page, and you're not like seeing yourself typing the year in it in a little search box. Right. So there's a kind of odd idea that by just connecting our brains to computer, we're instantly gonna be like computer man, and that'll be fine. It's like, yeah, definitely no danger of someone going completely insane by suddenly having every memory in their brain accessible instantaneously.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

That's what I'm saying, man.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Yeah, right? And like, who's gonna filter that information for you? Like Junior, maybe? I don't know. Baron Trump, probably. He's probably on top of it. You're right.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

But I mean, this is this is one of my biggest issues with this whole idea, is that it's under theorized. You can't just say the brain memories are like Wikipedia pages. They're fundamentally not like Wikipedia pages. Uh, do you do you know you misremember things? You associate, you think something happened at this time, and then you talk to your parents about it, and they're like, no, it was not that time. That was a year before, or whatever. And you say, But I'm so sure I remember those two things. Or you think you remember something really clearly, and then you're home for a vacation, and you realize, oh no, I don't remember it at all. I just remember seeing this photo on the mantle that was taken that. Day. Right. So we have all of these stand-in ways of triggering memories, right? Our memory works very indirectly. Sometimes you smell a perfume and you think, oh, that was my girlfriend, sophomore year of college, wore that scent. I haven't thought of her in years. Or, you know, like just a random event can trigger a set of associations that will send you in an unexpected direction that might end up being extremely fruitful, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Yeah, it's an interesting thing too. Like, I mean, I don't know if you if there's if this information is out there in in a in a guy like Kurzweil's theories, but like you plug in, can you like shut off the thing and just have your regular mind when you're I mean who knows, right? It's not like we've It seems also so overwhelming to have access to all of this.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

100%. That's why I suggested it might drive someone insane. So, you know, how is how is this merger gonna take place? Because it's like pretty iffy if this is gonna work, first of all, right? I would say so, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

You mean the merging between my brain and the internet? Yeah, I'd say it's iffy.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

The internet and like every program? Are you just gonna try and access a memory and just see a string of binary code?

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Also, just like, can you just be like, I don't need Bing, you know, for example? Like I mean, exactly, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:34

You have to get a brick, you know, those things like the like anti-distraction device, you have to have a brick for your brain where you can like Yeah, it's your screen time limiter or whatever for your brain built into your brain. Yeah, that's not bad. I guess it's just me and you again, old brain. Damn, I was just streaming season three.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

You go back to your old brain that is like barely hanging on, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

I mean, what are the consequences for mental health of offloading?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

I mean, we've already talked about the consequences for your physical brain. You know, all of this stuff is just so unknown, right? Yeah, it seems And they just talk about it like it's sort of de facto on the way and it'll all and it's good, and not only is it good. Michael just will be smoothed out.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Michael, it's not only good, it's necessary. Because if we don't do it, the super robot will kill us.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

We become lab rats, right? Which, you know, maybe it'll start time to start writing books about like getting a new perspective that lab rats maybe don't have it so bad, you know? Like it's yeah, maybe right.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Actually, you know what, the lab rat is a pretty cushy life when you think about it. I mean, we've already talked about Chat GPT and how much the offloading of thinking that that enacts has been uh disastrous for education, right? You see these, I mean this is anecdotal, but you see these people on Twitter, and who knows if they're being fully honest, but who are like, Yeah, a student came up to me and was like, How do I write an essay about something I like? They're like, Well, you you you list the elements of the thing that you like, and then you you tell me why you like them. She's like, Yeah, but what if ChatGPT, you know, it's like the the the the very um sort of relatively simple It's interesting, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Like a lot of the people of the of that of that ilk, or even generationally speaking, it's like the idea somehow of um, and this is an interesting problem that we sort of helped to create, right? Where like very early in this idea of like an information superhighway, and part of the way that all of this infrastructure was sold was that it would uh create this wealth of knowledge that was so accessible to everybody, that was like this inherent good for every person to have access to information, and that would make you sort of not only more knowledgeable, but somehow you know have more wisdom or whatever. And now people who have grown up their entire lives are presented with something that really makes you feel in the way that like a con artist can, like you are having this intimate exchange of information, knowledge, and wisdom all at once. And if you take that away, then you sort of not only do you maybe not have any idea how to do stuff, something like that anymore, like write an essay about something like it's also like, well, wouldn't I be doing a way worse job if I didn't have access to this dialogue with this, you know, computer with this romance? Right, and I think that like the this is one of the the the consequences of sort of whatever putting the idea of information sharing and knowledge uh as a sort of like godhead upon which like everything else is. Right, because it becomes a crutch that you need that you become dependent on and and it became a crutch for like for me when I had the ability in school to like look stuff up in a way that I wouldn't have if I had just been one generation further and had just you know set up in the library, you know. And I think about because I was like a kid who, you know, I was like the kid down in the local library that like all the librarians knew, and I was always there. I mean, I was like always there when I from like I don't know, early, you know, like seven to twelve, you know, just every go down to the library. And you know, it you do realize that like you're like looking back now, it's like remarkable to think about the powers of like research and understanding that I had at a very young age, not not as like a a genius of any, you know, or anything like that, just a curious person or kid who's like accessing this knowledge base in a way that takes a bit of distance, time, effort, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Um, and now and it has a specific location associated with that. That's right, that's right. Yeah, I used to like the library too, but I hated taking out books because I always feared I would forget to bring them back.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Oh, I had I had that's so many overdue disasters.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

I mean, truly I was so fearful of rule breaking as a child that I just like I got in trouble for not taking enough books out of the library at school, actually.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

And I was like, I have a lot of books at home.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Um but I do think like, I mean, it's not I'm really not romanticizing it. I think of those that time. No, there's something good. There's there's something time of my life in the sense that like in terms of learning, and it's not I you know, I I don't think it's just about young age and curiosity. I do think it's also about like the tools that were available by the time I'm in high school. It's like I still I have Google. I mean, I can do all this stuff in this more automated way. And now, just imagine being a high school age now, like with what's available to you. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Yeah, I mean, this stuff is all very unreliable. I mean, there's bad info, there's always been bad info out there, bad theories in mistaken theories. But ChatGPT and Gemini, which occasionally I'll type in a query, and Gemini will give me an answer, and I'll just be like, you know, not because I want it to. It's just the first result that comes back now for a lot of you know things you type into Google. And it's just I'll know that it's wrong.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

And it just it just that happens to me, but obviously with like sports stats that I just know.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

You're like typing in the guy. Elvin Hayes actually played exactly 50,000 minutes in his NBA career.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

You know, you you search something about Jason Tatum, and then like the AI mode tells you how he, you know, unanimously won NBA Finals MVP in 2024, and you're like, no, that wasn't him.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

That didn't happen.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Yeah, not only was it not unanimous, he lost to his teammate. Like it is it is it is very strange.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

In any case, uh, there's another problem with all this, which is if you can upload your brain, essentially, if your brain is synced with a computer, it's no different than your iPhone. You lose your iPhone, you get it replaced, you can sync your old contacts back to the new phone. We could do that with our bodies. So you you sync your brain to the cloud, uh, you get killed in a machine gun incident at a Wendy's or whatever. And but no fear, you're synced. You're backed up, they just fix your body, or oh, body is not fixable. Well, here's a new robot, Michael. Let's upload, upload, uh, but isn't that but that creates a problem?

SPEAKER_01 30:17

I'm heading back to Wendy's, you know. I never got my single, you know.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

But this is a problem because if your backup exists, that also implies that there could be more than one of you.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Sure. Right?

SPEAKER_00 30:32

And I guess that's that's a bad thing, or you're saying Yeah, well, wouldn't it be weird if one day you're walking around and there's just another you comes up and is like, hey Michael, I know everything about you because I'm you too.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Right. And are these things I guess these are is the idea that these things would be consistent because they are they'd have the same, they'd have the same memories, have the same brain. The same memories, okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

Different body. But if you know what I'm saying, if if you're immortal because you can functionally immortal, because obviously someone could blow up the server where your brain is stirred, you stored or whatever. Um this is kind of like uh a a big problem. Now Kurzwell gets around this though, because he's he says, Don't worry. Oh, okay. Even if uh even if another you were created while you were still alive, you'd you'd also be that you at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Oh, phew.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Because of what he believes in, which is called pan-protoism. Is that true? Who knows? No, I mean we don't know. Let me explain what he says.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

He says there's a philosophical idea from the ancient world called pan-proto-psychism. And with the ancient basically says that every version of you, whether organic or mechanical, restored from backup, you will all share in the same consciousness. Uh why? No, he has no reason, there's no empirical reason that he thinks this.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Just says that will happen.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yeah. Uh he says that plan pan-proto-psychism, he says, one might imagine a sort of universal field that holds the potential for consciousness. And the interpretation of this view that I hold, it is the kind of information processing complexity found in the brain that awakens that force into the kind of subjective experience we recognize. In other words, he's trying to explain consciousness, which is one of the great, you know, mysteries of the brain and of the world. And he's saying, well, I think it's because there's this pan-proto-psychism. Pan-psychism, which basically means there's a mind in everything, pan means everything. Psychism means mind. And then proto means there's the potential for a mind in everything, right? So this chopstick that I'm holding on. Yeah, no, this chopstick has the potential somewhere in it for a mind. If it could be if its molecules could be arranged in the right way and it could be part of the right, you know, whatever object you have around your house, anything.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Um it just arrives in America.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Well, no, it comes when there comes a fork, just like oh no, fork has come to life. Yeah, I I don't think it I he basically is saying that if we connect our brains to computers, this brain could activate this potential that lies waiting in a computer. Another thing he thinks is if we build a computer that's complicated enough, has enough GPUs to go back to the language we were using a couple episodes ago, uh that maybe it'll just uh it'll spontaneously appear uh consciousness.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Maybe uh could be 2045, could be 2030, maybe. So I think one of the s one of the implications of this is that like if we have this if we have multiple copies of us out there, we'll all be the same because we'll all have been animated by the same divine spark of consciousness.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

So if you if if you had a couple of copies, right? There's another me. There's another you, right? But then there's there's you, you, there's and you you feel you're the original you, let's say.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Right, but I'm sure the other me thinks that too.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

And so you're going out and you're like, I gotta go pick up whatever, cat food, right? Uh and you see other two, right? Yeah. What do you what do you have a conversation?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Like, what Kurzweil says is we'd both be the same person. Like we'd be we'd be are we be connected. So like I in my original body would also be experiencing whatever secondary body is because we'd share one consciousness. Like if what I'm asking you, if if you both end up on the same street corner, well we wouldn't, but but we we uh one consciousness would control both of us.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

I see. Well that kind of that actually sounds pretty fun.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Yeah, but it also sounds like a nightmare.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Oh fuck, I have to like sounds like it's not ever gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

I have to take care of these six bodies now. Oh, body five like fell in a manhole cover and needs to have like a new robot arm put on or whatever. Like and like, oh, how do you feel when one of the robot bodies dies? Are you like, well, oh damn, robot body six snuffed out, a dump truck just dumps coal all over it or whatever. Are you like, well, I better get a new body to back and what about to just keep one body like locked in a safe room at all times?

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Because just then how many I guess the number that you have corresponds to your wealth, right? Which creates some. I would just be able to have as many copies of myself as I've got as many as resources allowed, you know.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Presumably there'd be some like mother god and robots.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

17 to 25,000 copies of me?

SPEAKER_00 35:57

I mean, I don't think anyone would be having kids anymore. What would the point be?

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Yeah, I mean, I don't I'm not having kids now, so I mean No, but I just mean like nobody would scrolling around town picking up copy numbers 7,435.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

And like, what are the implications for children? So you have a child, this this this brain duplicating software hardware thing is available. It's like, all right, little Johnny, you're out of the womb. Now plug little Johnny in right away. You know, just an interesting question.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Are you waiting until whatever 25 or whatever?

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Yeah, is there like an anti uh no infant brain module, you know, you should Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Well, I mean, I think you've you've read the script, but one of the ideas of one of the movies that I wrote is that exactly that this idea of like if you do have something that can only work after the body and mind have developed to a certain stage, then instead of a childhood, you probably have these very, very protective parents knowing that immortality is you gotta get to 21 before you can possibly must get to 21. You think you're going out tonight? You're not going out, we can't have anything happen to you.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

You're staying in the safe room like you do every night.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

That's right. If you're going to the safe room, I mean, and I think that might be a very similar thing because one can't imagine that you just plug it into an infant, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:19

We have to ask Kurzweil, you know. I mean, I mean, I'm sure he would just be like it'll be fine. Yeah, yeah. It'll be great. This is what I mean when I say this is like.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

I like the idea of like three, is it three men and a baby? Is that remember that one? Yeah, yeah. I like the idea of like it's it's the three babies instead. Like it's one, it's one baby, and he's like directing three men.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

He's got three bodies.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

Yeah, one of them's in the same way.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

That's a good question, too. It's like, are are all those bodies then the same age? Right? Like, it's right.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

I mean, what's to stop if your your child from having an adult body right away? If you can just transfer their consciousness.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Or you get into whole other body issues, like anybody who wanted certain type of body or certain features, like yeah, trans issues, for instance, are solved by this immediately.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

But it's also no, I mean, it really does a big scenario, is really possible here.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Yes. Which I mean, I guess score one for Kurzweil, that sounds pretty fun.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Yeah, who doesn't want to be Hanks in big? Um so all of this is under under theorized. That's my big takeaway. It's like there's so many more implications for this that he just doesn't address at all. He's just like, look, it'll be good, we'll be effectively immortal. And then also he doesn't affect address the fact that obviously the people who'll be able to access this are the wealthy, right?

SPEAKER_02 38:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

And like, are they gonna just in a fit of benevolence be like, ah, now that I am a tech god, everyone should be a tech god. Are we gonna have six you know?

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Obviously, to be fair, most humans who flirt with godlike power do become massively better people.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

Yeah, there's absolutely no stories in literature or sci-fi.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

This is where he this is where he's exactly like all these guys, man. It's just like, yeah, there'll be some turbulence, sure, no doubt, but just hold on and it's gonna be amazing. And it's like, what are you talking about? Do you look around ever? Like, people can't people don't have like uh savings to deal with not having a job for for three weeks, or just like people who do have jobs still can't go to the doctor.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

That's right. Yet all of a sudden, this capability is gonna be bestowed on them. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. It's it's we're living in a complete land of fairy tale here.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

That's right. But that's the thing, when people come up like with where the entire like their entire actual world of view is based on science fiction, you just get the most insane results.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Yeah, science fiction, the famously non-dystopian uh all right. Well, my other biggest issue is like if we have this infinite, you know, effectively immortal life ahead of us, um doesn't that destroy the capacity in the mind for for beauty and for truth? It's like if I this getting back to what we were talking about before, but like if you have all like if you have all information at your fingertips at all time, like what is it that's allowing you to judge what's good and bad, right? Because it's all just gonna be ones and zeros on some level. Are you gonna be like, oh, that set of ones and zeros that is like the third Oasis album is like not as good as that other set that is the new Phoebe Bridgers album or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:44

It's interesting because there is kind of a comparison then to the way to the way that we consume like media on the infinite scroll, right? The process of indifferentiation that has clearly had profoundly terrible effects, not only on your own mind, but like political will, morality, and so on, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:01

Absolutely. And I mean the second half of the essay, which I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna delve into this too deeply here, uh, if you want to check it out. It's about Wordsworth and it's sort of another it's another perspective on immortality, one that is not based on literal immortality, but kind of on a attaining a deeper sense of your enmeshment with the environment and with the species. But I think just to close out, I thought it would be interesting to talk about uh a version of this from a more recent work of art, namely Twin Twin Peaks, which I don't know, we haven't really talked too much about Twin Peaks on the show. Which is sort of stunning. Yeah, I mean it's one of my favorite things ever. Uh, and I've watched the original show and the sequel series and Firewalk with me, the brilliant movie.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

I honestly think that Lynch is I I mean, maybe this is crazy to say, but a genius, like honestly, at the level of Brian Johnson. What do you think? Like the my point is just like before you go in, because it is really interesting, I know that I don't care. This has been great, but it's just like mere existence is what seems to fascinate this these mediocre people who don't bother to try to like actually do something of real value. So just basically being able to extend life or somehow this dream world of making it immortal is like a good thing in and of itself. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

There's no point to being alive, it's just being alive itself that matters, right? Yeah, I mean there's this moment in this first episode of the second season of Twin Peaks, which is directed by Lynch, uh written by Lynch and Mark Frost, who's the co-creator of the show. And you know, it's it's Bobby is this sort of boyfriend of Laura Palmer who's dead, and he's one of the suspects in her killing, and he's this sort of classic troubled teen archetype. He's kind of running around selling drugs, he's got some hoodlums that he meets up with, his awful friend Mike, for instance. And in the first season, we're kind of like this guy Bobby is a fucking mess. And his dad is this character, Major Briggs, Major Garland Briggs, who's uh this secret Air Force officer. He's got these connections to Project Blue Book and like the search for extraterrestrials, and it's a really uh stunning contrast because it's a classic, like super straight-laced dad and rebel son kind of scenario. And you'd expect that Major Briggs would hate Bobby, but in fact he doesn't, and there's this moment where they're in the diner together and uh he just gives this insanely beautiful speech about their deeper connection. And I'll just I'll just read it. He says Uh a vision I had in my sleep last night, as distinguished from a dream, which is mere sorting and cataloging of the day's events by the subconscious. This was a vision, fresh and clear as a mountain's dream, the mind revealing itself to itself. So just pausing there, we're already in the language of cybernetics and thinking about memory, right? And vision versus dream. Dream is just this kind of mechanical process of sorting the day's events. A vision is like something deeper, it's something that has uh a more profound resonance with your life. Moving forward, he says, In my vision, I was on the veranda of a vast estate, a palazzo of some fantastic proportion. There seemed to emanate from it a light from within, this gleaming radiant marble. I had known this place. I had in fact been born and raised there. This was my first return, a reunion with the deepest wellsprings of my being. Wandering about, I was happy that the house had been immaculately maintained. There had been added a number of additional rooms, but in a way it blended so seamlessly with the original construction, one would never detect any difference. Returning to the house's grand foyer, there came a knock on the door. My son was standing there. He was happy and carefree, clearly living a life of deep harmony and joy. We embraced a warm and loving embrace, nothing withheld. We were in this moment one. My vision ended. I awoke with a tremendous optimism and a confidence in you and your future. That was my vision. It was of you. I'm so glad to have had this opportunity to share it with you. I wish you nothing but the very best, always. It's this very um moving speech by this father who, by all rights, should be very concerned about his drug addict son, whose girlfriend was just brutally murdered and found in the town lake or whatever. Um, and he is like, no, we're gonna get through all of this. Like, and you're gonna we're gonna and it's this idea of like returning to this actual visionary immortal place from which you sprang. And I tie this in in the essay to to Wordsworth. Wordsworth has a sort of similar conception. Um But I think this is this is not practical immortality, but it's a kind of recognition that um immortality can be better understood as like the continuation of the species, right? Of recognizing ourselves as like part of this broader whole.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

And instead of that's one of the interesting like examples of where this current idea, these ideas of life extension and all that sort of fall flat, right? Is that you know many of those people um can talk about this as like a uh sort of de facto good as the birth rate plummets, as there's less and less interest in connecting.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

And as yeah, and as this in and of itself would obviate the need for having a next generation at all.

SPEAKER_02 47:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Which is the kind of ultimate fantasy of the baby boomers, certainly, but also I think that these Gen X type guys do. It's like, what if we could just live forever and be in charge forever?

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Well, I think the last thing I would say about it too, and like this is probably a little bit pie in the sky romantic, but I I actually had to have this thought the other it was about a couple weeks ago. I was staying in like a uh at Fire Island for for a week, and you know, things kind of slow down, right? When you're just actually relaxed and you're able to like I was reading a lot and thinking a lot more and all that stuff, and you know, when you're doing that combination of things, is like you start to make connections that are like truly like unique, they've never happened in your life, they're based on things about your life, they're based on the world, they're based on the rules of the universe, etc., your dreams, but like you know, at a certain point you just have to back off in terms back, like just take a look at what the point of life might be versus what they these people seem to think the point of life is, which is essentially solving some sort of ultimately rather banal version of the mystery of the universe to be able to live until they're 225 for no discernible reason with no discernible aim.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

Well, it's up to make more make more money, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:25

Yeah, to make more money, ideally, sure. But like those mysteries and the amount of time we have, if we are lucky enough to live a healthy life, are more than enough. I mean, they are supposed to give you the type of meaning and contentment to pass that on. So, like, you know, when you're out in a moment like that, everyone's been there, you're actually relaxed, you have some time, and you know, I'm thinking of people that I haven't thought of in years. I'm seeing them in very direct ways. I'm I'm I'm sleeping and having these very vivid dreams. Like these mysteries uh can sustain you for your entire life, and it can be a life well lived. Like, you don't need to drink your child's blood, you know what I mean? Like you're supposed to sort of give that children.

SPEAKER_00 49:11

Well, it's Frankenstein, not Dracula, but but yeah, close enough. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

I mean, I'm talking about Brian Johnson.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

I know, I know, but he doesn't drink it, he like infuses it.

SPEAKER_01 49:19

So he's telling you. I'll tell you this, Mr. Stu. If he does come out and say, I'm actually drinking it, would you be stunned? Would you be like, oh, I can't believe it? No. No. Brian Johnson, like, if he could figure out that it was way better to drink it, you honestly think he wouldn't drink it?

SPEAKER_00 49:34

No, I mean, sure, I'm sure he would, of course. No, I think that I think that nicely resonates with I think what uh Frost and Lynch are getting at in this this Major Briggs speech, too, right? Is that like stepping back, seeing the real value in life, um is more important than actually living forever. I mean, Major Briggs, the character, disappears and is goes into some trans-dimensional portal and returns as a floating head in uh the Twin Peaks the Return. So I mean, this is like he's himself is about to die when he gives this speech, right? He dies within a few weeks in the chronology of the show. Um But yeah, no, I really I I really like I really like what you said. So in the article, there's more stuff. I haven't I a bunch more stuff on Kurzweil.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

This is good. There's a lot more in there to anybody who's gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 50:24

Yeah, I thought I figure it's better to leave. If so, if people want to learn more, they can find it. There'll be a link in the show notes, of course, to the article.

SPEAKER_01 50:31

And um yeah, so we haven't decided this is like an exciting new chapter for us, to be honest. I do think that there's gonna be a lot of you know very interesting topics that kind of give us a very easy springboard. Well, you you think once a month or so?

SPEAKER_00 50:47

Yeah, once a month, I think, or every yeah, every four or five episodes. I've got a new I've got the new essay is already in the works. I'm about eight or nine pages into it. It's gonna be even longer than this one somehow. Uh I'll figure out what the best line. I mean, I'm still figuring out the substack, like what shorter essays better, ten pages, eight pages, you know. Um but I just thought it'd be cool. I've had this, I've had this, I wrote this essay in the winter of last year, or the early end of last year, beginning of this year. And um I I figured, you know, I'm gonna just put it out for myself rather than shopping it around or whatever, and maybe just uh see how that goes, see if I can uh uh in some time I guess you know, we'll also have some fodder from me.

SPEAKER_01 51:30

I probably will start a sub stack as well. I'm thinking about putting together some pieces on increasingly deranged things that Brian Johnson might do and just kind of throwing them just really honestly study more for myself, you know, than chopping it around. Just like, you know, what would happen if he did drink the piss of his child?

SPEAKER_00 51:46

You know, something what if he had a tail, like a lizard tail? Yeah, that's better too. I like that. Would he surf on the tail like Godzilla? Isn't that ambitious?

SPEAKER_01 51:55

Like if Brian Johnson could figure out that a tail would really help. Like, would he just start to put a tail on his body? I think so.

SPEAKER_00 52:02

I think there I just check that out too.

SPEAKER_01 52:04

That'll probably come out in a few months.

SPEAKER_00 52:11

Alright, so we haven't figured out our topic for next week, but it'll be something good, I'm sure, something fascinating. So we'll tease it. We'll tease it out. Yeah, we'll we'll always tease it out. Um, in the meantime, if you like the show, you can follow us on the podcatcher of your choice. If you really like the show, you can leave us a rating and or review on that podcatcher. We always appreciate that. Tell a friend about the pod too, it's always helpful. You can follow us at Instagram at the end of the worldwms, where we uh post exciting reels from the show. So, yeah, check out the substack if you get a chance. If you have an interest, uh there'll be a link in the description to this episode. And uh till next time, this has been The End of the World with Michael and Stu. I'm Michael! And I'm Stu, and we'll talk to you real soon.