We originally live streamed some election night results and takes to Twitter, but I wanted to post it here too.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

It was great to have Ben back on the podcast to talk election predictions!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

I had a great time learning more about the Stratfordian perspective on Shakespeare by talking to Draculaic, my twitter mutual.

Divia (00:01)

Hey, I'm here today with my Twitter mutual, Draculeac, who is mostly remaining anonymous. And we are here to talk about something that I touched on in the podcast with ThinkWork, but to go into it in greater depth, which is why Draculeac thinks that Shakespeare is the guy from Stratford.

And he has some expertise here. He studied this stuff in college, wrote his undergraduate thesis on Lear, and is currently in the process of getting a paper on Shakespeare published. So I've prepared some. Ultimately, I am far from an expert in this topic, though I know more about it than I did when I talked to Thinkwart on a previous podcast. But yeah, I'm really excited to hear what you have to say and ultimately become more informed over the course of this conversation.

Draculaic (00:50)

I appreciate that. Thank you for the introduction. I think I should probably caveat one or two things before we dive in. And I'm happy to let you steer the conversation however you'd like. One is that my interest in this is primarily as in the plays as what we could call literary artifacts. And so my interest is what the plays are and how those affect the audience of Shakespeare primarily.

I'm not personally a historian, but I've read up a little bit about this and I know enough to, think, know, muster an opinion. But I also just want to say that I don't particularly have a dog in the fight about authorship. don't have any particular care about who wrote the plays. I care about the plays themselves. But just in what I've

Divia (01:29)

Yeah.

Draculaic (01:46)

been looking into researching myself. think that, and what I remember from what I've read about this previously, I think that there's, it's probably the strongest case that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. And I'm definitely happy to give you my opinions about why that is.

Divia (01:58)

Mm-hmm. Cool. And I think one of the things I discovered, which anyone who knows about this probably already knows, unless I'm wrong, is that that is the more common position, at least with academics, right?

Draculaic (02:09)

Yeah, people who are sort of academic literary critics or people who are literary historians tend to converge on that argument, and I think probably for good reason.

Divia (02:23)

Okay, so I have various things I expect to wanna ask you about that, but I would love if you would just start out by laying out the basic case for why you think for the Stratfordian position.

Draculaic (02:37)

Yeah, so the rough shape of it is that we know that there was a person who existed named William Shakespeare. He has plenty of peers that wrote about him. We know that he was an actor. We know that he there are people who testify at the time that he was a playwright. The people who referred to him as a playwright are generally pretty reliable people. They're people like Ben Johnson, who wrote the four basically the forward poem to his folio.

which came out after he died. A lot of people I think would have

Divia (03:10)

And wait, sorry, and just to be clear, like he mentioned, he didn't just say Shakespeare, he mentioned like more details about him.

Draculaic (03:18)

yeah, I mean, he talks about specifically, you know, I think attributes of him, like he talks about his wit is there some things that he's talked about in like, you know, written correspondence and features of Shakespeare. but he also like talks about him specifically as a playwright, in that poem. and I think he also, you know, he's generally speaking, he himself was a playwright and a peer of Shakespeare. he

would have undoubtedly known him. And again, is a pretty reliable guy. Doesn't really, there's not a lot in the historical record of things that he's written that are trying not to be true. would be, he'd have to be, it'd be a pretty big lie for him to be doing that. And it would be an extreme.

Divia (04:02)

Okay, wait, let me, and I know I said I was gonna want you to lay it out. Now, I guess I'm nitpicking on this point. So just to be clear though, because the case that Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare includes that there was a guy using the pen name Shakespeare, right?

Draculaic (04:07)

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, that's from what I have looked into. That's the primary version of it is that it was some kind of masked identity by various different candidates. know, Christopher Marlowe, who somehow survives his murder or, you know, or sort of dies. of the big ones.

Divia (04:35)

Earl of Oxford is one I read a bunch about. So I guess so how do you know, now I've forgotten the name, but the guy who was talking about him as a playwright at the time, like how do you know that he wasn't just referring to whoever went by that pen name?

Draculaic (04:49)

Yeah, that's a fair question. think...

That would have to be like a pretty sly maneuver. And I think that

I just, I don't know. I think that it doesn't really comport with the way that Johnson sort of tends to represent himself and to represent, you know, represent Shakespeare in again in that poem and in sort of the private correspondence. I'd have to look into that more. It's a fair question, but I don't, just, the idea that it would be an inside joke is sort of, I think, what you're implying. And I just don't think that fits.

character some of the writing that he's done.

Divia (05:36)

Okay, like that he was talking about him as though he knew him personally, basically. And that to use his pen name while talking about he knew him personally, it just doesn't really fit when you think about it that way.

Draculaic (05:40)

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And there's, other people besides Johnson that write about Shakespeare. it's also, mean, Shakespeare, when he was coming up before he was sort of an established playwright had haters. And there's this guy, think Robert Greene who writes this pamphlet called Greene's Grotes Worth of Wit. And it's sort of one of the most famous things that was written sort of contemporaneously about Shakespeare. And he talks about him as this upstart crow beautified with our feathers, you know, our other playwright's feathers that he's this pretender.

Divia (05:59)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (06:18)

Why would you be writing that about a person, somebody who was, you know, pseudonymous? This is somebody who's really trying to, I think, go after Shakespeare. There's like, I think pretty strong case that, you know, that if it was well known amongst the writing class at the time, or, you know, the playwrights that he was a pseudonym that he probably wouldn't have been, you know, he wouldn't have written that. It would have looked really completely ridiculous to do that.

Divia (06:27)

Mm-hmm.

Like you think you would have used the real name of whoever it was or you wouldn't have written it all or something different.

Draculaic (06:49)

Yeah, I think you probably wouldn't have written at all in that case. think that it's, you know, the purpose of it was to damage Shakespeare's reputation. That was the purpose of that pamphlet. And he's like, I think he even like uses like paraphrases of Shakespeare's text in order to denigrate him. And the entire purpose, it was a hit job, because he was, he saw him as a rival. And

Divia (07:15)

Yeah.

But like, what if, I mean, I don't know, there are pretty popular Twitter accounts that are pseudonymous and in some cases like really pretty anonymous too. It seems like people could write hit pieces about those Twitter accounts using their handle instead of trying to find out. I mean, I think it's more common among people who are trying to write hit pieces that they do try to dox people and find out their government name or whatever. But I think I've seen it.

Draculaic (07:19)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Divia (07:47)

Funny the other way too.

Draculaic (07:51)

The other way meaning...

Divia (07:52)

Meaning that people will write something very negative about a Twitter user, but use their Twitter name, even if it's obviously not their real name.

Draculaic (08:00)

Sure, but in that case, guess the question would be, I mean, you'd have to ask the question how prevalent was that at the time and who would be doing that and why would they be doing that? There's, yeah, and like, you know, for playwrights, think, know, Shakespeare, as far as I'm aware, is sort of the only person that people say this about. And I have a sort of a long thing about that, which is that

Divia (08:10)

how prevalent it was to use pseudonyms basically.

Draculaic (08:26)

I think one of the things to dig into and to talk about is sort of the historical context of Shakespeare's writing. And it's a miracle that we have the plays at all, this sort of point one. And it's also the case, and I think you undoubtedly, if you've looked into this and probably run across this, that the plays were basically, it's funny that you bring up Twitter because Twitter was going to be an example that I used because the plays themselves were ephemera. They weren't meant to be

Divia (08:33)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (08:56)

things that were. Yeah.

Divia (08:57)

I did hear this. Yeah, what I just learned about that, but please correct me if I'm wrong, is that they did this partly so that, because there weren't the sort of copyright protections where they could prevent other people from performing them if they were written down and they took them. So they didn't write them down. Is that basically right?

Draculaic (09:14)

well, yeah, also like, you know, mass printing was, more of a luxury back in the day. And the idea that you would want to have printed copies of the plays and that they would reflect literary value was just not something that was considered at the time. It's as if people would be printing out, you know, scripts for the Batman, you know, and shipping those like around, you know, I mean, I'm sure people do that now because you can, but like,

Divia (09:20)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (09:43)

It would have been expensive to do that at the time. And it's not something that would have been thought to be something that would have been of high literary value and worth the expensive.

Divia (09:52)

Like no one was consuming them that way. No one was reading. I mean, they couldn't have, because they weren't written down at the time.

Draculaic (09:58)

What did happen at the time was that you would have people that would, there was some interest amongst the population in having some memorial copies of the plays. the ways that those were largely constructed were the quartos. And what those usually were, you know, they're called quartos because they were folded twice, which meant that you saved on paper, which meant that it was really cheap to print them. And what ended up happening is that generally speaking, we think of these as sort of,

bad versions of the text. can get to the sort of here and there. You can get chunks of the lines correct because largely what it is, is there plays that are being constructed out of the sort of the memories of the various actors that they had sort of conscripted to write the quartos. There were like bootleg versions of the plays that were going around as a result of this. And so people would be interested in reading them, but there wasn't an effort until after Shakespeare died.

to produce a high quality version of this. And that was the folios. And those are mostly constructed by people who took the time and the effort to go through after Shakespeare died to gather up basically the books that had been used internally by the players to memorize their lines, to be distributed, to gather those together and assemble.

Divia (11:22)

You

Draculaic (11:23)

a text out of that. And so those are generally speaking thought to be, you know, they're not not perfect, they're thought to be sort of more reputable and more more correct. So the idea that I think the main idea is that although there were obviously sort of bootlegs at the time, and there was sort of this posthumous version of the place that came together, these weren't things that were like designed for literary publication, the way that, you know,

poems at the court or masks were designed to be for publication because those were seen to be sort of the higher art. And it's kind of funny. think I certainly have my personal opinion about why this is, those, you know, it's interesting that we don't retrospectively think of them as being the, I mean, we think of them as being important literary documents, but we don't think of them as being like central to the identity of Western literature the way that we think of Shakespeare's.

Divia (11:57)

Mm-hmm.

You mean the poems.

Draculaic (12:22)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's also like this weird artifact of history that the there was this sort of reputational upswing in shape for Shakespeare anyway. I mean, people thought of him as being a very good playwright as a playwright back back in the day. But like, again, plays weren't all considered to be all that important. And it was really only like, you hundreds of years after he died that there was this

Divia (12:41)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (12:51)

effort to reclaim him. And it was, there were some people before the romantics, but the romantics were some of the people that really appreciated Shakespeare and are part of the reason for his reputation sort of hitting the heights that it did. And so there wasn't like really a contemporary need to, you know, there wasn't a contemporary.

valuation of the place, I think, is part of what I'm trying to say. were thought of as being entertainments. were thought of being sort of non-essential at the time. It was only sort of in retrospect that we've ascribed the value to them. And one of the things that I think is interesting about that is that a lot of the theories that Shakespeare did in the right Shakespeare as a result of this don't happen. They don't arrive until like the 1800s.

Divia (13:45)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (13:46)

And it's not like there were people that were at the time or even 100 or 200 years later that were saying, or I guess 200 years later is roughly 1800s, but it's not like there were people close to Shakespeare's time that were saying that the plays were not written by Shakespeare. It was only something that happened sort of much, much later.

Divia (14:07)

We don't have any record of people at the time doubting the authorship or speculating about it or anything like that.

Draculaic (14:12)

Exactly.

Divia (14:16)

Okay. Yeah. So I have various things I want to ask about, I'm going to try again to see if you can lay out any more of your main case before I go there.

Draculaic (14:16)

yeah.

Sure, yeah. Another big part of it, I think, is the fact that most of the people who are making the case against Shakespeare, there's no smoking guns. There's a lot of bits and pieces of maybe there's a cryptic thing that was hidden into the play. And I've had people try to convince me that, look at this one or two lines. And my feeling about this, and this is certainly something that I could go into because it's a personal interest of mine.

that when Shakespeare wants to put a pattern into his plays, it's not subtle. It's extensive. It's the entire play. It's something that is very foregrounded. And I'm definitely happy to talk about examples of that if you're interested.

Divia (15:11)

Yeah, let's just do at least one example or a few.

Draculaic (15:15)

Sure. This, by the way, I think is also an argument for the idea that Shakespeare was a continuous person with a continuous style, because you see certain patterns, certain interests all across his entire sort of body of work. A big one is doubling, doubles. And some of this, think, is just like as a motif, idea of

Divia (15:38)

What does that mean?

Draculaic (15:43)

things being doubled. And I think some of this comes from the fact that theater itself is predicated on doubling. There's an actor and then there's the...

Divia (15:44)

Okay.

you mean like somebody pretending to be somebody else type of doubling, not things being twice as much as they previously were.

Draculaic (15:57)

No, like, pretty much all permutations of the idea of doubling. Any way that you can think about doubling as a phenomenon, I think, shows up in Shakespeare. And it shows up in his very early plays, then shows up in his very his last plays as well. And I think it sort of hits a fever pitch around the time that he writes, around 1600, when he writes Hamlet and Twelfth Night, and a poem, a long poem called The Phoenix and the Turtle, all of which deal with

doubling as sort of a motif. like, Hamlet, think is sort of one of the best test beds to talk about this, because like it's all over Hamlet. It's like in every possible dimension of the play, the idea of doubling shows up. And like a really trivial example is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are a double, but then those same actors that play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern probably also play two ambassadors that are indistinguishable from each other.

there's, they also play two other characters called, Volta Monocornelius. there's a whole other thing. I know that you guys got into, Will Kemp, and you know, his role. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a whole theory, around Lear that there was a doubling of parts between, that Kemp played both Cordelia and also played the fool.

Divia (17:12)

He was the funny guy, right? Yeah.

Draculaic (17:28)

and that's the whole complicated thing that I can go into, but there's like one of the climactic moments. In fact, like the climactic moment of Lear, is a moment where Lear is presiding over Cordelia's dead body and says, and my poor fool is hanged. And there's this like moment, like, what if that actor played both roles? that, that would have had extra resonance at the time. there's, I have a personal theory. go ahead.

Divia (17:52)

Okay. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. You finished that. question.

Draculaic (17:57)

If that pattern obtains, by the way, Kemp had played both Cordelia and The Fool, you have a situation where the character, actor's playing both a heroine and sort of a clown character. You can play with this in Hamlet too, that what if the same character, same actor that played Ophelia also plays the first gravedigger. And so then when Hamlet...

Divia (18:15)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (18:27)

goes to the first gravedigger and says, whose grave is this? He says, mine. Which would have had a resonance, yeah, which would have had that resonance too. But like, I'm just scratching on the surface. It's like, it's not just in like, go ahead.

Divia (18:32)

I see. Yeah, interesting.

Okay, wait, wait. So here's my question about this. It seemed like one of the first you were saying that something that people like the anti-stratfordians try to say is that there are sort of clues in the plays or elsewhere that maybe it's a pseudonym. That's one thing people say. But you don't buy it because you think when Shakespeare has some sort of thing he wants to communicate, he does it in more like an over-the-top pervasive way.

Draculaic (18:57)

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that when he wants to work patterning into his text, roughly my case is that that's not subtle and it's not like one or two lines. I think that's kind of thin gruel. And you don't really have to do a huge amount of work to interpret it. It's like, it's so.

Divia (19:28)

And presumably you also think though that all of the stuff about doubling is not particularly evidence that he was not who he said he was. You think that does not support that.

Draculaic (19:37)

That's, I like that. But I think that.

I think that one of the things that he does is he's oftentimes very clear when he creates, he loves parallel structure in his plays. And he loves having characters come out and say things that the audience is also, you know, that reflects what the audience is going through. And so one of the things that the characters say that Horatio says in the opening scene of Hamlet is, you know, in what particular thought I know not what.

how to work, essentially. can't make sense of what's going on. that a close reading of that scene is that it's very difficult to understand the information that's coming into you in that scene. And in that last scene in Lear, there's part of the effect and the reason that that play is so powerful. And I can definitely talk about that.

Divia (20:22)

which reflects the audience perspective probably.

Draculaic (20:44)

but part of the reason it's so powerful is because of the way that that last scene in particular is structured. and one of the things that it does is it wraps up all the subplots and the sort of the main plot is that the, the wicked son Edmund has taken Lear and taken Cordelia and is going to execute them. and part of what happens in that scene is that everything gets wrapped up and then somebody says, well, what about Lear? And then somebody else says, great thing of us forgot.

which is also a thing where the audience has forgotten about Lear because of all this other action that's happening on the play. And so, and there's, and I have other examples too. There's another thing in the closet scene where Gertrude says, where Hamlet says, I must to England. And Gertrude says, I, you know, I had forgotten about that. And that's something that had happened many scenes earlier where Claudius had said that he was going to send him to England. like,

Divia (21:17)

Maybe forgot.

Yeah.

Draculaic (21:43)

Generally speaking, and there's examples too of like, you know, mobs in Shakespeare are standing in for people watching the plays. And so when Shakespeare wants to tell you something about how to, about what he intends for his audience, it's generally reflected in sort of the timber or the text of the plays. And I don't really see.

Divia (22:04)

Okay, so you think he was not trying to do any sort of subtle, like, I'm not who I say I am. You would not count, you basically dismiss any evidence of that.

Draculaic (22:13)

Yeah. And in fact, what I would say is the opposite. I say that there's evidence in his work that he is who he says he is. And those are both sort of implicit and explicit. So some examples of those. It's interesting because think where it was talking about Henry IV. And he had some really interesting things to say, some things that I hadn't really thought about before. And it was interesting, I thought, by the way, that he was talking about Shakespeare's emphasis.

Divia (22:24)

Yeah, what are some examples?

Draculaic (22:42)

One, that Shakespeare would have known the whole acting troupe, is undoubtedly true, which is a very good point. And two, that the emphasis on family I thought was pretty interesting, particularly because you guys.

Divia (22:49)

Yeah. Okay, but that said, at least some of the candidates that people think might not be Shakespeare also had families. This was one thing that I, like if I were to go back to that one after I looked into this a little more.

Draculaic (23:00)

Yeah, absolutely. And if I were to put my sort of literary critic hat on, I would note that you guys went in your conversation to talk about family. So it was obviously something that was important to think were. And I think there's something in Shakespeare where one of the things that's sort of a miraculous feature of the plays is that if you have something that you're passionate or you care about, you will find it in the plays, which is kind of neat. Yeah, exactly. As one of my TAs put it when I was in undergrad, it's all there, which is kind of amazing.

Divia (23:10)

Yeah.

Yeah, because they cover so much.

Draculaic (23:31)

The thing that I thought he was gonna say about Henry IV is that I think in Henry IV and Henry V, which are very, very interesting plays, that what they found is they found court records of John Shakespeare, Shakespeare's father. they found, you know, there's summons where he was like had to go to court because he wasn't showing up to church because he was afraid of debtors that were gonna come after him. And there were other people that were.

Divia (23:58)

as you sing.

Draculaic (23:59)

listed in this, and I'm happy to send you this document. And some of the people that are mentioned as his neighbors are people that are minor characters in Henry IV, part one and part two. Yeah.

Divia (24:01)

Yeah.

interesting. But that does seem like some pretty good. I like that. I did not know that.

Draculaic (24:14)

Yeah, and like for me, it's like, just why would you do that if you weren't William Shakespeare, if you didn't know these people, right? And there's some other stuff, there's some other incidental stuff too, like the fact that the, so the sonnets, and I'm a little bit wary of reading too much autobiography into the sonnets. I think that's a mistake you can make because there's a thorough distance and Shakespeare is certainly sophisticated enough not to have it just be pure autobiography.

Divia (24:22)

Yeah, okay.

show.

Draculaic (24:44)

by graphical content, but there is one sort of sonnet that's famous where he talks about, like the dyer's hand, I am immersed in the thing that I am writing about. that metaphor suggests knowledge of dying, particularly glove dying, which is the profession that John Shakespeare had. Yeah, so there's a fair amount of like,

Divia (24:55)

Okay.

That's his dad. Interesting. Okay.

Draculaic (25:12)

circumstantial evidence. And there's other stuff too, like the fact that, so he has a lot of classical illusions in his plays, particularly to Rome, which I know your husband would be very excited about. the, you know, a lot of that, you people have, have traced it and what they've figured out is that a lot of the illusions that he refers to are things that are explicitly in the

curriculum that he would have encountered as somebody who is learning Latin in Stratford in grammar school. It's not like he has like super deep complex. Yeah, it's like exactly. the stuff that like, and so the stuff that he references is stuff that he would have been familiar with. You know, there's a lot of that kind of stuff where it's like, there's, it points to

Divia (25:47)

Okay.

It's not like a deep cut. It's the normal curriculum stuff.

Draculaic (26:09)

it points to somebody who was this person.

Divia (26:14)

Okay, so would you humor me? I felt this is one website, Shakespeare Oxford fellowship.org. I asked people for links to look at. This is one that someone sent me in response to that. And I, I don't know. This is one that I was looking at a bunch before I was talking to you. And it has 12 reasons to question Shakespeare. It has some other lists too, but would you humor me and I can go through these and you tell me what you think of them. Okay.

Draculaic (26:21)

Mm-hmm.

Sure, go for it.

Divia (26:39)

So the first one is where's the paper trail and basically says that no one has found any letters written by Shakespeare to anyone and that this should be surprising.

Draculaic (26:50)

I think the part of that that I dispute is that I actually went through and I've read some of the stuff as well. So the part of that that I would dispute is that it's surprising that this is the we.

Divia (27:06)

Okay, and they claim, it says, and I have not fact-checked this myself, but it says, thorough survey of two dozen other English writers of the time found all of them had more documentation of their literary careers than he did. I guess that's different from the letter thing. Sorry, this one has two things, that people, that they claim that people are not recognizing him as a writer and that they did recognize other writers of the time as writers. Sorry, okay, so you dispute that this is surprising.

Draculaic (27:29)

Yeah, I don't think it's surprising. think that relative to his sort of cultural importance that we have actually a surprising, if anything, surprising amount of documentary evidence suggesting that he was a human being that lived at that time. Yeah, mean, why would we wouldn't have those? I don't think.

Divia (27:43)

but he just didn't write letters.

You think even if, you think basically the fact that we don't have them is very little evidence about whether he wrote them. You think he probably did write letters, we just don't have them?

Draculaic (27:57)

I mean, it's possible, like, mean, who is he writing to? He's probably writing to like, you know, yeah, and back in Stratford and why would, I don't know why we would have those necessarily. I think that the amount of documentary evidence that we have relative to the person that he was at the time is actually pretty strong.

Divia (28:00)

I don't know his family, his friends.

Okay.

Okay, and then similarly this thing about no one during his lifetime clearly recognized him personally as a writer. Does that seem true to you? Does that seem relevant to you?

Draculaic (28:29)

I mean, again, I think that's just not true. think that, you

Divia (28:34)

Because that's the intention with the thing you previously said, right about the guy with the folios who was talking about him and recognizing him.

Draculaic (28:40)

Yeah, Ben Johnson and also like, you know, the gross worth of wit talking specifically doing a takedown of him. You know, that's definitely during his his lifetime. And it's definitely referring to him as a writer. It's not like, you know, there may be like a semantic thing here where they're not specifically talking about, you know, Shakespeare is a writer, but like, there's a lot of implication that, you know, this is a writer who's competing with us.

Divia (28:47)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, okay. All right, and then number two, this seems sort of similar and I think you just dispute this one. Number two on their list is why the gap in the historical records during Shakespeare's lifetime references to the author. Shakespeare basically impersonal, some don't even use the name, but just to allude cryptically to works like Venus and Adonis. Many references imply Shakespeare as a pen name. See number six, so I guess we'll get there. The documents we have relating personally to Shakespeare of Stratford reveal mundane business activities, but never hint at any literary career.

Draculaic (29:37)

Yeah, mean, Shakespeare, this is a bit of a simplification, but Shakespeare was somebody who wrote, again, these sort of unimportant, defemoral plays at the time, made money doing that, and then used that to find real... And Paul, this is true, but mostly plays. This was mostly where he made his money. And he used that for real estate. And most of the records that we have are about his real estate, because...

Divia (29:47)

Mm-hmm. And poems. He did write all the-

Mm

Draculaic (30:06)

Again, it's, I think a lot of this is sort of again, a species of the idea of like, there's sort of a fallacy here, which is that because we place such a value on the literary content now that there must be somehow some thing historically that would have preserved, you know, that would have would have captured that. And I think that once you sort of understand that there's a big disconnect between

Divia (30:29)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (30:35)

you sort of develop. Yeah, that a lot of this room's

Divia (30:35)

how we see them and how they saw them. Then you think a lot of these things are no longer actually surprising with that view. Okay. All right, let's see some of these other ones. Yeah, this is pretty similar. It says that Shakespeare's family and friends didn't talk about him as though he was a writer. Says Shakespeare's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall kept a journal in which he wrote of the excellent poet and Warwickshire native Michael Drayton, but Hall, dude.

Draculaic (30:41)

Exactly. Yeah.

Divia (31:04)

never mentioned the Shakespeare himself as a writer.

Draculaic (31:07)

Yeah, you'll note that the first thing there is poet, not playwright, right? And so, I think that it might be useful to think of playwrights and actors at the time as being in a kind of a weird state because they had benefactors that were in the nobility, but they themselves were somewhere between upwardly mobile,

Divia (31:13)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (31:37)

people and also sort of like traveling carnies. You know, there's like, you guys talked about Falstaff and about Henry IV and like, you know, the thing about the Henry plays is that it's full of brothels and it's, there's a mistress, Quick, who's running a brothel and like, there's like all this, you know, sort of very, yeah, not just low bar, but like extremely lower class stuff and like, the evidence is a real familiarity with that world and

Divia (31:52)

Yeah.

like lowbrow stuff.

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (32:05)

In fact, the Globe Theater at the time would have been basically in the brothel district. Shakespeare's at the time would have been somebody who would have been thought of as being somebody who wasn't particularly, again, sort of like in his lifetime was upwardly mobile, particularly at the beginning of his career, wasn't somebody that was particularly high class.

Divia (32:09)

Yeah, disreputable.

Okay, and so you think this, and that explains why his family and friends didn't talk about him as a writer. You're like, he wasn't their conception of a writer. Yes, he wrote these poems, but it sort of wasn't that big a deal. And so it doesn't seem surprising to you they wouldn't have mentioned it that way.

Draculaic (32:46)

Yeah, that's roughly accurate.

Divia (32:48)

Okay, another point five on here is why the complete silence when he died, it said in an age of copious eulogies, the reaction to Shakespeare's death was eerie silence. I'm guessing what you're gonna say here is, yeah, he wasn't considered that important at the time. Okay, and then, so this also disputes what you said earlier. This list says that authorship doubts arose more than 30 years before the first folio.

Draculaic (33:02)

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

Divia (33:14)

This says, dozens of writings raising question about the author's identity were published for decades before Shakespeare's death in 1616. And it did not arise first, much later. Do you have any, I mean, I don't know. I haven't really tried to fact check any of this, but this is a claim here.

If they have some sort of, I don't know, we can try to dig into the citations, but.

Draculaic (33:35)

I think it would be interesting. I'd have to dig into what those specifically are, but here's my guess. I think that, so this is actually something I talked about with your husband, which is that, you know, for the first several years of the printing press, it was mostly being used for misinformation and for attacks on people. That was the only bulk of what was being published. And like, I think that

Divia (33:57)

Okay.

Draculaic (34:03)

probably there's some amount of like, you know, people who are contemporary rivals of Shakespeare who are, you know, trying to undermine him. And I don't know if these really necessarily qualify as doubting his authorship.

Divia (34:20)

Yeah, so the one that it mentions specifically, claims there more, but the one it lays out, it says, the title of a 1611 epigram did so openly and with startling bluntness, addressing Shakespeare as our English Terrance, where Terrance was an ancient Roman playwright notorious as a suspected frontman for two hidden aristocratic writers.

Draculaic (34:35)

so there, so you have to have an insert of an interpretive leap to do that, right? So like, yeah, like, the thing about referring to him, it's interesting, because like people at the time called him, you know, had various ways of referencing classical writers, like the one that he gets the most is probably audit for the metamorphosis. And like, I think that there's sort of a stylistic reason for that, that like, you know, that

Divia (34:39)

I guess so, yeah.

Draculaic (35:04)

Even though it's sort of thematic for Ovid, it's also stylistic, the idea of taking sources and transforming them, which is like a huge part of why we value Shakespeare, I think, is in what he does with his sources and the experience of his plays. But like referring to him as Terrance is just referring to, I think that's a stylistic thing. That's more about like he writes histories, right, which is what Shakespeare wrote partially.

Divia (35:29)

Yeah, okay, you're like, if you're looking for parallels between Shakespeare and Terrence, the maybe Terrence was a front man for other people is like not in the top few most obvious parallels.

Draculaic (35:37)

Exactly. Yeah.

Divia (35:39)

Okay, all right. Here's another one. People talk about his will, that it has detailed disposal of household items, no mention of books, manuscripts, desks, musical instruments, or anything suggesting literary, artistic, or intellectual interest.

Draculaic (35:54)

Yeah, but you have to think about, and again, I'm not really a historian, but like, the question is, like, what did legal documents at the time focus on? And they often focused on material wealth, as opposed to like, tangible assets, like books or manuscripts. And so he does.

Divia (36:13)

What is the difference between you're saying because of like a book or manuscript meaning like they didn't have copyright like

Draculaic (36:20)

It's just not the kind of thing that would appear in a will, I think. Well, he does sort of famously and possibly notoriously bequest his second best bed to his wife, which is a very famous thing in the will. And some people think that that's insulting, but other people think that, well, the second best bed was the marriage bed. And so it's a bed that would have had like,

Divia (36:23)

intellectual property would not appear in a will. But what about like a writing desk?

second best bed to his wife. Yes, that's right.

you

What was the first best bet?

Draculaic (36:49)

the first best bed. That's a question. the thing. yeah, I, the, second best bed would have been the, possibly the bed that had more emotional significance. And so that's possibly the reason why he requested it. it is important to note that like the will does have requests to other actors, in it. So it's not like.

Divia (36:54)

I would have thought that would be the best bed, again, I don't really know.

Draculaic (37:19)

So it's, I think that a lot of these points are like, if you forgive me for saying so, a little bit legalistic, where like, they're focusing on the letter of something as opposed to like the context and the spirit of something. And so like, yeah, like specifically there aren't like books and manuscripts in the world, but like he's mentioning other actors. And, you know, and I think that suggests a connection to the theater. And

Divia (37:26)

Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, but I mean, think no one's disputing that he was an actor, right? So that's sort of, think, equally well explained by he's an actor and also by he wrote the plays.

Draculaic (37:57)

Potentially, but I mean, like it certainly suggests a connection to the theater. And so like.

Divia (38:02)

Right, but I guess I'm saying like, think that part, I think both the Stratfordians and the anti-Stratfordians would be like, yes, of course Shakespeare had a connection to the theater. He was definitely an actor. Right?

Draculaic (38:14)

I mean, sure, I'm happy to take that point.

Divia (38:16)

Or I don't know, if that's not true, then that's what I've been assuming.

Draculaic (38:20)

yeah, I don't really know enough about the anti-stratfordian position to say that, but I mean, if they're going to concede that he was an actor, certainly. But, I guess one of the things that follows from that though, is that, the other thing to say about the plays is although there is like a strong authorial style to Shakespeare and then I'm only sort of lightly touched on it with like some of the things like doubling. And I can certainly talk about that. I could talk about that for two hours by itself, but, I think that.

Divia (38:39)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (38:50)

You know, it's also important to note that the plays themselves were like collaborative to a degree and that there was like, mean, that's true of like anybody that's true of like television today. It's true of movies today that like, know, yeah, you have a writer's room, but then you also have a director and then you also have like interactions with the actors and the actors also give you thoughts and feedback. And sometimes you ad-libs and sometimes that works its way into the plays. And so like, I think that,

Divia (39:03)

Yeah, you have a writer's room.

Draculaic (39:20)

understanding the nature of the theater itself and the way that the plays were written, you the idea that somebody would be just an actor and be relegated to being an actor, but not a writer is, you know, somebody who would have been written the plays would have had, I think, extremely deep connections to the actors around him too. I think that's sort of an important point to make. And so,

That's the kind of thing that you would see in a will.

Divia (39:52)

Okay. All right. Some other things. Some of these seem more compelling to me than others. So I'm going to, I think, you know, we already talked about, I think we're, and I talked about the people say that his people were not impressed with his signature. I'm not sure. I think I'm persuaded that I shouldn't wait that one too highly. If you want to say more about that, feel free to add your own two cents.

Draculaic (40:07)

Mm-hmm.

I mean, spelling was really inconsistent at the time. Handwriting was really inconsistent at the time. The language wasn't really fixed, which is part of the reason why Shakespeare is able to like do so much with the language at the time. He's sort of at the right place at the right time to do that. you know, legal documents were rushed and formal and, you know, the fact that there were multiple signatures was pretty common, I think. So I

don't really find that particularly, yeah.

Divia (40:44)

Okay, yay. All right, so here's another one. This is like one of those details that, I don't know, maybe the closest to a claim that this document, this list has to some sort of smoking gun. So the thing about, right. So this says the dedication of the sonnets in 1609 described the author as our ever-living poet. And it says that standard sources confirm that ever-living was used to indicate a deceased person.

And that they think that this, yeah, and there was another one somewhere else on the list about like, why didn't he write about, I forget, something that happened before this William Shakespeare's death that they thought it was surprising.

Draculaic (41:28)

Yeah, but like, okay, so everliving, you'd have to dig into the etymology of like what that means. like, you know, everliving could be potentially something that's used to describe somebody who's dead. It could also be somebody that a term that is used to like, metaphorically suggest literary immortality, rather than like an actual death, you know, and

Divia (41:48)

Okay, so you question that it's obvious that ever living would mean that the person was dead. You're like, maybe, but that's not obvious.

Draculaic (41:55)

Yeah, think a lot of this stuff, if I had to sort of characterize a lot of these, I think that a lot of them sort of beg the question where they sort of force you towards a specific interpretation of something and that interpretation either might not be correct or might not be the whole story.

Divia (42:12)

Yeah, and then there's another whole list on here that I could get into or not that basically, I don't know, among the anti-stratfordians, it seemed more compelling to me, though I didn't, I really didn't do a very deep cut here, that Earl of Oxford seemed like the most compelling candidate to me. And they also have all of this compilation of like, look at all of these.

parallels basically between the Earl of Oxford's life and particular things and particular characters and stuff that is in Shakespeare. And I think it's hard for me to really do a decent Bayesian analysis of this. Like, I don't know how much could somebody like Shakespeare's written a lot, how much could somebody kind of find these sort of parallels with a lot of other people too. But I don't know, does any of that interest you? Do you find any of that compelling? Do you want some examples?

Draculaic (43:05)

So I find it interesting, certainly. And I find it interesting, but not for the reason probably that the anti-stratforians think. So like one of the many doubles in Hamlet. So there's obviously one big double is that there is a play within a play and that each of the characters in the play within a play maps to two of the characters in Hamlet. So there's that kind of doubling. except for one character, which maps to three characters.

But that also telescopes out from the play into real life. And I think that's really interesting that Hamlet himself as a character is a double, is somebody who is both the Earl of Essex, who was once Queen Elizabeth's favorite sort of courtier, but then subsequent after Hamlet stages a rebellion against her and is executed. But his biography is that his

Divia (44:00)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (44:04)

you know, father was murdered and his mother remarried. And he was somebody who dressed in black like Hamlet. And so there's like that echo there. But at the same time, there's also King, the future King James, James the Sixth at the time, later to James the First when he's the king, who was melancholy and who was a scholar and whose mother, his father also was murdered. And in that case, the father, the mother remarried the murderer, just like in Hamlet.

And so there's a lot of stuff in the plays that is like drawn from the actual observable lives of many people in the play. And there's ways in which, know, a trivial example of Macbeth that is also about King James is where they talk about, there's this, you know, the idea of secession, which is a very interesting word in Macbeth, ends up being

Divia (44:34)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (45:03)

like a major sort of one of the major thematic points. And there's a point in which there is a bunch of kings that are lined up. And the joke is like, it's sort of a half joke. And Macbeth is sort of sees this vision of these kings and what should the line stretch out to the crack of doom. And like, obviously one of the people that's included in that is James the first. there's like, there's like, you know, the plays themselves, I think Shakespeare is very

unique. One of the arguments against covert sort of political content being smuggled explicitly into Shakespeare is one that there are better candidates for that, that we would have done that more explicitly.

Divia (45:42)

What do you, sorry, can you, what do mean? They're better candidates.

Draculaic (45:45)

There are people who are more explicitly political in their content. Marla, yeah, exactly. And one of the things that's true about Shakespeare is that Shakespeare is very, very good about balancing in his plays and not really signaling too much one side or the other. One example of this is that, you know, one of the things that's true, and this could be a two hour conversation by itself, is that Hamlet is something that's legible both.

Divia (45:49)

Like playwrights at the time, you mean? Okay.

Draculaic (46:14)

to Protestants and to Catholics. And that would have been a very complicated thing because Protestantism was relatively new. was Elizabeth's father that had set up the Church of England. And most of the people in the country, to include Shakespeare's father and probably Shakespeare himself, were covert Catholics. I had a conversation with my thesis advisor about this. And there was a thing about

You know, one of the conspiracy theories is which was Shakespeare's secret Catholic. And I talked to my thesis advisor about that and he's like, yeah, they all were. That was true, true of everybody at the time. But like, it's a very complicated moment, you know, sort of in terms of the sectarian history of Elizabethan England. And so Shakespeare would have walked that line. And I think that generally speaking, when politics arises, he's somebody who's very careful.

Divia (46:49)

Interesting.

Draculaic (47:10)

in the way that he represents it, he definitely can be perverse and provocative, which is something that is characteristic of his place, but he's not somebody who is explicitly political in the way that some others.

Divia (47:21)

Okay, yeah, because this is also something that comes up is like, how did he not get in trouble for writing the controversial stuff that he did? And maybe that's your answer to that. You're like, well, he was very careful actually.

Draculaic (47:31)

He was pretty careful. like, for the most part, you'd have to, you'd say like relative to other playwrights, like, you know, this stuff that he does is pretty, again, pretty careful. The closest thing that he does to getting in trouble, as I understand it, is that, again, when the Earl of Essex stages his rebellion against Queen Elizabeth, one of the things that he does is he stages, you know, he puts on a,

Divia (48:00)

Who was the Earl of Essex?

Draculaic (48:01)

He is one of the people I was talking about as being a model for Hamlet.

Divia (48:08)

Right, yeah, I was just wondering if you knew what his name was. I can look it up.

Draculaic (48:11)

no, I don't know his name off the top of my head, he, his, his history is that he was sort of the most favorite courtier of Elizabeth. She sends him to go pacify Ireland. He fails at doing that. He comes back. there's a, there's a whole thing that, that, that sort of erupts as a result of that. And he, you know, and he falls out of favor with her and then he gets upset and he stages a rebellion.

that fails and he's executed for that. By the way, the thing that he does is to stage a play when he does this, which is something that even though this happens subsequent to Hamlet is also something that is echoed in Hamlet. the play that he stages is Richard II. And there's sort of a famous thing there where, so like Richard II is the play that comes right before 100 IV.

Divia (48:48)

Okay.

in Hamlet.

Draculaic (49:10)

part one and then part two and then Henry the fifth, which is sort of all arguably one sort of limited series, if you will. And what happens in Richard the second, Richard the second himself as a character is among other characters in Shakespeare, kind of a proto Hamlet. There are other characters that are like this too. Brutus is kind of a proto Hamlet in some ways as well. But the thing about

those plays is that a lot of them are centered around Henry V as a character. And there are different models for what kind of kingship Henry V is going to have. That's an enormously complicated topic. one of the things that, know, and there's different sort of ways, different foils for Henry V in which he is, you know, he's not like his father, Henry IV. He's not like

Divia (49:51)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (50:10)

This guy Hotspur, who's his contemporary, who's a little bit too hot headed, sort of the sunny Corleone of the plays. He's not like Falstaff, who is on the one hand very witty and is very gifted with language, but is also like a person of ill repute and a person of low honor. And he's not like Richard II. And Richard II is somebody who is somebody in the play who confuses his mirror image for himself, who doesn't understand the difference between

Divia (50:28)

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (50:39)

having the kingship as sort of a title and being a king is a big part of that and is too reflective and is successfully overthrown by Henry IV, who is a person who is more of action and is less of sort of the mind. Henry, when Essex stages his play as a protest against Elizabeth, he stages Richard II.

And he does that because he wants to draw the parallel between Elizabeth and Richard II and claim that he is Henry IV, essentially. you know, Shakespeare is somewhat insulated from this and Shakespeare is, you know, sort of a juggler to remove from Essex. And I think it may or not be his particular troop that stages this play. But the

Divia (51:17)

Okay.

Draculaic (51:36)

That's as close as he gets, I think, to anything that is really going to be. Yeah, I think that there's definitely things where he's poking. I think it is characteristic of his plays that he loves to be right on the edge of, know, perversity and like right on the edge of things that are permissible. But I don't think he's overtly directly political in the way that, you know, even other contemporary playwrights were.

Divia (51:39)

to anything really controversial.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. All right. Here, that makes sense to me. Here's some other questions. So this is at least a little bit about these parallels people talk about between the Earl of Oxford's life and some stuff that shows up in plays. So at one point they talk about how Polonius is, has been long recognized. I don't know what that means as a parody of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley. So would you, does that seem right to you? I don't know if you're familiar with this one.

Draculaic (52:29)

It seems entirely possible, but it seems like they're...

Divia (52:32)

And you're like, he could have done that anyway, basically. So it's true that Oxford knew this guy, he was his guardian and later his father-in-law. But is that, yeah. So I don't know if it's true that that Polonius is meant to have a lot of parallels to that guy. But then, yeah, if it were true, would you think it was much evidence or would you be like, no, because Shakespeare could have done that also.

Draculaic (53:01)

Yeah, I mean, I think probably the latter. think that, you know, it's probably the case that, you know, I think it's illustrative to think about contemporary writers and what we think about contemporary writers as being analogs for this. just because you're somebody who is not inside, not an aristocrat and not somebody who's of the nobility,

doesn't mean that you sitting in Los Angeles can't write about the White House.

Divia (53:34)

Yeah, you're basically like you would have known a bunch of gossip. And so if there are parallels between what he wrote about and stuff happening in aristocratic circles, like you don't think that's surprising basically.

Draculaic (53:43)

Yeah, and he would have had patrons and he would have had like access to this. Like, it's, I don't think that's surprising at all. And I think that, you know, London at the time, it was a pretty small town and he would have had been a degree or two removed from this stuff at most. like, I think that, you know, don't forget at a certain point he becomes, you his players become the King's men. And so they would have had, you know, more direct access. Like, I think that,

it's entirely possible that somebody of Shakespeare Station would have had access to all this kind of biography.

Divia (54:17)

Okay, cool. So I think I don't have a ton more from the things that I was looking at as obvious questions to ask you, though I'd love to, I don't know, to just think about it a little bit more on my own and hear more thoughts about it. I think you have definitely done a good job answering the things that I did bring up. In particular, I...

Draculaic (54:44)

I hear that.

Divia (54:45)

Yeah, the thing you said about, like, well, he's, like, mentions his specific neighbors. That seems more compelling to me than maybe any other individual thing you said, because the idea that he would write about aristocratic stuff or like, you know, sometimes I guess I didn't bring this one up directly, but people would be like, but whoever wrote this seemed to know so much about details of the law. And like, why would Shakespeare have known that? Yeah, OK.

Draculaic (55:13)

I have a theory about that, by the way. So one of the things that people talk about with Shakespeare's life is that there's lost years, that we know about what he did when he was a young man, and then we don't really know all that much about what he did in sort of his teenage years, as it were, and then we sort of know about him as a playwright. And...

My personal theory, just a personal theory, is that one of the things that he could have done is he could have been a paralegal. I have worked as a paralegal myself, so maybe that's me projecting on that. I think that the kinds of things that you're trained to think about as someone who prepares for the law are things that you see reflected structurally in the plays. That you're trained to think about weighing

Divia (55:43)

Yeah.

I'm just saying.

Projecting.

Draculaic (56:08)

arguments back and forth without making a decision. And you're trained to think about legal strategy. like one of the things that I think is, so one of the things that's a big core part of the thing that I wrote is that I think that Shakespeare just as an aesthetic form is very interested in things that are their own opposites. And one of the things that he does a lot is, and this, this in some cases is

Divia (56:11)

Okay.

Draculaic (56:36)

subtle and in some cases it's overt. And one case place where it's overt is in Macbeth, where they talk about equivocation and about, which was a legal strategy at the time, which is in order to not say something that was going to be incriminating, you would say something that was going to be, you know, that was equivocating instead. so there's equivocation.

doesn't just sort of show up as like a named sort of thing in the text that people talk about as a strategy, but it's also something that is part of the content and the structure of the text itself.

Divia (57:15)

that the text includes people equivocating? Is that what you're saying?

Draculaic (57:18)

the text equivocates. like equivocation is like when you sort of refuse to make, or you imply something that could be taken in multiple ways. so that kind of ambiguity is something that's in Macbeth. And also there's like a lot of equivocating between two things that would seem to be contrary in the play. And so like famous examples are things like

Divia (57:25)

take a position in a clear way.

you

Draculaic (57:48)

know, is fair and fair is foul. There's a lot of what we would think of as like paradox, but they would call equivocation in the play. And that's like.

Divia (57:50)

Yeah, okay.

Interesting. Okay, so in that case, you basically are like, yes, it does seem like Shakespeare has particularly deep legal knowledge, and you have an alternate explanation, which is that he perhaps studied the law or like had was employed in a way that gave him a lot of exposure to legal concepts.

Draculaic (58:05)

Yeah, pretty.

Yeah, that seems completely plausible to me.

Divia (58:17)

Okay, cool. All right, well, I think, I don't know. mean, talking to you, I'm like, this all sounds very reasonable. I have not talked to any sort of equivalent anti-stradfordian, you know, in like this type of back and forth. I've read some stuff, but I feel like that's never gonna be as persuasive to me as talking to someone who has reasonable responses to them and my questions. So.

Draculaic (58:40)

Mm-hmm.

I have a couple of things I want to add too, which so one of the, it's interesting that one of the things that you brought up is not sort of the core argument that I hear a lot from people who think that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare. The core argument that I hear is that, and possibly this is just a result of the research that you've done, but one of the big arguments that I hear is that the

Divia (58:46)

Yeah, go.

Draculaic (59:12)

you know, it had to have been somebody from the nobility to write these plays because of the quality of the plays themselves, because they're so, such rich texts. Yeah.

Divia (59:22)

Yeah, yeah, no, certainly I did, this occurred to me, but I guess I didn't find that one that persuasive, which is why I didn't bring it up, though I do wanna hear what you have to say about it.

Draculaic (59:31)

Yeah, it's interesting because that's the one that I hear the most actually is that, and that I usually hear it as some form of like, well, he couldn't have written these plays because he only had a grammar school education, which would have been extremely rigorous Latin recitation for most of his young adulthood. like, I think that the, so I think I have some good arguments against this, which are that the,

Divia (59:45)

Yeah.

Draculaic (59:59)

Number one that is okay. one example of this is if I mentioned to you two movies that came out in 1994, Timecop and Pulp Fiction, which of these do you think by common consensus would be the movie that people 100 years from now will be most likely to look back on as being something that was of merit, of literary merit?

Divia (1:00:12)

Okay.

I mean, certainly Pulp Fiction seemed like the one everyone talks about now, so I guess that would be my best guess. I've seen, I think I've seen, I've seen at least part of Pulp Fiction. I don't know if I've watched it all the way through. I don't think I've seen Time Cops, so yeah, that would be the obvious answer.

Draculaic (1:00:38)

You are not alone in not seeing Timecop. And if I ask you which of these two movies was written by somebody who graduated from a university versus which of these two movies was written by somebody who dropped out of high school, which ones?

Divia (1:00:52)

Yeah, I mean, I'm guessing it's that, you the famous one is that people would assume it's pulp fiction because it's the famous movie that the educated person wrote it.

Draculaic (1:00:58)

Yeah, and so I think the thing that I want to say is that writing is a very strange art because you have to be literate and you have to be somebody who is engaged in sort of intellectual affairs to some degree. you know, certainly there were books at the time that Shakespeare is alive and he certainly was by all evidence, you know, somebody who read very widely, even if he may not have.

Divia (1:01:21)

Mm-hmm.

I mean, obviously he referenced a bunch of stuff.

Draculaic (1:01:27)

Yeah, and there's some cases where you can see like the, you can see his sort of stitching a little bit where one famous example of that is that there, I think, I forget who the historical source is, but there's a historical source when he's writing Anthony and Cleopatra that is talking about her barge. And you can see the original text and you can see,

her barge like a burnished throne, dot, dot, dot, in Anthony and Cleopatra. And you can actually see the source and you can see what he's written and you can see how he's doing the transformation of that. so you.

Divia (1:02:01)

Okay.

Yeah, I think I saw something also somewhere, I can't remember now, about the to be or not to be speech as referencing some other thing.

Draculaic (1:02:16)

what was that? I could give you an hour just on the to be or not to be speech. but I, the, the, the overall point I want to make is that writing is a very strange thing where you have to be widely read and literate to be good, but you also have to have talent. And, you know, just cause you've gone to the university and, know, it doesn't mean the time cops going to be a good movie. And conversely, you know, like,

Divia (1:02:17)

I might be remembering that right.

Okay, nevermind, ignore that because I don't remember what it was I saw about that.

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Draculaic (1:02:46)

you can drop out of high school and still have this obsessive interest in film and film history and how to put story together and have a real talent for writing plot and dialogue, right? So like, it's not.

Divia (1:02:58)

Yeah, I guess this one, right, again, I'm pretty persuaded by this. Like I think for sure, I don't know, I would expect there to be some correlation between elites in general and a conflict. Like of course there's a big correlation there, but the idea that some guy that wasn't one of the elites couldn't have done it, I don't know, it seems to me like he could have, I guess.

Draculaic (1:03:16)

Yeah, I think for some people this also becomes like kind of a stocking horse conversation about, you know, class and merit. And I think that like, that's really complicated with writing. And it's complicated in the following way, which is that unquestionably there are people who come from the aristocracy that are extremely talented writers. know, Sir Philip Sidney is one of them. All the romantic poets are lords, Lord Byron.

And there are a lot of people in a lot of great writers that are aristocrats. Conversely, there's a lot of great writers that come from extremely modest circumstances, including peers of Shakespeare. Ben Johnson and Christopher Marlowe both come from relatively

Divia (1:04:04)

I mean Christopher Marlowe is one of the candidates people also bring up.

Draculaic (1:04:08)

Yeah, but like he's also somebody who comes from modest circumstances. I forget what his parents are, but they're like, they're definitely lower class working class people. and, know, which is pretty characteristic of playwrights at the time. And, the, you know, other people that are people who come from the lower classes, you know, George Orwell, although I don't really think of him as a fiction writer so much as a polemicist, but, you know, Charles Dickens.

is somebody who comes from the lower classes. Like there's a lot of people from the lower class as well. like overwhelmingly, the bulk of writers are bourgeoisie through time, overwhelmingly. And it's because my theory about that.

Divia (1:04:37)

Yeah.

Well, also it wasn't considered respectable to be a playwright, right?

Draculaic (1:04:57)

Yeah, it's also not considered respectable to be a writer, generally speaking. Yeah. And so in order to be somebody who has enough leisure time to be a writer, but not so much prestige that you don't write, the sweet spot is, think, to be sort of middle class or upper middle class, which is the overwhelming bulk of most writers through history. So I think there is...

Divia (1:05:03)

at all, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Draculaic (1:05:25)

an effort by some people to claim Shakespeare as somebody who had to have been at the upper class. But you had other people that were contemporaries that were of the upper class that were unquestionably great writers. It's just that Shakespeare happened not to be one of them. And I think that, and I think just sort of as a code of that, I think that the, one of the things about that is that it is again, sort of an accident of history that we give

Divia (1:05:39)

Yeah, I buy it.

Draculaic (1:05:54)

merit to the plays. I think that that has to do with the fact that they just happen to be literary documents that are extremely engaging and they can operate in sort of many dimensions at the same time in a way that, you know, courtly poetry doesn't.

Divia (1:06:04)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I think you're right to bring that up, because even though I didn't personally find it persuasive, that is a top thing that people do like to say about this.

Draculaic (1:06:16)

you

Divia (1:06:22)

All right, I think, I don't know, think I might be, I might not have too many more questions. Any final words on your end?

Draculaic (1:06:30)

you know, not, we've, mostly talked about authorship stuff. I've mostly dabbled in the other stuff that I've talked about. I feel like I've just sort of touched the surface on some of the stylistic stuff. I certainly think that, there's stuff that Thinkwart was saying about how much he admires Henry IV and Lear are very interesting. I, would, had we but world enough in time, I would be very happy to talk about my opinion about why those plays work the way they do. But that's probably a separate conversation.

Divia (1:06:57)

Okay, let's say at least one thing though. If anyone who's listening to this wanted one recommendation for you for something to particularly check out or maybe read it again or read it for the first time or any passages, what's your top Shakespeare recommendation for people?

Draculaic (1:07:12)

it's my top Shakespeare recommendation, like in terms of the plays.

Divia (1:07:15)

Yeah, like I don't know, it could be for me too. Like I read a bunch, I read some of the, you know, like I read Rummy and Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet and some other stuff like that in school. And then I've been to see Shakespeare in the parks. I've probably seen like a bunch of Shakespeare plays that I haven't really read, but I don't know that much about Shakespeare. So if you had any recommendation for me, what should I check out more?

Draculaic (1:07:38)

Yeah, sure. So I think it never hurts to reread Macbeth or Hamlet, both of which are great plays and which are extremely, extremely interesting and complicated. But if you're looking for something off the beaten path that most people haven't read as a Shakespeare play, that is a great Shakespeare play. The Winner's Tale is something I might recommend. It's, yeah, it's.

Divia (1:07:48)

Yeah.

Cool, I have not read it. And I don't think I've seen that performed either.

Draculaic (1:08:06)

Yeah, there's one of Shakespeare's favorite puns is on bear and various different sort of permutations of bears, which, you know, as a Berkeley grad, I'm very, very excited about. But that's the play that has the famous exit pursued by a bear. And when that happens, he's been punning on bear for like three acts before that happens.

Divia (1:08:22)

nice.

That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate getting to learn more about this.

Draculaic (1:08:30)

Yeah, no. This is great. Thank you for taking the time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

In this podcast, Shea and I tried to hunt down a philosophical disagreement we seem to have by diving into his critique of rationality. We went off on what may or may not have been a big tangent about Internal Family Systems therapy, which I’m a big fan of, and which I think Shea thinks should have more caveats?

Unfortunately, our conversation got cut short because partway through, Shea got a call and had to deal with some stuff. We hope to record a Part 2 soon!

Transcript:

Divia (00:01)

Hey, I'm here today with Shea, who is my Twitter mutual, recently got a job doing software engineering management at Andro and is an objectivist. I think I've, listened to a long podcast with Shea about objectivism on Daniel Filan's podcast, The Filan Cabinet, which I recommend to anyone who's interested in that. We'll see how much we get into that today. I'm sure it'll come up. Our primary topic for today is, Shay sent me a long list of things and one of them was Contra.

rationalists. So I, if you check my Twitter bio, it says I am a rationalist. So I figure there's probably some interesting disagreement here that we can dive into.

Shea Levy (00:38)

Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I guess with respect to the rationalists, I've been rationalist adjacent for lack of a better term for I guess over a decade now. I originally kind of became aware of it through Ozzy. So Ozzy was on, I don't even remember what the thing, there's something

Some feminist blog kerfuffle and somebody, a blog I followed, Provocracy, recommended looking at Ozzie's thing on this. And then through Ozzie, I then found the rest of the rationalist sphere. I was mainly on rationalist Tumblr for quite some time. I've been socially connected and intellectually engaged with the community since then in various ways. Some of my closest friends are rationalists.

Divia (01:35)

Like they say.

Shea Levy (01:37)

And throughout all that, there's been a kind of general fascination and love for some of the things and then deep frustration and then for some parts of the community, going from frustration into I think something seriously wrong, defective there. I don't know what's interesting to you if you want me to just give my spiel or if you want to talk, I don't know.

Divia (01:57)

Mm-hmm.

So something that comes to mind, I don't know how much this will relate or it won't. The first conversation I remember us having on Twitter, which may not be the first one we actually had, is talking about AI boxing. Does this ring a bell? Yeah, because I think, I don't remember, but I think I was like, okay, who wants to talk about AI boxing or something like that? And you were like, no, this doesn't make any sense because I just would simply not let the AI out of the box. And we ended up talking about it, though then it seemed like-

Shea Levy (02:17)

Yeah. Yeah.

Hey.

Divia (02:35)

This is probably what you're saying all along, but what I eventually understood you to be saying is, unless I think the AI should come out of the box.

Shea Levy (02:41)

Well, so, okay, let's start with that one. So I feel like there are a pieces to it, but let's drill into me personally, if I'm the one in charge of the AI Box. So like, will, will see that there are people you should not put in charge of that. But the fundamental thing that I don't buy in the AI Boxing argument is that there is some, like,

Divia (02:52)

Yeah, you were clear about that. You were not like arbitrary person. That's a good idea. Yes.

Right.

Shea Levy (03:10)

general like key you can turn in anybody's mind to make them believe anything illegitimately like You can I'm not saying I'm like some like you completely like never fall for any scam kind of thing. I'm not saying that like if somebody could trick me about things if I were like in a normal situation where I'm treating them as a like good faith human being that I'm interacting with like I'm certain certainly people can pull something over me I'm not my claim is not that

But my claim is if I know that this is a like potentially hostile intelligence and now let's set aside whether an AI could do that That's a separate concern I have but like yeah, if I know there's a potentially hostile intelligence. I don't understand how it works I'm well aware that it doesn't work like a human being even if I don't know the details of how it does work like there is not some magic sequence of words that it can tell me that

will convince me of something false relevant to letting it out. I just don't buy that and none of the arguments I've seen suggest that it's true and it all really seems to rest on the sort of like determinism, lack of like the impossibility of objectivity that like, like the AI could present a like picture that is an illusion.

It could present something that looks like something, but it's actually, you know, it looks like X, but it's actually Y and could confuse me visually. And I think there's this idea implicit and sometimes explicit, but implicit in the argument that like, reason is like that, that there's some like reason level illusion possible. I just, that's just not how reason works. So like, if I knew what the situation was, I know it's an AI in the box. I know that it's extremely dangerous.

I think it's possible I would let it out, only under the circumstance that it actually convinced me properly and like, because it was right, not because it came up with a clever argument. Like, I would know, I would set up controls beforehand and then reevaluate those controls if I thought they were being breached. Like, there would be a number of things that I could do depending on the specifics to like, actually confirm that the argument it's making is legitimate or not.

Divia (05:09)

Yeah.

Shea Levy (05:28)

And so like, yeah, that's basically my view. like, don't think that's something, I don't think it's, certainly not everybody in the population is true of, but I don't think it's something like distinctive to me that like, I've got some special skill here. I think like there's a certain degree of like objectivity and self-awareness and understanding of how, you know, how reasoning and how like persuasion works.

that you want to reach that point, like there isn't this magic button that a known adversary in a known adversarial context can compress.

Divia (06:04)

Yeah, ultimately I think you convinced me that that was basically right.

Cause I had, so as people may know, I guess I should say what AI boxing is. And many years ago, Eliezer Yudkowski was, and of course like the whole thing in some ways is moot because his argument was, this was about an AI safety argument where he was like, look, AIs are dangerous. And then at the time people used to be like, but we could put the AI in a box and not connect it to the internet. And then that would not be dangerous. And he was like, okay, but people would let it out. And people were like, I don't think so.

And he was like, I'll tell you what, I'll do an experiment and I'll role play the AI and then the person will let me out. And he did do that a number of times. I don't know if it was 100 % of the times he tried it. It might've been, but it was certainly a bunch of them. And he didn't say exactly how he did it because he was like, well, if I say, then people will be like, well, that exact argument would have worked on me, it was in the point and.

Shea Levy (07:01)

Yeah.

Divia (07:03)

And then I tried it too. I tried it with a friend of mine and in fact, he let me out as well. And so I was sort of like, okay. Yeah, and as it is, people of course have made AIs and immediately put them on the internet. like no AIs are in boxes as far as I know. Like maybe some hypothetical future AI could be in a box, but that's not really what people are up to anyway. But like it is interesting to me because I, because the first time I heard about LAO's are doing it, I was like, well, how could that possibly be right? I can't imagine anyone doing that. And then I was like, all right, I thought about

I think of some ways maybe I could do it and then I did it. But I guess it never really occurred to me, I think until talking to you, which seems like a pretty big oversight, that maybe some of those people should have let the AI out of the box. That there aren't actually zero cases where people could let, and of course it could be that it didn't more like he tricked them and, but yeah, there was this other possibility.

Shea Levy (07:53)

Yeah, I'm curious, you okay sharing publicly what you did or maybe if you could share privately after it?

Divia (08:02)

I just don't think it was, I'm like, I don't think it was that interesting. I tried to role play the AI and say the most persuasive things I could say, which in fact were me being like, yeah, you could like run these safety checks on me or whatever. But then I was like, but of course like I could fake those. And I think your point is like, well, maybe not though. Like couldn't necessarily fake that stuff.

Shea Levy (08:19)

Let's take an example that I don't think this is how you would solve the AI safety issue if there's an AI safety issue, but it's something that like if

Like, let's say it's an AI in the old mode that we, before we had weights and things where we thought we were going to write it in code, right? And we had a, AI, what the AI gave you was a formal specification, which is relatively concise that like a mathematical, that a like formal theorem prover could understand. And then a proof, and then like, you'd obviously have to like inspect the proof to make sure it's not like taking advantage of a bug in the theorem prover. Maybe you would give the same proof in multiple theorem provers and all of that.

Like that kind of thing, like there are certain aspects of that. Now I don't know if that would be enough. That wouldn't be enough by itself, but there are certain aspects of that. Like I would be very convinced. Yes, this code that is validated has certain really important properties that are relevant to safety. so like it, so yeah, like the, the, the level of thing wouldn't be like, you know, it would have to be a fairly robust.

piece and like, part of it would be like, if I'm, if I'm already somebody concerned about AI safety, part of what the AI in the box has to convince me of is like, it basically has to like, if I like, let's say I buy like LA's basic framing around like friendliness and value alignment, like it needs to solve the problem. It needs to solve the value alignment problem and then convince me it's solved it. And if it does, right, if it's super intelligent and this is a real problem and it's or prove that it's not a problem, right? But like.

Divia (09:47)

Mm-hmm.

Shea Levy (09:57)

not just, it wouldn't suffice to just say, you know, here's a list of common sense things that you can check and if you check these things, it's probably fine, right? Like, that's not the bar, but like, I know that's not the bar. And so, you know, I wouldn't let it out. Yeah.

Divia (10:12)

Yeah. Okay. So with that as some stuff in my context, you walk me through your anti-rationalist spiel?

Shea Levy (10:20)

Yeah, I mean, so I think it's a love hate thing. So it's not purely anti, I mean, yeah. I guess the first thing I'll say is like what drew me to the rationalists originally and still does is outside of objectivism, it's not all of objectivists, but outside of objectivism, it's the only group of people where a significant part of the subculture

exists and is driven by people who care about what's right and what's true and in a way that ties in with like modern understanding of economics and scientific development and things like that that like takes industrial scientific civilization seriously and add value even if there might be some issues with it. And again is like dedicated to understanding what's true and following that where it leads. So there are obviously non-rationalists who have that.

Divia (10:54)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shea Levy (11:18)

but there's no other like community or like movement that has that as a distinctive characteristic. Other than objectives that I found. Historically, yes, but I mean, so this gets into some of the like philosophical cultural things I put on our list, but like, I think there is a general element in our culture that

Divia (11:18)

Sure. Community.

other than objectivism, you're saying.

Shea Levy (11:45)

put pits, idealism against reason and science. And I think the rationalists are one of the few groups of people who on an implicit level have combated that. And I'm emphasizing on an implicit level because this is where the bad side comes in, is I think the explicit ideas in so far as you guys have explicit ideas that you're kind of are coheering around, anyway.

Divia (11:57)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we sort of do, we sort of don't.

Shea Levy (12:14)

explicit AIS or co-hearing around that that are common, think ultimately undermine that interest. like, don't think... No, no, no, even setting aside safety because so like, think, I think some of the safety stuff is a consequence of some of the things I'm thinking about. But aren't concerned about safety have these issues. And it's basically like, I was thinking about this before before you got on the call and like, the there's a sort of like,

Divia (12:22)

Do you mean the AI safety stuff? Okay. Okay.

Okay, but you don't mean that.

Shea Levy (12:44)

What is the, I have a view on like what the fundamental issue is, but I think the high level it's, and like the sort of, the high level, the surface level of it is a kind of overly, there's an acceptance of a, like a view of the world that,

takes too seriously contemporary views on ethics and the nature of science and reasoning and then doesn't grapple with the issues that those ideas have. And so insofar as the thing that attracts me is people who take ideas seriously and want to actually get to the bottom of the issue, the thing that bothers me is that those of you who are more like,

explicitly philosophical don't seem to be bothered by the issues with your philosophical framework. And those of you who aren't just get letters stray by the issues. like the biggest sort of surface issue, which I don't think is the fundamental, but the biggest surface issue here is the ethics. I think part of the problem is that there is no consistent ethical framework. There's some, there's a sort of modal, there's a modal framework, but there's not, and like that's part of the problem. Part of the problem is

Divia (14:05)

That's true, yeah. I would agree with that.

Shea Levy (14:12)

not seeing these philosophical ideas as needing to be an explicit integrated system. you guys, tents at the level of the kind of culture you're trying to build, a broad tent doesn't work. Like, you need to actually have... It doesn't work for intellectual and value alignment. Like, insofar as your goal is to be an intellectual movement or even a social movement trying to build a...

Divia (14:26)

What is it doesn't work for what?

Shea Levy (14:41)

different way of living within the broader culture, which, know, part of it, like the rationalist project is not a coherent project. It's not a specific thing. So like we're sort of like working backwards from like, what are, you know, if you were to say like, what is distinctively rationalist or not? And like anybody would have legitimate quibbles with anything I'm including here. But if I talk about like, like the consequentialism and I'm going to use the AI terminology, but this is not really an AI thing. This is before even without the AI issues, this is the,

Divia (14:50)

Sure.

Shea Levy (15:12)

orthogonality thesis or, sorry? Let's take the weak historical, the human version of reason is a slave of the passions, basically like your, or to put it maybe in more rationalist jargon, like.

Divia (15:13)

Yeah, I don't buy it for what it's worth. I don't buy the orthogonality. Or sorry, there's the weak version and the strong version I could get into the weeds, but I basically don't.

Shea Levy (15:34)

You have your preferences and maybe you have preferences about your ultimate values, perhaps. It's not ultimate values, it's terminal values is the way you put it, right? And those are maybe for some strains of rationalists, they're evolved in completely. For some, it's sort of a mixture of evolution plus whatever culture you grew up in and experience or whatever. like those are not things you reason about. They're things that you have and then you use reason to achieve. And maybe you have

subsidiary values that you kind of reason yourself into causally that support those ultimate ends but like those are given in some way and then there's a so that's that I think is wrong, but then there's an additional layer on top of it which is and Obviously the ones most of us have and if you're one in this sort of stronger biological camp you say this is like genetic is a sort of like some some flavor of altruism Is sort of like we we were built in

It's built into us to care about other people and to, know, there's, Eliezer has this short story and I wish I knew what it was called, but it's like, it's like about some alien species that isn't at all altruistic and like they're, it's not three worlds collide, no, no, no, it's a different one. It's like, basically, a big part of the story is one of the like aliens evolves an altruistic impulse.

Divia (16:48)

Do mean three worlds? Is this part of three worlds collide? No. Okay.

Shea Levy (17:02)

But the alien species is kept technologically down because they're all egoistic in a very, I think, very short-sighted, dumb way. think Eliezer's not taking egoism seriously in this story. But the idea is that each, it's very genetic, selfish gene type thing of each individual cares about itself and then cares about its relatives.

based on how closely genetically related they are. And so there's sort of like planet wide warfare constantly. there's like very limited technological development. then the humans come along and they're extremely technologically advanced. And anyway, one part of the story is there's one sort of like genetic mutant in the tribe who's developed altruism. they're like, humanity has like adopted this alien into humanity. And like part of that story though, is that like,

Like the alien doesn't believe the humans that they're being altruistic. They think it's like some kind of lie. They're like, how could you possibly evolve this? And like the human is like, yeah, well, we, best guess is a sort of like lucky evolutionary path where like we evolved altruism in a way that could have been exploited, but wasn't. And then it got widespread enough that then it was able to sort of sustain itself. And then that's sort of what.

But like, anyway, a key part of the story is that like altruism is clearly in this view, like at least locally opposed to like this flourishing life and maybe it's only if you get lucky. Anyway, but the reason I get into that is like, there's clearly a view amongst many rationalists that not only is altruism my personal terminal value, but it is in fact like a human wide,

Divia (18:35)

Yeah.

Shea Levy (18:51)

thing that many humans, if not all, have baked in. And that being baked in is not questionable and is kind of a foundation of ethical reasoning. So first of all, I find that depressingly parochial because not all human beings have And it's only historically, especially historically. If you look at like

Divia (19:11)

because lots of people don't behave that way or even profess it. Yeah.

Shea Levy (19:17)

The first people who explicitly talk about ethics in the Western tradition, it's the ancient Greeks. there's a wide variety of ethical stances that they put forth, but basically none of them are explicitly altruistic in this way. You have elements of things that look like it, but nothing like, the goal was your own perfection and happiness, That is the goal of most of these virtual, ethical, sorry.

Most of these ethical theories. That's the goal of most of these ethical theories. And like some of them think, okay, well, that's not really possible. Happiness is not possible, but at least we can reduce pain. But again, it's reducing your own pain. It's not like reducing pain for the people at large. And I think it's a very Christian thing that comes up. So like that's the sort of most service thing. And I can get into like where I think that comes from. But like I think that is...

Divia (20:06)

Mm-hmm.

Wait, okay, so.

Shea Levy (20:12)

that's the area where like it ties into EA, but even before you get to like the weirdness of EA versus cultural altruism, it's really the altruism part. yeah, anyway, sorry, I've been talking.

Divia (20:24)

Yeah, okay, no, this is interesting. Let me see if I can back up and maybe try to summarize and try to see what... So unfortunately, I do have like a small sinking feeling that we might not have as substantive a disagreement as I hoped, which... But yeah, okay, I think we will too. Because I'm not really willing to defend the orthogonality thesis, like values are sort of arbitrary things that came from evolution or evolution plus culture. Like I will not defend that thing.

Shea Levy (20:38)

think we'll get there. I think we'll get there if we keep cooking.

Divia (20:54)

Okay, I will say a little bit, this doesn't feel like a central point, but like about the Greeks, some could be like, okay, but clearly they did care about some people somewhat, right? That weren't just themselves, not necessarily just for their end.

Shea Levy (21:08)

Yeah, but nobody doesn't, right? There is nobody who's claiming that like, it's the stupidest, stupidest straw man of egoism to say that an egoist literally doesn't have friends, literally doesn't care about anybody, right?

Divia (21:11)

Yeah.

Okay, yeah, yeah, no, and I don't want to spend time with that straw man, but I guess I'm like, but what, I think I don't fully know what you mean by altruism here.

Shea Levy (21:33)

So I mean, think the basic idea here is that like, who is the proper beneficiary of like, one way to think about, yeah, so one of the big questions that I any moral system should answer is like, moral principles give guidance to your human action. The question is like, who ought to benefit?

And like there's other questions like who ought to benefit from your actions and like the altruist stances like fundamentally not as a means to some other end not as a part of some bigger thing but fundamentally like the standard of value is the good of others now there's the utilitarian version where it's not the good of others it's the good of everybody including you but like you're one still one piece of it and I like I don't think that distinction is very important like it's

Divia (22:20)

But it's.

But is that what people are saying that rational... is this really part of rationality?

Shea Levy (22:38)

So I think it's, again, like, can quibble on what is and is not exactly part of rationality, and I'm happy to sort of have that discussion, but like, there's a strong, I think there's a strong, they wouldn't say that explicitly, so like, that's, I think for everything, yeah, okay, that's a point, and I'll flag that a lot of the things I'm gonna claim, like, many of them aren't explicitly endorsed in that term, but like,

Divia (22:45)

Well...

Yeah, that's what I'm asking about. I'm like, how can you see that? Like what are some maybe less obvious ways that you can see this as more part of the rationalist worldview?

Shea Levy (23:07)

So I think the, I think you see this in the embrace of utilitarianism, of like, what we're trying to do is do the most good, right? What does that mean? It doesn't mean build the best life for yourself. It means like, create a universe where happiness across the whole population or the whole, you know.

intelligent light cone, right, is is maximized in some sense and you're trying to, I'm like that's not everybody.

Divia (23:37)

And is this what, yeah, like to what extent is this a rationalist position? And again, like I'm not trying to make it, I'm trying to say some ask the substantive version of that.

Shea Levy (23:48)

Yeah, I mean, I think so.

I think insofar as there is a vision of the good, it is not always explicitly this, but it is almost always either something like this or something that, and I think these ultimately bottom out in the same thing, but, or a view that sort of externalizes the good in some way, excuse me, from yourself. it's sort of like, just like, it's not exactly this, but it's like,

It's something along the lines of like you could imagine like what would I have to do to maximize the mass of the earth right like that's something sort of like a Problem you could present and then identify that and like goodness is something like that. It's more complex, but like it's some like physical it's some not physical, but it's some like Characteristic of the state of the world that you are trying to maximize right that you're trying to say like

you ease the, you like, you see this in the sort of like, kind of reasoning about, like, some of the thought experiments about, if you could press a button and, you know, like, and so some magical thing would happen, like, which world is better? And like, as if that's a coherent question. And like, people's... Yes, yeah, yeah, but I mean, so that this is sort of going lower in the fact than epic. But yeah, so like, that, that is, I think, a big part of

Divia (25:16)

Yeah, I do tend to be a conscientious objector to these types of questions. Yeah, yeah, okay. I like your answer.

Shea Levy (25:26)

that kind of thinking about ethics. Basically, okay, here maybe here is the thing I would more strongly defend as central to rationalism, but have a harder time pointing out to like a lot of convincing examples. So there's a mistaken view about what science is and that like what kinds of identifications and especially quantitative identifications are properly considered scientific. And then

Divia (25:39)

Yeah, I got it.

Shea Levy (25:54)

an application of that view to ethics that ethics is a scientific thing. And I agree that ethics is a scientific thing, but if you have this wrong view about what science is doing, then... I'm gonna try to see if I can, like... It's... Okay, so this this view that objectivity, especially in a scientific context, is somehow impersonal. It's somehow like you have to take yourself out of the picture and you have to think about like,

Divia (26:03)

Yeah, so can you expand on the wrong view of what science is doing?

Shea Levy (26:24)

What would, know, sometimes that impersonality surfaces as like, what would convince any rational being? And like they're very clear to say like not just a human being, but like any sort of rational thing like would convince them or what would, you these like veil of ignorance type approaches, like what would convince anybody who doesn't have any particular interests at stake? So they're like starting out to say that that's what scientific reasoning has to do.

And then says, okay, if we're going to make a scientific ethics, if we think that's possible, if we're going to do that, then whatever we're aiming for has to be measurable and identifiable in that way. Yeah, has to be legible in that, but that particular view of what legibility is, right? Like.

Divia (27:05)

to be legible.

Right, legible to some kind of view from nowhere type of thing.

Shea Levy (27:14)

Yes. Right. And then what a lot of people then do is say, but we can't find that. And so what is going to ground this process is what we can make legible is given an ultimate preference, X would be good. But the ultimate preference isn't itself legible or it's made legible in non-ethical ways. Like it's legible because it's what you evolved to have or it's legible because it's, you know, what...

culture has acculturated us to have. like that's where I think the other, that's where I think these, these kind of two paths merge. Like either you think you can succeed at this project fully for ethics and there's some like just intrinsic goodness you can measure with a, you know, a goodness thermometer about the world. Or you say, no, you can't do that.

Divia (28:01)

Moral realism, right? I mean, people maybe disagree about what that means. Yeah.

Shea Levy (28:03)

I'm a moral realist though, so like that's my point. It's a view of what realism would have to mean. I think that...

Divia (28:10)

Yeah, I consider myself a moral realist also, I think. Though again, sometimes when I try to talk to people on both sides of this, they seem to get really different, really varied answers about what moral realism is supposed to mean.

Shea Levy (28:13)

Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Yeah, I so like, guess I say I'm a moral realist because I think that kind of gets at the issue, but it's, think this is an area where the...

the conceptualization that we have, not with, not a, of an object level position, but of like how we categorize the positions, slants the discussion to rule out the right answer.

Divia (28:43)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I will say, so in terms of who's saying this explicitly, think, and apologies if I'm misrepresenting anyone, but I think this is Spencer Greenberg's position that rationality is for how you achieve your values. Values can be whatever. I think he calls it valueism. I think you're saying you can see it in Eliot's writing and maybe in Lesserang in general, but I think this is something that Spencer will be like, yes, this is my position. Yeah, okay.

Shea Levy (29:14)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's and like I mean, I think if you where you see elements of this is like People talk about like preferences and preference stability and like this there's a sort of notion the notion of preference and the way That fits into rationalist discourse. I think implicitly bakes in a lot of this right like it's like obviously there's I think there's a sort of like innocent path there because there's like a preference like I prefer

like long video chat discussions about philosophical ideas and my wife very much doesn't, like she would not be having fun right now and I am. And like that's, that.

Divia (29:52)

Therefore, I should like offer it to you and not to your wife and stuff like that.

Shea Levy (29:55)

Right. Yeah, right. So like, should seek it. like, so there's, there's a real phenomenon that people are seeing here. And like, it's also not only like that, but also like, the fact that I have this preference and she doesn't doesn't mandate that one of us is right and one of us is wrong. Right? Like, yeah. yeah, with that, but like, then there's a sort of like, okay, well, that's what all of valuing must be like. And like, really, it's a

Divia (30:11)

Totally. I think everyone would agree. Everyone reasonable would agree about that.

Shea Levy (30:22)

Like I think it's more the better way to think of it is that like there is optionality within a general positive view about what a, not sorry, positive view is getting too epistemic. There's optionality within the realm of like what is a good human life. But like the nature of what a good human life is is not.

downstream of those choices. At the right level of abstraction, it is a fact of reality what a good human life is. Now, there's things to say about that that I cringed with that formulation, but like, first line of the fan, I'll put that there.

Divia (31:03)

Okay, I'm still a little worried that we don't disagree about as much as I thought. So what is something, maybe you have a guess, like what's something that you think we probably disagree about?

Shea Levy (31:13)

I, so I don't know. I think if my guess is there's something in epistemology and maybe, maybe some like metaphysical stuff that we disagree on. that's, that's only because of things around, like

Like, okay, the discomfort I have with internal family systems. We haven't gone into that, but like, I suspect your willingness to...

Divia (31:38)

yeah, we can talk about that. I do like it.

Shea Levy (31:47)

Embrace it despite whatever concerns you might have. I suspect that's downstream of some like Yeah Yeah, yeah, I mean maybe maybe let me start at the bottom then because I think that's that this is maybe like Yeah, okay. So my view and again, I don't think this is every single rationalist. There are definitely rationalists who disavow this explicitly but still

Divia (31:53)

Okay, yeah, let's try it. This is a good trailhead and we'll see what happens at end of it.

It's like with libertarians, they say, you know, there might be two rationalists who agree with each other, but I'm not one of them, right? That's what they say.

Shea Levy (32:17)

Right exactly. Actually libertarianism is definitely a place where I think we would disagree So let's let's so they I think the basic thing is Again, so we have this pre explicit philosophical Value that rationalists tend to share of caring about what's true and what's right and seeing that on through or seeing

Divia (32:22)

That might be also true. Okay, let's get.

Shea Levy (32:45)

some elements of the post-enlightenment scientific and industrial and cultural establishment as reflecting that. Not everything, but like something about the way science has developed, something about the way like our culture has developed, some elements of that in some ways reflect the success of like taking seriously what is true and or enable us to do better at taking seriously what is true.

Divia (33:14)

Okay, I mean, that seems like a pretty narrow statement. Some asked, I'm like, yeah, okay, I think I'm on board with that so far.

Shea Levy (33:15)

So.

Yeah. So, like there are people who either reject modernity altogether, there's like the religious mindset which is like the real religious mindset, not the like, you know, postmodernist, like I'm religious, but like all other religions are fine, but like the religious mindset who thinks their religion is true, takes their religion very deeply seriously, and like thinks like God literally exists and literally did these things. That religious mindset you could sort of say cares about what's true.

Divia (33:27)

True.

Shea Levy (33:48)

but not in a way that embraces any element of modernity. And then there's the other side, which embraces some element of modernity, but then thinks that implies that you are, that, like, taking truth, like, the whole post-rat ethos of, like, taking truth seriously is for squares. Like, that's, that's the-

Divia (33:52)

Right.

That's why I rationalists in my Twitter bio. It's not the only reason. Like, I really do come out of that community, but I'm like, no, I don't think that's true.

Shea Levy (34:12)

Yeah, right. Yeah. So like, I think that that's why I put those two together is because I do both to kind of just anyway, so you have that. But the I think at the bottom,

The rationalists are by and large materialists. They take the success of the scientific revolution and the ability, sort of the reductionists success of basing chemistry on physics and biochemistry on chemistry. then basically they're saying, okay, let's take that fully seriously. We could talk about different variants of materialism, but basically what we care about is physics, things moving around, everything is built on that.

in some cases there's a sort of degree of taking that seriously where they'll say like there's no mental anything and some will say yeah there's mental stuff but they don't grapple with like how their worldview like actually doesn't allow for mental things so that's a very like basic philosophical issue how does that how does that apply in different cases is an interesting question yeah

Divia (35:17)

term by the way that I sometimes use on Twitter called the Materiast Epistemology Industrial Complex.

Shea Levy (35:22)

Yes, okay, so you, okay, think you, okay, so like, if you reject that, if you reject that, and it sounds like you do if you have that kind of like, dismissive terminology for it, like.

Divia (35:28)

Yeah. I think so. Yeah.

Shea Levy (35:35)

In what sense are you rational? like, I think part of the like, centering,

Divia (35:41)

Okay, I do want to answer that, but you were gonna say some stuff about internal family systems. I really do like that.

Shea Levy (35:46)

So okay, let me let me jump to the internal sorry I forgot about that right the internal fandom of systems thing is like my guess and I don't know enough about your view but my guess there's there's an element of like

Divia (35:54)

Yeah, well, we'll figure it out.

Shea Levy (36:05)

Treating yourself and the development in psychology of treating yourself as a third party, a third person object to evaluate, that's like, internal family systems, it's not literally true that there are multiple yous in your head, right? Unless you're a...

Divia (36:24)

Okay, but internal family systems for the record, calls most, it calls a bunch of things parts and then also talks about self.

Shea Levy (36:33)

Okay, so like maybe, right. But okay, maybe part of it is that like the popularization that I've heard of it sounds too much. It's a sort of thing that, okay, I guess maybe I'll let me just say like what I've heard and what makes sense. What seems like is going on to me is that like, it can sometimes be helpful to sort of like, for the sake of a like,

Divia (36:33)

So it's not trying to say they're all the same thing.

Is it fat suit?

Shea Levy (36:59)

thought experiment, like treat certain motivations or thought patterns or something like that as distinct from you as like a separate person or a separate like motivational system that is either distinct from you or distinct from other motivational systems that are then like somehow at play at different times or you need to integrate in and like I can see why that would be helpful to like as a like tool for like

working your way through a problem. But as a literal description of what is going on psychologically, I think it's false in a way that if you like, try to seriously integrate it with your reflective experience, you couldn't hold coherently. Like...

Divia (37:32)

Okay.

Okay, let me try to hash this out. So let me give you my brief description of what I think internal family systems is. Okay, so I believe it was invented by a guy named Richard Schwartz. And I think he got there sort of phenomenologically, like empirically, he was talking to different people. And he noticed that sort of interesting things happened when he asked them certain questions, such as like, and because talking about parts, like this is the thing people just do though. Part of me wants to stay in bed, but part of me is like, nah, you should get up and go to work, with a normal thing to say.

Shea Levy (38:14)

Yeah, yeah

Divia (38:16)

And then he used to be like, okay, well, what is that part of you think about this? like people would go with it and do the answer. And then he started getting some interesting answers when he would ask, for example, questions like, okay, now can you ask that part of you to step aside? Because sometimes they would and there's a little bit of nuance to like, that's not necessarily gonna work. But it is also my experience working with myself and with other people that sometimes this really does happen. And it...

it means something like then people are like, okay, and they do actually sort of set those concerns aside, which doesn't mean they won't come back or anything like that. And he also noticed that when he sort of kept asking people to do it, again, there's some nuance to people, it's not always gonna just work straightforwardly, that he'd be like, okay, what if what's, and people will be like, no, no, this one doesn't feel like a part, this one feels like me. And that's what in IFS he calls self. it characteristically, like it has some qualities, like people experience more curiosity, more compassion, more whatever, whatever.

I've tried to sort of ask other IFS practitioners about this somewhat, like I've taken some classes and things. It seems like people are now like, yeah, well some parts sort of have more self than other parts and whatever, like, which seems kind of right to me. It seems like it's certainly true that people have some perspectives that are not totally integrated at this time. You would agree with that, right?

Shea Levy (39:33)

Yes, well, mean, like, yes, I mean, think that's a, if it's an important one, think that's in like a flaw. Like if it's something like surface level thing.

Divia (39:36)

It sort of should be uncontroversial, I think.

We get, but that's the point of the IFS process is to integrate the things. Like the first time I talked to my IFS therapist that I used to work with, she was like, I don't really have parts like the way I used to have parts. Like it worked basically.

Shea Levy (39:46)

Yeah, okay.

So maybe it's just the metaphor has been to, like, the metaphor of family, I don't know.

Divia (40:02)

I do think it's a terrible name. think it was because someone else was a family systems therapist. And then they were like, we'll call it internally family systems.

Shea Levy (40:07)

Maybe then the only disagreement I have is that adopting a name that doesn't actually accurately describe what you're doing. I guess on the one hand it's interesting and reassuring because now I want you to send me what you think is your best IFS, the best IFS resource. that sounds more like, so the way I would conceptualize the same thing is there are

Divia (40:17)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Shea Levy (40:37)

You can have different thought patterns and subconscious identifications that don't integrate at any given point, which depending in certain contexts, you can like oscillate between or both have both, you know, subconsciously activated at the same time leading to a conflict. And you need to sort of tease out like, which is which is true or more usually it's not which is true sort of like

Divia (40:45)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shea Levy (41:06)

How do I reconceptualize this issue to understand like they're both identifying something real about the situation, but like not in a way that I can integrate these together. But like I think the biggest question I have with it is with the description you have is to what extent these are like coherent over time. And I guess like maybe maybe the answer is they're coherent over time insofar as you have not done the work and you have like continually acted on one.

Divia (41:08)

Right.

Wow.

Shea Levy (41:35)

or the other side of a given divide.

Divia (41:38)

Yeah, I think sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. I guess a different thing I would say is, so I believe my IFS therapist when she was like, don't have parts like I used to have parts. I tend to think it's not usually, it doesn't usually make sense to try to sort of resolve every polarity fully. Like if it were free, sure, but it's not. And so I guess I think that there's some shifts that I think of as more like, I mean, nothing's always worth it.

but closer to like overdetermined that it's worth it. That if some people's perspectives are like really sticky and unresponsive to evidence and wrong, then there's something I think very good about trying to free that up and get things like moving in a way where they can't integrate. But then I think like given, I don't know, like given my practical constraints, I think it makes sense for some things to be sort of persistently represented in more like a polarized way, but like that's pretty fluid.

Like a friend of mine, and I know it's not the same with groups, but as an analogy, I have a friend of mine who sometimes talks about like, I don't know, he would be involved in planning workshops. And sometimes like the one person who was always like, we should have more structure. And the other person who's like, nah, we should talk to each other more. And there's some impulse to be like, okay, let's like really get on the same page about this. Let's put you in a room and like resolve it. And I think sometimes that can be right, but given practical constraints, I think sometimes it just makes more sense to have one, to have the group kind of split and you argue it out and like, whatever.

Shea Levy (43:06)

I do think the group versus individual thing is... No, no, I know, know, know what I'm saying. I guess I think the analogy fails, I guess. This is my...

Divia (43:10)

I said this analogy. Yeah.

Okay, I think it doesn't. I think it makes sense if there are certain patterns in me that are like, that are more attuned to some things. You can make it more concrete.

Shea Levy (43:23)

Can you like, are you able to give a question? Yeah.

Divia (43:28)

Yeah, let me see. I, I don't know. I remember, so this is like a parts type description of my life. can critique it if you want. So about a little more than a year ago when I was moving, I was pregnant. It was just like a lot going on. And I remember was talking to my friend and I was like, yeah, some part of me is like sort of screaming at me that this is not okay. And we're like, okay, well, some like assumption that like, well, that must mean there's something better than that, right?

And I sort of sit down and try to like introspect. I'm like, okay, I think this part of me is sort of like, look, it's not my job to figure out what the, what thing would be better here. It's just like locally, like this part of your mind really doesn't like it. So it's like a request from allocation of more resources towards making it not like this. And ultimately like, I think this, you know, this move to introspect and whatever, it's sort of like an integrative move. But the part where some part of me is like, this is more like, I'm in charge of looking at this part of your mind and being like, are things okay over here? And it's like, no.

That seems fine to me.

Shea Levy (44:25)

So do you think there is actually some part of your processing which is the same thing that is caring about that same issue? That's the piece, I get in the moment.

Divia (44:38)

issue. I don't know about issue, but I think there's certain contours. Like I think I have different types of, I could try to be concrete, but it's hard. Like I think I have different types of processes and that that makes sense because like, I don't know, I, for example, like I certainly have visual processing, right? Like do you use a really low level example? I think sometimes it's true that like my visual processing is kind of tied.

because I've been looking at really fine details or something. And so I think there is a relatively persistent part of my mind that's like, hey, part of you is like, give the eyes a break right now. Or something like other things like that.

Shea Levy (45:11)

Yeah, that's how I'm on board with I'm on board with I think the place that I'm less clear on is like,

different persistent carers about or attendance to different values. That's where I am like, yeah, so like definitely different kinds of processing. Like sometimes I can think like do like deep abstraction or like, you know, very like thorough, like thorough reasoning through a problem. And sometimes a different process is like very generative thinking of just like,

Divia (45:28)

Mm-hmm.

Shea Levy (45:50)

coming up with ideas that might solve something and that's not the same thing as checking all the boxes, right? Those are different. Completely unborn with that.

Divia (45:52)

Yeah.

And I think there will persistently be different. Like, I don't know, maybe someone somewhere could integrate them, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Right, they're not in conflict. Though they could be locally in conflict at some time, potentially.

Shea Levy (46:02)

they're not in conflict. They're not integrated. that's why I wouldn't call it.

I mean, think it's more, the conflict is not between, it's not like those processes aren't conflict. The conflict is which of those processes should I use? It's not like, I guess they're in conflict to resources. I can't do both, I can't do generative stuff at the same time I'm doing the really thorough, like, checking the boxes stuff. I can't do those at the same time. But to me, if there's conflict, it's either causally, I'm not sure which,

Divia (46:21)

Okay. Yeah.

Seems right, yeah.

Shea Levy (46:39)

will lead to the aim I'm going for or like I don't know which aim I should even be going for, right? And like it's that part where I, it's that, that's the piece and maybe the answer is like that's not what they mean by parts that are persisting, but like that's the piece that's always stuck out to me like.

Divia (46:44)

Okay.

Shea Levy (46:59)

Like there's not a part of me that's dedicated to like caring about my wife, right? Like, okay, so like maybe.

Divia (47:05)

I would agree with that. I cannot, like here, look, a central example of like a part pre-IFS work would be something that has some particular, so like I always tell the same story because I like to tell stories about me, so it's not dividing, it's privacy, and some of them are weird or personal or hard to explain. So this is my one that I tell. So early on when I was working on this, I came up with, and it was experienced to me as a part that was like really,

sort of messed up. It was the part of me that thought I needed to always feel guilty about things. And I was like, all right, let me look, where did this come from? And I remember it actually, because I remember being this age and like not really having it. And then it was there and being like, well, this sucks. Does it have to be like this forever? And I guess the answer was like, no, only 20 years or something until I finally went back and figured it out. And there was some dumb thing that precipitated it where I'm guessing it's overdetermined that something like this would relatively overdetermined. Like I don't think it was.

super caused by the thing. But there was this incident where I knocked over this pile of cups and someone was like, hey, you knocked over a pile of cups. And I was like, no, I didn't. Cause I didn't realize that I like happened. I just didn't know. And then later I was thinking about it. I was like, I did do that. But like, it seemed like there was no way back. was like, I can't, I don't know what to do other than like feel guilty about it forever. And yeah, and it's, it's dumb. Like it's not a good way to operate. Obviously. I think it was sort of my best attempt at sense making at the time. It seemed like I was.

sort of stuck in some bind where I'm stressed out and I was like, I could either sort of forget about what really happened or I could feel guilty forever and I chose to feel guilty forever, even though it wasn't really forever. And of course, as an adult revisiting it, I'm like, yes, it is fact possible to remember what happened and not feel guilty forever. Like these things are fine. I'm like doing some mental ritual to accept that and whatever.

Shea Levy (48:51)

So I noticed that other than when you introduced it, you didn't talk about that as a part of you. You talked about that as like a way you processed a certain thing, like you processed it.

Divia (49:00)

Yeah, but at the time it felt like a part. Before I processed it, it seemed more part-like.

Shea Levy (49:03)

Okay, so maybe that's.

Okay, so maybe that's the piece. So I'm very interested in this conversation. I no longer think it's going to get at like a, it's not a big difference, but I'm very, so up to you you want to keep going. So like, the feeling like a part, I guess it's like, you process this in a certain way and like, that feels like it doesn't, it doesn't feel like it like fits with your general way of thinking about things. Is that sort of?

Divia (49:10)

Yeah. Okay, all right, cool.

Right, it seemed like, I don't know how to, like it just seemed like some, I don't know what's literally true about it, but when I would visualize it, it seemed natural to visualize it as sort of like a pretty separate piece of me. And I could like follow its threads and it was saying sort of a bunch of things that all seemed, like my guess, I have a pretty strong prediction that if I'd started following this thread on a different day, we would have gotten to the exact same thing.

Shea Levy (49:50)

Yeah, okay.

Divia (50:03)

that it wasn't very contingent about the way I was asked the questions or something. I think like that can happen. I think it's basically a bug if it ends up being a really contingent process. I think it wasn't. I think it really was something that happened that sort of locked in place like a piece of my personality that was failing to integrate with the rest of my personality.

Shea Levy (50:07)

Right.

Yeah.

Divia (50:23)

Which I think is a common human behavior, to be clear. I think most people have things like this. I think I still have things like that, I would assume, but I think not really the same way I did before.

Shea Levy (50:35)

Yeah, think, okay, so I think there's a sort of like, what I would want to see to like embrace this as a like, more thorough characterization of what is meant by it, what makes something apart versus just like a thought that occurred right now that is against my other thinking or like, even a persistent pattern of thinking, like maybe that's all it is, maybe that's all it is, a persistent pattern of thinking.

Divia (50:58)

I think it's some a persistent pattern of like thoughts and emotions and behaviors that tend to be clumped together and there's some sort of like time series thing and it used to sort of Disturbed me a little when I talked to people after I've been studying I've had something like you kind of like switch parts in real time when I was talking to you that's weird like your whole affect is now different from how it was a few seconds ago because you've inhabited a different perspective and I think some people do this more than other people but I think it's a real thing

Shea Levy (51:15)

Yeah.

So maybe this is the piece that maybe isn't actually part of IFS but has felt like part of IFS when I've heard it generally described, is that these parts have agency in some sense, as opposed to like, and like I don't, in your description, that's not there. So maybe that's like the piece that's like, that like,

Divia (51:41)

I don't, how is it, is it not there? I mean, I think it had agency in that I really was feeling the guilt the whole time. Okay, you don't mean that.

Shea Levy (51:48)

No, no, no, not that as a fact, but that like, there's like a part of you whose goal is to make you feel guilty, who is trying to allocate resources to you. Okay. Yeah. Okay, I think there's something.

Divia (51:55)

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think it was doing that, yeah.

Because I think it thought something worse would happen if I didn't do that, right?

Shea Levy (52:07)

Yeah, so that it would think something worse. that's, think that's the piece where it's like...

Divia (52:10)

Because when I would introspect about it, I'm like, go through some processes, like, well, what is the part of you saying? And I remember being like, well, it seemed like it cares about what's true and it doesn't really know how to, like, I would get answers like that and they felt resonant. then, like, I think I also would always, well, maybe that's a distraction, but like, part of why I take it seriously is that then when I did some mental reconceptualization of it, it changed. Like, I really didn't feel guilty in the same way afterwards. That's why I'm like, it was a thing.

Shea Levy (52:19)

Red.

Yeah, I mean I think, okay, so like I think this might be the basic disagreement and hard to tease out, but like.

I totally buy, and not even saying this is other people, I have things like this. There's a persistent pattern of thought, maybe a particular implicit belief or value that you have, in context where it's activated, regularly puts you in the mindset or brings up certain emotions or considerations that don't integrate with your normal mode of thinking. That I buy.

It's the next step of conceptualizing that, not just as a persistent aspect of your overall subconscious, but as something that has goals or something that has agency. Pinning that down would be hard, but I think there's something about that that that's the part I disagree with. And my suspicion now is that if we got to the point of

Divia (53:34)

Yeah.

Shea Levy (53:45)

making explicit what that thing is, would either dissolve and we would be fully in agreement, or if you said it explicit, you'd probably say something like, I don't believe that literally. But that's my guess.

Divia (53:53)

You

So one thing I do think about it is it seems like I was surprised at first when I would query these things how coherent their answers were.

Shea Levy (54:11)

Yeah, so think there's an explanation for that, that doesn't require them to be like, sub-agents with their own minds and thoughts.

Divia (54:17)

But I'm like, what does that mean with their own minds and thoughts? Like, don't think... Yeah, yeah, no, so that's why I'm asking. I'm like, I think it's... Okay, maybe an objective thing I could say is I think there's quite a lot of structure there. And I don't think the structure is formed during the process of asking questions. I think the structure was already there and is revealed through the answering of the question. Okay, we agree with this.

Shea Levy (54:19)

Well that's part of my point, that's part of my point, that's part of the issue I have is that like...

Yes. Yes. So I agree with those two things. I agree with those two things that that is a thing that happens. Yeah. And so like, think, I think basically, my objection is that like, I think, and I would have to know much more about the details of the theory, but I think basically, either when you say like, it wants this thing, or it had this goal or something that either ultimately you're like being sloppy with words or

The only way to ground it is some little homunculus with its own. And obviously if you say that, that's ridiculous. You don't endorse that.

Divia (55:07)

You

Okay, I think, no, no, here's what I think it is. I think that there's some part of the thing that I would more call myself that it's safeguarding. And so I'm like, it is ultimately me, but it's not, I think parts of my cognition will take responsibility for different angles on the values.

Shea Levy (55:23)

Thank you.

Let me say, instead of interrogating your conceptualization, let me try to give mine for that kind of thing, right? So, let me see if can find a concrete example in my life that...

Divia (55:31)

Okay. Yeah.

Shea Levy (55:49)

Yeah, okay, so like, they're less so now, but there is a sort of like, common pattern of thinking that I have fallen into of like, when things are not going well in some respect, being very reluctant to surface that to others, especially to Alyssa. And like,

Seeing it as an additional failure if I need to like make that visible and like ask for help or like get support on it in some way or other and you know, like so what I would say is that That stemmed from a mistaken view of how to achieve a real value that I endorse right there's a real value of self-sufficiency and

I don't have a full articulation of masculinity that ties into that. I actually do things of real value. And I do think there are things that I do now that I might have historically confused for this, but I now think about it in a very different way. So in that sense, sort of mistaken thought pattern, which at the time didn't integrate well with the way I thought about

social support and pursuing values and being open and with communication and all that, right? I do think it stemmed from a value that I hold and it's related to my values, not its own values. It's related to my values.

Divia (57:31)

Yeah, okay, I will agree with that it's your values, not its own values. I don't think the values are separate.

Shea Levy (57:35)

Yeah. but like, guess, I guess the, the, the piece that I still like, it's not like a subroutine that I've set up in, you know, subconsciously to like defend that value. Like it is, it is like,

Divia (57:50)

Why is it not?

Shea Levy (57:54)

Why is it not? That's a good question. think, okay, I think what it comes down to is like...

It's a, I think the fundamental is a mistaken thought, like a mistaken idea about like what that value requires or entails in a certain context. And so I guess, I guess, okay, it's like, once it's integrated, it's not like there was a separate agent, which is now integrated in. It's that like, my ideas are now coherent. And so like,

Divia (58:16)

Yeah, I would-

Shea Levy (58:31)

One idea, one view, one thing I hold about reality is this answer in relation to this value. And another thing gives the same answer because those things I hold are now integrated. When it gives the same answer, it's not like this idea has agency. It's more like... Yeah.

Divia (58:36)

Mm-hmm.

Okay, all right.

Okay, here's what I think I'm willing to defend. Here you're talking about this. Have you heard of Martin Buber's I and Thou?

Shea Levy (58:55)

I've heard of it, but I don't know what it is.

Divia (58:57)

Okay, I don't know what it is either. But one of the things is it's in contrast to I it. I think that it's according to my, like in a bunch of ways really, to have an I thou stance towards these parts of me than to have an I it stance towards them.

And to interact them as a thing that there's mutual respect and mutual change back and forth and not objectify it.

Shea Levy (59:17)

Thank you.

Yeah, so but it's not objectifying it. It's like, so like the, I agree with it. That I grew up is a, okay, but the vow externalizes it in a way that I think is wrong. It's like an I, me, right? so like, mean, so like, think there is like the right way, the way that I think about sort of the way to kind of handle this thing is like,

Divia (59:27)

Well, I don't know if you are. I don't have a claim that you are, but I think it's very common thing that people do.

Yeah, okay.

Shea Levy (59:54)

there are values at stake leading to this thought process and this emotional conflict. There are values that I hold at stake and I want to identify what are my values and then maybe beliefs about those values that are leading to this conflict and how can I align those values. So it's not like, so like

Divia (1:00:13)

Yeah, okay, but here's, think I'm mostly with you about the part like, it's more accurate to call it my. I'm like, yeah, I think sort of pragmatically when having a conversation, be able to hold lifetime experience talking to someone else that it's kind of nice to draw that in or something, whatever, it does seem more accurate to call it my. But the thing, seems like, it seems like you're, it seems like you're talking about it as though the agency is in the part of you that you're more identified with. And I'm like, I think it works way better to treat it,

as like, who knows what this thing will do now presented with this information? Like, not like I'm gonna change it.

Shea Levy (1:00:46)

So the agency is not fully within my present considered self. The agency is within me across a lifetime. Right? But it was me who had the initial...

Divia (1:00:55)

Yeah, yeah, so maybe what I'm I don't think I disagree with that but I think I'm like look I think the language that you use in the moment to describe it will and it maybe depends on the people actually I think it does but I think for many people at least the ones that resonate with the process using the sort of standard language about the parts and the you and the me brings to mind the right sort of stance for actually yeah Okay, you think it's gonna

Shea Levy (1:01:20)

Okay, here it is. Here's the thing that I was suspecting might be there and I'm not sure. This is now getting into the rationalist thing. That kind of pragmatic view toward, like, it's one thing to hold that explicitly as like, this is purely a like, thought experiment to trigger a certain thing, but like, letting that shape your...

Divia (1:01:25)

Yeah. Yeah.

Shea Levy (1:01:45)

ontology about like the way you actually think about it in your own thoughts about like what is actually happening. That's a thing that I think like I thought that was much more suffusing this than it actually is. So it might be something that but like what I would say concretely to that point like if that's true

Divia (1:01:55)

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think are no perfect pronouns for talking to one part of oneself.

Shea Levy (1:02:07)

Yeah, so like then I would say like but that's how I would formulate I'd say look It's not actually a separate part of you, but there's not like we don't have a good way of we don't have a good way of talking about this So this is the best we have right now and it would be in advance if somebody came up with a better conceptualization and like I would

Divia (1:02:20)

Okay.

So for the record, I've done this with people who are like, it's not a part of me, does not want to be called a part, wants to be called a whatever. And I do always go with what people say. And I try to take it seriously too. I'm like, okay, we're talking to a whole of you, fine, cool. Okay, it's just you, fine.

Shea Levy (1:02:33)

Yeah. So, but like, yeah. But like, mean, I think the like, so like, this, but like, the epistemic part of it is like, in my own thinking, in my own notes, when I'm not like, happy with conceptualization, like, I will put things in scare quotes in my own, like, like, this is not the right way to put this, but I don't know, or it's not worth like, figuring out what the right way to put it is in this context, but like,

Divia (1:02:53)

Yeah.

I'm not yet convinced that part of me is particularly wrong. I don't know, what is part? Part, means like...

Shea Levy (1:03:08)

Again, if you're attributing separate motivation to that part, or separate agency, or separate

Divia (1:03:16)

I think it's separate, but I don't think it's... I think it's... No, I do think it's ultimately mine. But it's not all of... It's not like, if I just say mine, I think that calls to mind like a more integrated thing. And I think I don't know what it is, and I think I should treat it as like some unknown to be curious about. But no, I don't think it's separate.

Shea Levy (1:03:19)

Not that you don't think it's yours.

Right?

So, okay, maybe here's a thing.

when I'm in that state of conflict, don't like, I can identify which sort of side of the conflict is more, more in line with like, what I would expect myself to feel on my normal thinking. But I don't give that side of the conflict priority. Like, my going in is both sides are stemming from real

real values that I have or think I ought to have and real ideas that I have. like, I'm sometimes fishier about the one that's kind of more in line with my normal thing, because that's the one easier to justify because it's like, you know, I can put words to it much more readily. But like, in that moment, it's not, I guess, in like,

Divia (1:04:26)

Yeah, cause you can like slip something in there. Totally.

Shea Levy (1:04:40)

Yeah, maybe this is a little bit phenomenological. I guess I would say like, I think it's a phenomenological thing that stems from a healthy view of my psychology, but like, maybe a little bit more of phenomenological claim than a like, metaphysical claim that it doesn't present to me, it presents to me as conflict. It doesn't present to me as like, something...

one piece of it waging war, that's too violent and extreme, like, interceding with the rest of me. It's two strands of thought, or maybe let's say two parts of me, two parts of me conflicting, it's not like a part of me conflicting with me. I don't know if that-

Divia (1:05:07)

Yeah.

Yeah. yeah, I agree with that too. I think parts are ultimately never really in conflict with the self. They're in conflict with other parts. I do think many people do describe it as something more like a war inside themselves, for what it's worth.

Shea Levy (1:05:37)

Yeah, no, I think that's true. I think then my question with my sort of like theoretical psychologist hat on as opposed to critical is like, okay, what is actually going on that makes it feel that way?

Divia (1:05:53)

I mean, I think often there's a pretty total war type attitude from some of their parts that are like, there's no way to achieve this part of my values through normal means. So instead I'm gonna do all these kind of extreme things. I think that happens.

Shea Levy (1:06:08)

Yeah, like, yeah, okay. So, right, so maybe one way to think about that is like,

you've sort of accepted on some level an inherent conflict between two deeply held values. And so depending on which

Divia (1:06:28)

And if I were doing something therapeutic with someone, I'd be like, okay, well, let's like, you know, like I wouldn't necessarily be taking that as true.

Shea Levy (1:06:34)

No,

Divia (1:06:46)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay.

Right. Right.

Shea Levy (1:07:03)

they have at some level accepted an inherent inability to gain two key values that each value individually they've accepted as necessary for their happiness and they've also accepted that they're an inherent conflict and so they put themselves in a position to do that.

Divia (1:07:16)

Mm-hmm.

And they don't see a better resolution path also, and nor do they necessarily have faith that there could be one, except, I don't know, if they're telling someone about this, maybe on some level they do.

Shea Levy (1:07:29)

Yeah, and then I think that the extra piece here is that like, it depends on the combination of their pattern of thought and what has like what is relevant to them in the situation, which of those values is more motivationally salient and like winning out in that and like how those conflicts arise and how

Divia (1:07:50)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, like think some language that the transactional analysis people use that I haven't seen elsewhere is they talk about how people, like there's a sort of normal thing people talk about where the one, when there is some sort of polarization, often people describe one of them as like, well, I think this, but, and then another part that's connected, which I think is the word, which is the one that's controlling your body, which is not always the same for people. They'll be like, I don't know why I'm doing this. This seems like a terrible idea. And yet they're doing it. So obviously there's some sort of different process.

Shea Levy (1:08:23)

Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. Interesting. Okay, so I think my takeaway here is if there is an existing resource which is not therapeutic, I'm interested in what do they think is actually going on and what is the right way to conceptualize it and then separating that from the question of what's the right way to talk about it in a therapeutic context to make it easy. If you have any such resource, I'd be very interested in that.

Divia (1:08:35)

you

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know what...

Shea Levy (1:08:51)

What's the ontology of IFS?

Divia (1:08:54)

think it's fundamentally really pragmatic. Like think that's where it came from. Is the guy working with people and being like, people seem to be talking about this. Maybe I go with how they're experiencing it and.

Shea Levy (1:09:02)

This gets back to the epistemic point of like, if that's how I'm holding an idea, I want to be very clear that I'm holding it as this is a pragmatic tool and it would be useful, maybe not important, maybe not useful enough to be worth going into, it would be useful to actually understand the facts that make this work. I don't need to know those facts in order to know that if I do things this way, it works. So I have a similar attitude towards gamification.

Divia (1:09:07)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Shea Levy (1:09:31)

I have a more thorough view now than I used to about why it is that gamification is useful. I think it's acceptable to say, yeah, gamification seems to work. I do the thing that I want to do better. that is enough. That is something you can hold as true and valuable without taking a stand on some deep, what human motivation is all about is dopamine hits or whatever.

Divia (1:09:57)

Okay, look, look, I think I'm on record being like, ultimately this is a pragmatic thing, but I think it does make some claims about like structurally what's going on in people's minds.

Shea Levy (1:10:07)

Yeah, so that, think I would love to go know what those are and I don't know if we can get into that here, but...

Divia (1:10:11)

Okay, yeah, bookmark. We can maybe talk about that. I think I have talked about it a little, that one such claim that I think I already flagged is that if people sort of manage to approach certain parts of their cognition with curiosity and compassion, there is quite a lot of structure there. In ways that are not evident, usually without doing that. Claim one.

Shea Levy (1:10:26)

Yes. Yes. And so I completely agree with a lot of strut. There's structure to this conflict. It's not just that that part disagrees. I just shut it down or ignore it. Right. Like that is. Yeah.

Divia (1:10:40)

Yeah, and it's not like the only option that people could get is confabulation if they try to go down that road. That's one claim. Anyway.

Shea Levy (1:10:43)

Right. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So I guess maybe getting back to the original discussion. Why don't call yourself a rationalist?

Divia (1:10:53)

Yeah, okay, so one thing is that I really do come out of that tradition. Like think that reflects my, I don't know, like I have certain things that I've sort of believed since before that, but then I found overcoming bias and those people and like I moved to California, I met a bunch of those people and it was a pretty transformative time for my way of thinking. And I think I came out in a way that was like deeply influenced by that.

Shea Levy (1:11:02)

Okay.

Divia (1:11:21)

community mostly to be more like it than before.

Shea Levy (1:11:24)

Okay, so you said that way of thinking. Do you think you hold that way of thinking, whatever it is, or is just that it influenced you?

Divia (1:11:33)

I mean, some of it and not other parts of it? I don't know. so, okay, one thing I would say concretely is I think that I grew up in an environment where the sort of, of course, like, I don't know. There was definitely some, like, let's really figure out what's true. Let's point at things that are incoherent and care about them. But the overall density of it was not really enough for me to have a social context that kind of like gelled in that way.

Shea Levy (1:12:03)

Yeah.

Divia (1:12:04)

if that made sense, where like, remember, and you know, I have a couple of less wrong, I have this less wrong draft post about this from like, I don't know, more than 15 years ago, I never wrote it. But I was trying to convey this idea, which is like, okay, and then I got there and I was like, everyone's kind of like enough on the ball, that like some other part of my brain kind of kicked in and was like, yeah, things really, like, come on, let's like really make sense now. Like the social environment is expecting of you, expecting of it, of you too. And it was very helpful for me.

Shea Levy (1:12:32)

Yeah, mean, so like that, I mean, that's, that's the piece, like, if that's what rationalist is, which like, there's a, there's a, there's a,

Divia (1:12:39)

don't know that it's, it's not my full answer. That's the beginning of my answer.

Shea Levy (1:12:41)

There's there's a there's ground to be defended here, right? That that's really what it is to be a rationalist I guess I guess it's too I would say there are two parts to it one is that you have this attitude and take it seriously and to that like you got it or you mostly Experience it within this particular social milieu, right?

Divia (1:12:44)

Mm-hmm.

I it's a little different now. think more of it's in the groundwater, more of the people I've met have different, like it's, I think it's less clear cut than it was then. I also think that,

I mean, and I do, I don't think this is in my bio, because it limited characters, but I would definitely say like a less wrong style of rationalist. Because some people mean like, you don't care about feelings or something. like, I don't mean that. And I also.

Shea Levy (1:13:22)

Yeah. Rationalist is an overloaded term for sure.

Divia (1:13:26)

It is, but that's, it also reflects like a bunch of chart, like if I, like, if I talk about, I mean, maybe one of the conceits of rationalists such as myself is that I basically would never be like, that's rational or that's irrational in the way that people who don't call themselves rationalists frequently do use those terms.

Shea Levy (1:13:48)

Okay, so maybe there's a good disagreement.

Divia (1:13:51)

Look, I think a bunch of my language use and stuff like that, like I think if someone were trying to understand where I was coming from and they had the like, this person sort of grew up to a certain degree on less wrong, like I would make more sense. And, and crucially, that I have, unlike a bunch of other people, I'm not like, and I'm post that now. Because that seems way more wrong to me. Like it's true that I don't agree with a bunch of stuff on less wrong, but that's like, and I disagree with Elia's or about various things, but that's like,

Shea Levy (1:14:03)

Yeah.

Yeah, sure.

Divia (1:14:20)

Typical.

Shea Levy (1:14:21)

Yes, so that's fine. think, okay, maybe there's sort two avenues of attack here. One that came up is like, that I think is tied to like, I wouldn't call things rational or irrational. Like, do you think less wrong is a good name? Is a good thing to ascribe to? To aspire to? Okay. There's an underlying epistemic claim that I think is the same in overcoming bias of like, yeah, you can't be right. The best you can do is just not, you know, eliminate the errors, right?

Divia (1:14:35)

No. It's not a good name, no, but yeah, but it is what it's called then.

Yeah, which is that you can never really be right. Yeah.

Yeah, I also don't call myself an aspiring rationalist. I myself a rationalist. This is another one of those things.

Shea Levy (1:14:54)

So like, yeah, so okay, if you don't buy into that, like, the most I can say, which is not a very strong, like, I guess I wouldn't say I'm contra Divya. Most I can say is that

Divia (1:15:08)

Yeah, sure.

Shea Levy (1:15:12)

I think there are...

There's path dependency in anyone's terminology that is not objectionable, but I think there are elements of less wrong rationalist jargon terminology ways of approaching things that I think reflect some of these issues, even if you yourself don't no longer or don't endorse the underlying claim. So no, no. So like,

Divia (1:15:39)

I do think I shouldn't call myself a rationalist? I've thought about it a lot. Okay.

Shea Levy (1:15:44)

That's I mean, I think part of the issue is like and here I'm gonna here's like here I'm gonna get to like the philosophy of philosophy like What is philosophy for and why do we need one? Like I think you do in fact Need some kind of like But like worldview that you hold and having a name for it and

Divia (1:15:53)

Mm-hmm.

Ethical grounding is back to that.

Shea Levy (1:16:13)

Ideally having a social scene that is at least somewhat aligned to it is extremely valuable. And so like, I guess what I would say is like,

If you don't, yeah, so I think maybe like one of the biggest problems with the rationalist space is that either what it is to be a rationalist is this sort of bucket of philosophical views that I think are many of them deeply wrong, or it includes a sort of meta view that like, it doesn't matter that we all have very different philosophical views. And of course there can be some social things that cross these lines.

Divia (1:16:52)

I mean, what do we mean by doesn't matter?

Shea Levy (1:16:55)

Like, I guess like.

Divia (1:16:59)

Like we shouldn't try to resolve them?

Shea Levy (1:16:59)

But you don't them. Huh? No, no, no, no. Not that you don't try to resolve them, but that like...

Okay, Descartes meditations, he opens up basically saying like, I've known for a long time that like, I can't integrate my s**t. Like my ideas, but like, I haven't had time to do it and now I finally have time to do it and this has bugged me for a while. like to me, like, I think his answer is he fails. But like that motivation of like, I need to integrate my ideas, I need to actually have an explicit integrated worldview here. Like I personally need to have that.

Divia (1:17:21)

Okay.

Shea Levy (1:17:40)

I think that is a healthy attitude and it is something that a proper philosophy would inculcate in everybody. Now let's not say that everybody would be a philosopher, right? But like, they would, I mean, in the world I'm envisioning, there would be a culture-wide philosophy which actually integrates and actually, like, it's not that I can blame somebody who is, I can blame Eliezer. I think Eliezer has like,

explicitly thought philosophically and he doesn't have this view but like the fact that that doesn't bug you that like like you don't you can't articulate like an explicit philosophical worldview that ground like like huh it doesn't well even if it doesn't have a name like what is it like it's not rationalism because like you don't endorse like any of the things that i've called out so like what is it if it's not rationalism right yeah i mean

Divia (1:18:15)

That what doesn't

the name and stuff.

I even their name.

You're saying that's okay. Okay, okay, okay. So what is, yeah, I mean, I do care about having a consistent worldview. I don't think that there's any name that I have. mean, like I don't, I do have objectives as friends. You're one of them, but.

Shea Levy (1:18:48)

But that like a basic the basic way you self identify doesn't seem to

Divia (1:18:55)

Mm-hmm.

Shea Levy (1:19:01)

incorporate it. like if I say like if I say like I'm a Christian and I mean it like the old style Christian right like that self-identification incorporates a whole worldview right. When I call myself an objectivist why does it

Divia (1:19:03)

Yeah, okay.

Sure. Yeah, that's, I mean, but...

I don't know. I haven't found some community of people that are like, this is the thing.

Shea Levy (1:19:26)

But like the question is like does that seem like a flaw like maybe not a flaw worth fixing but it does that seem like a flaw to you does it seem or is it's like Well, yeah, that like not about that you're supposed to but that like it would be It would be better if I had it like something Yeah, okay. Okay, so maybe okay again

Divia (1:19:35)

Like in the world or in me? Like am I supposed to make it?

It'd be better if I had a community of, yeah, it seems better if I had that.

So I think it doesn't seem tractable to me. Like maybe I'm wrong, but it does not currently seem tractable on a community level.

Shea Levy (1:19:57)

Like to have a community oriented around a worldview. Your worldview.

Divia (1:20:02)

my worldview. Or like a worldview that I'm like, yeah, it's probably right about things that I'm, like, if I disagree with the community, like I sort of expect to update towards its position.

Shea Levy (1:20:12)

Right, so yeah, it doesn't seem tractable because too much of, like not enough people are aligned with you today or like something about your worldview means it just won't ever happen.

Divia (1:20:22)

don't mean ever. I don't know, I'm like, I'm really sad about that one way or the other. But no, I don't think I mean ever.

Shea Levy (1:20:27)

It doesn't seem to me like I am not going to live in an objectivist community and like I would say like there's an objectivist movement and I would say like I would count on one hand the number of people within the objectivist movement that I like feel like I would let into my like objectivist on clay. Like some of them I don't like maybe like personally but I think they've got like like so like I'm with you there and

Divia (1:20:49)

Yeah.

Yeah, they're individual friends that I feel pretty aligned with, it mostly seems like the people I know that are really taking this type of stuff seriously are mostly like, we're doing some trailblazing thing that kind of works for us. And yeah, of course, ideally it would be more complete than that, but we're kind of on some sort of frontier, so what can we do?

Shea Levy (1:21:12)

Yeah, I guess, to be clear, the primary for me is not the social scene, it's the system of ideas. So if your view is like, yeah, it would be great if somebody, it would be really valuable if somebody could articulate the system that reflects my ideas. And like, you know, maybe.

Divia (1:21:18)

Okay, articulated.

Or if I could more, like I do try to a certain extent, but I also have, maybe this is a real disagreement. Like I think on the current margin, nah, maybe it's not. But like certainly my most, like my newest set of ideas that seem most fundamental, I'm not super eager to be like, let me write those down so that people can read them. Like I wanna talk to my friends about them.

Shea Levy (1:21:54)

Yeah, no, My point is not that everybody has to be intellectual, right? That's not...

Divia (1:21:59)

No, I wanna be an intellectual and I do wanna share my ideas, but I think there's a gap between what is really my most bleeding edge worldview about this and what I'm willing to be explicit about in public anyway. No, that's not good.

Shea Levy (1:22:12)

Yeah, I mean, so like, yeah, like, because you want to validate it and work it out and see, like, get it right. Like, yeah, it's not it's not about a rush. I guess, I mean, again, this is another area where, like, I'm sort of contrasting. Like, what are you talked about that way of thinking, when you're talking about, like, what you took from overcoming bias and less wrong, like, anyway,

Divia (1:22:20)

Okay.

Like so many, like I sometimes forget, cause I'll hang out with people that they really don't care.

Shea Levy (1:22:40)

I call that upfront right I call that out of front like that

Divia (1:22:43)

Yeah, yeah. No, I know. So, but that's, I'm like, that's enough for me to call myself a rationalist.

Shea Levy (1:22:47)

Yeah, okay. So like, I think that's fair to say like, okay, I think it would be, I want to know what's true. And like, the rationalists were the first place where like, I got that as an explicit message.

Divia (1:22:57)

And it's still there. Like if I go to a Less Wrong Meetup and someone's like, if someone says something and I like know that that's just actually not true, I'm like, we have a shared way to communicate about

Shea Levy (1:23:11)

Can you hold on one minute? I need to call. I will step back in a minute.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

I would say this one was hard to summarize, since we jumped around and covered a lot of ground, but I had a ton of fun finally talking to Visa from Twitter in realtime.

Transcript:

Divia (00:02)

Hey, I'm here today with Visa from Twitter. That's mostly, I know you're on other platforms too. You have essays, you're on YouTube, but that's definitely how I think of you. When I got back on Twitter in like 2019, I think of you as really the one that kind of created the Twitter scene that I then joined. I don't know. I don't know to what extent you see it that way, but like, you you really the guy that started with all the threading and like the...

Visa (00:10)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Divia (00:30)

actually friendly norms and I don't know, maybe nothing ever starts, but like you popularized it in the corner of Twitter that I'm in anyway, so I'm super glad to be here with you today and get to actually talk.

Visa (00:43)

Yeah, it's nice. I still remember there were a couple of things that you responded to on my tweets that I remember thinking were uncommonly insightful. One of it was, I think it was I was asking my timeline to psychoanalyze me about why I like angry women, like my wife or my friends. And your answer, think, was one of the best ones. Something about them being able to express something that you feel like you can't express.

Divia (01:02)

Yeah, I remember.

Visa (01:11)

And that just struck me as so true. And all the other responses were so, I don't know, superficial. And yours was like, I think that it's correct. And I think it helped me shift my understanding a little bit. And so I'm grateful for that. And yeah, so.

Divia (01:24)

Yeah, thank you. It's definitely, mean, I don't know, maybe one reason I think of it is just because, you know, I'm female, I'm like five feet tall and you're, you you're a guy, you're tall, you're like browner than the other people around you. I think it's hard, I imagine, with the anger, right?

Visa (01:35)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. You become the threat. mean, it's like the beauty and the beast dynamic, Where, yeah, I am the danger when I walk down the street at night. so I don't fear for my personal safety around other people. But like, if there's something like, you know, if I'm in a random country and there's like a bar fight and like someone blames me, I'm not going to get the benefit of the doubt. And I think that's

Divia (01:51)

Yeah.

Visa (02:05)

Subconsciously, think that influenced my whole friendly game game thing, so that I have people around who know me and can vouch for me. think there's this bit from, I can't remember, it Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle. And they got into a traffic stop, and they were stressed out about it. But then the cop recognized them, and then they had a good interaction. And then they're like, yeah, being famous kind of, it sucks that that's, you know, it's.

Divia (02:11)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

huh.

Visa (02:34)

as a solution to that kind of problem that's not ideal. But it is a solution. yeah.

Divia (02:39)

Yeah, I mean, if you can swing it, right? And as you've said, also, I think it's different when you go around with a baby,

Visa (02:47)

so much. So much. It's like, man. And sometimes I remember, think I'm walking with my wife and my child. And then the world around me just feels so warm and open. And then let's say we're going to the park or something. And I'm like, I should go and get some water or something. And I'm like, OK, I'm going to go to the store. And I separate from them. And I cross the road. instantly, it's like, the warmth is gone. It's like people are like, you know.

Divia (03:13)

Yeah.

Visa (03:14)

And I get it, know, it delivers society, people have to make snap judgments and whatever, but like it's so striking. I think I might have been motivated to have kids sooner if I knew that, but I mean, and not knowing it intellectually as well is not, I don't know if that's helpful, but so my recommendation to a lot of young guys is try and borrow a baby, like you're like a nephew or a niece or something, like borrow a baby and like walk the streets with that and feel it for yourself. And I guess some people tell me that,

Divia (03:25)

Yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah.

Visa (03:41)

Having a dog is kind as opposed to having nothing.

Divia (03:44)

I think especially if you have like a little puppy, or at least this is my brother said, he goes around with his kid a lot, but he also, he said it was pretty similar when he had a puppy that people would just come up to him and like be really friendly.

Visa (03:47)

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can imagine that. Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe I might be likelier to get a puppy after my kids are grown or something like that. It is very addictive when people are so nice.

Divia (04:09)

Yeah, that makes sense. actually, know, I some other stuff, my most extreme story of this, because I don't really, I don't know, I didn't notice as dramatic a contrast. It's true that people are more likely to talk to me when I have my baby, but I feel like people are pretty warm regardless. But I would, so one time, this is when I just had one kid and my midwife had organized like a, I don't know, like a walk around with your baby type activity, so there were like five of us.

Visa (04:21)

All right, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Nice. So important, yeah.

Divia (04:37)

with babies and our midwife and then I ran into this guy that I kind of knew and he had been climbing around in some off-limits area and he was wearing these like distinctive, they were like red or orange pants or something and the cops came over and then he started talking because I knew him, we were talking to him and the cops came over and they were like, you know, we heard someone was like climbing around in that area and they were like, and I think we heard, it was, and they sort of.

Visa (04:50)

Hmm.

Divia (05:03)

I think they picked up, were like, yeah, they said he had red pants or something, but they looked at him and they were like, but it obviously couldn't have been you, because he was standing with all these people with babies. And I don't know if they were like, I don't know if they were like, it was you, but like wink, wink, nod, nod, we can tell you're not actually dangerous, or they were just like, no, it couldn't possibly have been you, this guy standing with the babies. But either way, it was pretty dramatic.

Visa (05:09)

Yeah, moms, yeah.

Right.

think that's quite plausible. There's a bit in Modern Family that does that where, again, I think a bunch of people knock over some private property, but then there's a realtor and his wife and all the upstanding citizens around. So the cop comes over and when he sees the guy that he knows, he's yeah, everything's fine because of that guy. And similar, think one, I Chris Rock has a bit, which is like, if you're in...

If you're in some random city in the middle of the afternoon and there's a bunch of unemployed women around, chances are they are upper middle class, upper class strollers. And they're likely in very nice neighborhood because they can afford to do that. And whereas if you're in random city and there's a bunch of guys in the middle of the afternoon hanging around, are probably either unemployed, homeless, or druggies, whatever. Statistically, that's how it shakes out.

Divia (06:01)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah.

Visa (06:20)

And it is what it is. I don't know how deep you want to get into that, but it's just a thing that once you observe, think you can use it to your advantage, I guess. It's a thing that is worth trying to figure out. I not necessarily to your advantage, but I never thought about these things very much. How much your experience of reality is sh-

influenced or determined by like the meat bag that you're in, your height, your gender, your... and you don't realize the degree to which that is the case until you share a space with someone who's not like that and you get to witness their experience or like yeah I think one of my...

Divia (06:53)

Yeah.

Yeah. lot of, mean, trans people also, I think, tend to have really interesting perspectives on this. I feel like some of my most, some of the experiences that people describe that I'm like, okay, I better pay attention to that, is someone who's like, you know, I never felt like anyone valued me for me when I was walking around as a man, but then people start reading me as a woman, it was a whole different thing. Or the other way, the one I tend to hear the other way is something like,

Visa (07:14)

Mmm.

Right. Mm. Mm.

Divia (07:32)

People seemed to listen to what they were saying more and respect them more and take them more seriously when they start presenting as a man. And I'm sure it's all more complicated than that, but those are at least some of the things.

Visa (07:36)

Yeah. All right.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's very useful to have. I think, yeah, so there's like downsides to each thing, but we can kind of, if it's like, it's like a comparative advantage, something, traits, something, it's like in a friend group, like people can stand up for each other and kind of mitigate the worst of each. So yeah, make friends, you know, it always comes back to that somehow.

Divia (07:49)

Yeah.

Definitely. Okay, so one tweet you made recently, I was like, all right, we definitely have to talk about this. This is after we'd already scheduled this time. And it was, because I tend to be most interested in talking to people about the things that they haven't quite figured out yet. So I don't know, maybe you've figured out since, but what you said was a thing. So I'll read it out. This was like a brainstorm in response to a potential essay that you would really wish like you could figure it out.

Visa (08:12)

Mm-hmm.

Nice. I don't know. Let's try it.

Great.

Divia (08:35)

So something about smartphones, chaos surfing, information architecture, network scenes, Twitter, containers, episodic, incompleteness, focus on what you want, maniac thread, win loops, MVP, attractors, word magic. You wanna thread that all together. And you have a little bit more about it. Cursed artifact, memed into existence, strange loops. But you haven't quite assembled the mind city. You were like, no, not quite. So yeah, has that been percolating? You have any new thoughts there?

Visa (08:44)

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, mean, yeah, I mean, so I have thoughts about every one of those things. I have written about them. So it's not, you like I always am wary of like, you have these big ideas, but you haven't even started describing them. But I think I have spoken about each of those things in some detail on Twitter. But, you know, so the current way to get it to like internalize what

Like what does Visa mean by all of those things? Like if you follow me for a long period of time and you've read all of those threads, that's probably the best way to internalize it in general. But like very few people get to do that. So it's just our mutuals on Twitter who happen to be around for so long. they're yeah, I kind of like just seeing those words and seeing Visa's name, I kind of know what he's grasping at vaguely. Yeah. And I'm like, how do I talk about these things in a way that is relatively succinct that

Divia (09:47)

Yeah, it's like your dominoes are kind of similar.

Visa (09:57)

like kind of, I don't know if downloads is the right word, but just conveys a lot of that in a succinct way that people can relate to, I mean understand, I don't know, I'm still...

Yeah, I just want to not require such a large time investment to convey these ideas, even for myself, I guess. I do feel like maybe I haven't identified the precision points. If you see Picasso's bull, the drawings that he does, he made them progressively simpler and simpler. Or Steve Jobs has a bunch of quotes about how like,

and sophistication is simplicity is the ultimate sophistication where you can take away all the elements that are not relevant. But you don't quite know in advance what elements are not relevant. So even with both of the books that I've written, they are longer than they need to be. let's just talk about introspect because Sven was like a, it's not even finished. Well, introspect is also not finished.

Divia (10:56)

This is, by the way, this is friendly, ambitious nerd and introspect, right?

Visa (11:10)

In retrospect, it's like 100,000 words. And I don't want it to be. It's just that to include everything I want to say, that's how big it swelled up to. And I tried to compress, compress, compress. But there are some compressions that you don't know how to do until you've seen how people understand and misunderstand it and how it passes through conversations and stuff. So it's like I had to write the book.

in order to, and I don't think I've arrived at another better thing, but like, you know, that's like something like 50 sections. And I haven't figured out like, if I had to narrow it down to like 12, I'm not sure precisely. I know I was rereading it yesterday and I now know some of the things I would like set aside because some of the other elements imply some of the other, some elements imply other elements. So you can kind of identify the elements that

you know will imply the ones that you need so that the, yeah, you don't know which are the most load-bearing elements when all seem important, but even so, some elements are always more load-bearing than others. And it really takes time to identify what they are. So I need to circle back to the things that you're asking about. I think at the heart of everything, there's an understanding of dynamism and

attention. Those are probably the most central things and like frames, are all the same thing again. It's like, you know, that things change and what you see is not necessarily what it is. And a sufficiently advanced understanding of that is something that you can use to re-derive everything else. But that thing that I just described is very, very succinct and people who get it

They already get it because they've already synthesized a lot of things in their own experience. And they're like, yeah, that reminds me of this essay, or that reminds me of that book, or that reminds me of something someone said. And they connect the dots and they recreate the picture, sort of. I just, yeah, so what I just described does not solve my problem for me. I'm trying to, I guess I need to project manage this better for myself because the kind of,

like version 999, like final holy grail, not holy grail, but the really grand design is that, you can share this with anyone anywhere in the world, and they're going to get it very, very well, and they're going to be able to use it very, well as well. And to get to that point probably requires a bunch of prerequisites states that I don't currently influence. So I probably need to narrow it down and be like, I want to help this subset of people who

This is very helpful when you say out loud. So our current mutuals will get it already. So I don't really need to explain it to them. But if I did, it would be helpful anyway. And then there's another layer outside of those people who are sympathetic to these ideas, but they don't actually think about it very much. And elegant, succinct framing for these words would help them see what I see. And again, so I guess should say what I see.

Divia (14:30)

Yeah.

Visa (14:31)

The thing that usually, I think the best anecdote that I have to kind of open this is like a bunch of things people say about the internet and about smartphones and about media in general, I guess, is that, I I think the stereotype is like someone goes on the internet a lot and they just get increasingly deranged and crazy and like lose their s**t. And my experience has been the opposite of that.

It seems like the more time I spend online, I feel I get smarter. I get more well-informed. I make new friends. I make more money. Everything just gets better for me the more I do it. And so it's like, I'm looking to understand and convey, what is that? Is it something special about me? don't think I'm, I mean, I'm a bit different from some of my peers, I guess, but I don't think I'm like an alien, like a literal supernatural whatever. I guess I have some configuration of

Divia (15:24)

You

Visa (15:29)

how I filter information or how I respond to things, like some energetic posture that allows me to go into quote unquote, like the sludge, toxic sludge or whatever you want to call it, like like waste water or something, it's a metaphor I'm getting, and come out of it cleaner somehow or like fresher or healthier or happier. And...

Divia (15:48)

Yeah.

the pure all things are pure. I don't know, it's some quote. But I think there's something to it where like if you have a certain internal clarity then what you're saying like you can go into something and you come out and it's net like you weren't it didn't make you worse.

Visa (15:55)

Is that true? Do you think that's true? Yeah, don't know if... Yeah.

Yeah, so I think, you know, and like I've been kind of like testing this on the timeline. mean, testing. Testing sounds like I'm doing experiments on people, but I I share my experience and I've witnessed people saying, yeah, you the way you said this made me think about that. And then I changed something in my behavior and then that's a little bit better. And if these things can be condensed into some principles, some ideas, some, and I don't think

anybody learns these things from like a lecture about how to do it. So that's the tricky thing. know, and here I'm reminded of one of the, there's like a story I've told. It's like, okay, there's a subreddit for Zen, rzen. It's full of people like one-upping each other about being more spiritual and bickering with each other. It's so bad, it's good. But like, you know, it's like, if you go there for like spiritual instruction,

Divia (16:47)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's weird. It seems like a pattern on my Twitter timeline that some of the most one-upping I see is among the spiritual path, like official I'm on a spiritual path people, right?

Visa (17:19)

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you're still stuck in stage three. How's stage four of you? And that sounds like Keegan stuff. in every tradition, there's people being like, you are still in this stage of enlightenment or whatever. Whereas on the other hand, one of the most beautiful, elegant, simple things I've read was from my friend who's into kitchen knives sent me a link from a kitchen knife forum.

Divia (17:25)

Yeah.

For sure.

Visa (17:47)

And the guy's like, and people are saying, how do I get the, what's the best kitchen knife? And this random poster, this red is very eloquent. Like, know, it's about, like, in your journey into knives, you're going to try a bunch of different things. And you're going to find that what fits your hand is the whatever, what fits your purpose. And I'm reading it, I was like, that's so, like, it's so spiritual. It's so like, there's this deep appreciation for yourself, for your tools, for your task. And I guess it's like zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance kind of.

Divia (18:07)

Right.

Visa (18:16)

But this guy wasn't trying to be spiritual or give instructions. Yeah, he was just trying to help some other guy manage his knives better. And so I think if I am to do what I'm trying to do, I cannot tell people, I cannot announce that this is what I'm doing and everyone come and let's do this thing. Because it's it's too on the nose, I think. And so I get conflicted about.

Divia (18:20)

was probably part of what was so successful about it, right?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Visa (18:43)

Should I even say that? Should I be talking to you or anybody else and tell them, I'm going to do this thing, but actually it's about that thing? I don't know if that works. But so my approach is, OK, let me do a thing that I actually want to do. instead of pretending to care about kitchen knives when I don't, I'll just pick up a thing that I actually do care about. And then because I have those things on my radar, that should come through. And so one of the things I think I'm going to do is media studies, media analysis, movies.

TV shows, that's stuff that I like to talk about anyway, and video games. And so that might be how I approach it. So maybe all the things I was talking about earlier about episodic thinking and whatever, that's. Well, so the episodic stuff is about form, right? So it's how you present information in a way that you can make it as a creator and re-

audiences can receive it as audiences. And so again, I think one of the more profound things similar to The Kitchen Knives was the rules of show running by some TV producer who produced TV shows. And again, it's remarkable what goes into producing a good TV show. You have so many different people, have the story, you have different interpretations, set design, and the project management of that is remarkable.

Divia (19:56)

Okay.

Visa (20:10)

And so a person who's good at it has some domain-independent insight. The insights from that domain can be translated into project management and lot of other domains, I think. So that's the kind of thing I'm interested in. And I don't know if I answered your question. I'm just going in circles.

Divia (20:28)

Yeah, okay, let me see if I can try to reflect back what I heard you say, okay? So there's something that, at least the way you've been thinking of it is you kind of, you have like a, there's something that your body of work on Twitter tends to communicate to people, or at least like tends to communicate to the sort of people that like stick around and maybe are interested in some of the same stuff and read a lot of your stuff. But what you're really hoping is that you could make it more, make it more of an elegant concept.

Visa (20:32)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yes, more accessible to people.

Divia (20:57)

And one day you're, sorry, yeah.

Right, and ideally you want it to be sort of such a good concept or such a good conceptualization that you can communicate to almost anyone, regardless of any more like prerequisites or something like that. But then it seemed like you were like, but that might be a little bit of a leap from where you are. So maybe just like one, I don't know, like one circle out or something from the people that currently seem like they get it. Maybe with some context, maybe that should be sort of what you're thinking about next.

Visa (21:11)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Divia (21:31)

And then it seemed like you started to be like, look, there's some way of being that you have that's sort of like if you, where for you the internet can be a force multiplier. And probably not just the internet, probably like sort of regardless of what you expose yourself to, you can kind of like inhabit it and things will get better because you have more reach.

Visa (21:55)

It's happened. Yeah. I found some screenshots from like a WhatsApp group from like my early 20s where like all my, it's a bunch of my friends were all in a group chat. And then they were like, how do you guys, how do we all know each other? Like Visa was the one that introduced all of us. And like this person's dating that, but they're married now. And you know, it's like this person's in a band with that person. And it's just, I just introduced people to people and it works out, you know? And I guess, so when I say that,

Divia (22:02)

Mm-hmm.

Visa (22:23)

Someone else might then come along and be like, I tried that and it didn't work. And I'm like, did not realize that I did not think to include the fact that, OK, first of all, you've got to filter for a certain level of pro-social thing. And so it's layers and layers of that. And sometimes I don't know what I know. sometimes I don't know. Oftentimes, I don't know what is implicit until I encounter a misunderstanding. And I'm like, OK, that's because I assumed.

bunch of things. So I have good assumptions, which is kind of, you know, yeah, it's a strange, and I don't know what they are. So it's kind of, slightly, it's it's, guess it's because, yeah, I don't even know why, you know, like I can, I can like recite my like, words that come out of my head, that, you know, kind of say words around the thing. But if I really investigate it, I don't really know why. Like I have theories, right, like just like, okay, I,

When I was a kid, I wanted to be wiser because I felt unwise. And so I did a lot of reading. But a lot of people do a lot of reading. that doesn't quite. Until then, I'm like, OK, maybe it's something very particular to. So my current leading theory is something like my leading story that I'm still. my family runs a family business. And so I was raised a lot by helpers, domestic helpers, who left.

Divia (23:28)

A lot of people do that, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Visa (23:50)

And I remember that, I think, from a very young age, that was kind of devastating. remember, and I forgot about it, sort of, but it was, I was never like close to my parents emotionally. I mean, we get along. It's not, you know, I wouldn't say they're like bad people or neglectful or whatever. And like a lot of Singaporean kids are basically raised by helpers who they don't know anymore. It's like a movie about it. And then, but yeah, so again, that's part of the story, but lots of other Singaporean kids also.

Divia (24:02)

Yeah.

Visa (24:19)

do that. So why am I different? Then there's like, okay, I remember reading. So I spent a lot of my childhood reading a lot about like disasters. And I didn't connect the dots that disasters and like, know, collapse of civilizations and stuff like that. It's like emotionally similar to abandonment, or feelings of like, you know, why is everything over? why, you know, so there's that. And then I remember reading about, so in school, when I was like 10,

Divia (24:31)

Okay.

Visa (24:49)

In Singapore, you learn about the Japanese occupation in World War II. And it's like a classroom thing. in 1945, this happened, and then the Japanese came, and then this happened. And everyone's just like, yeah, I'm like... And specifically, the thing that blew my mind was the currency became worthless. So the Japanese introduced a new currency, which they called banana money, and it quickly became worthless. And I was shell-shocked in that moment. I was like, what? Money can just become worthless? And everyone else turned to page for whatever. I'm like...

Divia (25:07)

Hmm.

Visa (25:19)

wait, can we discuss this? What's going on? And yeah, so I think it's something of those two things. It's like having that childhood experience, which quite a lot of people have, and then reading a lot about ancient history stuff and just having a lot of context, I guess, and then learning that that's also true in very recent living memory in my country. And yeah, maybe being a minority might have something to do with it.

Divia (25:19)

You

Okay, so sorry, I think I need to connect these dots for me. So how exactly the experience of being raised by the helpers and then they would leave, like, I think I don't quite, I believe you, but I don't quite see the through line from that to the sort of success that you're trying to put your finger on.

Visa (26:03)

Right, I think, and you know, there are a few other stories of a few other people that to me feels emotionally similar. So like one of the, like also in Singapore, one of our top diplomats slash foreign policy experts is this guy called Billahari. And I mean, people dispute whether, a lot of people don't like him because he's very abrasive, but he's like, the consensus is like he's kind of a genius.

Divia (26:12)

Mm-hmm.

Visa (26:29)

And one of his experiences, think, was that his father was in an embassy in Indonesia, I think, when there were riots and stuff. And he lost contact and something. It was a very traumatic experience, basically. And there's a few other things. If you look into like, where else do I want to tell stories about? There's something about having a rock. So I call these rock pool experiences, which I have a draft about.

And it's from crypto. So in crypto, say, run pool is when you lose your money or whatever. But I think it's an excellent phrase for just having your reality pulled out from under your feet. So you have some model of reality. this person, my mate, this lady who takes care of me will always be there for me. she's gone. And this money will always have value. it's gone. And when you have an experience,

Divia (27:00)

Yeah. Totally.

I see. Okay. So this is, this is when you were saying that you seemed like you had pretty solid assumptions. I think now you're like, because you questioned all of your assumptions due to some of these experiences.

Visa (27:35)

I think it seems like it. that's my leading current theory. People who have not yet experienced something of a Rumpool event, there's something different about, it's like you're trying to explain stuff to them and they will say they get it and they'll nod and be like, that makes sense. But they don't really, and it's, same for even, guess one of the most universal things is when people become parents, right? And then you think about,

whatever you've heard people say before you became a parent, and you're like, yeah, I get it. And then the reality of it, there's a certain reality shock where whatever the description of the thing is very, you know what mean? So it's like, do some people have a better time adapting to shocks than other people and why? I think that's one of the big questions that I don't know the answer to.

Divia (28:27)

parenthood thing, I think conventional wisdom is you can't really explain to someone what it's like to be a parent. They just have to experience it,

Visa (28:34)

Seems like it, yeah? And you don't agree?

Divia (28:35)

Yeah.

Visa (28:40)

You can prepare quite a bit.

Divia (28:41)

It doesn't seem right to me. when I, the way I, and I don't know that I'm right, but like on an emotional level, I'm like, no, I totally could have explained it to myself, but just nobody would explain it to me. Again, I feel like I was asking. Like when I was pregnant, I went around to everybody I knew. I go up to strangers. I'm like, okay, like, please tell me about it. Like, what am I missing? And like, might be fooling myself, but I'm like, I could have given myself.

Visa (28:53)

People are very, yeah. Yeah.

Divia (29:07)

Of course it's like, it's unfair to be like me and me, but still, I'm like, no, I could have explained it. Those people just didn't, and that's why I didn't get it.

Visa (29:09)

No, I, yeah.

I believe you. I think so and I think this is one of those things where we are both like kind of Both of us are a little bit strange, right? Like so like when I was asking people to psychoanalyze me I had like a hundred response yours was good. Everyone else's was meh and so, know that there's differences in quality of explanations and most people are really bad at it and like, you know, I look around and like People who are trying people who are parents who want to encourage other people to become parents

Divia (29:26)

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

Visa (29:43)

try to sell them on being parents and they do it horribly. They're like, it's going to be the most meaningful experience. Nobody wakes up in the morning and be like, I want a more meaningful experience. Not in those terms, right? Like you have to describe. And I'm not even talking about explaining what it's like, but just selling things to people. just pitching and I can think of so many things that were poorly sold to me. I'm putting on my marketing guy hat. But I got into marketing in

Divia (29:46)

It's true.

Yeah.

Visa (30:12)

Part because I felt like some things were well pitched and some things were poorly pitched and I wanted to understand the difference and I wanted to get good at it. And it's like, you know, one of the best ways of thinking about meditation that I like is that it's like you stop feeling like a guest in your own body and you start feeling like it's yours, like you're a native. Right. And it's so welcoming and inviting and it's not, you know, I think people have some kind of profound experience and then they...

Divia (30:32)

I do like that.

Visa (30:41)

they want to tell you that it's profound, but that's not the nature of profound experience. So it's like the moment you decide, I'm going to tell people how amazing it is, the experience of amazingness is not, wow, how amazing it is. So it's to understand how to convey the thing. guess it's a kind of literacy. It's like a language management, storytelling skill where

Divia (31:04)

Yeah.

Visa (31:09)

The way to convey a thing is not necessarily to name the thing as the thing, but to give the, you know, I'm reminded now of Andrew Stanton, who wrote Finding Nemo. He gave a TED Talk when TED Talks were good. And he was explaining that, you know, like storytelling is like, you don't want to tell people, you want to put two plus two and let the audience connect and say it's four. You don't want to be like four. You you want to like present in a way that they can complete.

Divia (31:34)

Great.

Visa (31:38)

the interpretation and then it's Diaz. And yeah, I think that's true for parenting. It's true for like, so I've had so many people tell me that my tweets about my son make them look forward to becoming a parent or make them likelier to want to become a parent. I've had so many people tell me they love my wife entirely based on my tweets of her, which is like my intention. have intent, like it's on purpose that I want people to like her because she's kind of a loner and like I want her to friends and but like.

Divia (31:59)

Yeah?

Visa (32:08)

You can.

Divia (32:09)

It worked on me. I think she's cool. And the way especially you talk about like all the research she does and like the way she seems really tuned into all this stuff going on in Singapore seems really impressive.

Visa (32:14)

Mm.

Yeah, she is really cool. And the thing is, there are a lot of cool people who we don't know about because nobody's helping them tell their story in a way that's compelling. And that's really what decisively made me go from, I want to try and, so you can innovate, you can sell, and you can manage the invent. I think the quote was like, you build it, you sell it, you handle the money, or you keep the house in order.

like illegal accounting, HR, whatever. like, so build it or sell. And I can't do, I can't manage a checkbook or I'll go crazy. So my choices are either I build it or I sell it. And then I investigate. First, on one level, the people who build stuff, have, like, at the cutting edge of building, they have like a sensibility that I see it and I recognize that I don't have it to that degree. Like really that maniacal, I'm going to get all the details right, I'm going to trial and error, whatever. Whereas,

I can experiment with, let's try telling this story like 25 different ways and see what resonates with people. For some reason, I'm drawn to that of all the things. And also, I hear things like when flight was invented by the Wright brothers, it took years before people even realized that it had happened. people had seen it. Yeah. So right now, if you want to accelerate innovation or whatever in the world,

Divia (33:23)

Yeah, interesting.

I do think there are a lot of things like that.

Visa (33:45)

It's already here, not evenly distributed. And so you can actually just, and to the person who didn't know about a thing, the person who did it and the person who told them about it are almost equal in importance. Because if the person did it and somebody didn't tell them, then they didn't know about it. It's as good as if it never happened to that person. And then you multiply by everyone. Anyway, so the thing I.

Divia (34:06)

Yeah.

I mean, it just seemed like the sort of thing you're well suited to.

Visa (34:14)

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to tell. Is it that I was always like that? Was I innately like that? Did I optimize for it along the way? A bit of both, maybe. And yeah, if it...

Divia (34:27)

So, yeah, I think it's so interesting to think about like where.

where people's kind of like fundamental dispositions really come from. And I thought about it a lot this time when I was pregnant. I don't mean it in some mystical way, but sort of like what is a soul in the sense that like sort of the most fundamental parts about how someone is. Because obviously a ton of it's genetic, but I've seen a bunch of identical twins and they come out of, they're different. And what I've determined when I try to talk about it,

Visa (34:37)

Mm.

Mmm.

Divia (35:03)

to them or their parents is they come out different. And so I'm like, it's whatever it is, it's gotta be pretty early. Even though, yeah, like again, they really are pretty similar, genetics is a lot, but it's not the only thing. And some of these fundamental dispositions, I don't know, it really, it's the sort of thing that I probably keep thinking about it. Like in particular, one of my bigger updates, not even just from having my own kids, but like,

Visa (35:11)

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (35:31)

You know, ever since I had kids, hang out with more people with their kids. And I can't tell if I'm exaggerating or not when I say this, but the basic update is that babies are about as different from each other as adults are. And I think there's some, like some sort of overall cultural attitude and also some part of me that's like, yeah, but don't think some people sort of start out similar and then diverge. And I'm like, kind of, but also kind of the opposite. Like kind

Visa (35:45)

Yeah, I think so too. Correct.

Yeah.

Divia (35:59)

they're right there from the beginning and then they try to fit in and like I don't know.

Visa (36:01)

Yeah, yeah. Again, even before I had kids, I would show up at a nephew's birthday party, like two-year-olds, three-year-olds. They're so different. They all do different. Some will be running after each other. Some will be approaching adults. Some will be off in a corner somewhere. you look at them, you're like, these are people. They might be unskilled in certain ways, but their inclinations, especially, I think.

Divia (36:13)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Visa (36:31)

You can't change your... You can't... You know, you can... I don't know how much you can influence these things. My son is clearly more social even than me. He loves people. We go anywhere... And my wife is very much not. So she's like, god, what have I brought in the world? Because we brought him to this play area in a mall where you pay to go in and there's toys. And we kind of... Not forgot, but we didn't really think about how... there are going to be other kids there as well.

Divia (36:38)

Interesting.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Visa (37:00)

And okay, so we bring him in and Sharon's thinking, okay, you sit down on the floor and let him get used to you because we're in a new space and he's small and like let him get used to you first and let him watch you play and then he'll start playing. And so she put him down and he races off to go meet the other kids. Yeah. And he just goes right into it like, wow, that's fearless, fearless and

Divia (37:19)

To the other kids.

Visa (37:29)

so energetic and so and you look around other kids and there was at least one kid that's kind of just hanging out hanging out by himself and seemingly happy to just chill and like we can make some very you know he's it's unlikely that my kid and that kid are going to be the opposite like 20 years from now where right it's it's i mean you could have some major event that revises something for you you might whatever whatever but like i don't you

Divia (37:48)

This seems right.

Visa (37:58)

People will always, when you tell people, no, where am going with this? Whatever you become later in life, there's always a through line back. And it could be because there's many, many branching paths. So whatever path you take, there will always be a path back. that then seems like a very significant thing. And yet, just the fact that that exists, I think, is, and the same with my writing, for example. I have never written a good

Divia (38:26)

Mm-hmm.

Visa (38:28)

piece of writing that I did not already have like a proto-primitive version of like years earlier. Like every single one of my books, even so right now when I finally decided, okay, this era is going to be called frame studies, I can do like a from visa frames. I'm like, I've been tweeting about this for a long time. But at the moment when I do it, it feels like, I've got a new, like a fresh take on things or something. And which tells me that my next thing after this is also something that I've already done.

Divia (38:35)

Right.

You've been talking about it.

Visa (38:57)

Right? It can seem a little bit limiting from a certain point of view, like, there's nothing new. Everything's already done. But on the other hand, it's also exciting because you see it with fresh perspective and it becomes more activated. Like, you realize that, this thing that was set in passing is actually so much more to it than I initially thought. And that kind of makes

Divia (38:58)

Seems right, yeah.

Visa (39:27)

everything around you actually becomes so much more lively like like you can't write anything off entirely

Divia (39:33)

You can see it as like these are these things that I'm thinking now they're going to grow into more later.

Visa (39:38)

Yeah, as long as you're following your nose about whatever's interesting, there's always... You can't know in advance what will resonate with you later on. I feel like we've gone in a bunch of circles and there were some questions that we had that were interesting that we didn't finish answering. Was it?

Divia (39:56)

Yeah, no, it's so, that's okay. I wanted to ask you about the thing that you've sort of been circling around. So this is, it makes sense, but about like what you're trying to distill. one description of it that I heard was like, what makes it so that things work out for you basically? Like there's something, you have some kind of...

Visa (40:03)

Okay, cool.

Divia (40:20)

Visa magic and you're like, what is it? And you want to share it.

Visa (40:24)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Some of it is just not giving up, I think. But no, that's even that. I mean, that's like, well, yeah, like so if you give up, then it's game over. Then you can't stay in the game long enough to start getting the rewards. even like with, so part of it is try to do things that you enjoy doing that you can do for a very, very long time. Because a lot of the mainstream games that people play, all the rewards are like,

downstream and a lot of people give up early and so they get like the worst of both worlds which is very common.

Divia (41:11)

think, yeah, so the thing that seems, and obviously you talk about this all the time, but if I had to say what seems most fundamental from what you've been saying is the part about focusing on what you want.

Visa (41:22)

But interestingly, came to me kind of late. I guess I was sort of doing it, it came in when I was like, I don't know, 28, 29? So my early 20s were not there. So this points at a thing I want to get to about, I call it blessedness versus wretchedness, which is like upward-downward spirals,

Divia (41:28)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Visa (41:51)

The wretched thing about wretchedness is that you try to help someone and it gets worse. And so then they don't get help. then that gets worse. Whereas with blessedness, it's like, you introduce a friend to another friend and you trust that they will take care of things. So you can just let them be and everything just gets better. And it's like, you, yeah, I feel like I've been in the wretched place before.

Divia (42:01)

Yeah.

Visa (42:18)

But then I have since heard from people who are way, way worse. I'm like, almost like, is this stolen better? When I was like 17, that felt true for me. Everything I was doing seemed to make everything worse. But I guess I was never truly down. I didn't go as far down bed as some people can, I guess. But I'm still contextualizing that.

Divia (42:38)

Yeah, I wonder. I think some of why that one resonates with me a lot. So something, I probably don't talk about it that often in terms of my main influences, but when I was in my mid-20s, this guy recommended, so have you heard of Holosync or Bill Harris? Probably not, but. So Holosync, I don't know how, it's Binaural Beats. And my impression is it's kind of a, yeah, and I think.

Visa (43:04)

OK. yeah, OK. I know by the orbits.

Divia (43:08)

it might even kind of scam me because I haven't totally ever fact-checked this, but I think the idea is that it has like slightly different sounds in each ear and it causes some like, I don't it's like a little trippy when you listen to it. But I think when the guys started selling it, was when like on a cassette where that couldn't even really have necessarily been true. I might be wrong about that. But anyway, so he introduced me to Holosync, but also he had these

Visa (43:19)

Yeah

Sure

Divia (43:37)

life integration courses, this guy, Bill Harris. And he never, I never really did the Holosync that much. I think the basic theory and he would, I also like something I still think about all the time is prig gene and disabative systems. I don't even really, I understand what it means more now that I did that, but his basic theory was like, look, you kind of just perturb the system a little and then it makes it like more plastic. And then if you learn better concepts, it's then then everything will be better. And he, so he had these, he was like a,

Visa (43:38)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Divia (44:07)

sort of hypnotist guy who was trained in like neuro-linguistic programming. He was a big marketing guy and he had probably had three courses, I say like 12 lessons each. And my friend gave me these MP3s. I used to listen to them. And that was just his top thing is you have to focus on what you want instead of on what you don't want. But he said it like 50 different ways and he tried to really drill down to the details and he's like, look, a lot of people have learned a shallow version of this. Some teacher told them to do that. So they started framing their sentences in positive ways. He's like, but you've got to.

Visa (44:20)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Nice.

Divia (44:37)

drill down to the actual mental representations and a lot of it anyway with a whole I don't know that's

Visa (44:44)

I see it. I see it. Yeah. It's, you know, it's like the inverse is like, so people say things like, I don't know if that could work or whatever, but like most people are doing the opposite all the time and it's clearly working. It's clearly working that like focusing on the worst things is making things worse. So.

Divia (44:58)

Yeah!

No, and I think there's there's some really wrong and cringey stuff out there, like, you know, the secret video or people are like, just focus on bills, you know, on checks instead of bills. And I'm like, no, no, like, like, of course not. Like, and of course the way this works is through people actually doing things. Like it's not, but the idea that on like a pretty low level, that is sort of how brains work is they're kind of like, all right, let me, this is what I'm picturing. Let me kind of try to.

Visa (45:09)

yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Divia (45:31)

it feels better when that kind of lines up with what I'm seeing. I think it's true.

Visa (45:34)

Yeah. Yeah, we are like pattern recognizing creatures. And again, if someone says don't look down, you don't process the don't very well yet. The don't has to, we hear the instruction and instincts is to follow the instruction before we, even though the first word is don't, right? You then.

Divia (45:43)

Yeah.

Yeah, no, and I remember this. I mean, I can notice it as an adult, but I also remember it as a kid too. this time, for me, the most distinct memory, I think it was my brother and he had this like some really sticky tape or something and he was gonna put something on the wall and he was like, don't touch it. And I just reached out and it wasn't like I was trying to do the opposite of what he said. It was just like a really, the way I remembered is like a really low level. heard something like touch it. I was like, like touch it? I don't know.

Visa (46:13)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So your brain is like, don't x is a very, you then have to, your brain or yourself, you have to do x and then process the don't. So don't touch it. like, this is the thing I'm not supposed to do. But you already start, you have to, you know.

Divia (46:38)

Right, and I think it is, I don't know, people go back and forth on this, but I think it is about the words and it's not. I think it's both that he said it that way and that he was probably imagining me touching it. So I think his whole vibe was kinda like, communicat- I mean, I don't really remember this very, in a lot of detail, but I do know that when I see parents with their kids, sometimes they're like, don't do that. And I'm like, okay, maybe there's some advantage to saying it in the positive, but like-

Visa (46:47)

sure. Yeah.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah

Divia (47:06)

I think the overall communication is pretty clear. Whereas then other times I see parents and I'm like, you just gave your kid like a hypnotic instruction to do that thing. Like, and I know you have some tweets about this, but like, I don't know. It's, I definitely sometimes think about it. And then I try, you know, I try to mostly not think about it too much because it's not really, it's, I think it's ultimately not my business what people are doing with their kids, but.

Visa (47:08)

Yeah.

Yeah, it's wild.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah, same. So same. Yeah, I also care about this. And I also don't want to intrude in people's lives to micromanage their parenting. But if there's something we could release into the cultural ether where they might encounter it at some point, and then they're like, hmm, I should think about how I'm talking with my kids. That would be great. And I think it's possible. I've had DMs with some guy where,

Divia (47:35)

But I think it's very interesting.

Yeah.

Visa (48:01)

He came to me to ask me for some advice for some I don't know what. And I was talking to him about relationships in general as like a metaphor for something else. And then he DMed me like six months later saying that he had had a shitty relationship with his younger brother all his life because he was always trying to tell him what to do and what not to do. And it was from a place of, he thought he was helping, but like his brother felt it as like an intrusion on his sovereignty. And he didn't see it that way until I spoke to him about something else.

And he said he shifted the way he talked to his brother, and their relationship is completely different now. I'm like, what? That can happen? The fact that these things can happen, I wonder why I don't wake up every morning going, my god, there's so much opportunity to do so much good. It just doesn't feel obvious, I guess. And yeah, so another one of my riffs is the most magical thing about reality, about the perception, is that it transforms.

Divia (48:32)

That's so cool. Yeah.

Visa (48:55)

the extraordinary in trans, it makes the magical mundane. Like we have a magical brain that makes the magical mundane. I guess to make things more convenient so we can understand, like we narrow our frame of everything so that we can function and go about our day. Because being in like ecstatic exaltation about everything might be not.

Divia (48:59)

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, think it's then people sometimes end up kind of manic and it has problems, especially with like interfacing with other people and

Visa (49:27)

So then the kind of holy grail is like, is it possible to have like this soft mania that still lets you... I think it is, Yeah.

Divia (49:34)

Yeah, I think some people do it, yeah. I think so. But I think, so one of my, I don't know, feel like a relatively crack body talking about this, for me, and this has been on my mind recently, so I think one of the top things I have to figure out to sort of maintain the energy for the things I actually think are important.

Visa (49:45)

Another hit.

Divia (50:00)

is something like how to interface with some big societal force that doesn't really, that's like more like nah, people should be conventional, like whatever. Because I think it's a real thing and for me at least it doesn't work to just dismiss it. So I'm like I have to form some sort of relatively healthy understanding. I don't know if that makes sense, what I'm saying.

Visa (50:17)

Mm-hmm.

Wait, so you're saying that you have like a, like, it's kind of like a super-ego, like, societal representation that you have to get along with?

Divia (50:31)

So for example, like this is probably some of the most like, my God, these ideas are so cool. A couple of years ago, I was really into this, these ideas I found about animal training or whatever. And I do think they're good ideas. As with many things, I think I was like, I don't know, I thought maybe they would have more potential more quickly than they did, but you know, that's typical. But I remember, or especially looking back at it, I'm like, no, but just as I'm like, but this could be really important.

Visa (50:43)

Okay.

Divia (50:58)

There's some kind, like you know the meme that's been going around lot lately about like nothing ever happens? I feel like I have something in my head that's like, don't get too excited about that, because remember, nothing ever happens. Like who do you think you are to like think that something could happen? I'm like, well, but it seems like it's like, no, nothing other than, and like, it's not, I don't know, I don't wanna, I don't think I'm giving like a perfect description of it, but I think there is something like that that I feel like I have to contend with, because it's sort of out of sync with people if I'm like, nah, stuff can happen.

Visa (51:02)

Are you sure?

Aw man.

man.

Well, my... Sure.

Okay.

Yeah, well, OK, my kind of antidote to that. So first of all, would say that it's good to have some part of you be like, don't count on the change happening tomorrow. Don't count on it. Because if you're counting on it, then it's going to be a mess. But the other thing I would say is like, every change that ever happened, every significant change that ever happened seemed

Divia (51:44)

Sure, definitely.

Visa (51:56)

like it was never going to happen seemed impossible until it seemed inevitable. Now you take like the Berlin Wall for example, like the day before

Divia (52:04)

You know that, by the way, that is the first historical event I remember someone telling me about. I remember my mom being like, the Berlin Wall just fell. I was really little. I had no idea what it meant, but I feel happy that I remember it. Anyway, yeah, that is one of those things.

Visa (52:15)

Yeah.

Yeah, it was never going to happen. And then once it happens, it was always going to happen. Same for in Singapore, legalizing. So we had this archaic law that criminalized gay sex. I don't think they ever used it in court, but it was just this shitty vestige of people would use it to justify.

Divia (52:37)

Mm-hmm.

Visa (52:44)

like some bigotry, or they would say, it's not enforced, or it's not a big deal, whatever. But it's just this, I would say it's an eyesore in the legal structure, and it cascades out into culture. And people are like, that's never going to change. It's been there forever, and then it did. And then now, it just seems so obvious. And I would say even, I remember when I was just going to say that.

Divia (53:00)

So did.

And even gay marriage in the US, same kind of thing. Like all these, like Obama and whatever, they're like, look, civil unions, whatever, don't get too excited. But then that was passed.

Visa (53:13)

Yeah. I was just going to say that. Yeah. Like in 2014, if you had asked me when the US was going to legalize gay marriage federally, I'd like, maybe 2030, 25 maybe. And it's next, it's like, it's happened so fast. And the crazy thing is, as soon as the thing happens, people are very, very quick to like rearrange around it as if it was always the case. And I think, I think that actually contributes to the feeling that nothing ever happens because we are not

Divia (53:39)

Totally.

Visa (53:43)

You know, like, and so there is, I don't know you want to call it the man or Moloch or whatever, but like, there is some, in the social order, like this Hobbesy Leviathan creature, right? It's like, how does social change happen? It happens, or like, how does, you know, it happens because some group of people were very persistent in like being annoying, basically. And you don't, you generally don't want people to be annoying for no good reason or whatever. And so that, that

Divia (54:06)

Yeah.

Visa (54:12)

that information that people were being annoying until change happens tends to get like suppressed or you know, just like shrouded in whatever so that the next group of people isn't annoying for no particular reason or and Yeah, it's just that agitation is is misunderstood and that under theorized under appreciated, I don't know like

Yeah, I mean, I don't know how to talk about that, like nothing ever happens is a Psyop that such that the moment something happens, it then gets re, you know, the narrative gets rearranged around it such that it didn't happen. Yeah, yeah, we always knew that was, well, that was obviously going to happen. But other than that, nothing ever happens. You know, that thing was, of course it was going to, like, that's not, you you shouldn't, we are so quick.

Divia (54:54)

Yeah. We've always been a war with Eurasia.

Visa (55:07)

to rearrange the narrative such that we know what's happening. Even optimists, think. But everyone is afraid to acknowledge that we don't know for sure. And so I think there's this anecdote. I don't know how true it is, something about how people prefer, for a small electric shock that's painful, people prefer 100. If you press a button, you get it 100 % of the time. But since you press one, you get one 50 % of the time. People prefer, you know those shitty.

Divia (55:20)

Yeah, that's you.

Visa (55:37)

like silly science experiments, sociology professor experiments. But people apparently consistently prefer 100 % shock to 50 % shock. Because you like, at least you know it's gonna hurt. as opposed to I don't know, nothing happened. like, so that that uncertainty is hard to bear. So people actually prefer. It seems to me, I mean, I, I buy that it seems it's consistent with my experience of like, it's why so many people are so cynical and pessimistic. think it's like you have

Divia (55:40)

Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting.

Visa (56:05)

certainty to orient around. optimism is very, something cool could happen. When? I don't know. Today might be the day I write something amazing that changes my life. Today? And I look back, it's like the tweet that I told that changed my life was when I, I mean, there have been many such tweets, but one of the biggest was me replying to Mason about libraries or something, like Patrick McKenzie was there. It's just something about.

Divia (56:07)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Visa (56:34)

spaceships and I think I tweeted something like, kids are starving for the feeling of someone who really cares about them and you know that's why that's what reading was about for me. I wasn't reading to so many so much text wow I want to read a book like no like the author gave a s**t and I'm yearning to be in the presence of someone who gives a s**t and I tweeted that and that was sufficient to like inspire someone to arrange for me to fly over to the the states.

Divia (56:50)

Yeah.

Visa (57:03)

And it doesn't really matter the specific details about the flight and the states and whatever. It's just being kind of people expending time, effort, resources to help someone else based on what they've said. I always vaguely believed something like that would happen for me sooner or later if I just persisted. But I could not have known when or how. So it's so, which is.

Divia (57:24)

Yeah.

Visa (57:34)

I don't think I appreciate the degree to which how, I don't think I appreciate how there's a level in which, there's a sense in which that's like tiresome. Like it's it's energetically costly, I think at some level, I don't know, like just choosing to remain optimistic and open to possibility that is, I'm not.

Divia (57:57)

I think it drains something, at least for most people.

Visa (58:00)

Yeah, I don't know if it drains me less or if I'm just committed to allowing that. Is this a priority? I feel like it's so important and it's so big that I'm willing to make that my main... It was my main...

Divia (58:04)

Or if you just do it.

Visa (58:17)

Energy sync? don't know. I mean, same for just interacting with people online. The history of my replies, even before Twitter, on Reddit, on wherever, I've always been like, you either put in the effort to give a good reply or don't bother. Why would you do a mid-mediocre reply that

Divia (58:19)

Yeah, that's where you want to put it. That's where it seems worthwhile.

Visa (58:43)

The person is just going to like, ugh, stupid reply. So yeah, so some people approach it with like, well, I'm just here to blow off steam. I do think that's probably one of the major things. That's probably a very major difference. There are a of people who go online to blow off steam. It's just the internet is a cesspit. I'm at work, or I'm on the train. I'm just pissed off. I'm frustrated. I'm just going to, what's this annoying thing? I'm going to respond with whatever. And I remember even at my most.

depressed and I hate the world and like that face. Even then I was like, can I make art out of this somehow? Like, can I grumble in a way that is compelling to someone and makes them go, wow, I feel seen? So that might have been another one of my early things was just exposure to artists and music and this sense of feeling welcome and heard and seen in that space, like reading. And so.

Divia (59:21)

Yeah.

Visa (59:43)

It does involve being disappointed a bunch where you put in time and effort to do a good reply and the person doesn't appreciate it. But then it's like a numbers game where like, if you, I think I have a tweet somewhere else as well. It's like, if you have to talk to a thousand people to find three truly amazing people, like maybe one's your spouse and one's like your best friend and one's like your best collaborator, and it's gonna take you 10 years to...

to talk to a thousand, like three people a day, every day for 10 years, or I don't know what the math is. And like, you're going to be disappointed by 997 people. Would you do it? And I'm like, of course, like, because if you do it by the time, by the time you're 35, the rest of your life is completely changed by the presence of those excellent people in your life. And yeah, even, even just like saying this, I think a lot of people who haven't thought about it that way,

Divia (1:00:22)

Yeah, of course, right.

Visa (1:00:39)

They'll be like, well, that sounds good, but, you know.

Divia (1:00:44)

Well, and I think maybe some people don't trust themselves to recognize when the people finally come along.

Visa (1:00:50)

Yeah.

That's true as well. think one of the saddest things is you have a connection to someone and it goes well and then it goes bad. My biggest grief is still all the friends, all my former friends, people that I used to connect with and then for some reason we just stopped talking and when we tried to reconnect it just goes badly. I'm still sad about a teenage friend who I want to talk to again but I don't even know how to reach out.

You know, like, yeah, like some people are surprised to hear that because like I have so many people competing for my attention. But yeah, that was very meaningful to me. And like, why did it go bad? Like, was it me? Was it something about, I don't know. It's just, it's a, and yet you have to like to do the thing that I do or like the way I see it, it's like you really have to persist through the heartbreak.

Divia (1:01:25)

Yeah.

That makes sense.

Visa (1:01:53)

So someone was just DMing me like, when I was young, I had a lot of trickster energy. And then now I've kind of lost it. Do you have any advice? I'm like, yeah, it's very normal for young boys for whatever to be mischievous and silly and whatever. And then you get responsibilities. You get bills. You make mistakes. You hurt people. You hurt yourself. And then it's just like, well, that sucks. I guess I'm not going to do that anymore. And so I think people, myself included, like we

Divia (1:02:16)

Yeah.

Visa (1:02:21)

We overlearn to not do things after something goes wrong. So it's like, well, if it's like, tried the thing. It went horribly. I'm not going to try it again. It's it's kind of logical. You tried the thing. It led to something bad. OK, don't do the thing. It makes sense. You could say the logic is watertight and sound. So it takes imagination. It takes imagination to be like,

Well, this led to a bad thing, but maybe there's another outcome. It takes that sense of possibility and yeah.

Divia (1:02:58)

Yeah, like is there a way to do it, but have the odds be good or can you mitigate the downside or like really strategize about it?

Visa (1:03:05)

Yeah, so there's like a math part of it feels like a math component part of it feels like a imagination component

Divia (1:03:12)

And this is related to what I was trying to say before. I think a lot of people don't believe they really have permission to think for themselves.

Visa (1:03:21)

man, is so... I remember... This reminds me of a tweet that made me so upset. And it's like, I know that the person was being silly, but it made me so upset like in a righteous rage way, where someone said something like, you know if you're doing tasks and you're like bored or whatever and like you can pretend you're in a video game or you can pretend something, you can have a little mental illness as a treat. Or like you can be a little mental... And I was like...

Divia (1:03:30)

Yeah.

Visa (1:03:51)

I'm so like,

just every, I completely co-signed the suggestion. Like you can do whatever you want to make your life bearable, right? You can do, and the idea that that's framed as like doing a bit of a crime or doing a bit of a, I'm like, that's, you know, it's what your brain is for, kind of, or like what's your, what your imagination is for, to be playful. It's like, I remember I got so angry, I was like,

Divia (1:03:59)

Yeah.

Visa (1:04:21)

I was using a GIF of like an Indian auntie with a sleeper, like, who's best do I have to beat? That, you know, we've gotten to this point. Yeah, we've gotten to this point where people being playful with themselves. And it's like, you know, it's almost like you think you take those devices that's like, you're not supposed to open it and your warranty is void or whatever. It's like you're doing that with your own thinking and your own feeling. Like, I'm not allowed to think or feel in a way that's different than like the prescribed.

Divia (1:04:29)

that put this on everyone, yeah.

So yeah. Yeah.

Visa (1:04:51)

know, formulaic thing.

Divia (1:04:52)

Yeah, I remember sitting around as a kid and looking at like some mattress I don't know if this is a thing in Singapore. In the US there's often something that's mattresses have these tags that are like do not remove or else whatever whatever But it's not for the person that owns the mattress It's like you're not allowed like the point is you're not allowed to remove it if you're selling the mattress until you've sold it But then people get understandably they get intimidated by these tags and then these mattresses still have these tags on them

Visa (1:05:09)

right. In the store. OK. All right.

yeah. I remember after a couple of months, I got so pissed off with all of the baby... So like, you know, my baby wearing thing, all the freaking, caution, hazard, like you're going to kill your child. I'm like, that's stressing me out. I know I don't need that. I don't need seven of these warnings in my house every time I look everywhere being reminded. And yeah, like cutting those tags off.

Divia (1:05:29)

Yeah.

I know.

Really?

Visa (1:05:46)

made me more chill which I think led to me being a better dad like this much like 1 % or whatever but like you know

Divia (1:05:54)

Yeah, no, think, okay, so also, this is, can talk about whatever forever, but one other thing I wanted to get to was you had tweeted about getting stuff done, now you are a dad. Your tweet said, I'm not precisely sure, but I think the main thing might be how do I containerize my work into packets such that I can do them in small chunks that add up coherently in the associated changes I have to make around.

Visa (1:06:07)

Mm-hmm.

Divia (1:06:18)

And I'm like, yeah, that, don't know. I mean, I think basically you have it. I think that's what it is. And this is something, not that I'm some like master of getting things done with my kids. I can do some things, but not other things. But I, well, like I said, I think it's that. I think, I think the top thing is to not keep a bunch of state and to think about like, what's the smallest loop that I can just fully complete.

Visa (1:06:29)

please, yeah. I'd love to hear it, whatever.

Mmm.

Divia (1:06:46)

And I have a bunch of different angles on this, but so there's this woman I follow, her name is Dana K. White, and she talks about cleaning your house, basically. And I've been following her for years. She's sort of one of my inspirations. And her algorithm for, this is like my metaphor for everything, is if you have like a pile of stuff that you're trying to figure out what to do with it. Cause she used to have to be like a total mess. Like often I think the people with the best advice are the people that really needed it themselves.

Visa (1:06:59)

Nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

Divia (1:07:14)

And so the thing she figured out, she's like, all right, first, if there's any trash, get rid of the trash. Then if there's anything you already know what you need to do with it, you just haven't done it yet, then do that. And she's like, okay, and then you find some object, you're like, what about this? Like it doesn't have a place. And she's, her strategy is you look at it and you're like, okay, if I needed this, where would I look for it? And then take it there. Which, and that's the part that everyone's like, no, but like, isn't it more efficient to like pile it up?

Visa (1:07:35)

Mmm.

Aww.

Nah.

Divia (1:07:42)

And she's like, no, actually. She's like, it's true that if five things need to go to that location, that could be better. But in that case, once you're going to go there, look around. What else needs to go there? And find that, and then immediately go there. Because I think everything is kind of like that. And also, I think there's some sort of cultural artifact of, I don't know if you think in terms of spiral dynamics or modernism or so. But I think there's something.

Visa (1:07:45)

Yeah.

this.

Divia (1:08:12)

that has to do with our developmental stage as a civilization right now, that doesn't acknowledge the costs of things that are, like, there's a lot of weird accounting going on where it's very common for people to be like, no, it's more efficient to make a pile. And it doesn't even really make sense, I think. They don't really under, they're like, well, because, and I think it introduces fragility into the system that really shouldn't be there because,

especially with kids, because I'm like, okay, so, but then if my kid needs me, then I have this pile and then I come back to it and I'm like, well, now I have to like, re-figure out what even was this pile. And that's assuming that my kid doesn't start playing with the pile, like moving everything all around, which increasingly as, mean, you know, they become toddlers and then most kids like to play with piles and then eventually they lose interest in their parents' piles. But that's kind of my metaphor for everything is like, okay, that thing where you...

could just finish it, but then some part of your brain is like, no, no, but let me like make some stack of things and then like batch process. It's like, okay, well, do you want to batch process it now? That's my two cents on this.

Visa (1:09:22)

Yeah, that's funny when you said that. It's what struck me was that is what I do with my tweets. When I see a tweet that I want to remember, I ask myself something that's like, if I wanted to find this, where would I look for it? And sometimes it's like, I would put it in a thread or in a reply to something that is not quite obvious that, like, it doesn't fit in a big picture, not big picture way, it doesn't fit in a...

Like, in a, in a, yeah, it's not, it's not like orderly, you know, in a, a logical way, but it just, this is, this is the friend of that thing. You know, this thing goes with that thing. And so I put it with that. Like, so then I know, you're frozen as well. Both our videos are frozen, but I can hear you. Yeah. Yeah. I was just saying, like, I, I,

Divia (1:09:54)

Look, it might not make sense to someone else.

Wait, no, you froze. What happened?

Okay, I think we're back now.

Visa (1:10:19)

If I tried to organize things top down, I don't think it would work. Like I wouldn't know where to look for things, even though like there's a system or whatever. But I just, I'm like, what tweet does this tweet want to be friends with basically? And then I put it with that.

Divia (1:10:32)

Yeah. Yeah. And I think there are a lot of things, like another one, I got this, it's maybe a little bit of a, I don't know that anyone else would read this and get the same thing, but my friend, Scott Garibrand wrote about geometric rationality on less wrong. I'll plug it because I think it's cool. But part of what I got from that is like another one. had this moment where I, so I have since dealt with this, but for a long time, this is probably a common situation. I had a box of like some old hard drives and like old laptops that I had deal with.

Visa (1:10:59)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Divia (1:11:01)

And it was one of those things where I was like, okay, this is kind of like never gonna be the most important thing to do. And yet I don't wanna never do it. That doesn't seem right. And maybe there's some kind of accounting where I could be like, no, but it is the, but I think it's sort of like a tortured accounting to try to be like, no, but it is the highest priority. And instead the thing I switched to, which again, it to me is like the same principle as before is sometimes I would think about it and I would be like, that box.

Visa (1:11:09)

Same.

Divia (1:11:31)

And in that moment, there's something where I mean, it's a little bit of like focus on what you want to. I'm like, okay, I think what I would reflexively do is to be like, okay, now I'm going to spend like X amount of energy dismissing this thought and be like, no, not now. I can't do it. And so what I tried to tell myself now that I'm perfect at this is be like, okay, look, there's some amount that's allocated for like addressing this thought. You could use it to dismiss the thought or you could use that amount of energy to make progress.

And I try to switch to using, and often it's really not very much, because all I was gonna do is be like, no, it's not a good time, whatever. And instead I'll be like, all right, I'm gonna take literally five seconds to visualize what my next step would be.

Visa (1:12:13)

Mmm.

Divia (1:12:16)

And usually the part of me that was like, the box is kind of like, all right, well, that's better than what I would have gotten before. So like, it's an improvement. And so then when it comes back around, I'll kind of be like, all right, how can I like lock in a little? And of course it's better if I can actually like, I don't know, look up the place that I need to do data recovery on or like check to see if I have the right cord to connect the hard drive. Like something like that's better. But if I don't have time for that, at least be like, all right, well, what would the next thing be to do? And like, like another one.

I don't know, and this, I think I really am better at this, but like years ago, there was some kind of, this is something I wanted to be writing about or doing or whatever, and I was like, I managed to sort of notice myself in real time being like, well, that's strange. Whenever I think of it, I'm like, no, why haven't I done it yet? Which is kind of like, no, no, the thing that happened is I just thought of it. Like, of course I haven't done it yet, that's fine, that's why I'm still thinking about it. I don't want every thought of like, now I want to be like, yeah.

Cool, now I'm thinking about it. This is like an opportunity to think about it, instead of being like, well, I haven't done it yet. I don't know. that's, anyway, I could say a lot, but that's some of my, like, if you really have small chunks of time, I think that sort of stuff can make a big difference.

Visa (1:13:18)

Mmm, right. Yeah.

Mmm.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. It's funny. Yeah, and I anticipate that once I figure that out, it's an ongoing thing. But I do think it'll probably be better for me, actually, in terms of as a working style. It just reveals to me that my prior working style was so...

I would use so much time and space to do very little. Very little in the end. like it's just... But it's a kind of... It's like... I mean, it worked for what it was, which is fine, I guess. I don't know if I could have arbitrarily constrained myself to have a more efficient process, but...

Divia (1:14:11)

That's everyone,

Seems right.

Visa (1:14:33)

Right, it's like, yeah, I've always been wary of like, try and force yourself to do more and less. I'm like, I can't persuade myself to believe in the lie. I mean, sometimes there's like a creative, there's an interesting creative challenge. It's...

Divia (1:14:45)

Yeah.

mean, if you can imagine, like, okay, what if, but I agree if like the only way it works is if you really try to lie to yourself about it.

Visa (1:14:53)

Yeah.

Yeah, so that whole game space is interesting. It's like, if you can frame it as something interesting and exciting, like, you call a friend. And I guess conversations are one of the best ways to it. Like, as a forcing function, you have x amount of time, and you've got to go afterwards. subconsciously try to say whatever is most interesting. And then you compare that with, I spent the whole day trying to write something, and then I talked to a friend for like 20 minutes. I'm like, yeah, that.

So that works. And there's a bunch of other things like that, I think, where you try to summarize something. You give yourself a playful, interesting constraint, rather than, for the sake of productivity. When I start that, there's another voice in me that's like, f**k you. I'm not going to do that. So how do I not upset that guy? It has to be genuinely fun. having a kid now, think, is reintroducing me to that sense of, is this actually fun? Are you actually having fun?

Divia (1:15:48)

Right.

Visa (1:15:57)

It's such a... It's so primal and we are so trained out of it and it's a... Yeah.

Divia (1:16:05)

Yeah, no, it's a lot. like another maybe another half of what I, of how I think about doing things is, so there are a lot of things that when people, and obviously like, I don't think having kids is like the only thing in the world like this. People have different types of jobs and other types of caring for other people. but so in my life, even though I had jobs and stuff like that,

Having a kid, was more the case that there were a bunch of stuff that I kinda needed to function that I wasn't even really aware of, because I would just sort of get it by default in my everyday life. And then I had this kid and I'm like, I sort of can't function. I would like, I'd be like, what am I missing? Because I didn't even, and then I'd have to like be a detective and figure out what like nutrient that I didn't even realize.

and now I had to get it on purpose. my clearest example of this, so this probably sounds silly, but after I my second kid, whenever I had a little bit of spare time for a while, I would go play the Sims, and in the Sims, I would be taking care of like multiple children. And I'm like, what am I doing here? I'm like, it seems like I'm trying to recreate the exact same stress of my regular life in this game. Like why do I think this is relaxing? What's going on?

Visa (1:17:25)

Interesting.

Divia (1:17:28)

And finally, I was like, I think a friend of mine maybe helped me see this, but I was like, because in The Sims, I can cue up like four actions and then they'll go do them. And that's like, I think what I was missing because especially with the two kids, I'd be like, right, I'm gonna do this and this and this and that. And it just didn't work. Like I couldn't figure out how to do it. And then I'm like, all right, well, I guess there's some sort of, and I don't know.

Visa (1:17:41)

That's so funny.

Right.

Divia (1:17:52)

You know, I could go deeper. could be like, why does my brain need that? What's up with that? Is there some way to like get it more efficiently? But once I was like, okay, I seem to care about being able to do four things in a row. Then it was sort of like I could recalibrate. And that's that my friend of mine early on, she has 10 kids now, but I think at the time she had like seven or eight. And she said something on a forum that made this click with me where she was like,

Visa (1:18:03)

Interesting. That makes so much sense.

Divia (1:18:13)

Yeah, you sometimes I kind of just need to like stay up till two in the morning doing a creative project, even though like the next day I'm going to be kind of grumpy and like kind of take it on my kids and it's like kind of worse for everyone. But if I didn't do that creative project, then that's even worse. And so like once I know what the priorities are.

Visa (1:18:28)

Yeah.

Yeah, that's always been very clear to me, for me. And it's funny because, it's like, so when I started writing Introspect, for example, like, prior to writing it, I was like, emotionally, like, in a beautiful place. was like, shining, well-rested, know, just great. And then I started writing the book, and it was such a stressful process. Like, I started to get worse. And it's like, you know, I think I would have this conversation myself, like, you know, don't actually have to do this. You can just like...

Divia (1:18:41)

Mm-hmm.

You

Visa (1:19:01)

not do it. You can do more marketing for your first book. You can make more money that way. There's all kinds of other things you could do that's easier, less annoying, blah, blah, blah. And you'll be healthier and happier. I was smoking cigarettes when I was writing Introspect. When I'm deep in the weeds, I get into this red bull and cigarettes habit. So everything about that process was on the surface level bad for me. But then when I was done with it, it was so satisfying. And then I think it's true that

Divia (1:19:01)

You

Yeah.

Visa (1:19:31)

In the period after that was done, I was better off than before I started. But in between, I had to go into such a shitty place. I look back on it, and I smile, and I'm proud of myself for being able to project manage the meta of all of that. So in between, I was grumpy and frustrated, and I might have snapped at my wife at some point and apologized, and all those things. But being the person that completed that, like,

Divia (1:19:35)

Yeah.

Visa (1:20:00)

shifted something for me at a deeper level, I think. And now that the book is live, every week or so I get some feedback from some reader who's like, this book changed my life and it made me a better person. And that's like, it's an on. Yeah, it does. I have not reached any kind of diminishing returns on hearing about how someone's life is better. That's just always.

Divia (1:20:14)

That fuels you too, right?

Visa (1:20:25)

I mean, conceivably, that may be when it's like 100 people a day or something, then you start to, I don't know. But I get like one a week-ish, and it's always very refreshing and very reorienting and very, yeah, this is why I do what I do. And probably like one or two a day is where, I don't know, but it's always thinking ahead. yeah, it's, I don't think it necessarily needed that reward for me to have felt good.

I wanted to do a big thing and be done. And yeah, I think when I was a kid, I felt so much gratitude towards authors for writing books. And so I always wanted to participate in that process. authors write books for me. I want to write for someone else. And if one person said something, that would have been. So yeah, I think I have a tweet from 2018 where, like, if I write one book and one kid likes it, I'm done. Life complete. From there, it's all victory laps.

Divia (1:21:10)

Right.

Yeah

Visa (1:21:25)

And it does, you know, I can't get back in that state. I'm like, yeah, you know, I did it. It's a thing that I did. And yeah, like my relationship myself used to be not that great. And I would say like day to day right now, it's not like it's at the best it's ever been, but I can bring it back to that state if I want to. And it's generally great. It's generally good, you know. And I see people talk about it, about their own relationship with themselves, or, you even like,

Divia (1:21:30)

You did it.

Visa (1:21:54)

A thing that generally annoys me is seeing people in their early 30s complain about their back pain as if it's inevitable. I'm like, you know can just do stuff, right? You can just do your hamstring stretches and your hip stuff. And it's just so, I guess it goes back again to the thing about permission to tinker with your mind, tinker with your body, tinker with the way you exist. And it's like, I don't know. It's a...

Divia (1:22:02)

Yeah.

Visa (1:22:22)

There's layers and layers to it, guess. Some people prefer to be with everyone else, and the companionship that comes with that, I think, is soothing for some people. And I've been tempted, I think. I do remember after making some progress. So this happens in Waved, I guess. And it's probably what...

eventually drives me to do whatever my next thing is. It's where right after I do a thing, I'm like, man, that was exhausting and emotionally taxing and I just want to vegetate and like, let me enjoy that I had done the thing and like not do anything for as long as possible. But eventually that gets frustrating as well. And it's funny because I was recently met my friend and law and she just finished her PhD and she's like, just published a book. So she's like,

She was very, very much in the focus zone of like, every day she wakes up, I'm working on this PhD thing, I'm working on this book. she got to the point where that was like, frustrating, like unpleasant. And so she's done and she's experiencing relief from the end of that. And I'm on the other side where the last time I shipped something substantial, OK, there's the book. And then there was a really good essay last year. And the year since, I feel like I've just been like f*****g around.

Divia (1:23:42)

So you're more like itching to have another project.

Visa (1:23:45)

Yeah, mean, I have to be making steady, clear progress. So the analogy we came up with was, I guess, it's like sunlight, right? someone who's in the dark or in the cold, they can't wait to have sun and get out. They're like, my god, sunshine. But you take someone who's been in the sun in the tropics for all day. They're like, my god, I need to get out. I'm sweating. I'm sticky. I'm gross. And so much discourse is.

son, good or bad? know, like good, bad, good. You know, like, and if you can see that things are contextual and like, what is the best thing for you right now might be the worst thing for someone else. Like just being aware of that dynamic and carrying that dynamic with you, I think instantly makes you like just more responsive to people, like just better in navigating media, navigating people and

Divia (1:24:13)

Right.

Sure.

Visa (1:24:41)

That's one of the things I'm trying to convey. you know, like I keep seeing people call each other stupid online, and it's implied that it's the person is dumb. And the thing that no one ever seems to bring up is that, people are scrolling past a lot of information, and everyone looks stupid when they are responding really quickly to complex things in, you know. And then are you dumb? The thing should be, you know, no, I'm busy or I'm surfing. I mean, I don't want to

Divia (1:24:49)

Yeah.

He

Visa (1:25:11)

There's a funny response somewhere there. And the other thing is that people are often actually scared. That's a separate thing entirely, but it's interesting how many thought-terminating dismissals have to do with intelligence or stupidity. It's like, you're dumb, or I'm dumb, I'm so dumb, I can't do this. Is intelligence even actually the bottleneck? It probably isn't.

Divia (1:25:35)

think it's not, I mean, I think it helps basically if people have more horsepower and all else equal, it can be a big force multiplier. again, I think people don't usually, I think people are usually capable of thinking in some sense. I don't think people's intelligence is so low that they can't think, but then often they don't, they do a different activity instead.

Visa (1:25:41)

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's usually that they did not even think. So are you going to say the matter that, you're stupid because you didn't think? I would assume that stupid means you tried to think and your thinking was bad. most people haven't. think sitting down to think about a problem for a few minutes can just. I have been shocked sometimes. I think I have some issue that's been bothering me for months. And I didn't realize that I never stopped the

Divia (1:26:07)

Yeah.

Visa (1:26:30)

think about it. Like, okay, what should I do? What's the problem here?

Divia (1:26:35)

Yeah, I think it's an interesting puzzle. Like, I don't know. I sometimes, it's been, I sort of saying this before, but it's been on my mind recently. I'm like, all right, look, I am busy. I have a lot going on. Sometimes I don't have enough energy, but like, why? From some angle, I look at it and I'm like, okay, but every time I have like a couple minutes, why don't I just like think about my problems? Like for real though. Cause like think about, like, and I'm like, because it would pay off, right? Like I'm like, okay, maybe I don't have enough like.

Visa (1:26:57)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Divia (1:27:02)

time to do it, but what if I just thought about how to get more time? And maybe I sound crazy, like saying, but I'm like, no, but I think it's really, it's like more powerful. And I try, but then again, some angles still exists where I'm like, but why am I not doing this more? I don't know. And I have guesses, like I could get into it and whatever, but it's a point of curiosity for me still.

Visa (1:27:07)

No, it makes sense.

Mm. I know that, that, yeah.

I mean, so one of my equivalent versions of that is like, why don't I just chat with people more? Because every time I talk to people, I get more energy and I get more just everything is better when I talk to people. And I guess, yeah, I have some legacy issues for why I flinch from talking to people. It's funny because I guess it's like the slob, Dana, like people who used to be messy. We give the advice that we needed.

Divia (1:27:48)

Yeah.

Visa (1:27:53)

needed to... I I always liked people, I think, and then I kind of psyop myself or internalized family, teachers, whatever, saying, why are you wasting your time with friends? And I had some bad experiences with friends as well. And so it's like, I need to actively remind myself to enjoy the companionship of my own friends. And I spent so much time and energy building this network of people who really like me. I made it, I de-risked it so much for myself. And now that...

Divia (1:28:14)

Mm-hmm.

Visa (1:28:22)

I can pretty much talk to anyone at any time. There's so many people that I love who would talk to me, and I just don't. And I'm like, what? It's free alpha slash money slash real estate. But I guess there's really that. There's something like a micro movement of, once you decide, or once you think, or once you just, there's a tiny space where you switch into it, and then it seems to be easy.

Divia (1:28:30)

Now it's your turn.

Visa (1:28:51)

And I guess people say as well, like with writing or whatever, the hardest part is starting, like the first few words. Once you've started, and with so many tasks, once you've started, it just keeps going. And it goes longer. So I have a kettlebell in my bathroom, which I use when I shower. I do bent over rows. And I was making great progress in strength gains for the first three months of the year. And then I had some military commitments. And then I had to stop working out. And then I started.

I mean, I had to stop working out because I had to train for a run and like, so I lost some weight. So was building a lot of muscle mass and then I had to train for a run and because I was getting heavy, I switched up and I lost a bunch of weight to run better. And then I got like a little bit sad about losing my gains and then I lost some strength as well. And then just stopped doing it entirely. And then I'm like, okay, I used to do like eight reps or 12 reps or eight reps or 12 reps. And I'm like, I'm too tired to do that many or something or that just seems, I don't know. But.

At some point, I'm like, OK, you know what, let's just do three. And every time I start doing three, I end up doing eight or 12 anyway. So it's like, if I just commit to the small thing, I do more. So it's so funny. And I'm sure there's versions of this all over my life where, yeah, just text a friend. Just say something. And maybe you'll end up having a conversation. Maybe you won't. There's something about expectations and.

Divia (1:29:54)

Yeah.

Yeah, do you know like what your, what your hesitation is? I mean, not that you always need to know, but do you know? Yeah.

Visa (1:30:23)

with friends? Again, think this is also the issue with my essays, actually. It's the same thing. It's like, I have gotten to a point of over-theorizing.

that I should have a plan or I should, you know, like not that I plan a conversation, but like I should, hey, let's talk about this thing and that thing. and, you know, like, like I want to make sure that it's worth your time. So in this case, it's very easy to say yes to a podcast because it's like, you are kind of holding the frame, right? Like you're the one that's like, like, I'm going let's do it. I'm like, it's so easy for me to say yes. But like, for me to like pitch something to someone.

Divia (1:31:00)

Yeah.

Visa (1:31:08)

Yeah, I seem to have this hang up where I overestimate what people want in a pitch. And for a lot of my friends, it's just like, Visa wants to chat, cool. And I'm like, but no, wait, let me come up with a good, you know, like, let's chat about this thing, and it'll be interesting because of that thing. And yeah. So I think a lot of my essays get

Divia (1:31:20)

Yeah, interesting.

Visa (1:31:33)

Even just a couple of days, I wrote a thread that a lot of people liked. And I muted it because it's getting retweets and stuff, and I don't like notifications. But it started with a story about tweets from a long ago. And then I freestyled somewhere interesting. I can't remember the specifics. And people were replying with, I need to read this carefully. I need to think about this. Wow, thanks. And all of those nice responses came from something that I did not plan and did not start.

So the reality of my life is when I improvise, things go really well. I mean, most, not every time. OK, actually there's nuance here that I guess I must be skipping over. I think of the times when I improvised and things went badly. But all of the best things I've done involved, there's like a mid-width thing here, where all the best things I've done have a quality of improvisationalness to it. And I've never done anything great that was like, OK, I'm going to plan every single thing. So I think I have a tweet to a.

Divia (1:32:01)

Yeah.

Visa (1:32:29)

Michael Kersey that I reference a lot, is that, and it's just me giving advice to someone else that I needed to hear, which is like, planning is great, but plans are worthless. So like write an elaborate plan and then throw it out and just do whatever. And then like write another elaborate plan like a month later or whatever. So each time you're planning, you're thinking through all the stuff, but like you're gonna fixate on certain things that might not necessarily need to be that way. So just think through the thing and then discard it and just improvise. And I'm like,

Divia (1:32:40)

Right.

Visa (1:32:59)

Yes, that's what everyone should do. Not me, though. I should make sure the plan is really, good. And yeah, it's silly. I would say, like, probably that's, if I'm honest with myself, like, that's the area where I seem to lack humility. Like, thing, yeah, like, I'm not sufficiently accepting that my best stuff happens when I'm not.

Divia (1:33:01)

You should follow the plan.

about plans.

Visa (1:33:28)

quite in the room. There's that relationship between creator and, so like Dave Chappelle has this great riff on comedians in cars getting coffee with Seinfeld. And he's saying like, the idea shows up in a car at your house, haunts, like get in, we're going, and you're like, I'm not dressed properly. It's fine. You'll be fine. he says sometimes you're shotgun, sometimes you're in the trunk. And then you have a great experience, and then you're like, hmm, I should drive, but there's no idea in the car. And so you're like,

You try to make whatever plan and whatever, there's no... So the humility for the creator, think, is to recognize when the idea wants to drive versus when you are imposing your... Almost authoritarian, this is how it should be and this is how... And you forget to ask, am I having fun? Is it cool? Is it great? And yeah, I think every time I reach some new threshold of...

followers or a new threshold like I've just finished a book or just whatever some kind of success like the the cheeky fun playful energy gets diminished and I start kind of feeling this is proper and important I should try and do a proper thing and then it goes to s**t and then I I go through like a long period of that and failure after failure after failure eventually I get pissed off and I get frustrated and just like to hell with this s**t I'm just gonna do nonsense and then the nonsense is good and yet you know like to some degree

Divia (1:34:41)

Yeah.

Visa (1:34:57)

all of that annoying preparation and all of that overthinking this and it does come through in the subsequent thing. if I think of, I don't want to be like, I do think there's a better, I don't need to like torture myself about it to get the result. Like it's just, it's yeah, I think where I'm coming around to is like, okay, if the nice art eventually comes out or whatever, cool. But like the process itself,

Divia (1:35:01)

It does help,

Yeah.

Visa (1:35:27)

is also an art in itself, if that makes sense. I'm trying to get to the point where I appreciate the way I do things just as much as I appreciate what I've done. I'm trying to get to that point.

Divia (1:35:30)

That's right, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, no, mean, I think it's more robust if you can do it that way, because if you're focusing on things, then you have more control.

Visa (1:35:46)

Mm-mm, very much so.

Yeah, and you're less likely to get whatever the equivalent of an injury is. And I'm quite lucky in that I've never really had any seriously major injuries that put me, mean, physical and psychological or whatever. But yeah, I've seen people push themselves too hard. So YouTuber burnout is always fascinating to me. It's so common where someone...

Divia (1:35:56)

Yeah, it seems true.

Yeah, interesting.

Visa (1:36:17)

works really hard to build a huge audience on YouTube over like a three to five year like intense period and at the end of it they're done they're like they can't do anymore and they just quit and I'm like that seems less than ideal like and my instant and so actually I was noticing this about local bands in Singapore when I was a kid teenager and like there's this music festival called Bay Beats and a lot of bands and Bay Beats is like you know like if you're playing at Bay Beats like you're a real like you're a

You're not just a hobbyist band. You've made it. But a lot of bands make their way up to babies, play babies, and then never do anything ever again after that. It's because they wanted to make it, and so they made it. And that was their goal. Their goal was to make it. And like, ha, I made it as a musician. And I think Murakami has this in his book about novelists as a vocation. It's like a lot of novelists who just want to write their first novel, which is fine. It's like if you have a goal is to write a novel, and you write it, you're done.

Divia (1:36:47)

You made it.

Yeah, interesting.

That was their goal.

Visa (1:37:16)

From his point of view, the real good s**t happens over a lifetime, right? As you dig deeper and deeper and you learn more and more things and synthesize more and more things. So there's this whole, there's this like, yeah, there's the first novels in the giant blip here and then it decays and decays and decays. if you can last, any novelist who's been writing seven, eight novels over 30 years, they're probably very interesting in some way that you may or may not be interesting to you, but.

There's interestingness there as long as they are not mindlessly doing the same thing over and over again. If they're actually exploring and trying, the interestingness accumulates over time. And yeah, I try to have that in mind. And again, it's like, if you burn out in five years, like you're... And really, you calibrate this conversation to depending on who you're talking to. Because for some people, doing anything for five years is like a stretch goal that they can't even imagine doing. But if you can...

Divia (1:38:13)

Yeah.

Visa (1:38:14)

So it's like there's phases to it. But if you can do things for years, then having a decades-long orientation, think, is where the real... That's where you go from the nothing ever happens to, at the decades level.

Divia (1:38:28)

of course, yeah, what that thing that happened is, of course it was inevitable.

Visa (1:38:33)

Right. yeah, anything you can do for, if you can stick around for decades. It's like, I have noticed many things crossing a seven year cycle. And it's interesting that it also fits the, most of the, like all the cells in your body are different after seven years, something like that. I don't know if that's precisely true, but yeah. And it's the same for like, you know, if you've been posting on Twitter, on a forum or Twitter or whatever for seven years, after that point,

Divia (1:38:53)

ship of Theseus style yeah

Visa (1:39:03)

it will seem like you were there forever because the bulk of the people who are there at the end are lot of newcomers. A lot of the newcomers don't look back further than... Same for at a company, if you've been at a company longer than seven years, all the new hires have come and gone and you're like, this person was there forever. So forever is about seven years. And you can use that to your advantage in some ways.

Divia (1:39:06)

Seems true, yeah.

Right.

You

Visa (1:39:33)

You know, year podcast has been podcasting forever.

Divia (1:39:35)

Yeah, I think, I hear you. I definitely think it's very underrated to play a long game. also, like a tendency in myself that I often want to really be mindful of is I think for me, some sort of like grinding without even like really paying, I don't know, like I wanna be process oriented on the one hand, because I think it's a better optimization target.

something like that, think it's more robust for all the reasons I'm saying. But then at the same time, I think often for me, it's more comfortable to just keep doing something that's not really working. So I'm like, well, you know, I'm doing it. I'm trying it. And then, you know, it's like five years later and I'm like, well, okay, I guess that was kind of interesting, but like I didn't really do anything.

Visa (1:40:16)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I feel that so much. And when I was a kid and I used to play video games, that was all how I did it. just failed at the thing and somehow find it kind of fun and just keep failing it. So you have to unlock a new... In fact, the way I think about it, it's almost like you're playing different games within the game. So you have a game in front of you, but initially you're playing bang against the wall. You you're playing...

Divia (1:40:32)

Yes, same.

Yeah.

Visa (1:40:51)

If you play like, think Grand Theft Auto, I didn't know there were missions or whatever. I thought it's a game where you go in, you steal a car, you bang into things, you get killed or arrested, and that's the game. you know, it's, didn't know. And yeah, same for, you know, like, in fact, I think I was writing my, I was journaling to myself yesterday, so it's like a draft where I seem to complicate things for myself and...

Divia (1:41:00)

Yep.

Visa (1:41:18)

I challenge myself to do things that are too far beyond my comfort zone. So it's not just a nice, gentle little bit. I go too far. I try to do eight things at once, and it's not going to work. And I was like, at one level, this is obviously not working. And then when I was reflecting on it, well, the fact that I'm doing it means that it must be serving some purpose for some part of me. And then I was reminded of Inception, the movie.

Divia (1:41:40)

Right.

Visa (1:41:45)

Cobb asks Ariadne, can you make a maze in two minutes that takes more than a minute to solve? And it's like, well, the point of having like, there's a level of complexity that when you introduce, it means that you get to be like immersed in that simulation or the dream or whatever such that it's not, you like you add variables and I some people do this with talking and they gish gallop, right? They just like say so many things that.

Divia (1:42:11)

You

Visa (1:42:12)

You can't process what's being said. so you get to kind of, I guess if you're enjoying it, you're like, well, I like to just hear what they're saying. I don't need to think precisely. I can't think precisely what they're saying. They're like overwhelming me. And I must be doing some form of that with the tasks that I give myself in writing. Because there must be some part of me that enjoys, I'm struggling to write, but I didn't publish. I'm struggling to write, but I didn't publish. And I've been, you know.

Divia (1:42:21)

Mm-hmm.

Visa (1:42:40)

If someone was doing this at the start of their writing journey or career, I'd be like, well, you're avoiding, do you actually like writing? Are you just avoiding whatever? But I've published so much stuff and I still do it. It's like, it's a kind of a safety ritual maybe or an avoidance ritual or like a way to enjoy writing and thinking without facing the consequence of people are going to look at it and...

Divia (1:42:40)

Yeah.

Visa (1:43:08)

I feel like I've learned to not worry about what would people think, but I guess, yeah, I've given myself this, I want this great outcome to happen. And if I publish a post and people kind of like it and they say some nice things, whatever, but it isn't moving the needle towards the outcome that I want, that'll be sad and upsetting and annoying and failure. Whereas if I'm struggling,

and I didn't ship, well, know, it's still there's still the possibility that it's like six months from now there'll be an amazing something like that. When I say it out loud, it always feels silly. I'm like, bro, you know, you've been through this before. You just got to, you know, like you got to write the shitty versions in order to get to the better versions. Like I know that intellectually, but emotionally struggling is, you

Divia (1:43:43)

Yeah, you think there's some dynamic like that that can draw it out.

You know, something that was, we're talking about video games, something that was really kind of, I don't know, kind of powerful for me to see. the first, not the first Zelda game, but Breath of the Wild, right? That was what, like five years ago or something at this point? So my son was probably five or something. He was pretty young.

Visa (1:44:14)

Okay, I'm familiar.

Divia (1:44:21)

And I was playing it and I had some whole plan where I was like, all right, well, in order to go to that place, it'll be better if I have this armor. So I need to get these ingredients and I had to do whatever, whatever. And then my son over there, he's just like, he doesn't care. He's like finds these like rare ingredients that have these few cook them, whatever. And he's in, he'll just go into the battle and he'll just eat them and whatever. And like naturally he beats the game while I'm still trying to make this armor. And I'm kind of like, okay.

Visa (1:44:45)

yeah. Yeah.

Divia (1:44:49)

This faster than I really realized, if you actually think.

Visa (1:44:51)

Right. I like to play video games, like RPG type video games. I like to blunder through my first playthrough where I like, like if there are side quests that like, I will go a little bit out of the way to do a side quest, but not like all the way. And I mostly try to get to the end of the narrative. I, but I'm not like.

Divia (1:45:00)

Yep.

Visa (1:45:15)

speed running to the end. I'm like, I try to, like, you I don't really, I like upgrade whatever happens naturally in route to that. do that. And then if I like it, then I will, I'll do a second playthrough at some point where I really go through every single thing.

Divia (1:45:16)

Yeah.

You can go back.

That's also how I'm with books. I remember, so I didn't, not necessarily with these days with books I read for pleasure, sometimes I'll just give up on it, but like in school, I think it happened with, what's that book? It's in the best of times, it's the worst of times. Tale of Two Cities, yeah, it was that. I remember it was a sign for like summer reading or something, and I kept reading it and being like, I really can't follow this. I really can't follow this. And I kept.

Visa (1:45:31)

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, same, You skim, right?

The tail of two cities.

Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (1:45:58)

trying to like go more slowly and understand. And finally I was like, you know what? I'm gonna finish it. And then if I really want to understand it, I can read it twice. And it was, it worked way better for me. It probably depend on, you know, on the person in the book, but it was far easier for me to understand it by reading it twice than by reading it carefully. I think a lot of things are like that.

Visa (1:46:05)

Yeah.

Yeah, I think a lot of things are like that. Because when you're reading it carefully the first time, you don't know what you're reading it carefully for. So you might read a lot into a detail that's not actually important, and you might miss a detail that actually is important. And you only find out what is and is not important after you've gotten the first sweep all the way through.

Divia (1:46:38)

Yeah. Anyway, also I could go forever, but I think my kids is getting to be a little late. I think I should go check in with them. But thank you so much. And if you have any final things that you want us to hit, now's the time.

Visa (1:46:42)

I should also run, yes, same. Yeah.

I mean, so my main thing in my life right now, apart from my wife and kid, is my essays. yeah, drop by my sub stack, I guess, and challenge me to write more. And yeah, I think leaving comments or asking questions or whatever, that helps me move faster if anyone wants to help. Yeah. OK. We could talk for hours.

Divia (1:47:09)

Sounds good. All right, well, thanks so much for coming on. Everyone can find Visa on Twitter in particular, and I'll link it. I'll try to post this pretty soon.

Visa (1:47:19)

Awesome. So much fun.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

Matthew Pierce, @MattPiercello on Twitter, comes on the podcast to talk about his model of how to have productive conversations.

Transcript:

Divia (00:02)

Hey, I'm here today with Matthew Pierce, who is my Twitter mutual. He is a professional cellist, systems thinker, interested in what makes people tick and how we can solve problems together. He's MJ Piercello on Twitter. That's where Pierce and cello, but they overlap. And we hadn't planned on talking today, but then I was going talk to another Twitter friend of mine about the Shakespeare thing again, which I discussed in my previous podcast, but he got sick.

So instead I asked if anyone was free and Matthew was. so here we are, welcome to the podcast.

Matt (00:36)

So we're making this up as we go along. It's fantastic. Hi everybody. Nice to meet you.

Divia (00:42)

Yeah, so do you wanna, I don't know, do you wanna tell us a little bit, it seems like your top thing these days, which I read a little bit about, but not as much as I probably would have if I had it longer, is a way that you help people understand each other when they disagree. Does that seem like a fair starting point?

Matt (01:00)

think so, yeah. mean, one of the things you can see when you look around, especially on Twitter, right, which tends to attract these sort of things, is these massive, powerful disagreements that seem completely unsolvable, right? And I'm not convinced they're unsolvable. I think they're just a bit maybe misunderstood. And so I've been playing the cello for a really long time now, almost 40 years, but I've been playing it professionally on the order of 30 years.

lots of different places, lots of different circumstances. And one of the things cello playing does is that it puts you in a position of using your body and your mind together, right?

Divia (01:42)

Yeah, for the record for the podcast listeners, I also play the cello not as well, not professionally, but I do have some context there.

Matt (01:46)

Yeah, yes, I only just discovered this. Yeah, so this is a serendipity point for me. I only just found this out myself. But yeah, so cello playing, you're not just drawing up formal equations on the chalkboard and you're not just building a brick wall that'll last for generations. It's kind of a mix of both that you've got these...

incredibly abstract things you're doing with the music in an orchestra and you're sort of manipulating the emotions of the audience and of each other in real time in a performance, but you're doing it using extremely abstract structures that music itself is built out of that define the sounds while using your body to make them. Yeah, yeah, like, like, okay, harmony, melody, harmonic progression.

Divia (02:28)

But abstract structures, you mean like harmony and that sort of thing? Melody.

Matt (02:36)

form and analysis. So this song has a refrain and then it has an intro, you know, all these different bits and you can, you can categorize things, things like this as abstractly as you would like to, but you have to do them with your own body in real time performance, even if you're really nervous. So it's a very interesting window into a more complete aspect of what I think of as decision-making.

And that's really where a lot of the disagreements live. They're not just rational, are they? They're sort of instinctive and habitual and emotional all at once.

Divia (03:11)

So for the record, I would call myself a rationalist, that's in my Twitter bio, and I'm out of the less wrong rationality tradition, and I would say, I don't know, people, I don't know how well any of us lives it, but I think I use rational, like in my ontology, it doesn't mean just conscious thought or just the things that people are aware of or anything like that.

Just for the record, you should continue to use it however you want to use it, but know that in my own lexicon it means something a little different.

Matt (03:42)

Sure.

I'll tell you how I came to use it because the problem with this stuff is exactly the problem we have in talking about music, right? I used to do this all the time when I was coaching groups of high school students. I would take the cello section of the high school and we'd go off and we'd have a sectional, right? Or I work with just them and we'd say, all right, so play these eight difficult bars for me as a group and they would play it. And then I'd say, okay, so now change.

these two specific things, a little more power on your left hand, for example, or a little faster bow on this one note and play it again. And they would play it again. And I would say this, okay, did that sound better? And they would say, yeah. And then I would say, describe it. And they would all just give me funny looks, you know, cause it kind of nervous laugh because there aren't words that really say exactly what happened.

And this is the whole problem, right?

Divia (04:40)

Or, I would say, or at least, like you didn't have words at that time. don't know, I'm also, maybe that's one of my other positions in life, is I'm pretty, I'm pretty bullish on what people can eventually describe in words.

Matt (04:45)

Yeah.

Yeah, but you have to negotiate a shared meeting before you can do that. That's the fun of it. And if you set up a sort of a dictionary, that's great. But if you encounter someone who's running off of a different dictionary, then that's a bit of a problem because what happens so often in these situations is that anything you have to do precisely is going to develop its own professional vocabulary.

with strict limits and like coding versus talking, that kind of thing. And what tends to happen is that a lot of familiarity with that language causes a sort of a habit to form and become second nature so much so that we forget that other people don't have it. when you, yeah, right? And that's where my entry into decision-making came through the physical and mental.

Divia (05:18)

Yeah, for sure.

Sometimes, yeah.

Matt (05:47)

habit building that goes with playing an instrument.

Divia (05:50)

Yeah, I think that was before we started recording. You were telling me about some of your life history and how you guys, you want to repeat that now for the podcast?

Matt (05:53)

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, sure. So I've gotten fascinated by decision-making and what I mean by decision-making is very, very broad. I define decision-making as the entire mind space between inputs and actions. It's just insanely broad. Anything you can think of that might go in there, throw it in. I don't care, you know, because we want broad for this kind of thing. And yeah, I've been playing professionally. When I was out in Boston, I wasn't working with a teacher at the time, but I was still

bettering myself as a player. And one of things you realize very quickly when you try to do that is you just cannot pay attention to all of the micro details that matter at the same time. Like say, and I happen to have a cello here, so I'll pull it out and kind of see if I can demonstrate what I mean through sound. So, you know, if you play a cello, you want the bow to go a certain speed and make a nice noise.

Divia (06:37)

I agree with that.

Matt (06:52)

And if your bow is too slow, it'll make that noise. And if it's too fast, it'll make that noise. So you have an audio clue, okay, am I too fast or too slow? But still, you're trying to get to that good sound for what you're trying to do. And the sort of hilarious part about it is that every note you play on a cello, for various reasons, has a different right bow speed and pressure combination. So you can't...

get there by just always keeping the same pressure and speed. That won't work. You have to develop rules that tell you how to get from one pressure to another and when and why so you can anticipate it in time to do it even in the fast stuff. So there's all this really complicated physical stuff and that's just one side. know, that's just your bow hand. Your left hand has its own habits of getting from this pitch to that pitch and up the string or down the string and

and all these things, but then there's strategies of when and why, again, layers of habits. And then you've got reading music, which is a written language, but then you have to make it into sound. So you have to read correctly fast enough that you can get the sound out and then play with an orchestra. So you've got all of these different windows into habit that are active at the same time. Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (08:11)

Yeah, they really need to be fluent because you have to do them in real time and while your conscious attention is often elsewhere. I would agree with all that.

Matt (08:17)

Yeah, because you can do this stuff slow if you have the time, but in performance you don't have the time. And so you have had to have it already so well ingrained that if you just start, it finishes. And you can kind of sit there back about three levels of abstraction and say, it's going pretty smoothly here, or there's some gravel on the road I need to slow down, you know, and kind of focus on my left hand a bit more, that kind of thing.

So it's this business of looking at the very, very broad definition of decision making, the entire mind space between inputs and actions, as a sort of a composite, but one that's integrated and unified so that you can get to the really big patterns that are in fact causing the problems that we run into on the internet with people talking past one another and just having entirely different habits sets.

Divia (09:16)

Yeah. So, so it seems like some of what you're saying is as you're trying to improve at the cello, it makes you sort of aware how for basically everything in life, there, there are many things going on at the same time. Most of them is not where conscious attention will be at any time. And you can see the connection between this and various other things. And one of your, one of the top issues that seems important to you is the business of people. Disagreeing with each other in unproductive ways about things that matter. Does that seem right?

Matt (09:43)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think so. So, you know, one of the things that is really wonderful about playing games with sort of rational type puzzles, and I should give you my definition of rational that I evolved from my own musical doings too, that I look at it, if a thing is logical, that's just simply it has internally consistent structure. You know, that's like a logic board on your computer or...

whatever logic there is that runs things, whether you know what it is or not, but you can say, okay, that's internally consistent. And if it's externally verifiable, that's what I refer to as rational. So you can like poke at it and measure it. Yeah, basically so. That sounds like what I would mean. Right?

Divia (10:23)

So like legible.

Yeah, it's definitely, it's interesting. It's definitely not how I, I use it. But again, it makes sense you would use it that way.

Matt (10:32)

Yeah, so this is again, if you're really trying to work with somebody, one of the first things you have got to do is get sort of on the same vocabulary.

Divia (10:42)

least like in yeah I mean because certainly I've thought a lot about people in disagreements too and and have my own frameworks and I tend to think of it in terms of of people's ontologies like we can I do sometimes approach conversations from within an ontology but I do think it tends to limit the scope and there are whole things that we won't be able to get to if we try to stay within a shared ontology instead of instead of addressing the fact that we probably see things quite differently in those ways too.

Matt (10:46)

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And the funny thing, so as I was poking around it and trying to understand habits, right, I found a book about intelligence. And it's, you know, it's called On Intelligence. This was, I don't know, almost 20 years ago. The book is by Jeff Hawkins. And, you know, he was the inventor of the original Palm Pilot, if you go back that far and remember those sorts of things. So he's...

kind of had a foot in neuroscience and a foot in technology and he's still doing things that way. But this book was talking about how he thought of intelligence in terms of how it incorporated the idea of habit. And it made so much sense to what I was poking around in with cello that I said, this is great. And it just kind of fit seamlessly with what I had. But then it also triggered an insight which launched me in this general direction I'm going in now. So.

I'll sort of talk you through a little bit it. From the neurobiology side, the whole issue is that neurons are slow. You know, if you get a stimulus in to the mind and it has to go through a chain of, I don't know, five or 10 different neurons, the lag is going to be so great by the time the thing gets into your sort of processing, your central processing, that...

Divia (12:30)

Do you know how long it would be?

Matt (12:33)

I can't remember, it was way too many milliseconds to be useful though. I don't remember the number, but... And the way I internalized it is that it's obviously too slow, so it doesn't matter what the number is. And the way I describe it to people is a bit like this. If you imagined that you were just gonna run up a flight of stairs, but you did so by micro-controlling consciously every single muscle in your body at exactly the right time.

Divia (13:03)

Yeah, of course you can.

Matt (13:04)

You can't possibly do that. And yet people do this sort of thing all the time. You can run up the stairs while thinking about what to have for lunch, right? It's, it's invisible. So there's, there's a lot of hidden processing going on, but it has to have some kind of an architecture that lets it work. And that's where the habits come in. So habits aren't just invisible. They're a particular architecture. And the idea of habit, according to Jeff Hawkins, which matches my experience behind the cello.

Divia (13:06)

for sure.

Matt (13:34)

is that if you have a stored pattern, a stored habit if you will, and you give it a partial match, what it'll do is automatically fill out the rest of it. So if I were to say to you, one, two,

Divia (13:50)

You want me to say three? Yeah.

Matt (13:51)

Yeah, exactly. And your mind already did it, even though your mouth didn't catch it, right?

Divia (13:55)

Well, okay, I I don't know. I mean, I think I was expecting you to say it. in that moment, I wasn't, I would disagree with the characterization, but sure.

Matt (14:01)

Right, yeah. You were expecting it to be said. So what, and that's what I mean, your mind had filled in that it was already gonna be said. But you just didn't know I was expecting you to say it. But then you did once you saw it, and see, that's the lag. That's a great example of the lag, is that you expected one thing and it didn't happen, but then you sorted it out and said, okay, then you, you know.

Divia (14:07)

I was expecting you to say three, yes.

than I did.

Matt (14:29)

But in the mind, it's like, it's already done, so we're on to the next thing. And so this idea is that if you store a habit, what it does is if you give it enough of a match, it just spits out the whole thing.

Divia (14:43)

Yeah, I I tend to also think of it in terms of like cues and then behaviors that happen in response to the cue, yeah.

Matt (14:46)

Yeah, right? And so what that does from a functional perspective is it acts as a prediction about what will happen next in the world. And if the world continues on and does its thing and matches the habit that you expected, you just don't notice. And it worked. And it stays down there in the merc, in the subconscious, or below the waterline of consciousness, whatever words you want to use.

and you go on with your life like nothing ever happened.

Divia (15:16)

Yeah, usually people wouldn't have any reason to pay attention to it.

Matt (15:18)

Yeah, and so that's the general notion of how a habit works. And so the nice thing is you've already done the work to build the habit, so you're not really expending conscious cognitive effort. It's already done. And it's really, really, really fast, so you don't even notice how fast it is. And it just solves the problem, and away you go. And habits stack like skill trees.

Divia (15:41)

Yeah, I was actually talking about this on a previous episode with a friend, where we were, because people use the word habits, I think, to mean a bunch of different things. And, you know, like, well, is brushing your teeth a habit? And I was like, well, look, that's the sort of thing where I kind of know, like, I think about it every time. And I'm like, yeah, I should probably do that. Whereas for me, and I think it depends on the person. My impression is that some people more like do it without thinking about it. Whereas I have other things that that's what I do. Like, I...

Matt (15:51)

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Divia (16:10)

I could think of different examples, like the way that I would turn the faucet off when I was done, like I don't ever register it. For me, like I have some places that I put my phone down and then I'm like, yeah, where are my phone? Like, and I just, don't even think about it. And so it didn't form a memory when I did it. Whereas some of the things that people often refer to as habits and I think they mean something coherent about it or in a different category. And I think this can cause some confusion, but anyway, yeah, those are.

Matt (16:13)

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's fun because that's the basic mechanism, but what's also fun is you can stack habits arbitrarily deep. Habits of habits of habits of habits. And so that's how you run up the stairs, right?

Divia (16:50)

Yeah, I think most people have a lot of gross motor fluency built up that in almost none of it is operating consciously and, you know, assuming they don't get any major injuries, usually it continues that way.

Matt (16:54)

Yeah. Yeah.

Right, and so that's a great way of just kind of seeing it, that my gosh, it built up is exactly the right word. Because you don't start with that stuff, but as you figure it out over time, it develops. And you see this particularly when you're trying to learn a specific complex thing, whether it's playing a cello or doing calculus or something. Because the fun part is the brain stuff is all the same. There's no...

necessary difference between the architecture of a habit of action and a habit of thought.

Divia (17:34)

Yeah, I would agree with that.

Matt (17:35)

It's just the same, just wants to attach to the motors. And so when you study an instrument, what you're doing is you're giving yourself an unexpectedly broad window into the architecture of habit, because you can physically see it.

Divia (17:53)

Yeah, no, it does add certain ability to observe it if it's something that's more externally facing, physical.

Matt (17:54)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Now the key thing, and all this leads again, as I say, into a model of decision-making I use. And my approach is sort of through habit, through music. And the way I talk about decision-making, I call it, I dubbed it the higher model, H-I-R-E, because those are the four main components. And so you've got H is for habit and I is for instinct and R is for reason. That's your rational side. And E is for emotion.

And all four of those are always active in the background. And the reason you can't see most of it is because the habits work so well that you can't see how well they work.

Divia (18:41)

I think, sorry, I think I'm, for whatever reason, I'm in a mood to push back more against some of the you statements. I feel like I can see it if I decide to. Like, I think I can step through it with almost any of this stuff. I think I don't normally because I don't have any reason to, but I disagree that I can't see it.

Matt (18:46)

it's great. It's fantastic.

Yeah. Sure.

Yeah. Well, you can't see all of it at once. You can zoom down the tree and you can focus in on any point. And you're familiar with this as a cellist. If you're trying to upgrade your playing, you go down there and you look at exactly when your first finger is leaving the string when you do this certain pattern. You can focus in at any given point in the constellation. But you don't have enough processing power to see the whole thing at once. That's the point of habit. Yeah.

Divia (19:00)

Sure. Yeah, I can't.

Sure, yeah, for sure. I wouldn't see it all at once.

Matt (19:25)

So that's what I mean, is that you can know that there's an insane amount of habit layering and you can follow any individual thread, but you can't get a global perspective on all of them at once. There's just no space large enough to hold it. That's visible to conscious attention. And here's the really odd bit about it. Habits form over repetition, right? If you keep doing the thing and it keeps working, it becomes a habit.

Divia (19:54)

Yeah, well, think you're rep, see, sorry, I'm really going to argue. I'm like, okay, repetition, but this is one of those things people say, so I also am a bit of a student of behaviorism. I would say over-reinforced repetition because I think it's, I think there is a popular idea out there that if people keep doing things over and over again, then they'll, it'll just feel natural to keep doing them. And that's very much not been my experience about a lot of things in life. Some things I keep doing them and I keep doing them and they get worse and harder and less.

Matt (19:57)

That was great.

Hmm?

Divia (20:24)

look more frictiony every time because I'm not getting one.

Matt (20:28)

But that, I would argue, is not because this isn't how habit works, it's because there are other mechanisms on top of habit that are complicating the thing.

Divia (20:36)

No, so I think it's when if we repeat it and it gets us some sort of payoff. I think, I don't know, that's how I would think of it with habits because mere repetition, just don't think, I don't know, I don't agree with that. It's not been my experience and it's not the theories that I trust. I don't know.

Matt (20:43)

Yeah.

Well, I think where we could probably resolve that would be in what we mean by repetition. know, it's like when you're practicing a cello, for example, you very quickly learn, if your teacher is on you about it, that what you thought was an accurate repetition wasn't precise enough.

Divia (21:14)

Yeah, but I do mean aside from the precision. I mean, if there are plenty of things that I could do it a bunch of times, and in my experience, it would not necessarily feel natural, more natural over each repetition because of what happened when I did it. Whereas if I hear it and I'm like, and I get that feeling of like, yes, that, I want that, and it feels right, then I do expect it to feel more and more natural every time. But if I don't get that, then...

Matt (21:26)

Mm-hmm.

huh.

Divia (21:43)

Like I do think there's some, I don't know. I think there's evidence either, I think there are examples where even if it isn't what people say they want, then they will keep doing what they've practiced, but I don't think that's universal.

Matt (21:56)

Well, I think, again, this is undoubtedly a case where we're talking past each other, right? This is the whole problem of decision-making being a thing. It's so vast and jungly as a process that when we actually talk to each other, it doesn't tend to make sense. And I think that actually, by the way, is another thing I haven't got to yet. But back in the days when everyone had very much a shared constrained culture and we would all be, you know,

Divia (22:00)

Sure. Yeah.

Matt (22:25)

talking one at a time and reading the same books and having learned the same grammar and terminology, it all seems to make a lot of shared sense because there's just a lot of constraint on the shared environment. But what the internet does is it puts it more like a jungle, that suddenly you're talking to people with vastly different backgrounds and language usage and et cetera, et cetera. And actually that's more of a window in how the mind actually works without the constraints, which is very unsettling when you're expecting it to be constrained.

So it's, you know.

Divia (22:55)

Yeah, no, I definitely think that people tend to have more varied perspectives than they used to. It seems right.

Matt (23:01)

Well, you know, if you take, if you take cello playing as an example again, you know, if you're trying to learn to do a certain thing and you really want to get it to come out right and it keeps exploding every time you play it, but differently, then I would say that's not a problem with the habit architecture. That's a problem with you're trying to learn a particular habit and you happen to have left out a factor. don't know what it is yet. that you're, there's a thing you're not accounting for.

And that's what's causing the problem. you know, that of course is what got me into reading this book that was about habits in the first place. I had that feeling.

Divia (23:37)

Yeah.

Yeah, would you be able to describe some specifics of your cello playing that changed after you read that book?

Matt (23:44)

Yes. Yeah. So here's, let me give you a habit piece that I solved years after reading the book, but it's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. When you're playing a cello, I'll pick the silly thing up again here, because I set it down. There we go. Get myself untangled from the headphones as well. Once you know your way around, it's like walking around. You can just kind of...

Do sort of predictable things, but if you start going too fast It starts to get muddy and messy and things start to go wrong that it doesn't just scale up infinitely you run into physiological problems of hey this mass in my arm is moving that way and now I needed to move this way and suddenly my whole body locked up and I can't play anything and And so this is this is the kind of thing where that matters

If you imagine me playing my cello, I'm gonna play a long note again. And what I did was I started with my bow arm in close to my body and I pulled the bow across the strings and my bow arm ended out pretty far away from my body. Okay? Now what that did in terms of playing the cello is it just vibrated the string and made the note. Great, wonderful. But mechanically,

That's not the only thing that's happening. Also, and you can try this at home, if you start with your right arm very close to your body and then you sort of stick it, you know, three quarters of the way out, pretty straight, straight ish to your right, you will feel it pulling your body to the right. Just because you stuck a bunch of mass out there and you changed the location of your center of mass. And in order to compensate that, if you're sitting,

and you want to stay sitting well balanced, what you would need to do as you stuck your arm out to your right is shift your weight ever so slightly in your core to your left and counterbalance that thing. So what happens when you are playing fast is that your body is changing center of mass location very, very rapidly. And if you don't have a system

Divia (26:07)

Yeah.

Matt (26:11)

a habit system that counteracts that in your core body positioning, you will lock up and you won't be able to play. It's that kind of thing.

Divia (26:18)

So is this an example of the sort of thing where you changed how you were thinking about your standard of mass?

Matt (26:23)

Yeah, and what you want to do is teach it to your body so that it works. And I said earlier, yeah.

Divia (26:28)

Yeah, so can you say how it was before and then how like then how it was for you once you changed your mindset?

Matt (26:31)

Yeah.

So the way this would go is that when it was in the before lands, what the mind tries to do with any complex concept is simplify it to the point you can manage it. And when you're managing body motions that are complex, very often what the mind wants to do is say, all right, we're going to knock this down to two variables and lock the rest and call it good. So that you can say, all right, I'm going to move my arm to the right and then to the left really quickly.

and I'll be able to control where it goes because everything else is locked down. In practice, that doesn't work.

Divia (27:08)

And so is that more like how you used to think of moving your bow hand is that you were thinking about moving just your arm back and forth and you were sort of trying to ignore the effects it had on the rest of your body.

Matt (27:10)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you just, you'd want to simplify it down to the mind because your mind is trying to execute this, you know, complicated, some kind of a passage that has you hopping all over the cello physically and you don't have time to think about what the rest of your body is doing. So you're just, all right, let's lock that up and just do this. But it doesn't work. And so until you find a way of doing two things, one of them is understanding the problem. And second is

teaching your body a solution to that problem, then you won't be able to do it quickly and by habit.

Divia (27:56)

Yes, sorry. I think I still want to understand this. can you walk me through like, okay, that makes sense. You read the book and you had been thinking of your bow arm in terms of just the bow arm. And then you were like, okay, now my mind is more expanded on this topic. Can you walk me through like how your perspective changed and then what you personally started doing differently?

Matt (28:02)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, the limit here is not what the body can do, because you can go online and see lots of great players of all shapes and sizes playing the same passage, but really well, right? So you know, it's not a body limit. It's an interpretation or mind limit, and it's amount of mind space. So what you're looking to do is find a way of offloading the processing

from direct conscious control, which is quite limited, into something that actually works. So we don't know what that is yet. And the pattern basically is that, well, if this is how habits work, that stuff that gets repeated and has predictable results, that gives you the same result when it's repeated, tends to become habituated. Then what you're trying to do is...

Broadly with the mind, conceive of a kind of an architecture that should probably do it, and then tell your body to go find it, and let it go exploring until it finds it.

Divia (29:19)

So that's sort of what you did. Before you were thinking of your go-ah more narrowly, you read this book and then you're like, okay, I got to conceive of some way and then can you fill in the...

Matt (29:28)

Yeah. Yeah. So, so the way it looks like this, and as I said before, what the mind wants to do is simplify the process down to nice sharp edged concepts, you know, arm moves, bow moves, cello plays, that kind of thing. But the body is this vast network of joints and sensors, and they're not just, you know, motion places, they're positional sensors. Like if you stick your arm out to the side, like before,

and close your eyes, you can feel where your arm is in space because gravity is pulling on the joints and bits of biology are squishing differently and the sensors are picking that up. So the insight there was that if you use your mind to try to generate two or three really sharp edge concepts, the body will respond by locking everything else down, shutting off the sensory input. And that's why you can't play it because you can't react fast enough with enough data.

Divia (30:26)

That was your experience. That when you were thinking of your go arm that way, your other muscles would tense up.

Matt (30:27)

Yeah, and instead...

Yeah, and instead what you want to do for the way the body processes, which is much more parallel, is you want to open it up so that you have as many joints available to the action as possible and then ask them to coordinate around one thing. In this case, stable center of gravity. So if I stick my arm out to the right, my body just says, hey, and it turns a little to the left, and then my center of gravity stays stable.

Divia (30:59)

So you changed your intention from, or at least for a while, the focus of your conscious attention was not moving your bow arm back and forth, but was maintaining a center of gravity. Does that seem accurate?

Matt (31:09)

Yeah, and you can only do that once you've learned how to move your bow arm. Right? Yeah. And the exact analogy is skill trees in gaming. That you'd start out and you you've learned to use a sword and now you can use a level three and you build up skill trees and you're stacking habits like that too. So your habit architecture now knows how to move a bow arm and how to hold a bow and...

Divia (31:14)

Sure, because otherwise you can't have your attention in two places, but you've been doing that for years, so that was not an issue for you.

Matt (31:36)

how to keep the bow straight and kind of generally have control of how fast it's going and how high it is and all that. But then...

Divia (31:43)

Yeah, no, my sense as you talk about it is there's something that you, that's very important to you here that you really wish other people would get more, is that right?

Matt (31:52)

yeah, I'm just not sure how to put in words as you can see.

Divia (31:55)

Yeah, no, I think I want to understand it better. So I want to keep trying to ask you about it. Yeah, like if there's one thing that, and you know, I don't expect any given prompt to necessarily work, but like if people could understand just how foundational you think this is, maybe with that as a prompt, what could you say about it?

Matt (31:58)

Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah.

Sure.

But I think it's tremendously important that, that again, if we use the physiology of habit as a window into the general notion of habit in terms of learning abstract concepts as well, I mean, it's the same stuff. If I say calculus to you and you have knowledge of calculus, it automatically spits out a whole bunch of ideas related to calculus, but not necessarily within calculus. You know, you might be thinking about how you had that one really terrible teacher in certain year or, you know,

that hilarious thing that happened in calculus class. it's a very broad, yeah, right. It's just sort of a lightning chain spreading out through the networks. And that is how knowledge is actually stored, I think.

Divia (32:49)

People have associative thought for sure. Yeah.

Yeah, I think people can often see it most directly. Some people, I think, know how to have an experience of free associating in that way while awake. But I think it's probably extremely common for people who have memories of it to notice that sort of thing happening as we fall asleep also.

Matt (33:11)

Mm-hmm.

And the easiest way to see it is just to watch other people talk on the internet, right? Because you're saying something that seems perfectly clear and then they go and they say something nonsensical and you're like, how did you get there? Right? And it's the whole thing about habit being what it is, is because it's compensating for the limits on conscious attention, which is kind of slow and narrow. And the habit is so much the large part of the iceberg.

that people are generally off by several orders of magnitude on just how important habit actually is.

Divia (33:56)

Because your impression is that people, even if they know about it, might not understand the scope of the relevance.

Matt (34:02)

Yeah, absolutely. You could also put it this way. You know a lot of stuff by now. You've been living and having experiences and studying and all these things. There is no possible way you can list everything you know. Right? Because it's all s-

Divia (34:19)

And so that you're saying that that relates to it because to try to address the scope of the issue, you want to draw attention to the difference between what people could sort of consciously list and how much embodied knowledge there is.

Matt (34:29)

Yeah. Yeah, and not just body knowledge, like random knowledge about Tunisia or something. Yeah, it is. In whatever form it's stored, the point is you can't consciously list very much of it at all. And so it is.

Divia (34:38)

I guess I think that stuff is embodied too. That's my worldview, but sure.

Again, I'm like, I don't know. I'm giving it enough time. I think probably people could. I think people don't usually.

Matt (34:54)

Yeah. Yeah. But I would say I would counter with, we don't have time. Like you're never going to have the time to sit down and list everything, you know. You could pursue a lot of it, but you would never get it all. Because for one thing, more stuff is always coming in and sorting, you know. So that's the first big insight into the habit world that the body shows you. It's it's vast beyond reckoning. It's really, really big. But then there's another interesting

Divia (35:11)

For sure, yeah, in a little bit I would.

Matt (35:24)

bit, which is that this familiarity thing comes from two directions at once in the system. It comes from top-down learning. Like you study something till you know it. That's a very good way of building habits, but it also comes naturally from the bottom up. And that's, that's the point where, you know, you're driving your commute in the new city and you can't tell when it became a habit. just did. And suddenly you realize, I did that one automatically. Didn't I?

Divia (35:36)

show.

Matt (35:54)

You know? Yeah, and because it's just a simple twist of the architecture. That's how it goes. So you're building habits. And again, what makes a habit work is reliable results. If you do it, if you see the same thing and it you see it seven times at each time it leads to this next other thing. Well, that extra thing gets incorporated into the habit with the little piece of habit. And so it's that familiarity building just piling up. Here's

Divia (35:55)

Yeah, I think that's a common experience for sure.

Matt (36:24)

The really interesting part of it though, this is now the next insight. Hey, I'm sure as a musician you had this experience of going into a lesson.

and saying to the teacher, I swear I could play that at home. Right?

Divia (36:41)

Well, I wasn't very good at practicing, but yeah, sure, I'll go with it.

Matt (36:44)

Right, well, most of it aren't, but as a teacher, you know, I have at least 100 different cello students, they all say that. I said it when I was a student, because when you're at home, you're in a familiar environment, and yeah, right, you learned how to do it in such a way where you're practicing and no one's particularly bothering you, and you know, the chair is this height and the light is that height. Yeah.

Divia (36:57)

Yeah, some of it's context dependent.

I do think that's a very common experience. think this is, I understand that some of this is pretty universal and neurological. I do think in particular, my experience has not been as much like that as a lot of people.

Matt (37:16)

Yeah, well, here's where I'm going with it, because I'm trying to get to a broader point through a specific example. When you play the lesson, suddenly half of your attention that at home used to be on what you were doing is now focused on what the teacher thinks you're doing. And there's no longer enough conscious energy to power the system, and it breaks in unpredictable ways. That's the typical way it goes. Yeah, right? So that one, it's...

Divia (37:39)

Yeah, I do think this is a common experience.

Matt (37:45)

What you find out, and here's the insight, is that the habit that worked locally at home and gave good results doesn't necessarily work globally because in a larger app... Yeah. gosh, yes. Uh-huh. Yes.

Divia (37:57)

Sure. Yeah, the way this happens a lot in my life. So I do a lot of dog training. I don't know that I'm that good at it, but I do it a lot. my version of this is I'm always like, look what we can do. And then I call my husband over and it never works. I didn't, I'm eager to show him. So I haven't, I don't wait until it's actually fluent. It's not fluent yet. And then, and then I call him over and it's different enough that the dog is now doing something else, which yes.

Matt (38:10)

Yeah, right.

Yeah,

Exactly, right? And this is the hilarious bit, is that the nature of habit formation is that basically you're training the nervous system to say, this happened a bunch of times in the network. So great. But then you take that and you set it in a new environment with new clues and new parameters and new weirdnesses. And it doesn't necessarily give you the same result. Yeah, right? So the business of becoming a professional in anything is learning the system well enough that you

Divia (38:43)

Yeah, it depends, for sure.

Matt (38:52)

you iron out the bugs and when you take it out in public it doesn't crash. You play on stage in front of people or in an audition or whatever, it always comes out the same way. But it's not necessarily the case. The key here is that all habits are formed locally because nobody has omniscient intelligence.

And it doesn't matter who you are, what you learn doesn't guarantee that it will work in other environments. And yeah. So what you suddenly find you have a collection of is this vast iceberg of habits that were all locally generated in different local contexts that may or may not work in global contexts, but they're all invisible and you can't see them unless you go looking for them. And that...

Divia (39:22)

Yeah, I think that definitely depends.

Matt (39:42)

has very interesting implications for sort of, you know, quote unquote rationality in general.

Divia (39:49)

Wish again, I have a thing I mean by that that's pretty different from what you mean by that.

Matt (39:52)

Exactly, right? And that's where we were one end of the words problem. So, so my contention is that this architecture is universal in a broad, broad sense. The content is unique to each person, but the way the interactions work is universal. And so that's, that's just one leg. Well, you could say fairly, I think it's about half of the decision-making model. If we're talking

habit, instinct, reason, emotion. This is kind of like habit plus reason. You know, that if you're reasoning things out with a limited amount of attention and you've got these oceans of habit that are not, not only aren't fully coherent, but can't be made fully coherent even in principle, because you don't have the horsepower to go in and pull everything out at once and make sure it all fits everywhere. And that's that half of the decision making.

and that looks like a bad place to be, but it turns out it's maybe not. And that's where I went next.

Divia (40:59)

Yeah, so why don't you walk us through, this is, you have a framework for people when they disagree in ways that aren't necessarily on track to be a productive disagreement. Would you be up for giving an example of a time that you have used it and like how it went? So like for each stage, what concretely happened to you that day when you used it?

Matt (41:07)

Yeah.

Yeah.

sure.

Yeah, so, and I'm one of those people who's not good at concrete examples, but I'll do my best. But, you know, if, example, and this is bearing in mind, I haven't talked about what I think instinct and emotion are in relation to decision making, so we'll just leave that off for a minute. If you run into, some random terrifying comment on the internet that somebody says, you know, I don't know.

Divia (41:27)

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Matt (41:49)

But aren't either purple dinosaur is a terrible president or something? You know, it doesn't really matter what it's about, but it's, it's like.

Divia (41:55)

Something that I would have a strong reaction to is what you're talking about.

Matt (41:58)

Right, or something that you look at and you say, don't even know how to begin to reason with this. You know, because it's just...

Divia (42:04)

Well, I don't know that I would personally say that, but someone, sure.

Matt (42:07)

Yeah, right? Yeah, right? mean, it is a common experience on the internet that people run across things that just seem insane to them.

Divia (42:16)

Yes, I would say I do not tend to have that experience, but sure.

Matt (42:19)

Yeah, right. And so the way I look at it is, all right, well, if you want to reason with somebody, you've got to look at the, what I call the higher model of it, and I say, of the four components there, reason is the slowest one. Habits can be instant, instinct and emotion can be instant, reason takes a little time. So if you would like to reason with the person, and I generally hold that that's a good thing to want to do, but...

I don't have to get into the reasons for the moment.

Divia (42:49)

And when you say reason with, you mean like exchange reasons in a that people are.

Matt (42:53)

I guess by my lights I would say, well again let me just throw a couple of definitions in here. I break the general experience of dealing with classical rationality into three layers, interactively speaking. And one of them, would say reason is solo rationality. That's where I did the research, know, and I worked it out for myself.

And debate is combat rationality. So my reasoning destroyer is your reasoning. And argument is shared rationality. Let's work this one out together. So what I'm interested in ultimately is getting to argument. And so if I want to draw someone into an argument by engaging their sense of reason, the first thing I need to do is assess what they said and try to defuse.

at need the instinct part and the emotion part and the habit part. So, right.

Divia (43:54)

Right? So how would you do it in this example of, you know, the person who said something about Barney?

Matt (44:01)

Well, in that one, if I look at it and I say, if I think this person feels existentially threatened by Barney, then I'll say, it's all right, I'll help you out. How can I help? All right, so defuse. If it's just strong emotion, well, that's a little different game. Maybe I would say something like, that's funny. I just heard somebody say the same thing about the Easter Bunny.

What an odd coincidence, you know, it's like try to try to draw a pattern in, you know, again, without without going in and say, that's stupid. Don't feel that, which isn't likely to work. And if it's habit, well, you know, habit is mostly people say things that people around them say a lot. So so I hadn't heard it quite that way before. What do you mean by that? You know, so it's it's I'm going to look for a way in that.

Divia (44:56)

Yeah, and in those cases, you're saying the first one is more like they have a specific concern that like maybe on reflection, they're like, yes, I do worry about that. And the second one would be more like they have a strong emotion, but it's not really in the format of a specific concern. And then in the third one, it's sort of neither. They're saying it, but they didn't really, there's not too much behind it.

Matt (45:14)

Yeah, it's not like an existential threat. Yeah, right? And that's where the value of breaking decision making into four parts helps because between habit and reason and emotion and instinct, I feel like I've got a pretty comprehensive breakdown of the sources of whatever made them decide to say just that, just that.

And so that's step one. But now if I want to reason with them, well, the next thing we have to do is figure out a way of building a shared environment despite coming from really different places potentially with really different vocabularies. And so that's, I guess you could say, it's not the right word, but personified or embodied by

what I call the law of radical consensus. And that's a tool. And the law of radical consensus just simply says, consensus is easy to find. All you have to do is jointly agree that you disagree.

Divia (46:13)

So what's that?

Yeah, I would agree with this. Yeah, that's, I often attempt that as well.

Matt (46:28)

You know, it's,

Right? It's actually what's missing. Yeah, right.

Divia (46:34)

I would say it's not always actually easy in my experience, but I do think it's a good, it seems worthwhile to me.

Matt (46:42)

The missing piece is whether or not that looks like it will be productive. Right? Because it actually is easy. We could say, so we disagree, now what?

Divia (46:49)

No, it's, no, so that has not always been my experience. I actually had a long conversation the other week where, and you you could say it's a skill issue on my part, which I'm happy to accept, but in fact, I did try to get, and the other person listening to this may not, if the person I edit with is listening, may not agree with my characterization either, but I claim that I did not manage to get a straightforward agreement about where we disagreed. I do think often it's easy, I,

It hasn't been my experience that it always is, and I can think of some specific examples.

Matt (47:22)

Okay, this is the little different from what I said though. I didn't say agree where we disagree. I said agree. Yeah, yeah. And the limit case is we can't even agree whether or not we disagree.

Divia (47:29)

No, but even that we disagree.

Yes, sometimes that one is easier.

Matt (47:40)

Right? Yes. Yeah, but it still gets you there. So if you have that one in your bag, it's the showstopper. It's like, do you agree that we can't even agree? Yeah, so you can always do it. It's, right?

Divia (47:52)

I agree, it does seem to be helpful and it is often very tractable. Yes.

Anyway, point of disagree, this is noted point of disagreement. It has not been my experience that it is always achievable for me, which you could again say is a skill issue or I'm misinterpreting what happens. I do think it is very frequently.

Matt (48:03)

Yeah.

Right, do you see how the logical point I just made could get you there? I haven't found a way where it can't. So, right, but yeah, then it's whether or not one has the desire to do it, and that's a different problem. Because if you're dealing with someone who's just being contrarian, yet if they have no intention of actually reaching common ground with you, well, that's useful information.

Divia (48:19)

Yeah, to me it's just an empirical thing whether in fact people will always get there.

Maybe.

Matt (48:41)

Because yeah, yeah, yeah Sure, sure. All right. So so the goal You know if you think about how your own reasoning works basically the way it goes is if you've got this beginning condition you're happy with and Then you went through some reasoning that you're happy with then you're gonna end up at a conclusion. You're happy with right and and If you have a problem with the premises, well, that's one set

Divia (48:41)

Yeah, again, think I'm interested in hearing you out. I have a different ontology about that as well, but I'm interested in hearing you out.

I would agree with that.

Matt (49:10)

one place it breaks down. And if you have a problem with the reasoning, that's another place it breaks down. And the third place it breaks down is in how you selected which premises to start from. Which is, yeah, that's, yeah, that's the longer one. Yeah.

Divia (49:22)

Yes, I do remember this from the tweet you sent me, your long tweet, how this is a big issue these days. It's like, okay, well, you kind of cherry pick. I think the accusations that people cherry pick things are very common and I think for good reason.

Matt (49:33)

Right?

Yeah, and it's a difficult problem. And it's a common problem. Everyone's at this point working from individually unique sets of evidence. And what's interesting to tie this back to the earlier part is that's an exact map onto the architecture of habit. No two people have exactly the same habits. And the internet has suddenly done this at scale. So there's a resonance here. And if we can bridge it, that would be useful. And that's where the habit thing becomes useful.

So what I've been looking at is, okay, how do we tackle this? If you can't even come up with a shared set of premises, how could you argue anything? Right? So I've been playing with that. And the way I described the solar reasoning before is instructive in that it's very linear, right? Or at least it looks linear. You start with

Divia (50:19)

Sorry, yeah.

Matt (50:35)

shared premises, and you do your reasoning and then you get a conclusion. And if you want, could daisy chain that further into larger conclusions by adding more steps. And it makes reasoning look wonderfully linear. But it isn't. And the reason it isn't linear is, well, let me say first, the reason it looks linear is that's an artifact of language. That in order for me to explain it, I am using words in time

or on a page where it's in space and you're reading them in order and it's giving you an impression of linearity. But if, yeah, right? And because the communication works that way. But if you think about it more in terms of a habit architecture, what's hidden behind that is when you did the reasoning and you selected your premises,

Divia (51:13)

I do think words are more linear for sure, yeah.

Matt (51:30)

All of that work of, no, that won't work. This is a blind alley and that's a mistake is, is been washed out of the final product.

Divia (51:40)

Yeah, it's just less common than when people would choose to share that sort of thing.

Matt (51:43)

Yeah. And so when you look at the simple thing of premises, reasoning, conclusion, it looks nice and linear, but what that hides is this sort of tangly business that goes on in the middle.

Divia (51:55)

Yeah, which is often how people actually came to their conclusions. It's very much about that.

Matt (51:58)

Right. And that's that again, we're getting back to the architecture of habit and how people actually think versus how we think we think. That's that's how I tie it in. So so the problem is, if that's what's really going on, what we need in an internet world is a quick and effective way of getting on the same page, even from different perspectives. And so it's

Divia (52:25)

It's nice if you have it.

Matt (52:27)

Yeah, well that's what I'm trying to put into words. I think I have it. It's just, can I explain it usefully? And that's a whole different problem, especially for somebody who doesn't think in words or images, right? That's the whole reason I went into classical music in the first place. So it's like an unfolding harmonic progression here. So the way this goes is that first we need a way of getting back to shared premises. That's one of the things the Law of Radical Consensus does.

is that if we iteratively widen the frame, and we say, no, okay, so that's not solved. What if we go back here and we say, can we broaden it? Can we say this? Okay, that doesn't work. All right, well, how would you put it? we, you just keep, like for example, you and I are using competing definitions of rationality, but we're able to talk to each other because we're sort of accepting that the definitions are competing, but they're probably talking about the same general thing.

Divia (53:10)

What's an example of broadening it? Or how do mean it?

Matt (53:26)

So in a sense, we're sacrificing shared precision for shared accuracy.

Divia (53:33)

Okay, that's the sort of thing you mean.

Matt (53:34)

And we're just, yeah, we're just retreating out until we can both say, yes, I unequivocally endorse this very broad statement about this particular thing. Yeah, we were just retreating until, yeah.

Divia (53:43)

I'm not, okay, that might be what we're doing. In any case, we certainly are, we certainly are trying to proceed even though we don't have, yeah.

Matt (53:50)

Yeah. So step one is you're going to play this game with the law of radical consensus. just, okay, so we agree that we disagree on that. So what if we wrap it like this? Can we say we agree on that? Okay, no, and you just keep going out and out and out and out until you get somewhere where you can actually say, yes, it's really vague, but I'm totally with you on this point. Yeah. And you could do it, you could say both people or you could say all the people involved.

Divia (54:10)

And both people can.

Sure, yeah, if it's more than two.

Matt (54:19)

But whatever, it's a sort of a local condition. It doesn't have to be the universe all agrees with me. It's like we're for what we're doing here with the people involved. And if you play the game long enough and you're really trying to make it as rigorous and robust as possible, you're basically iterating the law of radical consensus until you get a convergence of four things. And the first one is consensus.

Divia (54:28)

the group of people that you're talking about.

Matt (54:49)

We actually agree, right? The second one that adds power is universality. We think this probably holds true everywhere. You know, this is why the laws of physics are powerful, right? Because people have done a lot of work, right? Yeah, right? The universality matters. It's useful. And the third one, in suspicious times where everyone has weird information, you're looking for self-evidence. If I s-

Divia (54:49)

Okay.

Yeah, math and physics are the...

What does that mean?

Matt (55:17)

If I say the thing and you can verify it by self-evident observation, then you're more likely to... Yeah. And for example, I would say that people have limited conscious attention.

Divia (55:22)

Like it seems self-evident to me, the thing you said.

Matt (55:31)

You look at that and say, well, yeah, right? There's no one out there who has unlimited conscious attention. We all have different limits, sure, but the fact that it's limited is true of everyone at once. So self-evidence. And the fourth one is invariance. That's not likely to change. So if I can get all four of those things on the same page at once, I've got a really solid functional epistemic floor.

And what I am doing by applying the law of radical consensus is going down the infinite rabbit hole of epistemics far enough to find functional agreement and then laying floorboards there and saying, we're going to build from here because this should support what we're doing. And if it doesn't, we'll just go back and check it because it's reversible. So you use the law of radical consensus to go backwards.

Divia (56:17)

Bye.

Matt (56:30)

in the linear sense and widen the frame until you've got a really solid set of foundational premises. And then you reason forward from there again and try to preserve those four things, the consensus, the universality, the self-evident observation, and the invariance. And you just go forward chasing those and you always look back to the nearest consensus if something breaks. You keep going until something interesting happens. So that's the sort of functional thing there.

Divia (56:56)

Yeah, okay. And so I think it's an interesting framework. Can you tell me like, since you, I know you said you have trouble sometimes with concrete examples, but like since you've developed the framework, how your conversations have changed compared to how they were before?

Matt (57:08)

Sure. Well, I think one of the pieces that I have to jump ahead to explain, and then I'll come back to where we are, is that when you apply the law of radical consensus method to human decision making,

Broad patterns emerge that make it much easier to talk to people without freaking out. So that's one way it's changed. When someone comes at me with their hair on fire about some topic that may or may not be true by my lights, I don't panic. Because I... Yeah. Yeah. And so that is downstream of having applied the law of radical consensus already to develop the higher model of decision making and its implications.

Divia (57:48)

Yeah, that's big if you can not be triggered about that in that way.

So when you could go meta and fit it into your framework, that helps you on an emotional level relate to what the person's saying.

Matt (58:07)

Yeah, because I'm not looking at the other person as insane or even particularly threatening. I'm just saying, you know, I mean, I'm not going to not defend myself if that comes up, but I can talk to anybody, no matter where they're coming from, because I know how to wrap the frame in a way that makes them into a reasonable person. So that's step one, is the broad

my receptive stance is vastly improved because I don't panic when somebody comes at me with something I don't agree with or sounds crazy. So then I apply my strategies of, know, so, my gosh, because politics is on everyone's mind right now, it's just like, okay, this particular presidential candidate is, you know, whatever it is.

Divia (58:43)

Yeah, that seems great.

Matt (59:01)

eating children or blowing up cities or whatever and this is so terrible and I have ways of defusing that. I okay, well, you know, that's fine. That's what I've been hearing about the other one too. What do you think could be going on? And what most of the time these people are expecting when they talk this way, and this happens at parties and things, right? Somebody says something really...

what you would think would be out of bounds, but obviously to them is not out of bounds. And they do that because of habit, because they're used to being around people who talk and think that way. So it's normal for their local habit structure. And they might be doing it because sometimes performative emotion is a way of getting status points in a social thing. So you demonstrate that you care about the thing. Okay, so, all right, but that's different from actually feeling threatened by the thing, right? So...

Divia (59:57)

In your experience, a lot of people who will say strongly worded statements about politics, they maybe don't have as deep-seated feelings about it necessarily. That's been your experience.

Matt (1:00:05)

Yeah. Necessarily. Sometimes they really do. But sometimes it's just social signaling born out of habit. And so you have to make a quick assessment, OK, is this person actually terrified that this is going to happen? Or are they just kind of saying it because all their friends say it? That is fun. But either way, I'm not like threatened by it myself. I'm like, OK, well, so. But.

But then there's a trick of listening to that. And again, engaging with the other person. Here I'm using my performance sensibilities as a musician, kind of trying to read the room. And then saying whatever comes to mind that I have assessed might slow down or jiu-jitsu the oncoming faster bits of the higher model so that I can get to the reason.

Divia (1:00:58)

So you're saying you want to interrupt their habits basically at this point.

Matt (1:00:58)

End.

Yeah, yeah, like if if I say to you one two and you're expecting three and I say six Or Yeah, and there's well, I won't get into that there's you can have plenty of habits that start the same way that end in different places so it's not always so clean cut but but yeah, you just

Divia (1:01:24)

But yeah, you'd like to, insofar as they have a habitual way of thinking about it that doesn't accord with how you're thinking about it, you'd like them to be in a different state. And so you try to interrupt that. Does that seem right?

Matt (1:01:31)

Yeah. Yeah. just, just break. Yeah. Just, just, just disrupt the flow long enough to get an idea in. And, and that's where you say, well, okay, well, okay. I heard the same thing about the other side. What do you think that might mean? Or, yeah. Isn't that funny how we keep hearing the same things about it? And where I'm going, you see how I'm aiming these things is toward universality. I heard that about the other guy too. So you're, I'm using my four points, the universality.

Divia (1:01:56)

Yeah, I can see that.

Matt (1:02:01)

the self-evidence, the consensus, and the invariance as targets, conversational targets. And where this kind of ends up, I've been trying to conceive of this in a way that makes a little more visual sense, because, okay, law radical consensus seems like, as I'm talking about it, okay, maybe that works, but the power isn't evident in the way I presented it. So...

Here's how I think I would lay out the power. I think that instead of thinking of rational argument as linear, it helps to think of it as planar. It has a second dimension. And the reason this matters is that this sort of plane serves as a window into other people's thinking. the, yeah. Right? And

Divia (1:02:54)

Yeah, because it is branching and it's not linear in people's heads. And so you want to have a more accurate model of how other people are actually relating to this stuff.

Matt (1:03:04)

Yeah, and it's both, like doubly so, because not only is it, you know, multi-dimensional in their own heads, it's just invisibly so, because the habits are smoothed out and it looks linear. But also, everyone coming out of the internet is coming from their own unique angle, and their own unique set of facts, and their own unique set of, you all this stuff. So, there is a way of organizing all of this stuff in a plainer way that I like. And this is a...

recent development by thinking.

Divia (1:03:33)

You mean like that intersubjectively, like not just for a single person, but if you imagine like the state of people's beliefs in general, not just the one you're, the few that you're talking to.

Matt (1:03:37)

Yeah.

Yeah, like what we're describing is the frame of a window that you're using to look into the internet at other people's beliefs. And everyone has a different view, but we can all use the same frame, like that. go back to our left to right model, where that's your premises and then your reasoning and then your conclusions. In that linear model, going right advances the argument and going left

Divia (1:03:50)

what you're describing,

Okay.

Matt (1:04:12)

does everything else. It checks the facts, it checks the logic, it checks the premises. Here's how I would do it. I would say going right still advances the argument, going left only checks earlier logic. In the other dimension, if you drill down, now you're getting into the facts. What are the facts? What aren't the facts? More decimal places, all that kind of thing. What do the experts say? And if you go up, that's big picture.

Divia (1:04:33)

Okay.

Okay. So you go, can, you're imagining the ability, like you keep in mind when you, when you imagine the plane part of that, how that, why that helps you is that it helps free you to have multiple dimensions to change the conversation to either looking, you know, backwards premises or forward towards conclusions or towards more concrete evidence or towards more meta or abstract statements.

Matt (1:04:43)

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right, so what that gives me is more targets, more navigational compass directions for my application of the law of radical consensus. I can see consensus in multiple directions. So if somebody says something crazy, I can say, okay, do you have facts that support that? That'd be going down. Or I can go left and say, okay, you skipped a step here. Can you show me how you got here? I just didn't follow it. And we go up and say, how does that fit into the big picture?

and you can use combination moves. You can say, so if everything you're saying is exactly right and those are the facts and that's all there is to it, then by logic, now we move up and right, if you're right about that, then the only possible big picture result is this terrible consequence. Like, one way I've used this on people before, years ago actually, is somebody will go on a vent about

some political party or something and then I just kind of look at him and say, okay, so I'll sign you up for the Civil War then. And just hold eye contact until it hits. And what that is is I'm not arguing with you, but I am saying that by your own logic, this is the only possible result. And that's not a comfortable place for people to be. So it's a combo move. I'm going to go, essentially, I'll accept going down to the facts and I'll accept all the earlier logic, but then I'll bounce up here and I'll say,

going up and to the right, that's a terrible thing. Don't you want to have maybe another option? And then I'll swing it up and left and I'll try to generalize toward, so what would that solution look like?

Divia (1:06:49)

Yeah, so I guess hearing you talk about this, one of the things I start to wonder is like, do you think this framework also helps you to change your own mind more when talking to people? Can you talk about that part of it?

Matt (1:07:01)

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, one of the things about the habit structure I was talking about kind of the first half, that again, the way I see it, habits of thought and habits of action are the same thing, except one's attached to muscles and one isn't. So they have the same architectures. And the architecture is such that I can't possibly have everything 100 % rationally coherent in there because new stuff's arriving all the time and it's evolving and I...

I don't have the bandwidth to sort it. So I know that I can be wrong about some really important stuff, even if I'm deeply invested in

Divia (1:07:40)

Yeah, you have some abstract awareness that's increased probably now that you've solidified your model of how you two could be wrong about something.

Matt (1:07:41)

Yeah.

Right? it... Yeah, the logic is clear that even though I don't know what I'm wrong about, I guarantee you I'm wrong about lots of stuff. Just like everyone else. So that helps, because it knocks out the sort of arrogance of thinking I'm right and no one else can be right. I know I could be wrong. That helps. Also, knowing how all of this stuff relates, again, in my own head, Ganon, that we haven't gotten into...

as to how emotion attaches to this stuff opens a lot of empathy. That other people can be really like 180 wrong on stuff they care passionately about and it happens all the time and so can I. So it's okay, well that sucks to be in that position. It's really not fun. But if you have strategies to help somebody out of that, well that's good. And then, then.

Bending that all back again to the idea of consensus, universality, and all of that stuff. Things that don't change that we can tell will never change. There's never going to be people who are unlimited in their conscious attention. We're stuck with that. It means we can bend toward finding the common ground in those ways that leads to actionable solutions. Like, OK.

Divia (1:08:55)

Okay, and then what's the implication of that?

Matt (1:09:08)

If we can find some stuff we can trust in sort of headspace about this wide angle logic that isn't all that precise, but it's very, very accurate, what that's gonna do is two things. It is going to eliminate entire classes of attempted solution. So we don't even have to try to pursue them because we can already tell they won't work. And it's going to offer us at the same time a way to

narrow down into an actual productive path that we can jointly pursue.

Divia (1:09:44)

And you think you get there from saying that people have limited conscious attention and so that's helping you to focus on where things seem tractable? Is that what you're saying?

Matt (1:09:54)

Yeah, yeah, and there's more to it than that. But yeah, that's the general idea. The framework is such that no one has all the answers. And when you inject exponential technology into that same situation, it sort of changes the rules. People can evolve new attacks faster than you can evolve defenses.

Divia (1:10:10)

So when you say exponential technology, what do mean?

And are you talking about like verbally or are you talking about, like, can you give an example of what you mean?

Matt (1:10:21)

everything well you know like these days you say the wrong thing on twitter you can get targeted for cancellation but people can also figure out who you are and try to come after your bank or whatever or they could drop drones on your head or whatever you know it used to be that when you had a disagreement you could just walk away but

Divia (1:10:41)

I mean, maybe there was, I think there was a brief period where that was kind of true. And then for most of human history, that was not, right?

Matt (1:10:44)

Right? Yeah. Right, exactly. And it back in the, in the low tech days, you really had to work together to survive where you didn't survive. So there wasn't a whole lot of optionality there, but then in the broad middle ground, you could, you could get ahead by pretending to work with people and then like taking advantage of them. And that's most of it. But when you get up into the high tail and you say,

suddenly anyone can do anything to everyone. That's when it gets...

Divia (1:11:17)

You're saying it's harder, you think it's harder to take advantage of people now?

Matt (1:11:21)

I think it's more dangerous. what happens is the threats can come in over the horizon faster than you can even know they're That you, know, someone can spread false gossip about you that can wreck your life. you know, and yeah, and so there's, this is becoming more and more accessible to more and more people. So.

Divia (1:11:39)

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, it has happened to people for sure.

Matt (1:11:49)

We are starting to get to a point where instead of a win-lose dynamic, it's becoming win-win or lose-lose. Because if you try to take someone out, then their allies will take you out. And then it spreads and...

Divia (1:12:05)

You basically, think there's more deterrence, more potential for deterrence than there used to be?

Matt (1:12:10)

Yes and no, because the architecture of human decision making hasn't changed. And our understanding of it may be changing, but it itself hasn't changed. And people have it.

Divia (1:12:21)

Yeah, but it seems like you were just, when you said exponential technologies, I think it didn't seem like you were talking about the architecture of human decision making. It seemed like you were talking about some other features of our environment.

Matt (1:12:28)

No.

Yeah, what we can do to each other is becoming broader and more sophisticated and nastier at a faster rate than what we can stop each other from doing to each other.

Divia (1:12:42)

Yeah, it seems like your perspective is also that basically the offense wins in like an adversarial environment more than used to be the case.

Matt (1:12:43)

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what happens when you develop the higher model is instructive in this result too, because what it comes down to, see if I can do it briefly, this is without explaining it, this is essentially asserting it, right? You've got all that messy habit architecture I talked about, right? It's not particularly rationally coherent, but it has a logical structure, it's just a tangle.

and spreading constellations and network effects and all of this sort of thing. And it's characteristic of humans. It's just how have it, okay. And one of the things your body is equipped with is a visceral sense of identity. And that's what your instincts push on to modify your behavior. You feel hungry, you go eat something. You feel tired, you go sleep, that kind of stuff. Black box for instincts, we don't care what the details are, but that's the general attachment is that your instincts keep your body alive.

But your abstract mind is also constructing identity, except this one's abstract. And like everything else in the habit world, it's very flexible. your sense of, right?

Divia (1:14:04)

For sure. had a good conversation about egos structures a couple of weeks ago. People want to check that out too.

Matt (1:14:07)

Right? So this will tap into literally thousands of other fields, but the idea is that your sense of self is whatever it is. You you can expand to be your house, your family, your expected vacation, whatever, you know. And because everything is on the habit architecture, it means the bits of yourself that are habituated will respond sort of quicker than you can think, rationally speaking. They just appear.

And my take on this as a musician is that since the mind and body is a two-way street, Alexander Technique, all these other things I haven't gotten into, there's no reason why the instincts that evolved to leverage the visceral sense of identity wouldn't also be fooled by the abstract sense of identity and leverage all that too. And we experience that as emotions.

Divia (1:15:05)

Sorry, we experienced it as what?

Matt (1:15:07)

emotions.

Divia (1:15:09)

That's, yeah, that certainly is one ontology.

Matt (1:15:12)

And so that's why you get people being existentially threatened by election outcomes, for example. You can lust after a new car, you you can feel hungry for a win. Right?

Divia (1:15:24)

Yeah, again, I think it's interesting. think ultimately I have a pretty different perspective on most of that, I, you know, it's, I like hearing what other people, how other people see it.

Matt (1:15:29)

Sure.

Here's where it becomes useful. And again, we're sort of playing this game of here's a simplicity and then layered above it is a ferocious complexity that's emergent and you have to go up to the next level to find a new simplicity. So we look at all of this mess and it's all of these different instincts leveraging all of these different identities at once and surfed by this tiny spotlight of rational attention. But what it still comes down to is this.

Just as the body in cello playing is a giant sensory network, and it kind of solves without you paying direct attention to it, the entire network of identity is going to solve the same way under the instincts, such that every decision you make, no matter how profound or trivial, is best available for self-preservation at that moment in time. All that changes is the nature of the sense of self.

Divia (1:16:30)

Yeah, I do think sometimes it can work that way. think, again, I think I have a lot of, ultimately a pretty different perspective on this stuff, but.

Matt (1:16:33)

Yeah, right. Yeah, sure. And so my take on it is that it always works that way, and that's one of the universals. Now, how we get there, obviously I'm asserting. I haven't walked through any of the reasons or how I think it works. But the point is, if that were the case, then you can figure out why society does what it does.

because everyone is always maximizing self-interest except that senses of self are different and that creates stable dynamics over time that fit with what is observed. And that's where the power lies is that if I'm right on this stuff then you can actually lay this stuff out and say, that means if we organize society this way it'll crash in that way at about this amount of time.

And that's where the interesting bits are. But you see how much work I have to do to get there? That's why I'm not able to just lay it out. Because it's very... In order to get to universals that everyone will take, I have to go about four layers deep. And that's where what I've got is, know, instinct protects the... keeps you alive, does the physical work. intelligence helps with pattern recognition and all that kind of stuff.

and conscious attention is limited. And that's my floor. And you go up from the floor and you get to various layers, but that's, you one of the layers is the higher thing and another one is this sort of self-preservation thing as being a true universal thing. But then the societal functions are above that.

Divia (1:18:20)

Yeah, no, and that could be a whole other thing. think ultimately we're probably close to out of time for today, but thank you so much for sharing all this. And if you wanna let people know where they can read more and find you on Twitter, I welcome that too.

Matt (1:18:23)

Right?

I'm sure we are. Sure, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm at MJ Piercello on Twitter, and that's MJP-I-E-R-C-E-L-L-O. And I also write, I think under the same name at Substack, but very infrequently. And I just, what I do is I'm trying to generate visuals and pieces and facets of this giant puzzle that will ultimately later become a sort of a linear presentation of it. So,

Divia (1:18:46)

Okay.

Right, because as you said, it's one of your, something that I think you'd say you find challenging about this is how much your thoughts are nonverbal and then to try to express it to other people. Yeah.

Matt (1:19:04)

Yeah.

Right? Yeah. And you know, having the experience of cello playing, it's like, well, you built all these habits from the tiniest motions of the fingers on up to the body on out through this symphonic thing where you're all playing together in a live performance, which is different rules than recording or practicing. And there's all these layers of things going on. And so I'm used to thinking of the whole thing as a layered construct. And I'm trying to figure out how to cram that into it.

like an appealing linear presentation. And it's, it's great. I can see it, but how do I say it? my pleasure. Well, thanks for listening. And thanks again. And so I don't know if we'll get a chance to talk more about this later, but if you think of anything that I said that makes no sense that you'd rather I explain differently, by all means reach out. But in the meantime, it's on to other things. Thanks a bunch.

Divia (1:19:41)

Yep. Well, thank you for taking the time.

All right.

Sounds good.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

In this episode, I talk to my Twitter mutual Thinkwert about Twitter, the nature of whimsy, why he thinks Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and some general life stuff.

Transcript:

Divia (00:02)

I'm here today with ThinkWert from Twitter. If you follow me on Twitter, you almost certainly also follow ThinkWert. checked and I think you were followed by 384 of the people that follow me, is a very high number. We're definitely in the same general vicinity. think, yeah. I think, so I got back on Twitter in, I think the end of the -

Thinkwert (00:21)

Same ecosystem, sure.

Divia (00:29)

At some point in 2019, I feel like that was around then when you started posting a bunch of tutors. Does that seem right?

Thinkwert (00:34)

It was like literally January 1st, 2020 that I kind of really hard launched ThinkWord. It was an old account I had for years and years and years, but I didn't really start honestly posting until literally like I decided that year I'm going to start really using Twitter a lot. And so, yeah, it's exactly four and a half years now.

Divia (00:55)

Yeah, no, I remember. think the first time you came up on my timeline, there was some reply and I'll pick a flower fairy for you. And I was like, I love flower fairies. I'll do that. So yeah.

Thinkwert (01:02)

Yeah. Yeah. That was also during the height of COVID too. So we had already had a lot of time. Everybody was on Twitter all the time.

Divia (01:09)

Right.

Absolutely. Yeah, no, mean, in January, you probably, I mean, maybe you knew, but you probably didn't didn't quite know how it was going to play out. A couple of people knew in January.

Thinkwert (01:16)

I did.

I knew before everybody else in my real life circles did because of Twitter. What everyone knew was that tidal wave was coming. I remember telling one of my classes, we're going for spring break, we're probably not coming back, take what you need with you. And nobody believed me. Every student was skeptical. said, OK, when we get back, you can laugh at me. You can laugh at me. I give you permission. But I'm telling you, we're not coming back. That's when Harvard had closed, Yale had closed, all the big schools closed.

Divia (01:22)

Because of Twitter. Yeah.

You

Yeah.

Thinkwert (01:47)

Yeah, we're gonna follow suit, we're gonna follow suit. So sure enough, I was right. For once, what am I predicting?

Divia (01:52)

It was a very bizarre time, I think, for a lot of people to be very online and then talking to people who weren't. And I think some people really like, I don't know, having the scoop or being contrarian or telling people. I was more like, no, no, I felt relieved by a lot when it became mainstream. I'm like, OK, I don't want to be the one trying to tell everyone that this is going to be a big thing. Heather, we're just... Yeah.

Thinkwert (02:18)

Yeah, the prophet in the square going, beware, beware, beware, it's not as fun. Like, yes, I told you so, is more fun. Yeah.

Divia (02:24)

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so, OK, so it wasn't because of COVID. What was it in January? And sorry, let me finish my answer. So for people who don't know, think we're mostly posts a lot of great. I want to say memes, but not like with meme formats, not like the latest format that's going around. It's like you put a picture and some text and it's usually really funny. It's usually really whimsical. I think it's always really wholesome. Occasionally you'll post

Thinkwert (02:49)

Yeah.

Divia (02:53)

You were just telling me before we started recording, you will sometimes post pictures of you holding your daughters. You've done that periodically also, but your bread and butter is like the funny, the picture and the text, funny stuff like that.

Thinkwert (02:59)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I would say the er, think word, post is a picture of an animal with a funny caption. That's probably a little bit whimsical, a little off kilter. But yeah, that tends to be the main way I post it. Yeah.

Divia (03:23)

Yeah, and as with the flower fairy thing, I don't know how often you're actually getting there, but the vibe is very much, at least from my perspective, like the illustrations in the books I read growing up.

Thinkwert (03:33)

Yeah, yeah, especially early on I used a lot of the child book illustrations. I went through the Wikipedia list of child book illustrators, like hundreds, looked up every single one of them and tried to find material to use for tweets. And I've kind of phased out of that a little more or less. yeah, definitely the first couple of years. That was my bread and

Divia (03:41)

Okay.

So what was it that made you think you were going to get back into posting in January 2020?

Thinkwert (04:06)

trying to think of what my mindset was there. I've always liked to kind of be part of something social. I didn't really have any, I didn't even know what I wanted to do. I started posting just a lot of different things. lot of, you try to see what's stuck to the wall. I actually tried a lot of emoticon art early on, believe it or not. When nobody was following me, I tried to post these interesting things using emoticon art.

Divia (04:29)

Okay.

Thinkwert (04:35)

And that didn't take off. But no, it's still there. Yeah, do a search from January through March of 2020 of ThinkWord, and you'll find it. But nothing took off. Nothing took off. The one thing I had going for me was EigenRobot followed me. And every once in while, he'd retweet me, and I'd get followers. And so.

Divia (04:37)

Can I go back and see it or is it deleted? Okay.

Thinkwert (05:02)

A good tweet man also followed me and sometimes he retweeted me. And I would get new followers from that. And that kind of built. But then I found this, I guess, the voice, the whimsical images, particularly of animals or children's books, and adding a little comment. Whimsical, wholesome, sometimes a little bit dark, but nothing too R -rated on there. And that seemed to be what worked.

Divia (05:29)

And a lot of it is pretty self -referential, like about the Twitter experience, which I think people like.

Thinkwert (05:34)

Yeah, yeah. Well, I found that tweets about Twitter did well. I found that tweets about being a parent did not do well. So I kind of just follow the algorithm, OK? This is what people like. This what people don't like. So I kind of switched to match it. I think maybe I'm too old for the average Twitter user experience. They didn't have their own kids. So diaper joke didn't go off that well.

Divia (05:40)

Yeah.

Right.

Thinkwert (06:01)

Tweets about Twitter, yeah, that always does gangbusters because that's a universal experience. And so I kind of made it a little game for myself, as in I'm going to write tweets, post tweets, keep track. I have records going back years of every tweet, how well it did. So my notes, my notes, say.

Divia (06:23)

What sort of records? Like in a spreadsheet or something? Okay.

Thinkwert (06:31)

September 23rd, 2024, here's a tweet. How well it did in the first five minutes, how well it did in the first 10 minutes, how many likes, how many retweets. You can kind of tell the trajectory and if it doesn't do well, delete it, post something else.

Divia (06:43)

Yeah, I you have a deleted word account also, right?

Thinkwert (06:45)

I deleted work. Yes, I will say I am less intense this in 2024. whereas I used to probably work three or four hours a day on tweets, I write 150 tweets a week. It's probably down to about 20. I think I'm down to more moderate levels. But that really was my growth period. I'm kind of a little bit plateau now.

Divia (06:52)

Mm -hmm, I bet deleting.

Okay, so hearing you talk about it, seems like a bunch of your motivation was like the sort of the puzzle of what people are responding to and how you can make more of that.

Thinkwert (07:17)

Yeah. Yeah. So it's a game. It's a game. When I was a little boy, 10 years old, we lived in an apartment and had a high wall in a courtyard. I'd take a soccer ball and kick against the wall and count how many times I could do it. Five. OK, then I'd try again. Six. And try to come to little competitions and different things and just playing with myself for hours at a time.

Divia (07:44)

Mm

Thinkwert (07:45)

And that's what Twitter was. I mean, I also had a social component, but I'm just like, does this work? No, it doesn't work. Okay, try something else. Does this work? Doesn't work. No, don't do this. Something else. And then, okay, this works, this works. And that was kind of the feedback loop that I went into. But I wasn't really doing it for anybody except me. was just a game. Twitter was a game.

Divia (08:04)

Right, and it wasn't like, I mean, I guess now you can monetize a little bit, but it wasn't about that either, because at the time there was nothing like that.

Thinkwert (08:08)

Yeah, right. was pre -monetization. So yeah, I have monetization now, but I didn't have it at the time there. So yeah, it was for the love of the game, so to speak.

Divia (08:20)

Yeah, it's interesting hearing you talk about it because I just use Twitter in such a different way and I'm always more like afraid of responding too much to what people like because it seems like, you know, I rarely have tweets that blow up. But what I do, sometimes it's because I managed to say something funny or I posted some meme just before somebody else did that I didn't even make. But sometimes also it's because I...

can I say something offensive or like more than I meant to or something like that? So I'm usually like, all right, let me steer clear of that. Let me not try to get audience captured. But then it's fun to hear the other side of it. Like you're posting this cool stuff and you are making a game of seeing what people respond to and that that also can be great. I think it's helpful for me to think about that.

Thinkwert (08:50)

I'm gonna...

Yeah.

Well, I think too, because I'm an anonymous account, because I don't really talk about my Twitter account, I don't have to worry about my real life persona and the think word persona kind of complicating each other. Right. So the think word persona is its own thing. And so it's not me and me. Right.

Divia (09:26)

Yeah, you're a professor. Do your students ever know that you have this account?

Thinkwert (09:31)

Yeah, in fact there was an article in the school newspaper about it last year about it. I mentioned it to somebody and the word gets around. got around. I don't, I feel like too many students follow me. I don't know if Thinkware is too popular, sorry, Twitter is too popular on this campus. And I've heard recently there's more restrictions on new accounts. if you start a new account on Twitter due to bot stuff.

Divia (09:35)

Okay.

Yeah.

Thinkwert (09:58)

that it's harder to apply to people unless you pay the money to get in the account. yeah, don't quote me on that. I'm a little murky on how the new changes are happening. But I have a few on there and I follow and I interact with some students every once in a while. But mostly it's just stuff. I don't post anything too controversial, so I'm not too worried about anything in trouble with administration or anything.

Divia (09:59)

Interesting.

Sure.

Thinkwert (10:26)

Maybe about the amount of time I spend on Twitter, that might be a concern. Not so much what I'm posting.

Divia (10:27)

No, that makes sense.

I mean, I imagine, my guess would be if that's how you treat your Twitter hobby, you're probably pretty dedicated with your work as well.

Thinkwert (10:45)

I would think so, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're definitely separate spheres, I would say, and they don't interact much.

Divia (10:47)

Yeah, sounds like that's your personality.

Yeah, so I posted on Twitter asking if there was anything I should ask you. We got a few questions, not too many, but one of them was, what is the essence of whimsy? So as a top whimsy account on Twitter and also English professor, you probably have a pretty good answer.

Thinkwert (11:03)

Yeah.

I probably should have a ready answer for this. I think it's something slightly off -kilter, something unexpected, but it's also very playful. A little bit like lobbing that tennis ball to somebody and expecting them to lob it back, right? In other words, I'm being silly, I'm being goofy.

but I'm expecting you, the audience, to kind of pick it up. Pick it up and see the joke, see the gag in there, and play with what that is, what is going on there. I often, back in the old days, I'd have a composition of a, this is a whimsy Twitter, this is political Twitter, or politics Twitter, and politics Twitter is also always horrible, horrible, horrible. Dante, Hades,

Divia (12:10)

Right.

Thinkwert (12:12)

War, blood, and whimsy Twitter was fun, sweet, calm, wholesome. So I try pretty hard to stay apolitical in what I post. You probably can tell from reading my Twitter account that I'm not posting a lot of politics. I guess I can't honestly say I never, but I basically never post about politics. I kind of want to kind of make a little oasis away from that.

Divia (12:38)

I think a lot of people want that, right?

Thinkwert (12:40)

Yeah, and I think that's part of the Peel of Thinkward account is that it's not culture war. It's not about if my opponent gets selected, the sky's going to fall in sort of thing.

Divia (12:52)

Yeah, I actually, do you know the word, I've learned this word on Twitter, I've never heard it used in real life, prelapsarian.

Thinkwert (12:59)

Yeah, yeah, like before the fall.

Divia (13:01)

Yeah, and that's the style of those children's book illustrations of like the animals frolicking and stuff like that. That's at least one way people use that word.

Thinkwert (13:06)

Okay, yes. A lot of the Jehovah's Witness art has that prelapsarian feel to it too. You ever seen a Jehovah's Witness art? Jehovah's Witness track art? Yeah, that's very prelapsarian. It often will show kind of very paradise, people smiling. I don't mean to denigrate it at all because there's a real charm. Sincerely, there is a real charm to it. But it has a very utopian...

Divia (13:14)

Yeah. Sorry? no, I haven't seen it.

Thinkwert (13:35)

glossy pictures, everything will be great. Sense of kind of vibrating with joy about it. you Google Jehovah's Witness tracked art, you'll see what I want.

Divia (13:44)

Yeah.

Okay, I'll look it up. Yeah, so what's your current, you'd mentioned that originally you'd gone through and found all the children's books, authors and compiled pictures that way, but yeah, what's your current way of sourcing your pictures?

Thinkwert (13:59)

the, well, like I said, I've had the gas off the pet a little bit really since last year. but really I have a couple of Tumblr accounts that I follow that are really interesting, strange, and then some TikTok accounts that I follow. So I've been posting a lot more videos this last year and, often I'll also just go back and recycle some old tweets as well. but

really it's I think Tumblr is kind of where I get the best images now.

Divia (14:30)

And then how do you find accounts to follow on Tumblr?

Thinkwert (14:33)

Mostly do a search for term like whimsy or berries or something like that. And then find people that kind of have that really interesting images and sensibilities. used to use Pinterest. I used to use Reddit. But I don't use those so much. But yeah, there's a lot of kind of trawling, looking at images, looking at images. Sometimes back in the day, I would say I literally look over 1 ,000 images trying to find some.

try to find something that seemed interesting.

Divia (15:06)

And then can you put into words when you see something, what makes you respond to it, you think?

Thinkwert (15:12)

That's a good question. Most of it is if is it fresh to me like it's something I haven't seen before and is is there something happening in the image. So that sounds strange but a picture of a ferry or a spaceship are often very boring because you're just looking at a ferry or a spaceship. There's nothing happening. There's nothing happening.

Divia (15:17)

Mm

Yeah, okay.

Thinkwert (15:39)

This is what I found early on is that you could collect 20 fairy pictures and they're not interesting. It's just a picture of a fairy. So there had to be some kind of action or gag or some context in the back. I realize I'm sounding very vague here. But it's all kind of same.

Divia (15:56)

No, I'm looking, I'm scrolling through looking at some of your pictures and I'm like, yeah, I think I can see what you're saying. So like your Pinch tweet, which says, a code, I will be kind, I will not thirst, I will not sneer, I will not be bitter, that stuff. And you have a guy holding, I don't know, he's a knight or something, but he has a, like maybe not. He has a sword though, and he has these, I'm like, yeah, he's doing something. Like this, I'm sorry, he does have a helmet, but it's, but he's taken it off and he's kneeling before this altar.

Thinkwert (16:14)

Yeah, yeah, right.

Yeah. Yeah. And that pin tweet is a pretty good representation of kind of what I'm after. As I say that applies there, it's more aspirational than followed in practice. In other words, this is my goal, not so much of I've arrived. This is what I do, is what I want to do.

Divia (16:42)

Sure. Yeah, no, think you convey that it's not meant to be the most serious.

Thinkwert (16:47)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's kind of a little bit of what I'm after.

Divia (16:54)

Yeah, or if I scroll a little more and I see the picture of like the cat reading the warrior cats books, I'm like yeah there's something happening.

Thinkwert (17:00)

Something happening there. Yeah, yeah, there's some context there.

Divia (17:04)

Okay, so you're scanning and you're looking for things that like maybe aesthetically you like, but also like sort of affords kind of like it has a of a plot already in there.

Thinkwert (17:13)

Yeah, right, right. There's something at work there. And then save a bunch of images, then pull something up and try to find a caption, gag, something a little off -kilter. If you insert whatever the end joke of the week for Twitter is, you can, but it also

Divia (17:35)

Right. That helps a lot, right, for engagement.

Thinkwert (17:41)

You don't gain new followers with that. You get a lot of likes, you won't gain new followers because it's the same joke they've heard all before. They're liking it because they've heard the joke, but they're not going to follow you because they already know the joke. So it's hard to tell, but it's usually something that is sharp and pithy and a little bit original and new, a little bit of skew.

Divia (17:43)

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, what does tend to get new followers?

Thinkwert (18:11)

I find that if I tried to get too long and complicated, you know, I'm an English professor, I like the semicolons and the commas and the clauses connecting to one another. Those, if it can't be quick, they don't work. They don't work. You need something that kind of punches, punches, punches hard and is a little bit something like they haven't seen before.

Divia (18:18)

Yeah.

Do you have, like, you, can you remember, there particular tweets of yours that got you a lot of new followers?

Thinkwert (18:44)

If you typed in thinkwart and wispies, W -H -I -S, yes. Thinkwart and wispies, I think I almost spelled it right. W -H -I -S -P -I -E -S. We're going to find it.

Divia (18:50)

Okay, I'll also open it in.

Thinkwert (19:04)

And it's.

Divia (19:05)

Wispies are giant creatures that live in the Scottish Highlands. This one, they are generally harmless, but their intense curiosity can be alarming to the bystander. They're 99 .8 % water vapor. these are... Yeah, and then it looks like these clouds with eyes and like tenderly fingers. Like these creatures.

Thinkwert (19:08)

Yes.

Yeah, that one got me a ton of new followers. I think it's. No, no, no, no. In fact, in reply, I list the source of the images. Yeah, that is something I found on Tomler. But.

Divia (19:33)

And you, did you create this image or did you find it?

Yeah, because it has 32k likes, which is a lot, but you often get a lot. That's not so many more likes than you sometimes get, right?

Thinkwert (19:49)

Right, right. Yeah, so it's interesting. Sometimes I find something on TikTok and I'll post it that's amusing. It'll get 30 ,000 likes. I don't get a lot of followers because...

Divia (19:58)

Right. But okay, but this one people were like, I'm this is new or something like that's the theory.

Thinkwert (20:02)

This is the one people... Yeah, think it's the whimsy. And also it requires people to catch on that it's not real, right? But it's real -ish in this...

Divia (20:12)

Yes.

Yeah, because when I click on the first one, like, okay, but that's, that would be a very strange cloud. But then, you know, I look at the other ones, I'm like, this is definitely not, this is not something that actually looks like this.

Thinkwert (20:25)

Yeah. But it kind of requires that the audience realizes it's a gag, they play along, and they're like, OK, yeah. So this is something that we see here. I used to use a lot of AI images, and they got a lot of traction out of followers. But there seemed to a turn around in a 2023, where people come.

Divia (20:50)

the ones that you generated or that other people had.

Thinkwert (20:52)

Some of them I generated, some of them I found. I did have a mid -journey account that I used for several months, and I had some good success with it. But I also found that people got kind of annoyed. A lot of people talked with the AI images.

Divia (21:04)

Yeah, I could see that because, yeah, they definitely, I'm sure there are ones that I wouldn't be able to clock as AI, but there is a thing where I can tell that it's AI and I used to be like, that's cool, know, technology. And now I guess maybe I'm the same as everyone else. I'm like, all right, well, I know that AI can do that now and it has that sort of distinctive look and.

Thinkwert (21:26)

It's flabbergasting how quickly that happened, right? In touring, we'd deal with a dolly, two images. I was like, this is, you can't tell, this is amazing. This is miraculous, really. And then two years later, it's like, ugh, right. Yeah, it's so amazing.

Divia (21:29)

Yeah, totally.

And it's still, yeah, it's still part of me is like, of course, it's a miracle. Like imagine going back, you know, I used to, studied computer science in college. Not that I was ever very deep in any of stuff, but my friends used to be like, wouldn't it be, you know, you should get the computers to make these pictures. I'm like, guys, you have no idea that's so hard. That you can't do anything like that. you know, so I do remember when very, the state of the art was very far from that.

Thinkwert (22:07)

Yeah, it did seem to the naive person like, I thought computers could always do that. Why is that new?

Divia (22:11)

Right. Yeah, no, in some ways I think I'm able to be more impressed with it because I was studying computer science when people were sort of trying and completely failing to do things like that.

Thinkwert (22:25)

But yeah, anyway, I was using AI images quite a bit. I've really, I wouldn't say I've stopped using them, but I don't use them so much, partly because it felt like people were unfollowing or blocking or really negative towards AI images. But like I said, I respond to what people tell me, at least how would I get in the likes and retweets, and kind of follow from that.

Divia (22:38)

That's too bad.

Right.

Yeah, you know, I was just thinking actually, because I don't really have viral tweets myself. I think one of my top tweets was just some early reply to one of your jokes with some other joke. was something about a, like, some old internet joke about the husband pranking his wife that he'd taken a coyote into the house or something. Okay, so one of the other questions that we got.

Thinkwert (23:10)

Yeah.

Divia (23:17)

This was from Science Banana. What is your ideal application for the allegedly upcoming AR glasses? I don't know if you've spoken about this before, but Banana thought you might have a take.

Thinkwert (23:27)

but yeah, I have not looked into it. I really don't have an answer to it. I always thought it'd be kind of neat to be able to enter like a classic movie mode. I think I'd go into a noir film and solve it, kind of like a game, except it'd be kind of more cinematic quality.

I know you've got kind of things that do that already. So yeah, I'm afraid I don't have a good answer for you, Yeah,

Divia (24:01)

Fair enough.

Okay, and so also when we were planning this podcast, you mentioned to me some stuff that you have a lot of thoughts on that aren't as Twitter -centric. And so I would also love to hear your thoughts on, you think Shakespeare is actually Shakespeare.

Thinkwert (24:13)

Yes. Right.

I think Shakespeare is Shakespeare. Yeah, yeah.

Divia (24:22)

Yeah, and this is one of those things, have a very sort of casual level of engagement with this. I've talked to a couple friends over the years that have opinions. I've read some blog posts, but I don't really have my own opinion. So can you lay it out for me? What's the...

Thinkwert (24:34)

Well, I'm glad I get a chance to rant about this, because I've been meaning to rant about it. part of it is that.

don't know if I want to actually get into fights with people online about this. So I'll preface this by saying I'm not so much interested in refuting arguments as laying out a case of why I think William Shakespeare, the actor, was the same William Shakespeare who wrote the plays. All right, so let me lay out, first let me lay out why there's a controversy at all. Okay, why do some people think that Shakespeare was not Shakespeare?

Divia (24:46)

You

Thinkwert (25:12)

Well, nobody thought this until like the late 1800s. So Shakespeare, yeah. So Shakespeare is like 1568 is when he's born. He dies, I want to say 1630 somewhere. But in his lifetime, nobody ever, no, there was no gossip. There was no doubt about it. Yeah, we have people talk about him and nobody says anything.

Divia (25:17)

At the time, everyone took for granted that of course he was.

And we have contemporary accounts of various types.

Thinkwert (25:41)

There's a few strange things that are said about him, but nobody says, by the way, he didn't write the plays. So in the late 1800s, you have this American lady who actually is caught in the tomb of Shakespeare trying to open it up like she has a pickaxe and she's hacking away because she's convinced that there was no way that he was actually Shakespeare. yeah, where Shakespeare's buried, like she wants to prove the tomb is empty. There was no, there was no.

Divia (26:04)

With the guy in the tomb, you mean?

Okay, so this is separate issue from whether he wrote the plays. She wants to prove that he's not in the tomb. Okay.

Thinkwert (26:12)

Well, yeah, so this is like hundreds of years later, she's convinced Shakespeare is not Shakespeare. So why do people think Shakespeare was not Shakespeare? And so then after that, you have these different candidates.

Divia (26:23)

Sorry, but even if he wasn't, even if someone else wrote the plays, what would that have to do with the tomb? Am I missing something obvious?

Thinkwert (26:28)

Well, I think she was not properly emotionally balanced, it's probably fair to say. But she believed there was a conspiracy, she believed there was a lie, and she was exposed to the conspiracy for the lie. But it kind of becomes this popular parlor game for the next 150 years of Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare, there was somebody else. And who that somebody else? There's a lot of different candidates that

Divia (26:35)

Sure, okay.

So she could just find out something, she could go to the tomb. Okay.

Thinkwert (26:57)

There's like a new one every couple years who the actual Shakespeare was But I say that that it's Most likely Shakespeare was Shakespeare. Okay, so why do I believe that well Shakespeare starts a Playing company. He's already got a little bit reputation as a writer in around 1594 he's one of the key people that starts his playing company so so they would

put on productions, these about 12 guys would, they'll just be a corporation, cut the prices among them, each had so many shares and they'd make money from

And starting from about 1594 till about 1606, there's about two plays a year that Shakespeare writes for the playing company. And they become really rich and they become really famous. In fact, when Queen Elizabeth dies and King James takes over, he makes their playing company, his playing company, King James's personal playing company. Like you're the Kingsman now.

You're not the Lord Campbell's men, you're the Kingsman. You're now part of, you're like my key guys, the ones that I claim for my own. So A, if there's a fake writer out there, which we have no reason to believe, but if there is, he's willing to give William all the money and all the fame, and he's writing them two plays a year. All right, what's the motivation?

Why are you doing so much work if you're never going to get any of the laurels? There's also strange things. why do people not want to believe Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare? Well, we have six copies of his signatures, and he spelled his name differently every time. So like in official court documents, Shakespeare spells his name. He's never consisted about it. In fact,

Divia (28:34)

Yeah.

Yeah.

And is that kind like, don't, knew the spelling didn't use to be so standardized. So is that typical of that era or.

Thinkwert (29:01)

Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's very typical of the era and it kind of doesn't matter that you spell it consistently. He's just kind of he's just writing it down any way he wishes. But people interpret that as, this guy was illiterate. The guy who wrote this William Shakespeare is not the William Shakespeare. He's just an actor, right? He's just just dapper.

Divia (29:29)

Yeah, that seems to be a lot of what people are saying that he wasn't educated enough, he wasn't enough of an elite, things along those lines,

Thinkwert (29:33)

Yeah. So he never went to the Oxford or Cambridge. He was kind of country educated out there, Stratford upon Avon. And then he strolls into the big city and somehow he writes the most beautiful prose in poetry of the English language. So how does that guy, how does the country bumpkin guy become really mute? That's right. so the always a suspect tends to be someone who is nobility.

Divia (29:54)

Yeah, that seems to be why people don't believe it.

Thinkwert (30:03)

Right? Rich and kind of disconnected. We have curious little things in Shakespeare's plays. I'm trying to find the exact wording. His vocabulary changes. For example, Shakespeare wrote in the older verb form of did go, which is more of the country form. Later on, he starts writing more of the went, the went verb form in later plays. So that suggests.

Divia (30:26)

Hmm.

Thinkwert (30:29)

that he had more of a rustic accent when he's writing at first, and then he starts changing it. Shakespeare did not like to write about the city of London. In other words, he wasn't interested in the politics and the goings on of the London of his time. So if you're noble person, isn't that what you're thinking about? Isn't that what you're interested in? Is that what you want to talk about?

Divia (30:31)

at first.

Okay.

which you would think some nobility who had grown up spending a lot of time in London might be more natural.

Thinkwert (30:57)

Almost all of Shakespeare's plays are heavily interested in families. The fact there's only one play we know that does not involve a family, and that was a late play that Shakespeare finished for somebody. Someone else started the play and he just finished the play for somebody else. We also know that Shakespeare...

Divia (31:02)

Yeah.

Wait, so sorry, but what do you think the significance of the family thing is?

Thinkwert (31:18)

Because if there is somebody who is single noble lord out there who is secretly writing the text, he would also have to be as interested in the theme of family, which is possible. But it seems that that's not who the usual suspects tend to be. They tend to be that lone genius who's writing.

Divia (31:23)

like nobility would have been less focused on family.

And I don't, okay. And I don't even know, does Shakespeare have a family? I'm pretty ignorant about this. He did. Okay.

Thinkwert (31:46)

yeah, yeah, he had a wife, had several kids. They were out of town in Stratford. In fact, he ended up buying a big amount of property out of Stratford and that's where he retires, outside of London. I mean, and nowadays it's like an hour and a half from London, but in those old days, was like a day or two away. And they would have seasons, there were seasons and he'd go back and his wife pregnant, they have another kid and he'd go back to London and work for a while. But it seemed like...

Divia (31:57)

Okay.

Okay, no, just so you're saying it's more natural that he would write about family because he did have a family and most of the other people that are, they're like, that could have been Shakespeare. They didn't even have families. Got it.

Thinkwert (32:16)

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Most of these were with subject matter. So subject matter one, yeah. But really what it comes down to, and another little curious thing is one of Shakespeare's big plays was Henry IV. So if you're familiar with Falstaff, he was kind of the big, fat comic character of Shakespeare's. He was a huge hit. We know this. He was the Mickey Mouse to the Walt Disney for Hamlet.

Divia (32:51)

Okay.

Thinkwert (32:53)

seriously, because there's a list of pop culture references in London of the time, and Falstaff explodes. People talk about Falstaff all the time. He is kind of like I said, he's his Mickey Mouse, his big character. His actor is called William Kemp. He's a comic actor and Shakespeare is always writing a role for comic characters.

Divia (33:10)

Okay.

Thinkwert (33:20)

Why even in tragedies he has to have a funny. OK. Why. Right. If you are the guy pseudo Shakespeare out there and you don't care you're just writing your beautiful poetry for these these playwrights to do is this playing company to do why do you always make sure to have a role for the funny guy. Right. Yeah. So so the.

Divia (33:23)

I do know this much. I've read some Shakespeare in school. I used to go see some plays.

Okay, you think that just, fits better with him actually being an actor and caring about his fellow, his company.

Thinkwert (33:49)

who's writing the plays knows the cast really, really well. He knows the cast really, really well. So, I mean, I guess it's possible that someone who doesn't know the cast could also be writing, but it makes more sense to think it's somebody who lives and breathes and eats with these guys every single day, right? He knows these, so he writes characters for him. So this is Kemp actually, because Falstaffs is so big, he ends up leaving the playing company.

The speculation is that he wanted more money. They were coming out with a sequel and he wanted another role and they didn't give it to him. Yeah, so Henry IV, part one. Paul Staff is kind of a minor character in there, but he's like the breakout star, right? He's the breakout character. He's Urkel of Family Matters, even though the reference there, right? He's the Urkel. So they make a sequel.

Divia (34:26)

sequel sorry for for one of the plays you mean

right, okay.

Yes, I do. I'm the right age.

Thinkwert (34:47)

And that does Henry IV, part two. I'm beginning this mixed up. Actually, think next is Mary Wives of Windsor because according to legend, Queen Elizabeth asked Shakespeare for a sequel and it's pretty terrible. According to legend, he had to it in two weeks. yeah, yeah, Henry IV, part one. It's a masterpiece. It looks great. Mary Wives of Windsor spins off.

Divia (35:06)

This was, the first edition of Henry IV, part two?

Thinkwert (35:16)

with Falstaff as a kind of a comic character in love is terrible. I it has its defendants, but generally speaking, Shakespeare wrote it too fast. Again, know, writing something for the money or because the queen asked you is another sign that maybe it's the actual Shakespeare who's writing these things. And then the fourth part two where Falstaff comes back, it's a kind of weird play. It basically is a remake of the first play.

Divia (35:22)

Okay.

Thinkwert (35:45)

Apparently not as big, but Falstaff is still very funny and it's still very good. At the end of Henry IV, part two, so again, we're three plays in, Falstaff has more lines than any other Shakespeare character in any of the plays. It promises at the end of Henry IV, we're get sequel. We're gonna get another, you're gonna see Falstaff one more time. One more time. Will Kemp, who plays Falstaff, quits. Like I said, apparently he wants more money. He wants more money, more shares.

they part ways, he goes away. So when Henry V comes around, Shakespeare writes, he dies off screen. It's a very touching scene, but basically he dies off stage somewhere, Falstaff dies, and we never see him again. He never brings him back, because that was the Wilk Kemp character. Again, if it was an outside playwright who was writing this, why would he care? Why would he care? So then we have another actor whose name I'm trying to remember.

Divia (36:37)

Why would he care so much about that? Yeah.

Thinkwert (36:44)

who plays as Wilkamp, he's kind of the new clown, and his name is Robert Armand. And he's a much more witty guy. He's not fat, he's not big, he's thin as a rail. And so Shakespeare writes things for a witty actor. So he has all the rules of stage, you know that famous speech, all the rules of stage, he writes that for Robert Armand playing Jakes, because that is a kind of acerbic.

Divia (37:06)

Yeah.

Thinkwert (37:13)

little piece. It really doesn't even fit in the play that well, as you like it, frankly, but it's a brilliant piece. It's by itself, it's just an amazing little monologue. If you've seen King Lear or watched King Lear, there's that fool character who's so sharp and acerbic and says these kind of strange, slanted things against or mocking King Lear. He's the only one who can do it. That's another Robert Armand role that Shakespeare wrote for him. So my argument is

why would these roles be so perfectly tailored for those actors unless it was somebody who knew that cast so intimately and so well.

Divia (37:48)

Yeah

Okay, but say there was someone, and again, I didn't even know if Schaefer had a family, I know almost nothing, but say there was someone who was really writing these, wouldn't he be going to see them all the time also? Like, wouldn't he care about the actors in that way?

Thinkwert (38:09)

I guess, I mean, he would have to know them really well, so I think that's plausible, but it seems like the most plausible case would be for the person whose name is on the marquee, William Shakespeare. He would be the one who would know more.

Divia (38:25)

Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that I, it's very interesting what you're saying about the, that he's writing it for the actors. I think the thing, again, not knowing much context that I find more persuasive is, well, that there wasn't any question about this at the time and that Shakespeare was getting all the money and the recognition, which does, and so does, from your perspective, does it not even really seem surprising that he could do this even though he didn't have as much formal education?

Thinkwert (38:40)

Hell, glory. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think he was kind of a preternatural genius. I don't know a way to put it. But it is interesting having read so much Shakespeare is that you see the early work and you see stuff that doesn't work. Doesn't work. You see flashes and then you see a lot of dead stuff. Reading Richard III, you see the Richard III character is fantastic. The rest of the play is kind of bad. But later on, he gets so good at it.

Divia (38:57)

Yeah.

Thinkwert (39:23)

And then towards the end of his career, you kind of see he stops caring so much and he passes things off. He co -writes more. And so early on you see more of a tutelage stage and then you see this other stage of less caring. And then you see the master craft kind of peeking and it matches. King Lear is probably the one that moves me most. Hamlet is probably the best.

Divia (39:45)

to your favorite Shakespeare play.

Thinkwert (39:53)

The one that I come back to is what's called the first technology, which is Henry IV, part one, part two, Henry V, and it starts with, sorry, Richard II at the top. And it kind of is about this, almost this original sin of usurping Richard II and how it goes down the generations. They try to fix it finally with Henry V. And it's basically about that whole, the Bollingbrook family.

So I would say those are probably my favorites. King Lear is the one that gets me in the gut every time. It's the one that moves me.

Divia (40:33)

What is it about King Lear?

Thinkwert (40:36)

I think it is that spectacular bleakness. What's interesting to think about King Lear is he bases, Shakespeare bases it on early legend of King Lear. And in the original legend, the story that his audience would have been aware of, it has a happy ending. He's reunited with Cordelia, they defeat the rebellion, King Lear reigns, then he dies happily a few years later with the arms of his daughter.

That's not what Shakespeare does. Spoiler alert for anybody who's not seen King Lear. It's awful. His daughter dies. He's gone insane. She heals him. He basically restores him. And then she's hung. And he's on stage holding her and weeping. And then he kills over and dies too. And we basically have his body being carted off at the end. And it's so bleak.

Divia (41:10)

Yeah.

Thinkwert (41:34)

And I can only imagine the shock of the audience who, knowing the way the story was, were just flabbergasted. Yeah. And as far as I know, I don't know if Shakespeare ever so radically changing the way the story is supposed to go into something totally new. It's written towards the end of his career. And I think he's basically, he's got nothing left to prove, right? He doesn't have to worry so much about audience reaction. He's confident in what he's doing. And it's a...

Divia (41:39)

Yeah, they really would have been expecting something very different.

Thinkwert (42:04)

It's amazing, yeah. It also helps that I'm a father of three daughters myself, so I resonate with that too.

Divia (42:13)

Yeah, that makes sense. you want to tell the podcast a little about your family? We were chatting about this a bit before we started recording.

Thinkwert (42:18)

Yeah, so, yeah, I'll try to avoid real names. I've been married for 15 years, and we have an older daughter who's 13. And I have twin daughters, who if you follow my Twitter account, you probably know, who are nine years old. in April, did we talk about this on? I don't know if we talked about it on camera or not. We talked about it before. But if you do think we're twins, you'll find them.

Divia (42:38)

They're the ones in the picture where you're the back of you and the front of them.

Thinkwert (42:48)

There's a picture, backwards picture I take with them every year. You can see my bald head in the back. as the girls are grinning, we've done it every single year since they were about eight months old. Just classic funny picture. In fact, it got into People Magazine. They posted it on one of their May issues this year. So if you really want to know who I am, you can look through all the old issues of People Magazine this year and find me in there.

So yeah, it was it was a lot of fun, but the girls are as we talked about they're nonverbal autistic Which I think actually helped these photos because they are so unmannered and then there's we're not they're not posing at all for the cameras They don't care about at all So the the laughs the grins that they have on there are totally natural and unforced on there, but yeah, they're both fairly severely nonverbal autistic

Divia (43:27)

Thanks a mix.

Right.

Yeah, I'm curious about something like, I don't know, like what do you think it's like for them? like, how do you think their minds, I'm sure you've thought about this a lot and seen it over the years. Like, how do you think their minds work?

Thinkwert (44:05)

I, you know, I don't know. I don't think they're unhappy. I think they know what they, they want, what they like, you know, you have to keep the pink starburst away from them. they, they, they like perfumes, sweet smelling things. And they'll, they'll hunt that. They're very picky eaters, but what they eat, they'll like to eat. But, like I was saying earlier, I don't think I've ever had a,

Divia (44:21)

That's their favorite.

Thinkwert (44:36)

question or inquisitive question from them. Like here's what I want, what I want, but questions about the world around them. So it's what is the world like from their mind? I don't know. I think they have a happy life and a good life, but it's hard to know what they're thinking, you know.

Divia (44:57)

Yeah. And do you have, I don't know, do you think, I always think in some ways the most interesting perspectives, like from real life people, obviously some people study this stuff, people who either have twins, especially identical twins, or they have some children that are genetically theirs and some that are adopted. So do you have any, what are your thoughts on children and genetics and from your own experience?

Thinkwert (45:17)

Yeah, mean, having identical twins, they both have pretty equally severe autism, which suggests really a genetic component, right? If they're identical twins and they have pretty much the same severity of autism, it does suggest something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they are both different personalities. One is much more bold and outgoing. The other one will copy her.

Divia (45:33)

And it's probably been there from the beginning too.

Thinkwert (45:46)

We have to get one of the girls dressed because the other one will want to match what the first one does. She refuses to get dressed until she sees what the one wears and she wants match. The first one doesn't care. She doesn't care at all what her sister wears. And so we always have to dress C first and then R will dress according to what C wears. And R is much more quiet and reticent. C is much more bold.

Divia (45:51)

yeah.

Interesting.

Thinkwert (46:16)

Unfortunately, C likes to hit, but R doesn't unless she's been hit by C. Then sometimes she'll back. But when R would throw a fit, when she gets overwhelmed, she'll throw a huge fit just smashing the ground. When C gets upset, she just weeps. She just breaks down, weeps, weeps, weeps, unconsolably. you see difference in the personalities between the two identical twins. But there's definitely a connection there.

Divia (46:22)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thinkwert (46:45)

with the autism.

Divia (46:47)

Yeah, I've known a few pairs of identical twins in my life. It's interesting how, and you know, I'm talking to their parents too sometimes, like how the differences can be very pronounced from the very beginning, but it's obviously not genetic. So I get maybe there's just some little path dependent thing or maybe they differentiate early or I don't know.

Thinkwert (47:04)

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't either.

Divia (47:14)

Do they ever look at your Twitter pictures? Do ever show them to your kids?

Thinkwert (47:18)

My eldest does. Sometimes she'll give me ideas for her tweets. S**t, bless her heart. She was playing Roblox and there was some kind of competition for online personality. Like, you dress your little Roblox figure as an online personality. And so she dressed up as Thinqort. And she got last place. Because no one knew what Thinqort was.

Divia (47:36)

Okay.

Because no one knew who she meant. Is this like one of those fashion famous like those types of... Yeah, my kids play Roblox.

Thinkwert (47:51)

Yeah, yeah, something like that. So God bless her, that was so sweet. But I said, honey, hardly anybody would know what Thinkware was. Not especially 10 -year -old, 12 -year -old kids on Roblox. They're not going to know what Thinkware is. But I thought it was a sweet little homage. Yeah, So she thinks I'm famous, at least on Roblox.

Divia (48:04)

That's really sweet.

I mean, in my world you are, like I said.

Thinkwert (48:15)

Yeah, yeah, very very micro niche way, I suppose.

Divia (48:24)

Yeah, so a couple more Twitter type questions. Do you have, you have thoughts on, I don't know, like how Twitter, especially since Elon and there's this perennial, you said you don't really think of it in these terms, in teapot, you know, is it, is it what it used to be? Any, you have thoughts on any of that stuff?

Thinkwert (48:27)

Okay.

Yeah.

I kind of feel like I've been on the periphery of T -POD. There's some of those diagrams that come up every once in a while where they kind of make a little unit, like constellation. You know I'm talking about? Some of them. And usually think word is kind of somewhere on the outside, like looking in. Like I'm really friendly and amiable with a lot of the T -POD folks. Yes. Yes.

Divia (48:52)

Yeah, yeah, there's maps and things.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you said you got a lot of your early followers from Eigenrobot, so that part tracks.

Thinkwert (49:09)

Right, right. So I do have a lot of the same connection and I'm kind of sympathetic with Teapot overall and I positive feelings. But like many people, don't know how I I do. Yeah, please. I'm sorry for me too.

Divia (49:21)

So for anyone who's listening, who's not following this, Teapot stands for this part of Twitter, which could really mean anything, sort of by the very words, but there's a cluster of Twitter users.

Thinkwert (49:35)

Yeah, it's a cluster of Twitter users, pretty good way put it. I would say very intelligent, hyperarticulate, and kind of not to flatter them too much, but a little more immune to the meanplexes of the dominant cultural ideology than other places. Not perfectly immune, you know, and I can imagine some people right now yelling at me for even saying it.

Divia (49:56)

Yeah, I think that's the that's at least what we're going for.

Thinkwert (50:05)

But I think that they don't.

Divia (50:06)

think it tends maybe a little more like inward focused also too like maybe as evidenced by the name like you know arguably can be sort of navel gaze -y but also like also I think people are friends with each other a lot like it really is there not that it's one friend group but but a lot of Twitter I think it's more like people broadcasting and I think part of the conceit of teapot is no we're here to really to talk to each other and have conversations and I think mostly

That happens more than a lot of places.

Thinkwert (50:35)

And to their credit, the first place I ever heard about COVID was from Teapot. The first place I ever hear about AI and the whole AI explosion was Teapot. The first people I ever hear talking about the low total fertility replacement rate. But in a way, they're kind of on the cutting edge of a lot of these conversations, right? That first place I hear it is from this circle. And then,

Divia (50:52)

yeah.

Yeah.

Thinkwert (51:03)

it permeates outwards from it. So there are people who are kind of in the know. I'm a fan. I don't know that I can honestly say I'm part of it, but it's not that I reject them so much as I don't know that I qualify.

Divia (51:14)

I think

I think the people who make a map and they put you on the map, I think they're right to do that.

Thinkwert (51:24)

So somewhere on the periphery and I'm a fan of T -Pod. I like T -Pod, but I don't know if that'll be...

Divia (51:30)

Yeah, do you have any thoughts on Twitter pre and post Elon, since you're a power user?

Thinkwert (51:34)

Yeah, it seems like two steps forward, one steps back. There's so many, I mean, changing the names, frankly, was... Yeah, well, you noticed that lasted like two months, right? And then most people went back to calling you Twitter. At least that's what I noticed. I like calling you Twitter. But it seems so silly. And then, of course, there's always at least...

Divia (51:45)

Okay, so I keep calling it Twitter, of course, now officially it's X.

Yeah, I

Thinkwert (52:03)

once every couple of weeks a tweet from Elon that makes me roll my eyes. Like, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Don't do that. He interacted with me briefly last year a few times. I liked for about two week period, I had about four or five times he responded to me. yeah. Yeah. But then never again. So I don't know if it was something I said. I somehow slipped off his radar again and never had it.

Divia (52:09)

Yep.

Did you get a follower boost from that? You did, yeah.

Interesting.

Thinkwert (52:34)

So yeah, I'm generally, think I like Twitter better post Elon overall.

Divia (52:44)

And are you a fan of the monetization thing? I mean, I imagine you get something.

Thinkwert (52:47)

Yes, yeah. I'm astonished that I paid anything. So that I could do this and do what I would normally do anyway and get paid out of it little bit. It's not a whole lot. I'd say I've maybe gotten $2 ,000 since about the last year, which isn't huge, but yeah, it helps, right? It helps with inflation.

Divia (53:11)

No, it's cool, but I have yet to hear of anyone. Like, there people that make a living really posting on other platforms. And I don't think anyone's doing that on, or if someone is, I have yet to hear of it.

Thinkwert (53:23)

Yeah, yeah. mean, I know of people who will get or at least heard people who get several thousand a month, which you could, you know, least supplement your income really well. But the really big influencers seem to be Instagram and TikTok. That's where you go if you really want to make the money or YouTube. So but yeah, I think that was a smart move from from Elon, actually. It kind of happened started right when

Divia (53:29)

Okay, I guess then that's...

Yeah.

Yeah, YouTube too.

Thinkwert (53:53)

Blue Sky and threads were kind of taken off. And I think that was kind of a thing to keep some of the power users on. I never did threads. I did Blue Sky. I still have a Blue Sky account. I don't think I've posted there in months. There's a certain bitterness about the culture there that I don't tend to like.

Divia (53:55)

Yeah.

Did you try posting those places too?

I have an account, I haven't, how would you describe it? I haven't been on there.

Thinkwert (54:19)

Well, I think they've got Elon in the brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything they do is to be anti -Twitter, anti -Elon, rather than their own thing. I wish Elon did not exist for them. I think they'd be a better place for it. But to be fair, I'm not on there often, so I don't know.

Divia (54:24)

like sort of anti -Twitter bitterness, you mean?

Yeah. Yeah. Sure. No, I mean, something I always liked about Twitter compared to other social media platforms, at least like what I see in other social media, is it seems like while there is a lot of like, this is a hell site, this is whatever, there also seems to be a lot of love for Twitter on Twitter. Partly as, like I think maybe your account is partly an example of this, especially like, you know, you'll make these memes. I don't know I'm supposed to use the word meme. I don't know how

But like the picture, know, like one of the ones I always think of for you is like a giant holding some small creature. And it's like, you know, what a big account is, you know, replying to a small account or like somebody like exploring this forest and like, you know, when you finally, when you get added to a new locked account or like things like, and there, these people be like, I can't believe this website is free or this is the best website in the world. I think that, I think for me, that goes a long way, even though there's a lot of people.

Thinkwert (55:07)

No. Sure.

Cheers.

Yeah.

Divia (55:36)

Complaining about Twitter, complaining that it's worse than it used to be, complaining that it encourages such terrible discourse norms. I don't know. I really like it. Also, people seem to love it.

Thinkwert (55:46)

Yeah, there's nothing quite like it. Nothing quite like it. And I like being here. Obviously, I'm here every day. I'm on tour.

Divia (55:54)

Yeah, have you made a lot of personal connections too on Twitter?

Thinkwert (55:57)

I have met a couple people. I met Bowser in person, although he's no longer around. Yeah, he's got a real account I won't reveal that I follow, or a base account. But I met Comrade Snake. I can't remember what his actual Twitter handle is. But there's been a couple people that I've met. And they've always been great. They've always been great to meet.

Divia (56:05)

Yeah, he's long gone, right?

Thinkwert (56:25)

Elijah Middleborn, I met him a couple months ago. He makes the wooden swords and bookmarks. don't know how many are familiar with him, but.

Divia (56:35)

Yeah, I know, but I'll look it up. That sounds cool.

Thinkwert (56:39)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we met, and he actually gave me a person, a bookmark that he had made for me, bad word. But yeah, everyone I've met has been great. I like meeting people from online. Excuse me. There's that cold again.

Divia (56:56)

Yeah, no, and I think I do want to wrap up pretty soon, given everybody's time, but one question that I've been thinking of is, as someone who I think you do know about Teapot, and as a professor of English literature, are there any books that you think are a little underrated that people in our part of Twitter might want to check out?

Thinkwert (57:17)

Huh.

Well, the last book that really knocked my socks off was the Cormac McCarthy Passenger and Stella Maris. They're two twin novels. I know if you follow Jarvis, he rewrote about these books in detail. They're really terrific. But I think Cormac McCarthy was the great American author until he passed. In fact, he was, we were going to call a son, if he ever had a son, his name was Cormac.

Divia (57:48)

neat.

Thinkwert (57:50)

after him. I never had his name. So we never got to use that name. Cormac McCarthy, think, is fantastic. He was the best author that we had until he passed. I'm not quite sure. What was it about it? Just a masterful use of prose and I think just kind of a thematic depth to him. There's also a

Divia (58:02)

And can you say what you think makes him the best American author?

Thinkwert (58:19)

I think is a throwback to Faulkner and the old kind magisterial voice of the American author.

Divia (58:30)

I have read Azalea dying. What does ministerial mean in this context?

Thinkwert (58:33)

Kind of grave, serious, but also a certain quality of...

eloquence eloquence and masterful use of the words deeply serious deeply serious use of the words there yeah as far as the the plots are very strange they go all over the place but yeah they were they were great the last ones i remember reading them like okay wow that's some good stuff yeah

Divia (59:10)

Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on the podcast and I'll see you on Twitter and everyone who's on Twitter, highly recommend following the Think Word account if you like whimsical humor.

Thinkwert (59:22)

Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

Divia (59:25)

Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

I got some feedback that the version of this episode I originally put up was too quiet, so I’m posting it again! Apologies for the duplication—I’m still figuring out this podcasting thing.

You can find JC Cassis at jccassis.com, and can check out her own podcast, Risk.

We cover a bunch of topics, including friendship in adulthood, what we owe each other, and a little about parenting.

Divia (00:01.721)

Hey, so I'm here today with my friend, JC. And I like to say that we went to school together and if people are like, like you mean like what? And I'm like, no, all the school we went to school together, starting in kindergarten through senior year of high school. And then we also went to college together. Yeah, it's yeah. Though, as we sometimes say, you were in the other class in kindergarten. really more like 16.

JC (00:02.589)

Hey.

JC (00:20.116)

17 years of nonstop togetherness.

JC (00:27.356)

Right, so it's, right. And then you were in a different dorm at Harvard and, you know, different friend group and all that. you know, yeah, yeah. It certainly wasn't, it wasn't overkill and it also wasn't nothing, you know?

Divia (00:33.216)

But we did hang out!

Divia (00:38.83)

Yeah, totally. And, you know, and we've kept in touch since then. I, you know, I wish I talked to you more ultimately, but, but I would say like at least, I don't know, like at least most years I think we check in. She seems like a.

JC (00:45.106)

Yeah, me too.

JC (00:51.836)

Yeah, and I think we totally could more and we probably just should do that. I don't think you're hard to reach at all, but I think it's just living in different cities and all that kind of stuff.

Divia (00:57.377)

Yeah, yeah that seems right.

Divia (01:03.659)

Yeah, totally. And, and JC also has a podcast. Do want to tell people a little about that?

JC (01:07.252)

Sure, yeah, so for the last 13 and a half years, which I cannot believe how long it's been, I've been working on the podcast called Risk, which is where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. No.

Divia (01:17.857)

Nice. Yeah. And so we were just texting the other day and I'm still sort of like restarting up with this podcast. Everybody took a pretty long break and trying to figure out what I'm doing. But one thing I know I want is just to like actually have conversations with people. And so I was like, yeah, let's, let's get on and, catch up and talk about stuff. I don't know, share our different perspectives. So JC, welcome to the podcast.

JC (01:39.72)

Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I think it's funny. You know, it's funny, I was talking to my brother the other day and he was saying that he remembered having a conversation with you when we were kids and you came over to my house and he was like, why are you friends with her about me? And you were like very diplomatic, classic Divya, you know, like he did his great impression of you. I forget exactly what the wording was, but it was just something like, you know, well, you know, I think we have good chemistry and I like to talk to her and we have a nice time together. So like, I'm friends with her, you know? And he was just like.

I just thought that was hilarious.

Divia (02:09.017)

Yeah, siblings, siblings are really, I don't know, it's funny with sibling relationships. I hope your brother's doing well.

JC (02:17.51)

Yeah. Yeah, he is, you know, and he fondly remembers you, you know, so that's nice. But he could not believe that you have five kids. His head almost exploded when I said that. So I know I told him that. Yes, you have not wavered on this. I told him I was like, well, her dream was always three kids and then she had three kids and she wanted two more. So like she's doing what makes her happy. Like, you know, it's never it's never wavered, you know, but his head exploded.

Divia (02:22.573)

Yeah, it's mutual, totally.

Divia (02:30.751)

but I always wanted a bunch of kids. I feel like this has been consistent,

Divia (02:45.229)

You know, actually, so a little bit of it, you say that, I think that's almost right. I definitely said three kids, but this is, and I think we're gonna come back to this topic more than once, but like what I thought was normal growing up in New York, going to like a private girl's school with you like we did, and then what, you know, later I got older and I saw some more things. so I just, it sort of didn't occur to me, I think that anyone could have more than three kids.

JC (03:08.928)

that's hilarious.

Divia (03:09.997)

Because like, who did we really, I'm like, I don't know. I feel like I barely knew anyone who did. I was like, three kids is a big family. There was one Christian homeschool group at the music school I went to that had five kids, but I think that was maybe it for what I knew, which seems, I don't know, it seems sort of weird to reflect on that. And, okay, so then here's the other part of that.

JC (03:15.751)

Yeah.

Divia (03:30.169)

The next next week, assuming you know nothing goes wrong and I get everything recorded promptly etc. The podcast guest will be Michael Vassar whom I believe I introduced you to at one point. Yeah and I think you guys talked about like the New York City Council and stuff.

JC (03:40.039)

Who that is? Some Russian, this guy?

JC (03:46.46)

God, my God. Talk about why are you friends with her? my God, I thought he hated me with that conversation. And then you were like, he loved you. And I'm like, perhaps he could have made that a little bit more like apparent.

Divia (03:48.801)

Yeah, yeah, so, I didn't...

Divia (03:54.698)

No, no, no, yeah, not at all.

Divia (03:59.789)

me.

So yeah, my recollection of that was I was like, no, he thought you were smart. He just was expecting you to push back. He sort of doesn't know how to like communicate if the person isn't pushing back and like asking for details and like arguing with him more. And you were like, well, yeah, it's true. I didn't do that. so anyway, no, he, I talked to him at a certain point and I'm going to get into this when he comes out of the podcast, I think at least a little, or at least mention it, but like, it was some conversation with him where I was like, yeah, I guess I could, I guess I could have even more kids if I wanted to.

JC (04:15.198)

How funny! That's hilarious.

JC (04:33.005)

after three, not after five, right? Yeah.

Divia (04:33.177)

And so then I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, after three. And I was like, maybe I could have five kids. And that was before I had any kids, but I was like, maybe I could have five kids actually. Cause I'm like, I was sort of like, have like a book at the time I was probably like, I don't know, 25 or something. And I was like calculating and like, I haven't met someone yet, but if I do, and then how many years? And so anyway, that was kind of where I got that one into my head and probably no, well, just if it had been super easy, I might've had even more, but it wasn't.

JC (04:39.494)

Wow.

JC (04:52.558)

Wow, that's funny. Yeah, it's funny. It's like, go ahead.

Divia (05:00.417)

So I really did want kids, but it is a lot of work, so that's why we're done now.

JC (05:00.596)

Right, right, Yeah, it's kind of crazy to think about like, you know, whatever the 1890s were like tons of people were having like 12 kids, 15 kids, 17 kids. And it kind of makes you wonder like, if it's so much harder now, I guess it's that we're doing a lot older and it's also much more expensive and whatever, but it's like, what the hell were they doing that we're not doing? Where it's like, my God, one pregnancy almost killed me, you know, like.

Divia (05:17.879)

I don't...

Divia (05:22.903)

So, so my contrarian take on this is I think it was harder for them. I think they had kids anyway. I don't think it was because it was easier.

JC (05:33.14)

But like just the idea, I don't know, it's like I wonder if the kind of, I don't know, it's not like fertility or just like baby delivering ability of women is the same today as it was then in terms of like, could the same per capita number of women have 12 children today as they could back then? And I suppose if they all started at 16, sure, but nobody wants to do that and nobody should.

Divia (05:45.785)

Right.

Divia (05:50.562)

Yeah, maybe.

Divia (05:55.981)

Yeah, I think that's some of it. And obviously, like, people did have... I think infertility is a lot more common now. I think it's one of those many, like, people have theories, but like lot of modern health problems, people are like, I don't know, like, modern health problems. Maybe. Right. Something like that. Totally.

JC (06:05.948)

Yeah. Yeah. Microplastics and chemicals and poison food and depression and, you know, all these terrible things we're dealing with. Yeah. Yeah. It's like we have more freedom, but we're less happy. And back then it's like, I don't think people were necessarily more happy back then, but it's like, you just had to do what you had to do. And you weren't thinking like, but I want to be a lawyer. It's like, I mean, some, some women were, but I feel like most women were like, this is my fate. It sucks, but it is what it is. I don't have another option, you know?

Divia (06:27.767)

Right, right.

Divia (06:36.033)

Yeah, this guy that I some, I think it's David Chapman. He talks about like the choiceless mode where like now, I don't know, we sort of, did modernism, we did postmodernism. And so they're obviously like trad people or whatever, but it's never really the same when you know that like, you could just go live in modern society and have a choice if you want. Like maybe for the Amish or something where you're like, I guess I could, but I was raised this, like everyone I know is ever whatever. But for like most people that were raised in like a

JC (06:41.949)

Mmm.

JC (06:54.792)

Mm

Divia (07:02.861)

basically modern context. There's there's no going back. You know you have choices.

JC (07:06.694)

Right, right. Well, I like choices. I'm glad we have them for sure, you know.

Divia (07:09.783)

No, but yeah, absolutely. But people, so yeah, I also am very pro -choice in the broad sense of the word, but I do hear people like on Twitter and stuff and like complaining pretty often, like they wish they had less choices, which I don't personally identify with, but I think that's out there as like a political take.

JC (07:27.316)

Yeah, I mean, that's something I struggle with constantly is like, there's a million things I want to do, and there's not enough time to do even two or three of them. And it's very frustrating to like have constant ambitions of like 12 million things and be like, well, it's not going to happen. And then also, like, I talk about ideas all the time. And I feel like people get exasperated with me because they're like, this is the 50th idea I've heard from you over the last two years, and you've been talking about it forever. What are you just going to do it? And I'm like, maybe it's not about that.

Maybe it's just like, I'm constantly thinking of things and as time changes, I think of a new thing or as I learn more about the thing, then I'm like, okay, I'm not doing that anymore, but maybe I could do this. but it's like, in the meantime, my days are jam packed with stuff to do. And I don't know, I'm trying to figure out like, how do I find peace and be like, yes, I'm just going to have ideas all the time, but unless I decide to push other things aside to execute this one idea or be like, I'll do this one idea for one month and then I will stop and do a different idea.

just make peace with the fact that like, it's just gonna be a fire hose of ideas and like an absolute trickle of execution, you know?

Divia (08:29.985)

Yeah, I mean, I certainly relate to that. I think most people do, right? Yeah.

JC (08:32.466)

Yeah, I think that's like the human conditions. Like, yeah, but that's why it's funny to me when people are like, you've been talking about this for so long, when are you gonna do it? And I'm like, you've been talking about plenty of things for so long. We all talk about things for a long time. Like go f**k yourself, you know?

Divia (08:40.153)

Right?

Yeah, no, and I certainly, I think also like, this is sort of a, it's like a pretty basic answer, but like, I think one of the reasons that we get along is I think we both like talking about stuff, like we find that energizing. Probably also why we both have podcasts, like, and then, yeah.

JC (08:57.46)

Right.

Right. I mean, can I ask you, because one thing that drives me completely insane is feeling like I'm the only extrovert I know, but would you identify as an extrovert or like, okay, yeah, then I think that's a big f*****g point of like commonality between us, you know, like, do you find like you're you're surrounded by introverts and misanthropists or misanthropes or whatever the word is?

Divia (09:09.965)

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Yeah.

Divia (09:20.043)

Well, yeah, no, some of that, but all like, and it's a little bit weird because I do consider myself an extrovert, but then this is some of the thing about having kids is I get to the end of the day or even in the middle of the day. And I'm like, I need nobody to talk to me for like five minutes in a row because I, you know, I think some of my kids are extroverts too, which I think is great. Or at least they want to talk to me. I think at least one of them is definitely an extrovert. And I think that's great. But like I

JC (09:34.8)

Mm

Divia (09:48.439)

because I do think there's something, certainly for me. So a weird thing that I've done, I'm not currently doing it very much, but I, there's this Facebook group for people who want to post like, I'll pay somebody to do this. And so it's just like among rationalists basically. it's, no, it's all over the map. Like last night I logged on and some guys like, I'll pay you a hundred dollars an hour if you help me with this programming thing right now.

JC (10:04.302)

What are the things they're asking for then? Not screwing in a light bulb but...

Divia (10:15.257)

But then other people will be like, like I once posted and I was like, I'll pay $5 to someone who makes a gift with the subtitle of this one thing from planet unicorn. Cause I couldn't figure out how to do it. And sure enough, someone was like, yeah, I'll do it. Cause that took me like two seconds. So like, why not make $5? But, but something I posted was because sometimes I like, if you ever noticed, like I'll get stuck on something and then once I talk it through, then I'm not stuck. It's a common human experience. So I was like, okay.

JC (10:16.195)

I need to learn programming.

JC (10:25.758)

That's cute.

That's cute. Nice.

JC (10:41.512)

Mm -hmm.

Divia (10:43.417)

I'll pay either $50 an hour or we'll do like an in -kind trade one hour per one hour for somebody to just listen to me talk about whatever it is I'm on about. And I don't normally do it and I ultimately like, I don't know, I feel a little weird about it, but then sometimes I do it. But it was extremely helpful whatever I did it.

JC (10:51.758)

Mm -hmm.

JC (11:00.276)

Mm -hmm. That's something that's another f*****g idea I have that I've never acted on and I may never act on and you got to make peace with it everybody in the world is is is offering hey I will listen to people for whatever 50 bucks an hour if you just need somebody to be present and listen I will do that and then one thing I thought was like I probably need to make some guardrails of like I'm allowed to say hey I need to stop you on that topic I don't want to hear about that if somebody's like let me tell you about this time that I just remembered a living cat it's like no thanks you know but if it's just like you know

Divia (11:07.383)

you

Divia (11:15.459)

Yeah.

Divia (11:29.325)

Right, right.

JC (11:29.992)

I'm feeling lonely and I need someone to listen. It's like, sure, you know.

Divia (11:33.495)

Yeah. Yeah. And for me, a lot of it's like, just, have some idea that like only half makes sense to me, but if I talk it through, they'll make more sense. but anyway, like I think sometimes my kids too, like I think they like to talk to people to process in like sometimes the sort of more one -sided way, which I think is developmentally appropriate and all fine. But then, so yeah, so I do think of myself as an extrovert, but then sometimes given that my kids and I still have little ones and then I have a lot of them.

JC (11:42.226)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

JC (11:51.24)

That's funny. Right.

Divia (12:02.763)

and they rely on me, it doesn't meet, like, I don't necessarily want socialization on every margin, but especially if it's like more peer -like and like with somebody who's like also gonna care about, like also be more attuned to me. So it's like, that is one -sided. But yeah, I do find that very energizing. I do like to do it a lot.

JC (12:04.104)

Mm -hmm.

JC (12:09.256)

Mm -hmm.

JC (12:13.032)

Mm -hmm.

JC (12:22.74)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was just talking to my cousin about, know, how like our social needs are not getting met, you know, and how I don't know if we just said this before recording or what, but the idea of like, you know, people would not be so desperate for relationships if their friends were showing up more, or if it was easier to get time with friends, you know, and I feel like at 40, I am so tired of chasing people around, you know, and I feel like as somebody who like works alone from home,

Divia (12:49.208)

Yeah.

JC (12:51.316)

I need the interaction more than they do. Like I recognize that a lot of my friends deal with people all day long in their jobs and then they come home and they just want to watch TV and not talk to anybody. And I'm the opposite. I'm alone all day. I want to talk to people when the work day ends, you know, or even in the middle of the work day, you know, and I'm so tired of calling 20 people and not getting anybody. It's, it's insane to me. It's like my friends have flexible schedules. They live all over the world. Da da da da. How can it be that all 20 people I try are not available?

Divia (13:04.098)

Right.

JC (13:21.14)

bright this same moment. You I'm not calling at 10 a on a Tuesday, you know what mean? And it's exhausting. And it's like when you feel like you need some social time, the worst feeling is like, well, I just tried 20 people. Most people don't have 20 people they could call. I have f*****g 80 people I could call. I call 20 and I'm so depleted by the idea that nobody picks up that I'm like.

Divia (13:25.997)

Yeah.

Divia (13:36.813)

Totally.

JC (13:43.964)

I can't do this to myself anymore. Like nothing comforts me more than talking to a friend, but it's not possible to talk to a friend. So I guess I got to read a book or listen to a podcast or go to the gym or whatever, you And I think if I knew like my friends are going to be present and show up and when I call somebody they will pick up or they will call right back or whatever, then, you know, it's like, I'm not longing for a relationship, but one reason why I understand why so many other people seem to be is just this idea of like, I need

Divia (13:55.352)

Yeah.

JC (14:13.384)

to have a designated person in my life who is obligated to show up for me. They have agreed to that and that's the expectation and they're gonna do it, you know?

Divia (14:22.487)

Yeah. No, I mean, this is, I think it's a huge topic because lots and lots of people talk about, and like, I don't really trust surveys that much, but in surveys, I think most people say they're lonely or at least like almost half, like a lot. It's big. It is also just, you know, aside from surveys, this just seems true of people I know when I asked them. But then, like you say, it's like modern culture does basically tend to have the frame of like,

JC (14:35.497)

Mm -hmm.

Divia (14:50.189)

You don't really owe anyone anything except maybe like the person you're dating and your kids and stuff like that. Like family and romantic partners are the only one that it's like more socially accepted to have that type of more like committed, like actually you owe them something in relationship with.

JC (14:58.025)

Yeah.

JC (15:02.995)

Yeah.

Yeah, and that's what drives me crazy is like, people go and find relationships and create human beings that they are legally responsible for and that they kind of own in a way, partially because they're like, well, the alternative is being alone and that is horrifying. And it's like, okay, so why are you surprised when I say, hey, I really need to talk to you right now and it's not great if you can never talk. Because it's like, I don't have a...

Divia (15:21.73)

Right.

Divia (15:29.912)

Yeah.

JC (15:31.678)

partner and a family. I don't have built in people that are obligated to be present in my life, you know? So I need, you know, voluntary people. And yeah, you know, I'm very frustrated by the attitude of like, no one owes anybody anything, because it's like, then good f*****g luck to us. Then we're all gonna f*****g die. Is that what we want? No, like, I want a healthy society. And a big part of that is giving a s**t about other people and showing up, you know?

Divia (15:49.378)

Right.

Yeah, no.

Divia (15:58.807)

Yeah, totally. Yeah, no, and I mean, and I think like a lot of people, I don't know, like, I relate to this somewhat where I'm like, okay, like, you know, as a kid, you're going to have various sort of obligations that don't really make a lot of sense to me. And then at a certain point, I'm like, wait a minute, like, shouldn't I sort of get to decide for myself about these types of things? But then like, but then it doesn't mean I don't actually have obligations, obviously.

And I think some of how I try to think of it is like, whatever, what is the thing that I think is sort of supposed to happen? And then like, who are all of the plausible people who maybe could be doing it? And I'm one of them. And so maybe that's like some information about how much I ought to try to do it. Am I making sense?

JC (16:39.826)

Yeah. Yeah. And also like, you know, I'm just learning over time, like how to better focus my efforts as I try to get my social needs met, which frankly, I just don't know if it's ever going to happen unless I get some job that is just talking to people all day long. But I, know, a lot of those are not very well paid and I don't really want to do them. anyway, f**k was I going to say? Hang on. I've realized like, I can't just

you know, for lack of a better term, spray and pray in terms of how I try to make friends. Like, it gets more specific every year of like, okay, now I need friends who are planning to live in New York City forever. Now I need friends who are planning to live in my neighborhood forever because I don't want to take four trains to go see people. Now I need friends who are going to not be in a relationship and not have children if that means that they're not going to have time for their friends.

Divia (17:13.271)

Right.

Divia (17:26.091)

Mm

JC (17:32.564)

Now I need to find people that, and like all these things plus like natural friend chemistry. Like I don't want to hang out with people that are like perfectly nice, but I don't give a s**t about them. Like I want to have the like deep friend chemistry. And you know, and I'm realizing like, I feel like phases of life come out of nowhere and just like smack you in the face and like turn you upside down and shake you and make everything fall out of your pockets or whatever with like no warning. And so I feel like this phase of life, like the phase of life that started

Divia (17:41.517)

Great.

JC (17:58.612)

previously that's still going is like everybody's parents are getting old and it's starting to impact our lives where it's like now you have to really like take care of your parents and get in there and like do some work to help them and factor them in and blah blah blah in a way that maybe you didn't 10 years ago and like the new phase is like crossing the 40 line in New York City never in my life did I think about how so much of the culture of at least certain areas of New York City that I frequent

Divia (18:02.423)

Yeah.

Divia (18:21.613)

Yeah.

JC (18:28.148)

are about you're under 40 and you're going out and you're socializing. And it makes sense for you because you are under 40 or under 30 and that's what your people do. But then you cross the 40 boundary and it's like, okay, now I'm the grandma in the room. Everybody else here is still 24 and I'm not, and it feels weird and I don't like it. And also with like the generational divide, like Gen Z and Gen Alpha are so different from millennials in some ways.

Divia (18:33.069)

Mm

JC (18:54.036)

that it's like you feel like a foreigner and you feel like you do not know what's going on. And also it's like, I had this experience where I was playing with a cover band in a bar and all the patrons were under 26. And I looked out across this crowd of people in friend groups having the best time with their best friends from college and high school and whatever. And I couldn't help but think you people don't understand that this is gonna come to an end.

Divia (18:54.157)

Yeah.

JC (19:17.652)

real fast and either all of you are gonna leave or all your friends are gonna leave. And like this is a very fleeting era and then you're gonna be alone. And like I'm standing on here as the 40 year old on stage looking out at you like your fetuses and also being like enjoy it while you got it bro, cause this is gonna end real fast and nobody told me that, you know? And so it's been like a hard adjustment to be like, okay, where do I go as a 40 year old to not be the only 40 year old in the room? And like,

Divia (19:19.576)

No.

JC (19:46.9)

You know, I had a conversation with like a work colleague that I ran into somewhere where we were having this conversation of like, okay, we're women over 40 who want to live in New York forever, are not seeking relationships, are not seeking to move away and are not seeking to have children. Where do we find each other? Because there are many thousands of us and we all want community with each other because we're tired of having our hearts broken by everybody leaving, you know?

Divia (19:59.885)

Mm

JC (20:09.758)

but like somebody's gonna have to spearhead it. And again, that's another of my million ideas that I'll probably never do, but I kind of have to because I'm like, if I want my life to be better, I've got to step up and do this because nobody else will.

Divia (20:12.951)

Here.

Divia (20:20.345)

Okay, but it seems to me, like, and obviously I don't know all the details, but like, it seems to me like you do a lot. Like you actually do try to put yourself out there and meet a bunch of people and like, what are you talking about doing that you're not already doing?

JC (20:30.15)

Yeah. Well, so for example, last or a couple nights ago, I went out, I took the initiative to talk to somebody new who was like playing pool and stuff. And I was like, do you want somebody to play with? And he was like, sure. Like I actually was really hoping somebody would ask. And I was like, amazing, great. We had a great time playing and chatting. He's, you know, friendly and interesting and like all these great things. But I I've met so many people over my adulthood who I'm like, I really like this person. I'd like to stay in touch with them. I'd like to try to build a friendship with them, whatever.

and I put in the effort and it doesn't lead anywhere. And so now I'm kind of like, I'm not gonna like try to make something happen with people anymore unless I'm like, this person is so special and I really think they want me to like invite them to like continue knowing each other. Otherwise it's like, this is one of the another person where I had an amazing time with them and it doesn't mean anything to them or it does, but they don't want a friendship, you know, or they're not gonna.

Divia (21:01.997)

Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (21:25.016)

Right.

JC (21:25.982)

put in the work and I'm so tired of being the first one to message and then like not hearing back or being the person who has to like set up like the first like three hangouts until it kind of like get the momentum going. And also it's like he was a guy and you he was there with his adult child and so I don't know if he had a partner he didn't mention it but it's like I you know I don't know I don't know what the vibe was I didn't I didn't say like you know.

Divia (21:35.651)

Mm -hmm.

Divia (21:50.178)

Right.

JC (21:51.644)

hey, are you open to friendship, whatever. And also he was like in his mid 50s, so it's like, maybe he is pretty satisfied with his life or maybe he's not, but he didn't seem to want me to make an effort to like keep in touch. So I'm at the point now where I'm like, if I'm not getting the vibe that somebody's like, please let's be friends, then I'll just kind of hold back and be like, it was awesome hanging out with you, know? Yeah.

Divia (22:05.187)

Right.

Divia (22:13.655)

Yeah, not waste your energy on that.

Divia (22:19.425)

Yeah, no, it's I think it is one of those things where a lot of people really do want community. A lot of people really are lonely. And then I have I have a similar experience to you of most people don't follow up or anything like that. Or like even if I do follow up, it doesn't mean that they do. And. Yeah, spray and pray, sort of like what you said.

JC (22:32.392)

Yeah. Mm -hmm.

JC (22:39.602)

Yeah, you know, it's tough. know, I'm somebody who would like to have that conversation directly, but I feel like a lot of people say like, but you can't do that. You can't ask that. And so I feel like it's okay to kind of feel it out of just being like, I was getting the vibe that like, yes, he thought I was funny and nice and yes, we had a good time playing pool together and yes, yes, yes. But he doesn't seem to be wanting to exchange information. It doesn't seem like he'll care if he never sees me again. like.

I'm just gonna let it be and say good night. And I kind of opened the door where it's like, I could have just left without saying goodbye, but instead I said, hey, it was really fun hanging out with you. I'm gonna head out, but have a great night. He could have been like, wait, let me get your information, but he didn't. at this point, after being the person who makes all the effort, I wanna meet people who are trying to make an effort. it's like my friend who was there with me who's so funny, he's like, I think that guy wants to bone you, whatever. And first of all, it's like, well, that's not.

Divia (23:23.715)

Right.

Divia (23:31.32)

Yeah.

JC (23:37.148)

what I want from him, but second, if he does, then he should f*****g say something. He should ask for my f*****g information. I don't wanna deal with a guy who's not gonna make effort. So whether it's for a friend or for a companion, know? Yeah, and that's another little like subtopic is like.

Divia (23:43.181)

Yeah.

Totally.

Divia (23:52.046)

Yeah.

JC (23:58.264)

I have wasted so much energy trying to build friendships with men who are in relationships with women. Just, you know, friendships. And it's like, I've learned, beware the straight man who's in a relationship with a woman because he is a waste of your f*****g time. He will not put in effort. You know, he will have paranoia about like, like my girlfriend, what would she think? It's like, it doesn't f*****g matter. I'm not trying to f**k you. Calm down, you know? And like...

Divia (24:07.192)

Yeah.

Divia (24:21.776)

Thank

JC (24:23.954)

So I just feel like that's a demographic where it's like, tread real carefully, let them make the effort, because if I make the effort and then they dip, it's like, it's more and more disappointment for me and I'm sick of it, you know?

Divia (24:37.429)

Yeah, I mean, so are there people where you have had more success? Yeah. Okay, what are the most promising ones?

JC (24:40.66)

other demographics of people? For sure. It's like, you know, I can make friends with women all day long, you know, basically like women and gay guys, you know, same s**t. We all know, you know, you know, it's like this is, this is, you know, I was talking to, you know, my cousin about this. I've talked to lots of people. I think one of the most alarming things going on in our society is the, is the real, I don't know if you'd say bifurcation or like just the segregation and separation of men and women, you know, especially like straight men and straight women, you know.

Divia (24:48.481)

Okay, yeah.

Divia (25:06.861)

Mm.

JC (25:10.004)

It's a real problem. And I think it's only gonna make things worse and worse and worse if we don't start bridging the gap. But in order to bridge the gap, we've gotta fight the rhetoric where people are saying, men are trash, women suck, whatever. It's like, if you have this idea that a whole group of people is terrible, then you're alienating them. And you're not gonna put any effort into trying to get to know them. And it's like,

I love straight men. I have straight men friends who I just adore and straight men in my life that I just think are the best people and I love talking to them. I love hanging out with them. I'm just saying that when I meet a straight man who has a girlfriend, that seems like a minefield because it's like, you know, this guy that I met recently, it made me so angry because he's an awesome guy and I really wanted to be friends with him and he lives in my neighborhood. We hung out, we talked for six hours, but you know what?

Divia (25:51.352)

Yeah.

Divia (25:59.255)

Hmm.

JC (26:02.844)

He was talking about how things weren't going well with his girlfriend. And you know when I stopped hearing from him? When things started going better with her. And it's like, are you f*****g kidding me? And it's like, and at least just say, like, hey, I really had an awesome time talking with you. Things are going better with my girlfriend now. We're spending a lot of time together. I just don't have bandwidth for like building new friendships right now or whatever. But the whole like complete disregard of like,

Divia (26:14.765)

Yeah.

JC (26:28.984)

six hours talking to a new person and you don't wanna be friends? What the f**k? And it's so obvious that it's about your f*****g girlfriend and now you're getting what you need from her so you don't care about friends. And it's like, f**k you, friendship f*****g matters.

Divia (26:35.991)

Yeah, you just can't relate to it, right?

Divia (26:45.763)

Yeah.

Yeah, how do you, like, if you could sort of, like, what is your speech to people about how they ought to relate to friendship? Like, how do you think people should do it?

JC (26:56.7)

Like if I'm just talking to like the general public about it. Well, one thing I've been thinking is like people really should treat it like dating in the sense of like a friendship is not a friendship until you both kind of get to know each other a little bit and you agree like, okay, we are friends now. Like you're not friends if you've like met at a party and hung out once, you know, it's like you're not obligated to each other. And there needs to be an open line of communication of like if somebody is really feeling it and the other person's not quite so sure.

Divia (26:58.722)

Yeah.

Divia (27:16.557)

Mm

JC (27:24.584)

then the person who's really feeling it should probably be like, hey, let's hang out again. And if the other person isn't feeling it, they can be like, you know, thank you so much, but I'm not really feeling it the way you would with dating instead of like, okay. And then you're just like leading someone on in a friendship way. But also it's like, I think it's like, you have to show up. Like a conversation I'll never forget. Is there somebody that I know from college who I don't know if you know or not, but we were having a conversation at a party once and he was saying,

Divia (27:34.817)

And then, right.

JC (27:50.136)

I was talking about friendship stuff or whatever. And he was saying like, well, I have a friend who's really mad at me because like, I don't really keep in touch. And he's like, but why is she so mad? I'm not doing anything. I'm not taking action that is hurting her. So like, what am I doing wrong? I'm not doing anything. And I was like, dummy, she wants you to do something. So you're neglecting the relationship. That's why she's angry. Like, we don't have friends so that they can just...

Divia (27:56.642)

Divia (28:07.96)

Yeah.

JC (28:13.874)

you know, ghost us. Like if you're going to be somebody's friend, you should send a text once in a while. You should have a call once in a while. You should let them know when you're in their city, you know? And so yeah, she's angry because you're supposed to be her friend and you're slacking on your friend duties, you know? And she's telling you that and you're not remedying it. You're not her friend. Just tell her, I don't want to be friends anymore. I can't, I can't put in the effort. So I can't, you're not going to get anything out of this friendship. So I'm going to peace out, you know?

Divia (28:28.065)

Yeah.

JC (28:41.598)

So yeah, think friendship is so much about like caring and actually showing that you care. Because like something I think about all the time, which is like, you know, it's whatever, but it is what it is. Like I love saying things that mean nothing. It is what it is. I think all the time about like, if I died, I know that there's a lot of people who'd be like, my God, I loved her. And it's like.

Divia (28:52.297)

You

JC (29:02.788)

and you never called me and you never texted and you never let me know when you were in New York and you never made an effort. like save it a*****e. know, like if you care about me f*****g do something about it. So that's definitely my thing is like when you think of someone in your life, send them a text, do it.

Divia (29:05.581)

Yeah.

Divia (29:13.356)

You

Divia (29:25.143)

Yeah. Okay, yeah. So it seems like for you, they're kind of two things that are maybe the same thing. One is like, have a concept in your head, a friend that means, that has some obligation attached to it. That isn't just like, like them, but it's like, and here's how I'll show up for them. And you also want people to be direct with people about whether they're up for that or not.

JC (29:37.832)

Mm -hmm.

JC (29:41.651)

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm. Yeah, because I feel like a lot of times I think about how I feel like I'm item number 697 on a lot of my quote unquote friends priority lists where it's just like, if I'm not poking them for attention, I'll never hear from them again. And like, it will never occur to them to send me a text or whatever. But if I say like, hey, you're invited to my birthday, they show up and they have a great time and they talk to me. If I say, hey, do you want to go see this movie together? They'll be like, yes. And then we'll have a grand old time. But like, yeah, if I don't, it's like,

It does not feel like I matter to them in the least. And like, it's not my preference.

Divia (30:20.545)

Yeah, no, it's true. a lot of a lot of like if I periodically they'll be like Twitter threads or stuff and I'll sometimes signal boost them about like here's how to meet people if you're trying to as an adult or whatever. And it's a lot of stuff that we've talked about, like put yourself out there, introduce yourself, host events, whatever, whatever, like all that stuff. And I do think it's true that the advice doesn't usually the advice tends to assume that the person is willing to put in all of the effort themselves perpetually. Which it makes sense.

JC (30:46.298)

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. Or at least like a lot of effort up front of like send the first message. If you don't get a response, follow up gently. If you don't get a response, then maybe leave it alone. But like, yeah, like set up the first meeting, then like set up the second meeting a couple of weeks later, and like communicate directly. It's funny, I have a friendship that like just started recently where it was kind of crazy to me because we started...

with a little bit of like a conflict about like, I'm really disappointed in how you are not showing up, you know? And then we had to have this whole like text discussion about like, yeah, I'm sorry, I've just been like so busy and this is not how I usually am and I know that it sucks. Cause I think we had our initial conversation, we met at a party, our initial conversation had been like, we're feeling a little lonely, we want more friends, we're the kind of people that show up as friends. We like talking to each other. Okay, great, let's make a time to hang out. And then it was extremely difficult to get that first time on the calendar.

Divia (31:18.659)

Mm

Divia (31:42.371)

Mm

JC (31:42.388)

and, and so I was feeling very like tender about that because I ha I was dealing with another friend that was kind of flaking and I was just like feeling very frustrated and exhausted by like constant friend flakiness and, never getting any closure about that because it always feels like you can't be like, Hey, I'm not happy with what's going on here because people will just kind of be like, chill out, dude. Your number 697 on the call list.

Like, what are you expecting? You know what I mean? But I'm kind of at the point now where it's like, well, if I'm number 697, I can say if I have a problem, and if you don't like it you want to walk away, what am I really losing? But like, I'm sick and tired of being like, it's all fine, it's not, you know? So anyway, so I was like, you know what? I just met this woman, I want to be friends with her, but if me expressing myself makes her go away, I'm okay with that because we just met. So again, what am I losing?

Divia (32:08.332)

Right.

Divia (32:15.669)

Right.

Divia (32:22.424)

Yeah.

JC (32:33.958)

and I'm tired of holding everything back all the time. So I said, like, hey, I'm not happy about how hard it's been to get something on the couch. I don't remember the exact words. I use something gentler than this, because I know that sounds like a lot or whatever. But I was just like, you know, I'm just so exhausted by all the friend crap that I deal with all the time. And it just feels like we're going down that same road. And I just don't want that. So let's please try to make something happen or let it go. And she was, I was really.

Divia (32:36.611)

Thank

Divia (32:43.33)

Okay.

Divia (33:02.211)

Good.

JC (33:03.782)

impressed by her stepping up and being like, you're right, it has not been ideal. This is not how I want to show up. Things have been crazy. I'm sorry. This is like not how I usually am. And like, we will make this happen. And then like we did make it happen. And it was kind of weird to start off because I was just like, you like we started with a conflict like that has never happened to me before. But we also started with resolving a conflict, which makes me feel more like secure and confident about like

Divia (33:15.107)

Okay.

JC (33:30.194)

she's somebody who's willing to have the conversation and then like course correct, which is amazing, you especially for a f*****g new person to whom she owes nothing, you know? You know, and it was, but I just felt like, let me just like clear the air of just like, I'm sorry that we started in conflict. I really appreciate how you like stepped up. It'll be okay. I understand. I was also in just like a really sensitive moment about this exact issue. So I was just kind of like, f**k it. I'm going to tell this person how I feel. I'm sick of not saying anything.

Divia (33:35.041)

Okay.

Right.

JC (34:00.244)

But I think, you we cleared the air about that and then we're like off to the races now and we're like kind of, you know, slowly building some rapport and I'm sure it'll be fine. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's funny because it's like she's she's really great, but she does live far enough away that it's like, God, like, I really want friends within 10 blocks at this point, you know.

Divia (34:11.884)

the school.

Divia (34:24.479)

That's so close though.

JC (34:26.034)

I know, but it's like, you my neighborhood is chock -a -block with cool, nice people. And let me tell you this, like I could talk about this s**t forever. I ran into a friend from college the other night. I didn't see him, he saw me. He called out to me, he reminded me who he was, because like my eyesight is not great. And you know, like at this point in our lives, it's like, there's so many faces where it's like, I know this face, but.

Divia (34:32.185)

You

Divia (34:43.918)

Yeah.

JC (34:47.486)

please help me. And so he immediately told me who he was, which I really appreciated. And I was like, of course. And then I was like right in it of like, I remembered our inside jokes and like I remembered our context and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, hey, what are you doing? He was like, I'm doing this job. I was like, where are you living? He lives three blocks away from me. But I have always gotten the vibe from this guy that he is not going to show up as a friend for me. He's a friendly acquaintance who is willing to say hello to me proactively when I didn't even see him. But he does not want to exchange information.

Divia (34:57.282)

Nice.

Divia (35:03.513)

Wow.

Divia (35:08.439)

Right.

JC (35:15.432)

does not want to be in touch. He's a f*****g straight man with a girlfriend. It just is what it is. And so I'm not going to do the thing anymore of like, well, we should grab coffee. No, we shouldn't because you don't want to. So like, I accept that you are a person who remembers that you know me and you proactively say hello to me when you didn't have to, but you will not engage with me beyond that. And I accept that. But I'm just like, why do you live three blocks from me and Divya lives in Austin?

Divia (35:20.323)

Yeah.

Divia (35:28.365)

Right.

Divia (35:45.025)

Yeah.

JC (35:45.044)

Why do you live three blocks from me and all my best friends have moved across the globe? What the f**k? So I'm just like, there have to be people within 10 blocks of me that are willing to engage with me. And I wanna find those people and create relationships, you know?

Divia (36:00.557)

Yeah, no, I mean, it's it is a big value add to have people be close for sure. Like physically close. I did know and and it took forever. Yeah, I don't I don't think I've talked about this on the podcast very much, but but I did finally move to Austin in a neighborhood with other friends that I already knew. And it's honestly it's really great. And I will say, though, for me, something I learned about myself during Covid is it works like I definitely prefer seeing people in person, to be clear. But I

JC (36:05.468)

I mean, you literally put a huge amount of effort into making that happen.

JC (36:20.745)

Mm -hmm.

JC (36:28.38)

Mm -hmm.

Divia (36:30.359)

do all right if I get to just talk on the phone. But then I'm like, for my kids, especially, it's just like even more important that it be in person. Though then I say that, know, so the thing you're saying about like, yeah, and so the people we moved with, so one of them does not have kids, he's just a guy, you know, and he hangs out and that's cool. Or so he has step kids that are much older, but he doesn't have.

JC (36:32.456)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

JC (36:40.272)

Mm -hmm. You mean your kids to play with other kids? Yeah, yeah.

JC (36:53.454)

huh.

Divia (36:58.061)

He doesn't have kids in the neighborhood. But for everyone else, that's really great. Because something I always used to think about from when I was a kid, I don't know if you remember my neighbor who lived right across. You probably didn't know him. So it was a weird situation because his dad, he mostly only spent the summers in America and then he was in France the rest of the time. And my, like.

I don't even... I guess I feel weird about saying this because he's like a real person who's out there somewhere. But like, I don't think we really did actually have that much friend chemistry, but he was literally next door. And so yet we hung out all the time. And so I think about that for my kids and like some people are course more extroverted than others and some of my kids are more than others, but I'm like I want them if they just want to go hang out with someone, I want them to have that as an option. Yeah.

JC (37:28.946)

Yes, yes.

Mm.

JC (37:44.432)

Mm -hmm, for sure, for sure. Yeah, and that's why I'm like, you know, it's tough, because it's like, I've definitely thought of the thing of like, let me just create community immediately around me, but it's not easy because my roommates don't want it. So it's like, okay, I'm not going to force people. They don't want it. But like, this is a real problem for me and it has been for years. And so it's like, you know, when it's time for new people to come in, I'm going to be so much more just crystal clear about this is what I expect.

Divia (37:58.05)

Yeah.

JC (38:13.404)

if that sounds weird to you, find somewhere else. I cannot live with it. I really can't. I'm tired. I've done it for too long and I'm really sick of it, you know? And then I was like, okay, well, what about my building? The people in my building are friendly people who do not want to put in effort and create relationships. And there's also a big age gap. I, know, I, I, yeah. And it's like, and I feel that thing of like, they're in a stage of their life where all their friends live here and they want to go out and party all night and blah, blah, blah. And like everything's peachy keen. And it's like,

Divia (38:32.654)

Like they're younger or they're... yeah.

JC (38:43.828)

You guys tell me how you're doing in 10 years when everybody's moved away and gotten married and had kids. And then you'll understand why the 40 year old neighbor wanted to, you know, make some connections, but they don't want to. So, okay. And you know, it's hilarious is actually, there's a woman who lives around the corner that I've seen like, I don't know, at least a hundred times or whatever. And we've been saying hello, you know, like over the years, just hello. She only introduced herself like a couple days ago for the first time. Cause she's like, I see you all the time. Like I've been living here 15 years. How long have you been, I was like, yeah, 10 years, you know?

Divia (39:02.585)

Mm

Divia (39:12.813)

Mm

JC (39:13.46)

And I would be very happy to strike up a friendship with her. And I'm treading carefully, I don't know if she wants that, whatever. But it's like, clearly you are a person who has been rooted here and you're friendly, you're looking at a stranger and saying hello to them and acknowledging that you've seen them a lot. And so yeah, I'm just like, I wanna try to see who else lives within a 10 block radius and is feeling like they want friends. Because I want...

Divia (39:25.462)

Mm

JC (39:40.376)

know, a bunch of Kramer's in my life, you know, just like people are gonna pop by or be like, let's take a walk or like, you know, I'm right here. And you know, it's like, I know other people like right near me who are just never available, one of whom is a man with a family. And so I'm just like, yep, not worth the trouble. Have fun with your f*****g family, you know, and it's badening.

Divia (39:43.533)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Divia (39:52.665)

Mm

Divia (40:01.431)

Yeah.

Yeah.

JC (40:05.064)

I mean, one thing I always wonder about, I know you kind of touched on this earlier, and I guess maybe I do know the answer, whatever, is what amount of your needs are met by having a partner and a family and living with them? And what needs are still not met by that? And do you feel like, thank God I have a partner and family, because it meets all my needs. And if I didn't have that, I'd be on the struggle bus. Or what's your kind of thought about that?

Divia (40:25.133)

Mm -hmm.

Divia (40:30.969)

I mean, all my, that's like a weird, I don't know that I think of it exactly like that. So I mean, I would say a family, like I, like obviously I love my family, like coldest take ever or whatever. But like there's something there for me that's, it just, it's like, it's the only thing like that. I'm like the meeting.

JC (40:35.539)

Mm -hmm.

Divia (40:55.723)

it gives me and like that I've just always wanted kids and then they're there and I were like creating something to get like, I don't know. It's not like anything else, but it's also not like to hang out with my kids, at least at these ages, it's a pretty different activity from socializing with adults. And so hanging out with my husband is much more similar. No doubt. I will say we're in a tough stage there in terms of just hours per day.

JC (41:10.738)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

JC (41:24.072)

Mm -hmm.

Divia (41:25.025)

And we try, and this is, I think it's basically my fault because I tried having more childcare and it was good for that, but ultimately it sort of didn't work for me. And the kids are still young. And so in some way, like the sad thing is in some ways it's easier for me to hang out. We switch off with the kids. And so in some ways it's easier for me to hang out with people that are not my husbands.

JC (41:33.736)

Hmm.

JC (41:40.489)

Mm

JC (41:46.545)

Mm Because it's like having Will home with the kids is the only way for you to get adult social time and then he can't be there.

Divia (41:54.295)

Yeah, I mean, we can all hang out together, but then it's more, it's like a different activity. And sometimes all the kids are asleep or something. And I really try, I'm not always the best about it, but I try to really remember like, no, this is scarce. So if there's like even a moment, I should go hang out with him. Sometimes I'll call him because they're like in the same house with the kids and I'll like call him and like talk to him about stuff. So yeah, I would say I do not get...

JC (41:56.594)

Right. Right.

Mm -hmm.

JC (42:06.617)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

JC (42:17.032)

That's funny.

Divia (42:21.057)

As much, yeah, I've failed to set up a life where I get as much time with my husband as I want. I do feel bad about it. I think in a few years it'll be a lot better, but it's been a long time of just, it's great, but it's not as much as I want. And I feel confident he would say the same thing.

JC (42:29.618)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

JC (42:34.675)

Mm -hmm.

And do you feel like you could ever draw, I mean, know, this is classic child -free person asking a question like this, whatever, but do you think you could ever set a boundary with your kids of like, mom and dad need some time alone, Lydia's in charge, go play in the backyard, only contact us if someone's injured or crying or whatever, you know?

Divia (42:43.828)

Yeah.

Divia (42:54.499)

Look, I do, no, no, absolutely bleeding or pooping. That's what I say. No, but yes, and I should maybe try, but Mike, I do try that. I think it's possible I should spend more time on it to get the older kids to babysit. But like, to be clear, my youngest is nine months old. Like it's just, she's still, like how long can they really? Yes, I think I should probably do it more than I do. The older kids aren't that into it. I do pay them. I do ask them.

JC (42:58.304)

-huh.

JC (43:11.871)

Mm -hmm.

JC (43:17.342)

Right.

JC (43:22.226)

Hmm, wow, funny. I wanna hear more about that because I feel like, know, I think about abstract things about raising kids, which I will never do, but I'm like, well, how would I handle this or that? And like, I think a lot about, you know, people are probably better off if it's like, okay, everybody's in this family, we are sharing duties. And like, I understand sometimes you have to incentivize kids because they just do not wanna do stuff and it's just not worth the trouble. But it's fascinating to me that you would

pay your kid to help out with childcare when it's like, we're a family unit, I need your help, I do s**t for you all day long, every day without any pay or whatever, you can watch the f*****g kids for two hours without me f*****g giving you money. You're a member of this family, you're not hired help. So yeah, how do you see it?

Divia (44:04.547)

Yes.

Nah, that's not how I see it at all, I'm like, I'm like, look, I could try to like guilt them into doing it, which I think is like, that's how I hear it when you say that. I'm like, I could be like, no, you owe it to me. You should feel guilty if you don't, therefore you should do it.

JC (44:17.626)

Mm. Mm.

JC (44:21.832)

just like, you know, we're a family unit, let's work together to make our lives work.

Divia (44:24.621)

But here's the thing. Here's the thing, though. I guess I have like two sort of things to say about that. One is I think below is so and what I'm like a radical in many ways with parenting and the things that I've mostly heard from people who tend to do things kind of how I do is that those sorts of arguments, I think, are pretty compelling sort of in the way they would be to like an adult, which again, I mean, obviously, like adults are sort of all over the map. By the time they're around teenagers.

JC (44:35.837)

Hmm

JC (44:49.767)

Right, right, right.

Divia (44:55.937)

Or maybe younger, depending on the kid. But the way I see it, and I'm sure, whatever, there's like so much individual variation. I'm not trying to like hate on anyone who does that. Like I think that can work well for some families. But it has never felt right to me. I'm like, they never agreed to that. And I don't think it intuitively feels right to them. And I've also had kids be like, yeah, on some level, I guess I should, but like, I really don't want to. So do you want me to just do it even though I don't want to? And your answer might be like, yes. And mine is like, no.

JC (45:25.726)

So it.

Divia (45:25.869)

Like I care so much more about them actually knowing themselves and being able to keep in touch with like what they really want. Like that's just more important to me. And plus like my, my BATNA, like my alternative, if they say no is first of all worse, like, and involves money. I'm like, this is a thing I have paid people to do before. I don't know. Yeah. Best alternative to negotiated agreement. Like that's what I'll do if they don't do it.

JC (45:33.159)

Yeah.

JC (45:44.977)

Mm -hmm. Did you say batsna?

JC (45:49.82)

my god. my god. Where the f**k does that acronym come from? I've never heard that in my life.

Divia (45:56.589)

think it's like a business. Yeah, this is the thing. So I hang out with rationalists and that's the sort of thing rationalists say all the time. No, but okay, you might think it's ridiculous, but you want people to be more direct with you. I'm like, hang out with rationalists. Maybe they will.

JC (46:00.113)

I know you do.

JC (46:08.04)

That's very funny. But yeah, mean, yeah, I mean, I'm always happy to meet new people, but I don't get the sense that the rationalist community is necessarily the place for me, but maybe I need to give it another try, you know? But, right. -huh.

Divia (46:12.057)

You

Divia (46:18.137)

No, no, no, it's probably not, but it is an advantage from my perspective. It also like, I think I have to say about the rationalist community is, and of course it's like sort of geographically different, whatever, whatever, but like it is kind of a community at all, which is something. Like, I feel like if there's like something goes wrong, like there's sort of like, you could send it, you could like sort of contact the rationalist community as a thing, like the same way, I don't know. I actually need to give all sorts of or something, but like.

JC (46:32.966)

Right, right, right, right, right.

JC (46:41.18)

Mm -hmm.

Divia (46:47.841)

that some things are communities and other things are not communities. And so I think it's worth something if something's a community at all.

JC (46:50.012)

Right, right, right, right. Yeah, for sure. And I just had a question, because I feel like a lot of people's theory is, yes, sometimes kids have to do things they don't want to do. How are you preparing? No, no, no, no, no. But how are you preparing them for real life if they never have to do anything they don't want to do? Because it's like, I don't want to work, but I work every day.

Divia (47:03.233)

I disagree, disagree, but yeah.

Divia (47:11.415)

Okay. Okay, but here's the thing. I think this is a semantic thing that you might be like, this is a dumb nitpick, but to me, it's extremely important. I think that it's a confusing way to put it to say that you don't want to work because you want the outcomes from working and that's why you do it.

JC (47:26.824)

Hmm.

JC (47:31.388)

Hmm. So you feel like I do want to work because I want what it brings?

Divia (47:36.801)

I mean, I think ultimately, it's sort of, like I'm not really into policing other people's language, but I am like, I would never really put it that way because it seems wrong to me. Like for sure a thing that seems true is you choose to work.

JC (47:47.39)

Hmm.

JC (47:51.836)

I feel that I have to because otherwise I couldn't pay my bills. So I do feel like if I came into a bunch of money, I don't know that I would work in the same way. You know? Yeah.

Divia (47:55.713)

Right. And so to clear.

Divia (48:00.963)

yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's how I was. Many people are like, I love my job. I do it even if and I'm like that. Yes. Yes, which I think it's most, which I think is, of course, sure, sure, So, but again, I'm like, you're doing it, though, because you want the result of it, which is like the paycheck and stuff.

JC (48:08.212)

There are things that I would do that are work, but not working at a job that I would prefer not to be doing. Yeah.

JC (48:23.735)

Mm

Divia (48:24.801)

And so my perspective on this is like, people seem to think that the natural way to explain to kids that sometimes you should do things because you want the result or if you don't do it, the result would be bad is to use like threats or guilt tripping from the parents. And I'm like, I just don't think that. I think it's different. Like I think these, my mom is gonna get mad at me if I don't, it's just so different from like, but I need money. That like, don't, to me they don't seem like the same thing.

JC (48:48.614)

Yeah, and I'm not saying those are the only options. For me, it would be like, I think it's worthwhile to talk to a kid about like, hey, we're a family unit. Everything works better if we all help out where we can.

Nobody wants to clean the toilet, but if somebody does it, everybody benefits. And like that's an act of service to our little community. And so, you I would really appreciate it if you would, you know, watch your little sister for two hours. And I know it's not always fun and I know maybe you don't want to do it. And I respect that you don't want to do it. And I'm sorry that I'm needing to ask you something that doesn't sound fun to you, but think of it as this is a nice thing I'm doing for mom and my little sister that's going to help my family. And it's not always about like, do I want to do it? It's like,

You probably don't want to do your laundry. You probably don't want to, you know, but you do it.

Divia (49:32.429)

So, okay, but yeah, see, I would never say any of those things. I'm like, I do wanna do my laundry so I have clean clothes. I do wanna clean the toilet so the toilet's clean.

JC (49:37.64)

Mm.

Okay. Okay. So why would it be inconceivable that your child might want to help their mom if that's how it was? Yeah. Okay.

Divia (49:47.151)

no, no, they do sometimes. Absolutely they do. Yeah, but the question is, what if they don't want to? Like, I think it's fine to make those sort of arguments. Like, look, it would be, and I'm not saying I never guilt trip my kids. If you ever listened to this, they're probably like, well, what about that time? You're like, but can't you just, whatever. but it's not really how I want to be doing things because...

JC (49:52.082)

Mm -hmm.

JC (50:02.59)

Hmm.

Divia (50:06.817)

for a few reasons. And one of them is, yeah, okay, fine. Let's say I give some speech like that. I would give it in my own words, which would be different from yours. It's super important to me to be like, and you know what? If you say no, I will respect that.

JC (50:13.598)

Mm

JC (50:20.006)

Mm -hmm. But are you also allowed to say, if you say no, I will respect it, but I will feel a little bit sad that you didn't want to help me?

Divia (50:20.889)

Because to me that's an important piece.

Divia (50:30.109)

sure, I mean think people sharing their feelings is good. And there definitely are times when I'm like, when I'm kinda like, yeah, you do what you want, but it doesn't feel good to me that that's what you're doing, for sure.

JC (50:32.316)

Right, right.

JC (50:41.082)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. And do they ever course correct then or are they just like, well, cool, you feel bad. Anyway, I'm doing me, you know, like.

Divia (50:47.737)

i they definitely care about it, though, like, you know, my two -year -old, like, you don't really understand what i'm talking about so it, like, depends on the kid

JC (50:51.772)

Right, right. what, -huh. And what I'm trying to understand is like, is the hard line that you will not cross, like is your goal to like never force your kids to do something they don't want to do even if one could say like, you're not abusing them by just asking them to perform a task that is helpful to the family, that is not harmful to them. Well, but that's what I'm saying is like, is your goal to never...

Divia (51:13.761)

No, but is it asking or is it demanding? Look, it's like.

JC (51:20.904)

to never have your kids do something they didn't wanna do as a result of you initiating that. Is that your goal?

Divia (51:28.363)

No, so look, to me, like none of these, like I just, I think the way you're talking about it is like very normal, but to me, it always strikes me as Orwellian. You're saying ask, and I'm like, no, I ask them to do stuff a million times a day, and they can say, no, that's what asking means. Otherwise it's like demanding or like threatening or like some other word. Like people will be like, my God, my kids don't listen to me. And I'm like, do you mean they don't listen or they don't obey you? Like.

JC (51:41.438)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

JC (51:51.9)

Right, right, right. But so, right.

Divia (51:53.281)

So I'm kind of like, let's be clear on what we're talking about first of all. So that's like one of my rants about this. But then another thing is like, there are absolutely some things where I'm like, don't, like, it doesn't really matter to me how you feel about this is what we have to do. And for me, in my family, this mostly comes up when people are toddlers and I'm like, no, you don't get to like kick other people. You don't get to take their stuff. don't get to like, like those two people are like the very basics, like other people and their stuff and their bodies, like it's up to them, right?

JC (52:13.62)

Mm

JC (52:22.287)

Sorry, there's a loud siren going by. Yeah.

Divia (52:23.777)

No, I miss it. You know, I don't know. Like, this is a messed up thing to say, because obviously somebody's hurt, but like, that's what I grew up with. Yeah, somebody's being helped.

JC (52:29.556)

Well, know what, somebody's being helped, know? Somebody's receiving services, you know? Somebody's in need and they're getting attention, you know? Yeah, no, because I have the kind of thought of like, when you were talking about it initially, I was like, but I would worry that if a kid... It's tough, because I love the idea of people not having to do stuff they don't want to do, but I worry about if you learn...

I don't have to do what I don't want to do. And then you go out into the world and people sometimes expect that of you in ways that are not sick. You know what I mean? Where it's just like, hey, could you hold the door for this person? It's like, I don't want to. And it's like, okay, well, society is starting to break down now. know, like, like.

Divia (53:11.609)

But again, that's the same type of thing like they and if if somebody doesn't do some basic thing for them Like people will get annoyed like that's the real world thing that happens like I might get annoyed their siblings will definitely like Might get annoyed. I'm sort of like I don't know. That's life like

JC (53:20.456)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Right, so do you feel like they kind of absorb the necessary lessons through being like, okay, I said no to this thing and then people were upset with me and I didn't like how that felt. So maybe in the future, I would consider doing a thing even though I don't love the idea of it, I understand that it kind of maintains my relationships and I want that.

Divia (53:40.781)

Look, I'm sure that sometimes happens, but to me, like, that's, that's not like a, it doesn't feel like the important part. Like to me, the important part of helping people thrive as people seems more like helping people build skills and like build understanding of the world and like understand things and like have options. And

JC (53:54.903)

Mm

JC (53:58.697)

Mm

Divia (53:59.831)

Like, is there a way for people to like hold the door that feels good to them? It's like, I think there's sort of, to many people I think it seems intuitive, like, let me like ramp up the negative motivation. Like, let me like really like make it clear to people what bad thing happens if you don't whatever. When like, I think the things that people do most consistently for the longest that they end up feeling good about it, and I know people are like, I don't know, some people can be very suspicious and disagree with, think, including for good reasons.

JC (54:09.997)

Mmm, yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Divia (54:26.957)

that type of focus, but I'm like, I just think that that is actually mostly what really works. Like, for example, like, how many people do I know? It's like so taboo, but then people will talk about it they'll be like, yeah, yeah, like my parents maybe like floss, but do I floss now? No, I don't floss.

JC (54:31.156)

No, I agree that like

JC (54:42.076)

Right, right, because you want to rebel and do what you want, even though flossing is good for you or whatever.

Divia (54:46.709)

Or not necessarily, or they're just like, because I didn't really want to do it. The only reason I was doing it was because they were like hassling me, and now Noh's hassling me, and like... I don't... I don't know.

JC (54:53.128)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah, no, I agree that like, think positive reinforcement and also making sure a child understands like, what is the value of this? Because I feel like people are often like, do it! And like, you know, just with the anger and the threat and the negativity. And so a child feels like, I don't understand why I'm supposed to be doing this and I'm not doing it, you know?

Divia (55:06.613)

You

Divia (55:12.759)

And sometimes they don't really know how. like, it's sort of a weird thing to say. there's, I don't know. Have you heard of the anti -psychiatry movement?

JC (55:23.216)

No! What is that?

Divia (55:27.213)

Like Thomas Sass, I've never actually read his stuff. I've just read people who talk about him, but he's kind of like look this whole like framing things as like people can't what so he's I don't get into it you but like a Thing that people sometimes talk about is like, okay, you say you like can't do it or like whatever but like gun to head Could you do it if someone were like no, really I'm gonna like shoot you if you don't do it Then could you and all for the answer is like, of course then they could like call you back or whatever even though what they're saying It's like no, I can't I don't know how to But

JC (55:51.402)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Divia (55:55.481)

But again, think that that type of, the way I see it is that most of these things that rely on like negative social motivations are not necessarily very robust.

behaviors. And I also don't think it's just and I'm sort of like a geek about like behaviorism in general. So I'm like, yeah, positive reinforcement, like whatever. To me, the thing is more like actual behavioral fluency, like being really if something is easy. So like, you it's another like, I don't know, I think really you are pretty online, but I think we're like very online in different ways. So have you seen the discourse about like ADHD, people can't build habits? Okay, well, I don't think it's true. There's a discourse about that. No, no, I don't think it's true.

JC (56:14.866)

Hmm.

JC (56:28.861)

Hmm.

JC (56:33.084)

No. So that's literally what it is. It's just like they cannot. Yeah.

Divia (56:39.149)

But it's like something people say. I think, something I certainly identify with is people be like, just like do it every day for a month. And then you like won't even notice I'm doing it. You just keep doing it. And I'm like, yeah, maybe some people, some things for sure. But it rarely happens to me that way. don't know. Do you think that happens that way for you?

JC (56:54.676)

Wait, are you the 927 millionth person in my life with ADHD that I didn't know had it?

Divia (57:01.145)

I don't, I don't, so okay, I have a whole thing to say about that too. I don't identify as having ADHD. never, I don't think I would meet diagnostic criteria. I identify with some of the things and not other things. I tried quizzing people. I'd ask some people in my life. Yeah, I asked some people in my life. I'm like, do you think I have ADHD? Some of were like, yeah, definitely. Some of them were like, no, of course not. So I don't know.

JC (57:10.259)

Yeah.

Mm -hmm. It's like astrology.

JC (57:23.048)

I would never think of that for you, but that's interesting. yeah.

Divia (57:25.049)

I don't really either, though when I look back, so this isn't a side, I will get back to my other point about habits, but when I look back through my life and like me comparing myself to my friends, I'm like, wow. A thing for me about getting older, I don't know if this happens to everyone, is I'm like, at every stage of my life, I did not realize until so many years later, maybe I still don't realize it now, how much I was selecting in my friends for people who were the same kind of weird that I was.

JC (57:54.174)

Doesn't everybody do that? I mean like.

Divia (57:56.109)

Yeah, but it was more than I thought.

JC (57:59.645)

So like you were prioritizing similar weirdness over what? Like compatibility or whatever?

Divia (58:07.819)

Well, no, I think it created compatibility. So I think not over compatibility, but I didn't realize how much of that was good. And I thought more of it was like random too, I think, like especially like, I'm like, but like, we're just like physically, like we were in the same dorm or we were whatever, like we're in the same school. Like I just thought more of it was sort of incidental. Like here's a perfect example. I made a bunch of friends years ago in the baby wearing community and there.

JC (58:15.347)

Hmm.

JC (58:33.906)

Baby wearing. Yeah, just like wear instead of like putting in a stroller or something. It's hilarious.

Divia (58:35.573)

Yeah, it's like you have like baby carriers. Yeah, yeah, and there was like a forum. was yeah and

And at first I was like, okay, like normally I meet friends this way, but this one, the only major filter is like, do they like baby wearing? And then I'm like, no, that's, frankly, I'm like, no, no, that's not true. They're like, do they like these particular types of discussions and probably have kids with this type of sensory need and like to geek out about fabric and really prefer written communication? I'm like, okay, no, no, no. Like this actually looks super filtered. It makes sense that we're all similar types of nerd. I mean, not, and like, not literally all, but like the filters for are we the same type of neurodivergent were more than I

JC (58:49.636)

huh.

JC (59:03.379)

Wow.

Divia (59:12.396)

and I think this has been true at every point in my life, including when we were in school together.

JC (59:15.154)

Yeah. Hmm. Interesting. That's funny. so the hyperforming.

Divia (59:19.949)

So anyway, so yeah, no, I don't identify as ADHD, but let me go back to the habits thing. yeah, cause I think this is also something that often comes into the people are like, we'll just like do it over and over and over with their kids. And then they just like, we'll just automatically do it. And I'm like, maybe like for sure. So sometimes things work that way, but for me it doesn't. I'm like, I do load the dishwasher at night and every time I'm like, I could, or I could not.

JC (59:33.256)

Hmm.

Divia (59:44.129)

I could, or I just didn't feel like I'm just automatically doing it, but then I do it, where something is like, do you legitimately feel automatic? I'm like, do I turn off the sink when I'm done using it? Yeah, like don't even think about that.

JC (59:53.35)

Yeah, no, I feel like things like unloading the dishwasher, like anything that feels like, I could do that, but I could also not. Anybody struggles to just or like has to take a moment to be like, OK, I'm deciding to do this. I'm not just automatically.

Divia (01:00:04.621)

Do it!

No, that's what I thought, but then I listened to podcasts and YouTube videos and whatever, and I hear people talking about it, and if that's how it is for them, that's not how they say it. They're like, no, then we just automatically, and I don't even notice, and then people say that a lot.

JC (01:00:21.682)

Hmm. Interesting. I think people are also unreliable narrators and don't, they're not good witnesses of themselves, you know? So it's like they could say that, but really they're just not noticing that they made a conscious choice or that they were like, I gotta unload the dishwasher. I don't want to. I gotta do it. Okay, I'm doing it. You know I mean? Like, I don't know. I feel like, yeah.

Divia (01:00:26.585)

Yeah.

Divia (01:00:42.649)

Yeah, people are also really different. So it's hard for me to tell. And I will ask, I'll be like, okay, like friends, like, I'll be like, I brush my teeth, like, but like, are there any days in the last month you didn't? And some people are like, my God, I would never miss a day ever. I do it every morning and every night. And I'm like, no, I probably do it like 90 % of the time. And I'm like, my teeth feel gross. I should go do it. I don't know, I'm like, maybe I'm not supposed to admit that, but.

JC (01:00:46.291)

Mm -hmm.

JC (01:00:59.725)

Hmm. Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

JC (01:01:07.186)

Yeah. No, it's fine. Yeah.

Divia (01:01:09.239)

I really do do it a lot, but it doesn't feel automatic to me. And I think when I ask other people, they're like, no, no, it's just super automatic, which is maybe how I feel again about like turning off the sink when I've done or like flushing the toilet. Like I don't think I ever forgot to flush the toilet. And I wouldn't be like, but I kind of want to this time. I just like do it. It's like not a thing. And so I think some people are more like that about more things in their life.

JC (01:01:20.463)

Right, right.

JC (01:01:24.72)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

JC (01:01:30.185)

But it's also like a strong incentive of like the smell of poop you want to go away or you don't want someone to see your poop or also you know like your teeth feel gross you like them to stop feeling gross and that happens cyclically every single day you know.

Divia (01:01:40.501)

Yeah, but for - no, for sure, but for me it's different. Like, I actually sort of think about it with the teeth, whereas, like, the other one is just, like, the flushing of the toilet, I'm like, I don't even - it doesn't even cross my mind.

JC (01:01:53.298)

But I wonder, mean, this is gonna be a ridiculous conversation, but like, if you just farted into the toilet bowl, you wouldn't automatically flush. You're flushing because there's an evidence that smells bad that's gonna keep smelling bad unless you flush it away, you know?

Divia (01:01:56.491)

That was so funny.

Divia (01:02:06.231)

Well, okay, so...

You know you say that, but I don't think it would require extreme effort for me to sit on the toilet and not pee.

JC (01:02:18.608)

Even if you didn't really have to go? Like even if you just peed, if you sit back on the toilet right away, you will pee again? Hmm.

Divia (01:02:20.313)

Correct. all... Basically, yeah. I mean, if it was literally like 10 seconds ago, like not exactly, but I would also like, it just comes up so rarely. I'm like, why would I ever do that?

JC (01:02:32.666)

Mm -hmm. Well, toilets do be for peeing and pooping, you know? It's not somewhere you're just gonna hang out and read a book without thinking you also have to pee or poop, you know? Not a very comfortable chair.

Divia (01:02:38.243)

Yeah.

Divia (01:02:42.773)

Anyway, all right. Sorry. So part of the reason I was getting into this is I do, I guess, I do wonder if this explains some different in parenting philosophy because parents, I think many seem to have the model, at least how they talk about it. Like, I just like force my kids to do the things and then that'll just be automatically what they do. And I'm like, I don't know, that didn't work for me. It never has really worked for me in any. And I think my kids are at least kind of like me. And so.

JC (01:03:01.618)

Mm -hmm

JC (01:03:09.629)

Mm

Divia (01:03:11.201)

That's one reason it doesn't appeal to me very much. Unless, I guess, unless it's about something very, like it's true that that is probably more the sort of rhetoric. If my kid was like, but I don't want to flush the toilet. I'd probably be like, look, just do it. Like, just do it. And then it'd be done. I probably would be more like that. And if they didn't, then I would just do it and whatever. Like, I don't know. But it does make me wonder if that's like a material difference in why people do things differently.

JC (01:03:23.912)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

JC (01:03:34.898)

Hmm. Yeah, I think a lot of people are not very thoughtful about why they do the things they do. I feel like, you know, I always joke like the motto of America should not be E Pluribus Unum. It should be I never think about that. Because like every motherfucker you talk to, you're like, but what about this? And they're like, I never think about that. And you're like, this is why we are where we are. Because nobody's thinking, you know? And it's like, I feel like I think more than.

95 % of people, it doesn't mean that I'm better or smarter. It's just that I'm thinking about these things. Because everybody I talk to, I'm like, but what about this? And like, never think about that. I've never thought about that. How did you even think of that? You know?

Divia (01:04:10.657)

Yeah, OK, so all right. So I also, I think I'm thinking a lot. Let me, one of our things on our ideas for what to talk about is, so we both did go to Harvard and one might think, that's like a place with a bunch of people who really like to think. I think that's sort of true and it's sort of not true. what's your, like, I don't know, what do you think about that?

JC (01:04:14.461)

Yeah.

JC (01:04:19.015)

Mm.

JC (01:04:24.5)

Mmm.

JC (01:04:30.46)

Well, I always say some of my favorite people in the world to talk to are people who went to Harvard because there's just some quality of the conversation that I just don't experience with people who didn't go there. I don't know if it's just like people of a certain intelligence level in general, and then plus the added familiarity of like, we both have a shared experience in a shared place or whatever. yeah.

Divia (01:04:53.787)

wait, just to check though, do you mean like if the person went to like Princeton, you're like, no, doesn't count.

JC (01:04:58.512)

No, no, no, I'm saying any highly intelligent person, and I feel like I've not met somebody from like a Harvard or Princeton or Stanford or whatever level institution or just somebody who's very smart in a certain way where I'm like, this person doesn't think, you know, I can't think of an instance where I've interacted with somebody that seems to be highly intelligent or have some kind of pedigree of like, I am smart, you know, where I'm like, this person is not smart at all, you know.

Divia (01:05:09.176)

Yeah.

Divia (01:05:14.179)

Okay.

Divia (01:05:24.429)

Yeah.

JC (01:05:28.818)

But so you're saying, your original question was, do I think everybody from Harvard tends to think kind of deeply about things?

Divia (01:05:32.791)

Yeah!

Divia (01:05:36.323)

Yeah.

JC (01:05:40.712)

I mean, it's funny because I'm...

Divia (01:05:43.171)

You

JC (01:05:44.274)

You know, the person that I had the conversation where he was like, why is my friend mad at me for being absent from her life? It's like, I don't think you'd be thinking ho. Like, wow, that's a dumb ass thing to say. But also it's like, it's just a different conception of friendship of like, there is no expectation and I owe this person nothing. That's what friendship is. And it's like, you're wrong, or at least you and your friend have a different conception of it and you're not even thinking about that. And I find your actions pretty thoughtless and pretty selfish, you know?

Divia (01:05:49.805)

That was, yeah, right.

Divia (01:05:59.586)

Right.

JC (01:06:13.63)

But anyway.

JC (01:06:18.482)

Hmm, I guess, you I think the reason I think so much is that I have a lot of time and space for it in a way that other people don't, or I make time and space for it, where it's like, instead of packing my life with like work and family and this and that and whatever, it's like, I have hours every day to just go take a walk by myself and just think, you know? And I think a lot of people don't either make that space or have that space. And that's something I thought a lot about is like,

Divia (01:06:44.643)

Thank

JC (01:06:45.116)

I think I have more time and space to think than the vast majority of other people because other people pack their lives with s**t that makes it hard to think. And it doesn't occur to them to think about stuff, you know?

Divia (01:06:53.817)

Sorry, it was just funny to me. again, he'll probably never listen to this, but I was talking to my nine -year -old the other day and he was like, he was like saying something to me and I'm like, but the middle of something and he was like, it doesn't look like you are in the middle of something. And I was like, no, but I'm like thinking about something. And he was sort of like, and I was like, you realize like basically all of the time I'm thinking about something. And he was kind of like, no, I didn't know that.

JC (01:07:11.805)

Hahaha

JC (01:07:18.804)

That's funny. Do you think he's a thinker?

Divia (01:07:23.713)

Yeah, yeah, no, I think so. But like, I don't know, people, like, especially kids, don't often necessarily spend a ton of time about, what other people are doing in their own heads.

JC (01:07:31.346)

Right, right, right, right. Do you feel that your kids are like going to be well prepared for going out in the world?

Divia (01:07:41.817)

Who knows? I mean, I hope so. I think some of them, I'm more like, yeah, I think we're probably, yeah, I don't know. I hope so. I'm trying my best. think certainly we're doing something pretty non -traditional, but like honestly, don't, it's not so much I'm like, my thing, I think it's definitely gonna whatever. It's more like I'm like, well, the traditional thing I think doesn't necessarily prepare people either. So kind of a low bar maybe.

JC (01:08:05.876)

Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is your, like, do you have an expectation or a hope of, each of them will leave the home by 22 and support themselves and, live in a certain way and whatever, or is it just, like, as long as they're alive and happy, I do not care about anything else?

Divia (01:08:24.725)

Look, I definitely want them to be able to support themselves for sure and have jobs and stuff and I talk to them about that. I don't personally, at least like not currently, I'm currently not like and I hope they leave the house. I'm currently more like and I hope they stay in the house if possible. I mean, probably not, but like my guess is that I'm going to be more enthusiastic about them staying longer than they are.

JC (01:08:30.366)

Mm

JC (01:08:40.87)

Hmm... forever?

Mm

JC (01:08:49.192)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Divia (01:08:49.773)

Which is, I don't know, that's what my mom always said to me. She was kind of like, hope you live here forever. And then eventually I left and... I don't know.

JC (01:08:54.47)

Interesting. Yeah, no, it's funny. It's funny to me how many parents seem to be uncomfortable with like the nature of like raising the baby birds and then letting them fly out of the nest, you know, like they're like, well, no, but the baby bird should stay in the nest. And it's like, not really. They're adult birds now. Yeah.

Divia (01:09:06.399)

But I don't think it was... No, no, no. Okay. That's not what I think. I don't think it's that they're uncomfortable with it. I'm just like, I like them. Like, I like having them around. And like, in some cultures, it's normal for kids to stay with their parents longer if they want to. I don't know. I really don't think it's uncomfortable with them leaving. I'm more like, it just seems cool. If they want to be there. I don't know. For the same reason it's... Yeah, I don't know. That's how I see it.

JC (01:09:14.386)

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm. -hmm. Yeah.

JC (01:09:25.8)

Mm -hmm.

JC (01:09:30.674)

Yeah. No, it's interesting. you know, something I think about all the time and talk about a fair amount is like, I love New York and I want to be here, but I also specifically do not want to be very far away from my parents, especially as they get older. I feel like, you know, I'm uncomfortable with that. I, it's like, you could say whatever you want to say about it, but it's like, I feel...

a sense of duty and care towards my mom, especially because she's on her own and she's in this stage of her life where she has helped greatly by having a family member nearby, me, who will go over and help her when she needs it. And my dad is partnered. it only occurred to me recently, like, good God, thank God for my stepmom because she can take care of my dad and I can take care of my mom. And I don't have to take care of both of them because she's there.

Divia (01:10:05.005)

Mm

Divia (01:10:13.24)

Yeah.

Divia (01:10:21.347)

Mm

Divia (01:10:27.214)

Yeah.

JC (01:10:27.484)

And if my mom had a caring partner, I would be a little bit more off the hook, but she doesn't. So I do have to step up because I do care. So it's interesting to me, and I don't know if you want to share any thoughts about this or whatever, but how many people are like, nope, gotta go. And it's like, yeah, but your parents are getting really old and they're really far away. And it's like, well, I gotta go. it's like, think there's like, yeah, there's nothing like.

Divia (01:10:33.389)

Right.

Totally.

Divia (01:10:50.423)

No, I hear you.

JC (01:10:52.968)

wrong with that? Because I feel like there is the thing of like, we should all be free to live our own lives. And I feel like you put a person in the world to allow them to live their own life. And that could mean that they go halfway across the world and never see you again, because that's their life that you gave them to live. But as I don't know if we were talking about this before we started recording or not, but the whole thing of, we have this culture now where it's so the norm to like,

move for school, move for a job, move for a partner, move for a life circumstance, move, move, move, move, like not necessarily be close to your family and your people and your hometown and whatever. So I don't know, do you wanna share any thoughts about like your decisions to go far away and how that's been?

Divia (01:11:32.749)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, obviously I did move and I didn't think I would. Like, I always thought that I would stay in New York and if I had kids, I'd do it in New York and that's what I thought. But then and I think there's like more than one way to tell any story, including this story. Like I moved to San Francisco to try to work on a startup with some friends. I didn't really end up doing it. They did whatever I in my.

JC (01:11:57.385)

Right.

Divia (01:12:00.899)

personal narrative, this sort of, at least one of the moments that I was like, I'm gonna go there. I was working, so I did move back to New York after college and I was living with my mom and I had various jobs and things and at the time I was working.

JC (01:12:10.44)

Mm

Divia (01:12:19.073)

I like, it's actually, at first I was working for the mom of a friend we went to school with, but then I quit that job and I was doing some other stuff, some like programming type stuff. Anyway, I remember I was watching a video of the C -Studying Conference. don't know, do you know what C -Studying is? Because of me. Yeah, yeah, of course, right. Anyway, and I remember just like, and I've been reading, I sort of had finally found the part of the internet with the people that were like even more like me, like the.

JC (01:12:35.154)

Hmm. Well, because of you, yes.

Divia (01:12:48.193)

rationalist, transhumanist, libertarian, whatever, like those type of people. Like I found some of their blogs and stuff. And I was watching the Ceaseless Conference and I was kind of like, I have to go there. Like that's where they all are. Like that's sort of my, those are like more like my people. And not, I'm sorry, not like more like my people than my family are. Like I don't mean it like that at all. Like my family are my people in a totally different way. But like that's where I could find intellectual connection.

JC (01:13:03.998)

Hmm.

JC (01:13:11.207)

Mm

Divia (01:13:16.375)

And I did, and it was like not even close. And to me, this is sort of, guess it makes sense to me you would have emphasized different parts of it, but I'm like, yeah, I went to Harvard and like everyone was really smart for sure. Especially like, I don't know, I mean, or like especially in a particular way, like everyone I met in computer science department, I'm like, wow, your mind is like really impressive. But my experience there was that most people didn't really care about ideas.

JC (01:13:34.963)

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

JC (01:13:46.388)

So what do you mean by that? Like they just wanted to absorb information but they didn't want to create ideas or like?

Divia (01:13:51.577)

No, I don't know. like, and I really like no shade on anyone. Like I think people should do what they want. But my impression of most of the people I knew from Harvard was more like they care about their thing and being successful at their thing. And when we went, did you go to the 10 year reunion? You did, right? I think I saw you there. Yeah. That was the only one I went to. And then I guess the COVID messed up the anyway.

JC (01:14:05.99)

Yeah. Yeah.

JC (01:14:10.962)

Yeah, the 15th reunion was a trip. my God. I could talk to you about that, but anyway, go on.

Divia (01:14:15.161)

Okay. Yeah, anyway, I remember meeting up with everyone and I was sort of like, okay, like everyone seems cool more than I thought everyone has succeeded.

JC (01:14:28.424)

Hmm. You didn't expect.

Divia (01:14:30.285)

Including it with, no, no, I just didn't think about it one way the other and like sort of including it like the different things. So then he's like, well I make like a zillion dollars in an investment bank. I'm like, okay. And somebody's looking, I'm like the best at making these particular types of weird art installations in the world. And I'm like, awesome. so, like, I don't know. It's just like what they wanted to do. It seemed like they mostly had gone and done it, which I don't take for granted when I meet people in other parts of my life that if they're like have some crazy thing they're really into, then they're going to really go do it. But I feel like the Harvard people mostly did do it.

JC (01:14:58.462)

Hmm.

Divia (01:14:59.181)

I don't know if that's, again, you may have had a different experience. That's sort of the general vibe I got from the reunion. But then when I sort of ask people, it seems like there's some activity that rationalists are usually up to that's like a certain type of like trying to make sense of everything in the world. That like the people I know from Harvard just mostly weren't that into that activity.

JC (01:15:15.123)

Hmm.

JC (01:15:19.152)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. I mean, yeah, rationalists definitely seem to be like a different breed than everybody else, you know? And I feel like, yeah, there's a lot of Harvard people where it's like, I'm just going to have the conventional picture of success. I'm going to get married, have children, make a lot of money, buy a nice house, you know, like...

Divia (01:15:24.707)

Yeah.

Divia (01:15:36.505)

Also, sorry, like, I think you, like, from your angle, it would make sense. You'd be like, they're gonna get married and have children. And I'm like, yeah. And you know what? At the 10 -year reunion, it seemed like I was the only one with kids. Because I think, again, I had it earlier. And they're like gonna have children at the exact normal time for like our social class and culture and whatever.

JC (01:15:53.812)

How old were you when you had Lydia then? guess 27? No. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because...

Divia (01:15:57.273)

I was 28, which is not even late. And I was one of the first from the school we went to growing up too. And there were, I think there were two other people that had kids before I did there.

JC (01:16:09.96)

Yeah, was Maxine and Liz. W? -huh. -huh.

Divia (01:16:14.905)

Yeah. Mm -hmm. think so. Unless I'm missing somebody. But I, and again, I'm like, and the depression I got at the time when I got pregnant when I was 27 is people were like, my God, that's so early. And I'm like, is it though? Is it though? No, but like it's, I guess so, but yeah.

JC (01:16:28.668)

Yes. For our cohort, yes. Yeah. I mean, feel like one of the... Or they're trying and failing because it's too late. Biologically, it's really difficult. That's an interesting thing that I'm witnessing right now is people's really horrible fertility journeys that are really making them suffer as late 30s and early 40s people.

Divia (01:16:38.593)

And now everyone has kids, it's true. Basically. Yeah, there's some of that. Yeah.

Divia (01:16:53.891)

Yeah.

JC (01:16:58.244)

And yeah, and also the whole thing of people kind of realizing like, God, maybe this isn't gonna happen for me. And like, what do I do now? Cause like that was the plan and it's not gonna happen for me. And I'm kind of as a child free person who loves their friends and wants to keep time with their friends. It's like, I want my friends to be happy and get what they want. And I feel terrible for people that are like, I want a child desperately and it's not gonna happen for me because I think about for myself. Like if somebody told me like,

Divia (01:17:08.865)

Right. Yeah.

JC (01:17:27.824)

something has changed, like, you know, if I lost my singing voice, it's like, it would f*****g suck. Like, I want to sing and my body may not let me and that would really suck, you know? So I definitely feel for them, but the selfish part of me or the part of me that's like, yeah, but how does this affect me? Is like, I hope that in five years, if it hasn't happened for people, that they've made peace with it and they're gonna move on and not have kids, you know? And we can just put this to bed, you know? Because again, it's like, I wish that

Divia (01:17:31.159)

Right. Yeah.

JC (01:17:58.13)

I just wish that we lived in a way where whether you have kids or not, you can show up as a friend, but we don't live in that world. It's like even without kids, people can't show up as friends. But with kids, it's so much harder for many people to show up as friends, which is why I really appreciate that I can talk to you and that you do keep space for friend talks. But also I have an assumption with five kids, it's like, don't expect that of you. And I don't know, is it, know.

Divia (01:18:25.917)

But it's like, okay, that said, like, I don't have a job. So like... No, it is a lot of... Yeah, no, no, absolutely, and I don't want to be dismissive, but I'm like, at the same time, like, almost everybody has a lot of commitments in their life. I don't know, I don't...

JC (01:18:29.076)

But you'd be like, five kids. That's like six jobs. You do have the job of mother and homemaker and that's like, know? Right.

JC (01:18:44.552)

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm, mm -hmm. But I feel like there's this idea or just this reality that when most people who have kids have them, there just isn't space in their lives for their child -free friends anymore because the adults they're socializing with are their partner, their family, and other parents, because they get their kids together and do kid s**t. And then there's just nothing left for anybody else because they're exhausted.

Divia (01:19:05.698)

Yeah.

JC (01:19:12.914)

So it totally makes sense, but I've always taken it as like, I know it's not personal and it's not about me or any of their other friends that don't have kids, but it is this kind of statement of like, hey, my life is moving in a different direction, goodbye, you know? And it's like, what if I said, know, it's like, feel like something I say all the time is like, I designed my life to have time and space and flexibility partially so that I could see other people.

Divia (01:19:13.495)

Yeah.

Divia (01:19:28.131)

All right.

JC (01:19:38.002)

and I feel like nobody else did that, so maybe I shouldn't have done that, but I didn't know nobody else was gonna do that. So I did it because I wanted to see people, and now I can't, because nobody else did it, so now I'm like, okay, I guess I should take my time back and go work or go travel the world or do whatever, because nobody wants my time. So I guess I'll take it back, you know?

Divia (01:19:38.519)

Okay.

Divia (01:19:56.257)

It is, and everyone, it's, I don't know, the whole thing seems tragic to me because again, like everyone said, not everyone, but so many people say they're lonely, including people with kids say that too.

JC (01:20:00.254)

Mm -hmm.

JC (01:20:04.484)

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm, mm -hmm, mm -hmm. But it's like, okay, but if you never call me, and I'm not saying you, I'm saying like my friends with kids, it's like, you know that your buddy JC has asked you a trillion times to talk and hang out. You know that, you know I don't have a partner, you know I don't have kids, you know I have a flexible schedule. I have shown up that way throughout this entire friendship, and again, I'm not saying you and me, I'm saying me and these people. And so it's like, you know, but again,

Divia (01:20:10.541)

Yeah. No, I know.

Divia (01:20:28.91)

Yeah.

JC (01:20:32.148)

being number 697 on the priority list. don't, you know, it's like, I don't think of everybody all the time. So I shouldn't expect that all my friends would think of me specifically, you know?

Divia (01:20:39.577)

I guess, no, but there's something, it's... And I don't know, like, I definitely have a category in my head that so many people are in that's like, okay, this person's flaky. And you're not. Like, it's not, and I think that flakiness is not mostly about, like... I mean, to be clear, it's great about being proactive, but I think it's pretty, like, there's so many people I know that they can tell me, like, I'm coming over to hang out in a couple hours.

JC (01:20:50.374)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Divia (01:21:09.217)

And I'll be like, meh, better not make any plans around that.

JC (01:21:12.943)

Mm because you know they won't show up or they'll show up way later than they say

Divia (01:21:14.945)

Or they might, or they, who knows? Like, they might show up. I'd usually be like thrilled if they did, but like, but I can't, and sometimes I've, yeah, and they're like, like I do try to, like I think it's better for them if I don't count on them at all, because then I'm not resentful, but it definitely is like a different sort of relationship.

JC (01:21:21.374)

Mm

JC (01:21:33.63)

Mm

JC (01:21:37.244)

Yeah. And this is why we need direct communication where like somebody should say, I have this idea that I would like to come over, but I don't know if I can follow through. And then you can be like, okay, well, I'm leaving my house at 5pm. So if you're not here before then, I'm not going to see you. And that's it. You know, like this wishy washy b******t is insane.

Divia (01:21:51.033)

Yeah, and I don't... There's something I don't... I mean, I can try to like inhabit the space, but I think I don't really relate to it that much. I mean, I don't know. I definitely like, I don't know. Last night I was like, yeah, I think I'll probably be free at seven. And then like my food was late and I was free at like seven ten. And I'm like, yeah, I probably should have said like probably by seven fifteen because like half the time something happens. But I think it's... I don't know.

JC (01:22:13.257)

Mm

JC (01:22:22.492)

Yeah, I'm always thinking like, what can be done about this? Like I've said often, like, if there was an app that would help you do all the back and forth in order to meet up with your friends, you didn't have to do it. The app would just figure out here's when JC is free, here's when Divya is free, here's a type of food they both like. Like what? I've never heard of it.

Divia (01:22:39.843)

But they have those apps, right? and maybe not about the food, but they have like a doodle poll and stuff for like picking times.

JC (01:22:48.198)

Yeah, but I'm talking about, know, like it would have to be so beyond that because it's like, is Divya in the mood to see J .C. specifically at this time? You know what I mean? And then it's like, will she be somewhere in town where she can go to this restaurant and not that restaurant? And like, you know.

Divia (01:22:56.855)

yeah, fair enough, yeah.

Divia (01:23:02.177)

Okay, so this is like, if we have AI assistance, maybe. I do wonder if that's where the world is going, that like in a couple years, everyone's just going to be like, have your eye talk to my AI and it'll set us up. Yeah, maybe.

JC (01:23:12.606)

I mean, maybe, but also I feel like I wouldn't be surprised if people start to create new paradigms of like, you know, the old way wasn't working, here's how we're gonna do it going forward, where it's like, we need to make communal living structures. know, people need to make peace with the fact of like, no, you're not gonna move six times for your career if you want quality relationships. You're gonna live in your intentional community and you're gonna stay there.

and you're going to work remotely if you have to or whatever, you know, like, and not in terms of coercion, but just in terms of people realizing like, it just doesn't work.

Divia (01:23:40.483)

We did it.

Divia (01:23:44.02)

Yeah,

But the thing is, is that, and this is, think, my top question is, like, but is that what people would really choose if they had the choice? I can't tell. Yeah.

JC (01:23:54.672)

some people, not everybody. know? I think, well, you know, yeah, it's hard to know what people would do under ideal circumstances because we'll never have that. Like, you know, I was saying to my cousin earlier today, like, a lot of the people that I know who identify as introverts who like quote unquote hate people, I wonder if they would feel that way if they were relaxed and not stressed out and like provided for.

and got to choose who they spend time with. Yeah, yeah, and got to choose who they spend time with instead of spending at least 40 hours a week with people they don't care about and who they find kind of annoying partially because they spend 40 hours a week with them, you know, doing something other than socializing, you know? And I feel like a lot of people who are like, when I get off of work, I don't want to talk to anybody. It's like, well, that probably wouldn't be true if you had not spent your day with people you don't like doing things you don't want to do, you know?

Divia (01:24:17.185)

Right. much of it is like anxiety, basically?

Divia (01:24:29.111)

Right.

Divia (01:24:43.137)

Yeah, and I also wonder, like, so this is another... I think I was... It's probably in some ways just me being slow, but also like maybe a real difference or something.

When I was maybe like 25 or so, I was hanging out with one of my friends and she asked me, she was sort of like, like she asked me something and I was like, what are you gonna talk about or whatever? And she was like, I wanna talk about the thing, whatever the thing is that's actually on your mind. Like that's what I would prefer to talk about. And I was kind of like, whoa, I don't think anybody, like never occurred to me that anyone would be interested in that.

JC (01:25:12.733)

haha

JC (01:25:17.02)

instead of just like having a thing they wanted to talk about whether you wanted to or not or something.

Divia (01:25:21.599)

Or like, and I don't know, like she probably just managed to say it to me in a way that I really heard it. But like, instead of just talking about what's normal or like some sort of more obviously approved topic, like, I don't know. And so I think like, I do also, and I think like, whatever, like Will is actually introverted.

JC (01:25:30.696)

or like what's going on or.

JC (01:25:44.464)

Ew.

Divia (01:25:44.595)

people don't know it. That it's interesting. People think he's an extrovert and he does make plans and he knows more people than I do. But anyway, I think real introversion is a thing. I also unfortunately, and I let's talk to people even before it occurred to me that I like it was more possible to talk about the things that were really important to me. But then that's and again, this is like a big discourse too. There's like

JC (01:25:57.218)

Mm -hmm, unfortunately.

Divia (01:26:13.901)

How do you get past small talk versus people being like, no, no, we need small talk. Small talk is great. How arrogant of you to think that you should skip it. Whatever. There's like a whole thing, but.

JC (01:26:18.098)

Mm -hmm.

JC (01:26:21.446)

Yeah. I mean, people have all these ideas about what's allowed and what's not allowed. And like, you can ask people real questions. You know, it's like I do it all the time. And then people will be like, Whoa, that's kind of deep. And I'm like, but I always give people an out. I'm like, you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but I'm interested to know blah, blah, blah. And I find that when I say that people just tell me the answer. Nobody has ever been like, I don't want to talk about that, but they could. And they're not coerced. They're like, wow. Well, yeah, here are my thoughts. And I'm like, great. We're in it. You know,

Divia (01:26:29.763)

Yeah.

Divia (01:26:34.381)

Yeah.

Divia (01:26:43.565)

Yeah.

JC (01:26:50.632)

But you know, it's like, there's lots of, like, it's funny. I feel like one of the most frequent exchanges I have with my mom is her saying, well, I wonder about this, but I can't ask them that. And I'm like, you actually can. You're just telling yourself that you can't, or you don't know how to ask it in a way that's gentle and thoughtful. But like, people want you to give a s**t, and they often want to share if you give them a safe space to share, you know?

Divia (01:27:02.849)

Right?

Divia (01:27:11.885)

Yeah.

Divia (01:27:17.965)

Yeah.

JC (01:27:19.166)

So I recommend that people ask what they wanna ask, just be gentle and thoughtful about it, or like read the room if it's like, obviously somebody's not in the mindset for it, then don't, but like.

Divia (01:27:20.665)

.

Divia (01:27:24.451)

Well, and also, like... When, as you say, it's like with the other thing, like... And if people actually don't want to do that, then probably better to find out now, because...

JC (01:27:34.238)

Mm

Divia (01:27:36.673)

I do want to this sort of relationship. there's some people that maybe, they're part of my life for some instrumental reason. I just want to, like, keep the piece or something. But mostly if I want to hang out with someone a lot, I'd rather it actually be interesting, including for me.

JC (01:27:48.668)

Mm And also, like, I always wonder how, like, if you're somebody who thinks you can't ask people anything, how often are people walking away from an interaction with you being like, I told her I had an illness and she had no follow -up questions? What the f**k? You know? Like, I said that because I wanted her to say, like, I'm so sorry. What happened? Are you okay? And she just didn't. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. I mean, there's, you know, it's like, it's, you know, different strokes for different folks. I think there's people who are very

Divia (01:28:08.291)

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

JC (01:28:17.908)

private and enigmatic and whatever. But I find that I think probably one of the reasons that I have a lot of friendships and that they all feel pretty good is that I will ask people stuff and they feel comfortable sharing it with me and vice versa.

Divia (01:28:35.949)

Yeah, like somebody just tweeted something that was like, when I die, like, I'm gonna try to tell them to put the cause of death in my obituary. She's like, but because don't people want to know? Like, why doesn't it just say? Right?

JC (01:28:44.48)

Yes, I have to say that's one of my social taboos that I'm like that has to go. The whole died suddenly s**t. It's like go f**k yourself. Of what? What the f**k did this person die of? Because it matters and I wanna know and if you don't tell me I'm gonna wonder about it for the rest of time. And there's no f*****g reason for that. Just say like s**t happens, you know?

Divia (01:28:53.153)

You

Divia (01:29:03.533)

Yeah, I don't really get it either. I can understand like some things are maybe a little sensitive, but usually it's not. Usually it's like, was it a crash or was it cancer or was it like, or did they kill themselves? And that's very sad, but still we should know.

JC (01:29:11.891)

Yeah!

Yeah, and it's like, I'm sorry, it's something that happens every day. It's not a stigma, like a stigmatized thing. Like it shouldn't be. It's like, sometimes people do that. And you know, it's like, I just feel like it's an illness in society to not talk about stuff because it's like, that's how we got to this place of like, everybody's experienced, you know, abuse or this or that or trauma, but nobody talks about it. And then it's like, people continue to be victimized because nobody knows how to protect themselves because nobody talks about what they've been through and how it happened and whatever.

Divia (01:29:18.701)

Yeah.

Divia (01:29:23.105)

Not very much anyway. Yeah.

Divia (01:29:36.664)

Right.

JC (01:29:44.956)

You know, so it's like, feel like the reason why younger generations are like so much more savvy is because they're growing up in a time where they can hear hundreds of people talk about the most taboo s**t anytime they want. You just Google search it, YouTube search it, yeah. And then like somebody will tell you the gory details of what happened to them. And then you learn and you recognize how to keep yourself safe more often, you know?

Divia (01:29:57.195)

Even the internet, yeah.

Divia (01:30:03.193)

Let's show.

Divia (01:30:07.107)

Yeah, it's so wild. Like, I remember this stuff as a kid being like, I want to the answer to that, but I'm scared to ask. And it was like really like basic stuff. Like I remember as a kid, I kind of wanted to know how it worked with like bubble gum. I'm like, but how do people do that? But I felt embarrassed to ask anyone. One of the things I know, but I just, seemed weird that I, and I think the top thing that I was missing was that like, no, you can't just blow a bubble with any gum. You need bubble gum. I thought you could just blow a bubble with any gum.

JC (01:30:13.246)

Mm -hmm.

JC (01:30:21.556)

Hmm. Hmm. Even though there's like nothing taboo about that.

JC (01:30:37.576)

like what would be an example of gum that you can't blow a bubble with just like a tougher gum that's not less elastic? I don't know. think I could imagine that that likes Yeah, I could imagine that that like very natural gum at the checkout line at Whole Foods is not one you can blow bubbles with, you know

Divia (01:30:40.491)

so maybe you can. Maybe I'm still wrong. I don't know. I didn't really chew gum,

Yeah, I think so. Anyway, just like random stuff like that that I'd be like, anyway, and we should probably wrap up pretty soon. like, just like, I sort of just wish I could have googled all that stuff.

JC (01:31:02.492)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah, the kids today have no idea how good they have it.

Divia (01:31:04.153)

But I will say something, I keep meaning to like contact her and go tell her, but like a friend of mine when I was 13 at summer camp really helped me with this because there was something that like the popular kids in our bunk were talking about. And she was just like, she just asked them, she was like, what are you talking about?

And I remember going to her later and be like, you're not supposed to do that. It's like weird. It's like socially, whatever. And she was like, however, I want to know the answer. Therefore I should ask. And I was kind of like, you know, I never really thought of it that way. And you really know, this was, this was summer camp. You. Yeah. It could have been at summer camp. Yeah. No, you did once you went to that Italian summer camp.

JC (01:31:27.881)

Yeah.

She sounds like me. Was it me? And I just don't remember it? Yeah. Right. Well, I don't remember anything, so I could have been there. I'm kidding. I do know that I didn't go to summer camp.

yeah, but that was one month in senior year. So it's like, if I was a child, I certainly was not at summer camp, you know? Yeah. And I always joke, it's like, you know, the one time I went to a summer camp, I came back and 9 -11 happened. So don't go to summer camp.

Divia (01:31:48.407)

Yeah. For sure. Yeah.

Divia (01:31:56.665)

yeah. Yeah, I guess we're just on the anniversary of that. Happy 9 -11? Yeah, something like that. It's so weird.

JC (01:32:01.332)

I know happy 9 -11. Yep, I say every 9 -11 where there isn't a 9 -11 is a happy 9 -11, you know? And the weather's great. Is that where we want to wrap up?

Divia (01:32:09.825)

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Yeah? Anyway, all right. I think so. I guess I will just say in closing, I don't know, I sometimes fondly think, like I had, you know, I had a couple pretty good friends when I was a kid, but you were, you were definitely one of them. And we, you were like the original person that I would argue with. I think, right?

JC (01:32:28.681)

Mm -hmm.

JC (01:32:34.004)

You were the original person that I felt close to and you're like, you're the original person that I would fight with because you're f*****g annoying. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. Hmm. I mean, I don't remember, but sure.

Divia (01:32:37.369)

I did feel close to you. No, no, no, not like that. No, like about ideas, right? No, we would. No, we, okay, well we did. We would talk about math homework. We were talking about like different things, but like, I, there's a certain type of way I like to talk about ideas that's like somewhat more combative and a lot of people aren't up for it, but that's, at least that's how I thought of it is that you seem like you were basically.

JC (01:32:57.458)

Mm -mm.

JC (01:33:01.458)

Yeah, no, I love talking to you and talking about s**t, you know, and I'm down, I'm down, you know? Mm -hmm, yeah, we had good times. All I remember from the early days, yeah, I only remember from the early days concretely as your purple confetti glasses in kindergarten, which I think you said, no, that was first grade or whatever, but.

Divia (01:33:04.567)

Yeah, like we talk about politics and stuff. I know, it was fun.

Yes, I'm glad you came.

Divia (01:33:16.215)

Yep. Yeah, I didn't have glasses in kindergarten, that's true. Did not have glasses in kindergarten.

JC (01:33:21.32)

Did not? There was never a PG pre -glasses Divya, a PGD.

Divia (01:33:27.117)

But that's the thing, we didn't know each other in kindergarten, so that's why you think that probably.

JC (01:33:31.249)

Yeah, but I think in the womb you had tiny little glasses on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well, you I'm down for a part two if you ever want to, but I also understand if you need to diversify your guest lineup.

Divia (01:33:33.689)

In some spiritual sense, probably,

Divia (01:33:42.947)

Yeah, no, you can come back on. we should stop for now, but everyone should go check out J .C.' podcast. I'll leave it in the show notes. Anything else?

JC (01:33:51.24)

Yeah, I'm at jccassis .com, JCCASSIS .com and then also at JCCASSIS on social media except for Instagram, which is jc .cassis and risk is at risk -show .com or at risk show on social media.

Divia (01:34:02.702)

You

Divia (01:34:08.089)

like you do this. And if anyone lives within 10 blocks of JC and isn't flaky, maybe be friends.

JC (01:34:09.374)

It's almost like that.

JC (01:34:14.898)

Right, and I'm not gonna tell you where that is, because it's the internet, basically, you know, whatever. If you meet me, you meet me, it was meant to be, and if not, you know, then I guess we'll never meet. All right, thanks for having me, bye.

Divia (01:34:17.589)

Exactly.

Divia (01:34:22.329)

Alright, talk to you soon. Bye.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

Michael Vassar and I had this exchange on Twitter, and this podcast is a followup discussion. I think we mostly didn’t find a huge disagreement, but did cover some interesting ground.

Transcript:

Divia (00:02)

Hey, I'm here today with Michael Vassar because we had a disagreement on Twitter that was actually from many years ago that I recently circled back to. And Michael, which is totally in character, was like, let's actually hash this out. And yeah, I've known Michael for a really long time, definitely more than, we met more than 15 years ago. And I would describe you as one of my biggest intellectual influences for sure. I feel like at some point you sort of

I was like, what's going on? And you were like, let me try to tell you, which is, I don't know, it's very much what you're like. Something I quite admire about you is how perhaps more than anyone I know, it seems like you are really dedicated to being like, okay, you person in front of me, how are you making sense of the world? How am I making sense of the world? Let's like actually bridge that gap and talk about it. And so, yeah, I think it's fitting that we're here going to try to do a little bit of that now.

And I'll start by just sharing. So yeah, I had posted, and this was one of the early things that I posted when I got back into Twitter around 2019. I was talking about words and I said, there's an issue with the word ego where people need self -concept, self -concepts are important in load -bearing. And then the word for it makes all of that sound nefarious. And then Michael said,

Self -concepts are load -bearing, but suboptimal. Memory, perspective, and epistemology concepts are better and less vulnerable to memetic infections. So, I don't know, that's kind of the context. Should we dive in? What are your thoughts?

Michael Vassar (01:36)

Sure, I could dive in. I mean, I can see the value of something that is non -conceptually selfie, like Schopenhauer's concept of will and representation, as something distinct from memory and epistemology. The idea that there is a thing that is not represented that structures and constructs

Divia (01:52)

What is?

Michael Vassar (02:06)

the subject matter, the content of representation, like the way Yoshibok talks about consciousness says that you're definitely a simulation because you're conscious. Things that can be you are necessarily conscious and they're necessarily simulations of something else that is not AU and is not conscious, you know?

Divia (02:26)

Okay, so on the one hand that makes sense to me and then I'm like, okay, but are you arguing that like we shouldn't even have a word like I?

Michael Vassar (02:35)

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have a word like I, I'm arguing that the natural meaning for the word I is...

also the natural meaning for ego in a stage one and two simulation non -performative world. Like there's a performative shadow world and a non -performative ego world. And the real self is in some sense a particular monkey and in some sense

Divia (02:50)

Right?

Yeah.

Michael Vassar (03:16)

physics or evolution or the fabric of reality in Deutsches' sense and like the agency of the self.

Divia (03:24)

Like an all self type of self, mean? When you say that?

Michael Vassar (03:26)

Well, not all self insofar as it's evolution, it's not necessarily all self. Physics is a fully extended self, but evolution and computation are like...

Divia (03:31)

Okay, but in terms of its physics, I'm like, that sounds like pretty broad, yeah.

Okay, all right, so there's a lot to unpack, but I think where I'm starting from is like, no, but there's a monkey, for sure, that's sort of like, I don't know, more, there's a body, there's a bag of skin, there's a thing, but there's also like a feature in the world that is not just the body, that.

Michael Vassar (03:57)

There is a body, there is a monkey.

Divia (04:06)

To me it seems natural to use some word like I to have some sort of self -concept around this feature and it's like, it's nebulous, it's fuzzy, whatever, there's a bunch of nonsense, but like, we do need something to refer to this feature, right?

Michael Vassar (04:18)

So like the issue is that there's the version of eye that's in my head and the version of eye that's in your head. And it's natural for the version of eye that's in my head to be a partial picture that I construct to shape my actions and the version in your head to be a partial picture that you construct to shape your actions. And for those two things to be like pretty different so that

Divia (04:35)

Yeah.

Yes.

Michael Vassar (04:48)

If I forget something that I said I was to do something for you that I said I was going to do, this is unintentional from the perspective of my eye and not unintentional from the perspective of your eye because the eye that is constructed by me is a

Divia (05:04)

Cool.

Michael Vassar (05:10)

tool for remembering commitments, among other things. And the eye that is constructed, the micol that's constructed by you, is the thing that constructs that tool. So the thing that constructed, the thing that constructs my eye, like parts of that are part of your eye and not part of my eye. So it's intentional from the perspective that treats me as the eye in your head.

if I forget the commitment and not intentional from the perspective and like there's a

Divia (05:43)

mean, that seems like an oversimplification. It seems like sometimes when I'm thinking of other people, I'm like, that one seemed really like a random oversight. And sometimes that seemed like a pattern that they don't think of as intentional, I wouldn't. Like, think that's it. But I think it would depend, right?

Michael Vassar (05:59)

Yeah, it depends to some degree, but I mean, like you might say that sometimes there is

Divia (06:05)

You're talking about the fundamental attribution error basically, right? No?

Michael Vassar (06:09)

Yeah, I guess you could think of it as the fundamental attribution error. I don't really think I was thinking of it that way. I think I'm talking about something bigger than the fundamental attribution error, more general.

Divia (06:16)

Mm

Okay, okay, so let me try to back up again. there's, we both agree there's some feature in the world that, and then there's a self -model in the person's own head, like in my head, and then there's a self -model, there's a model of me in other people's heads, and those are gonna be different, right? Because they serve different purposes. And then it is, so then it is true for sure that there's a thing where I...

We're people in general, think, where culture encourages us to have, try to unify these things and have some eye that's like my public facing me that I keep track of and that I kind of want other people to like, that we're sort of trying to have the same thing about what I am. Like that's also part of it, right?

Michael Vassar (07:07)

Right, but I would say that the thing that that's the thing I would call ego in a stage one. No, I'm not objecting to it. That thing that we're creating together is one of the meanings of the word ego. And there's a different thing. Yeah. And there's a different thing, which is also called ego, which is more like

Divia (07:13)

That's what you're objecting to.

Mm

Yeah, the sort of the social model of the person.

Michael Vassar (07:35)

like Vitae in a Vampire of the Masquerade sense, it's more like a...

Divia (07:38)

I don't know what that is.

Michael Vassar (07:44)

social substance that is used to animate a

more integrated pattern of behavior in a person who has become performative. So like,

Divia (08:09)

Okay, let me see, wait, sorry, sorry. Let me just take a second to digest that. You're saying there's some sort of social...

thing that gives life to something, like some sort of social power that gathers and it's like, okay, you could be a kind of integrated thing in so far as you live up to this performance.

Michael Vassar (08:31)

Insofar as you are recognized in this way, insofar as you are validated in this way, you can construct a more coherent, although still in some sense performative or an authentic agent. I think about it as there is a non -traumatized state that hopefully our children are still in, wherein one has a

Divia (08:36)

Okay.

Okay.

Mm

Michael Vassar (09:02)

integrated, not perfectly integrated, course, that's physically impossible, but a not at all disintegrated self, because the constraints of building a self model haven't come into conflict with the constraints of building a shared self model that you and others can also share.

Divia (09:26)

Okay. Sorry, I don't know if that seems... I guess I'm skeptical that that isn't sort of there pretty early, but maybe.

Michael Vassar (09:28)

and

So it seems pretty unlikely that our two -year -olds need to, when modeling themselves, also model our modeling of them. They don't succeed very well at false belief tasks. And that's related, I think, to modeling other people's models.

Divia (09:46)

Yeah.

For sure they're not very, yeah, I would agree that they're definitely not very good at it. Whether it already seems like an active thing they're trying for, I don't know. I'm sort of more agnostic about that part. It seems like it easily might be.

Michael Vassar (10:15)

I feel like they're actively trying to share information about themselves and they're actively trying to get attention, but I don't feel like they are.

Divia (10:21)

Right.

Michael Vassar (10:27)

trying to have a reputation.

Divia (10:30)

Yeah, I'm just, I think I hear what you're saying. I feel more agnostic on that.

Michael Vassar (10:34)

Okay.

So it seems like they certainly are not.

So I think that really up to a fairly old age, like old enough to have like a lot of fairly concrete memories and to have interests and to talk to people, cetera, I was like not really thinking about other people's picture of me at all. Like I think I can.

Divia (11:16)

Okay.

Michael Vassar (11:21)

remember being a second grader and being aware of how cringe I had been, not in those words that didn't exist, as a first grader. How like in show and tells or something, how I had been just showing and telling about things that I was interested in and not really at all thinking about the mental states of the people I was showing and telling to.

Divia (11:31)

Mm

Yeah.

Michael Vassar (11:50)

and whether they might be interested or what they might know or not know to begin with. I feel like between first and second grade, there was some level of metacognition that is coming online and after fairly detailed memory traces had been laid down and not fallen into the distant past.

Divia (11:54)

Sure, yeah.

I mean, yeah, I don't know. I have more thoughts about this. Does this seem like an important part of, like, is this a tangent or is this central?

Michael Vassar (12:22)

So like, I mean, I think that

One open question is the ego construct that we construct together in order to make a substitute for my picture of myself and for your picture of me that we can both work around. That ego construct is

Divia (12:43)

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Vassar (12:51)

It's a matter of great debate how similar that ego construct is to the construct I would build for myself on my own or that you would build for me on your own. And also a matter of great debate how similar either of those things are to the actual monkey.

Divia (13:11)

Yeah, though I think I object again to calling it the monkey. I'm like, there's a feature that seems more like a... This also seems like a bad way to describe it, but it's sort of like a distributed process. Also.

Michael Vassar (13:22)

Should we call it a monkey god? Should we call it Hanuman? I mean, it's a thing that is in some ways enormously powerful compared to the thing that we normally imagine ourselves to be. I like to say that we are very puny. What we think we are is very puny compared to the Greek gods. And what we think the Greek gods are is even more puny compared to the thing we actually are.

Divia (13:31)

Mm

Michael Vassar (13:51)

And the thing we actually are is even more puny than that compared to reality. But like, there's a big gap between the thing we think we are and the thing we actually are that involves the fact that the thing we think we are is creating the world we find ourselves in, in every moment. And we don't think of ourselves as doing that. We don't have conscious ability to mentally paint a

Divia (13:52)

Right, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no, and I think I follow that,

Right. Yeah, okay.

Michael Vassar (14:19)

seemingly perfectly rendered reality around ourselves. And you know, like we don't have the ability to just immerse ourselves in full illusion, but we like, in fact, do have the ability to create the thing we think is reality out of very limited data.

Divia (14:35)

Yes, that's right.

I mean, very limited. seems pretty high bandwidth about that, no?

Michael Vassar (14:44)

I mean, if you are watching a small child, they can't create a reality that is very similar to ours. They have very high salience on certain patterns that they're very fixated on, like trains and airplanes, but they will totally fail to understand what you are doing when you point at fireworks for the first time. And they'll just understand the activity of

Divia (14:56)

No, for sure, but that's a bit -

This is some kids more than others. Yeah, no, but it's...

Yeah,

Michael Vassar (15:13)

saying fireworks and pointing at the sky, but will not in fact point at fireworks because fireworks are an anomalous thing and you need lot of development of vision. You see what I'm saying? They haven't done the training.

Divia (15:28)

I do, but I'm like, right, but that does seem like we understand about fireworks in part because we have so much more data than the young kid, right?

Michael Vassar (15:36)

But some of that data is data of having seen a lot of fireworks. that it's not just the sense.

Divia (15:39)

Yes, still for sure. Yeah, definitely.

Okay, there's so many interesting places we could go with this and I have no idea how much I should try to sort of bring our listeners along with what may or may not make sense about this conversation. But I think I want to try to figure out what the core thing is. I'm like, all right, so we maybe have like a potential disagreement or maybe it's semantic. No, I think it's not. Like a potential disagreement about what exactly is young kids are doing, how much, but then, and you're also saying, look, there's this thing that

Society is kind of, I don't know, like sort of injecting people with some ability to integrate. Can you say more about that part?

Michael Vassar (16:23)

Yeah, okay. So there is this thing, trauma or secondary socialization. like primary socialization is the construction of the original ego and the original other model. And like that happens around age seven or eight primarily. And it's like, in some sense, probably the biggest cognitive

Divia (16:45)

This is the thing you're talking about where you're like, when I was in first grade, I didn't realize about show and tell, but now I do. Okay, so I think I'm still stuck on this. like, okay, but I think a lot of kids, not necessarily with their explicit thoughts, but I feel like they have some, some kids at that age, I think are pretty tuned in to like, it's pretty primary for them. Like how are other people to reacting to what I'm doing right

Michael Vassar (17:09)

Yeah, but in a vibes -y way.

Divia (17:10)

think there's so much variation. I agree, in a vibes -y way, but I'm like, and I think that part, again, I think there's huge variation and I think it's there from the time babies come out, that some babies are very into that in a vibes -y way and some babies not so much.

Michael Vassar (17:27)

Right, so there is a participatory, vibes -y way of behaving that is, by default, going to kind of gradually condense and congeal and integrate with a subject -object way of behaving.

Divia (17:44)

Okay, that seems right, yeah.

Michael Vassar (17:45)

And eventually, that will peak at around age 10 or so. You'll be kind of maximally integrated, completely done with primary socialization and not really started on secondary socialization. And then there's this.

Divia (18:01)

Okay.

Michael Vassar (18:06)

folk psychology, which is the psychology of folk theory of mind, that's formalized as homo economicus, but in a slightly perverse way that seems to either assume somewhat equivocally that a very high level of rule abidingness or a or no rule abidingness

Divia (18:13)

Okay.

Michael Vassar (18:36)

doesn't really like, like there's an equivocation of does homo economicus steal never or all the time? If homo economicus steals all the time, then there can be no economy. If homo economicus never steals, we're dealing with a fairly simplified model of the economy.

Divia (18:55)

True. I mean, some people have models of like, well, then they're just police and stuff, which is obviously incomplete, like, economics classes do discuss this.

Michael Vassar (19:05)

It's sufficiently incomplete that it never convinced me even a little bit. the first time I did steal anything was when I was lecturing 15 year olds on how obviously incomplete it was. So I walked into a candy store and took out not some candy, but like a whole box of candy. And it's like, look, you can just, not a candy store, a store. And then I'm like, look, if you want to, if you.

Divia (19:12)

Yeah.

Michael Vassar (19:32)

you can pay any attention at all to where other people's attention is and just take anything you want. And we don't do that because it would make us uncomfortable and we don't want to mess with systems that we depend on.

Divia (19:44)

I to a certain extent that's true, but I think we maybe disagreed somewhat about this in the past also, but it seems to me though, if you do remove the actual law enforcement side of things, then eventually over time, people will do some sort of more profit maximizing thing about stealing the things from the store and reselling them, et cetera. I think we do see this when, right?

Michael Vassar (20:08)

So I think that when we see, okay, so I think that.

What we see right now is a world where we built law enforcement and also dismantled the right to self -defense and implemented a sort of cryptic class and abuse system wherein people who are tracked as good guys in a sense or slave morality types or whatever you want to think about it will be aggressively prosecuted for

dubious violations of the law if they are getting uppity and where people who are presenting as bad guys or lawless or master morality will not be bothered at all. Okay, so 100 years ago, we had law but we didn't have police everywhere and 150 years ago, we had police almost nowhere, but we had private prosecutions. had...

Divia (21:09)

Yes.

Michael Vassar (21:09)

You could hire investigators, you could hire lawyers, you could arrest people. And to some degree, people still can do that, but it's so trivial that the courts are going to be so hostile to it that in actual practice you can't. So it seems that...

Divia (21:23)

Yeah, we sort of dismantled the natural anarcho -capitalism that we used to have.

Michael Vassar (21:28)

Right. seems that the dismantling the, right. Anarcho -legalism. We had anarcho -legalism, not anarcho -capitalism. Like in the book of Judges, you have law and no king.

Divia (21:35)

Check your legalism. What does that mean?

What is that? Why is that a just, okay. What does anarcho -legalism mean? I've never heard that term.

Michael Vassar (21:50)

I mean, I haven't heard of it either. okay, what I'm saying is that anarcho -capitalism tends to imply that there's no, maybe something like private courts. While you can have like official courts, but the official courts are not part of a, or integrated with a state apparatus in a manner that gives the state apparatus a lot of power to legislate or control them.

Divia (21:52)

You

Yeah, that's true, right.

Yeah.

Michael Vassar (22:20)

the courts. So in Islam you have like

Divia (22:22)

Okay, sure, fine. So it's not strictly private, but it was mostly like private initiative to use the public courts is what you're saying, or the government courts.

Michael Vassar (22:32)

It, like, prosec, investigation and prosecution were strictly private. Investigation and prosecution were strictly private except for like exotic things like the secret service that are very limited domains of focus, mostly counterfeiting.

Divia (22:47)

Okay, I don't know much of this history, but anyway, so I think I do wanna also try to stay a little bit on what's central. This is all part of like, look, most people don't steal stuff because they think they shouldn't or it feel weird or something more like that than because of concerns about enforcement. That seems true for most people.

Michael Vassar (23:07)

Right. And at an equilibrium, people will protect their own property and they also mostly won't steal stuff, I would think. there is a path, throughout most of history, in most times and places, I think, people would have protected their own property and not... Right.

Divia (23:20)

What do you mean by equilibrium?

Yeah.

Yeah.

As much as they could, anyway.

Michael Vassar (23:36)

But I mean, they would not have accepted, they wouldn't have protected it from big bandits, but they would have protected it in routine interactions. They would not have had the intuition that when they were in the right, it was still against them to apply coercion to self -defense or holding onto their property, you know?

Divia (23:46)

Seems right.

Yeah, my impression is that society's like hunter -gatherers or early historicalists or agriculturalists, I think they do have some property anyway. I think the degree to which they can, but I mean, it's sort of, in some ways it seems circular. I think this is like what David Freeman talks about, like natural property. Like the thing that they called property was the stuff that they could do that with. And then the thing that they couldn't do that with, they didn't try to own it.

Michael Vassar (24:07)

You

Yeah.

Divia (24:34)

Like they didn't, like I think many peoples did not try to own land because how would they even do that?

Michael Vassar (24:41)

I mean they would do that as a collective. They would have territory as a pride.

Divia (24:44)

They would do it somewhat as a collective, for sure, but even then I think sometimes it was limited about that.

Michael Vassar (24:49)

Well, if the land is very low quality, then they just wouldn't try to own it. If they are basically desert people, then they just wouldn't try to own it. If they're like, right.

Divia (24:58)

Yeah, I think it depends. there is some sort right, so I think it does seem like a natural outgrowth of how people behave or something, that there will be some things that they will try to protect them and it will be practical to do that and then they will call it property or something. I don't know if that word exactly, but they will have some sense of ownership for those things.

Michael Vassar (25:19)

Yeah, that seems true.

Divia (25:21)

Right.

Yeah, how much wealth accumulation, because also sometimes it wasn't practical for reasons other than defending it to really accumulate very much wealth. Anyway, like a lot of things, they're either too large or they don't store well or like all of those standard sort of economic arguments for why people didn't used to be able to accumulate very much.

Michael Vassar (25:40)

Absolutely.

Divia (25:50)

Anyway, yeah, okay, so I agree. People naturally do have some impulse to defend the things that they think of as theirs because there's some sort of equilibrium about that. That seems right.

Michael Vassar (26:00)

Yeah. Right. So like, I think that that was doing the job, not policing for most people, almost all people at almost all times in history before the 20th century.

Divia (26:15)

that people's personal property, it didn't really matter about the police in terms of that.

Michael Vassar (26:19)

Yeah, and I mean, there would have been like a registry of deeds in the court system and they might have in a more serious conflict taken one another to court for damages or whatever, but they would not be using the police to do that. They would still be having like a bailiff that comes and says to come to court and there's an assumption that of course you're going to come. And like, if you didn't, it would be a very large deal and people, you you like, you might have a

Divia (26:24)

Mm

Yeah, no -

Right.

Michael Vassar (26:50)

Posse rather than a police system.

Divia (26:54)

I mean, that also seems like the original form of law that emerges various places. Again, I'll say David Friedman, like, feud law, right? Like, okay, fine, we sort of can't resolve this. Like, I'll get my people, you have your people.

Michael Vassar (27:01)

short.

But I mean, like, I was thinking more like Icelandic law or like outlaw status being a thing. You know, people want to be under the protection of the law and not to be not under the protection of the law. And they don't want the sheriff to be rounding people up to hunt them down. But, you know, that's like a older thing than policing.

Divia (27:07)

Okay, anyway, sorry.

Okay.

Okay, sure.

Michael Vassar (27:30)

OK, so.

How did we get into this? We were talking about homo economicus.

Divia (27:36)

Because you were saying that there's sort of two. Yeah, exactly. There are two archetypes. There's homo economicus that never steals and homo economicus that always steals. That's what you're saying.

Michael Vassar (27:44)

Yeah, I'm saying that there's something about, homo economicus is a refinement in some sense of the folk psychology, the theory of mind, pre -secondary socialization. But it also contains this particular equivocation, I think, which is characteristic of the ways in which concepts get distorted.

when they get sort of formalized and also brought into legitimacy in ways that make them part of how we justify things. Where I was going though is that basically, homo economicus describes 10 -year -olds. basically, homo economicus does not describe 40 -year -olds.

Divia (28:27)

Okay.

Michael Vassar (28:42)

secondary socialization thing that happens. like early psychology, like psychophysics and theories of perception was about refining the ego model, refining the details of the folk psychology. And then with psychoanalysis and pragmatism, you start to have what you might call shadow psychology, the investigation not of the details of the ego model.

but of the unconscious, the investigation of the stuff that is just not predicted at all by the ego model, and which is in fact strongly anti -predicted by the ego model.

Divia (29:17)

Yeah, for sure there's a bunch of stuff. Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that people have their self -model and then it's important for predicting what's gonna happen or really understanding it at all, these other bits that aren't included in their official self

Michael Vassar (29:31)

Yeah, so these other bits are basically

More.

So by the time you're like 10, the vibe -y stuff has been pretty thoroughly integrated with the homo economicus stuff, I would say. And then secondary socialization is largely about like...

Divia (29:55)

Okay.

Michael Vassar (30:04)

Breaking the ego, breaking the shared self model that you and I can both see when we are talking about a me and replacing it with a approximate model of a more generic ego made out of vibes and archetypes. So like when

Divia (30:18)

Okay.

Michael Vassar (30:33)

We're 10, it's fairly easy to agree about commitments and it's natural and obvious. But by the time people are 30, they have any sort of class status. They are mostly not navigating life or maybe not entirely not navigating life through the use of the sort of self -model.

that we learn to coordinate around with like, like, like there's the original ego that's built in the process of primary socialization. And then there is the, then there is, and like in a D and D game or whatever, the original ego would be like your character sheet, you know? And then there's like a secondary ego that is like a

Divia (31:23)

Yeah, okay.

Michael Vassar (31:33)

level of like manometer or something, like some sort of a fluid that you get from validation that like causes a higher fidelity or lower fidelity, shorter lasting or longer lasting, more forceful or less forceful stimulation of an ego by within a person whose ego has been basically destroyed.

Divia (32:01)

Yeah, interesting.

Michael Vassar (32:04)

And we call both of those egos, but they're like totally different types of things. Like when we say someone has a big ego, that necessarily refers to the latter thing. And the latter thing is kind of necessarily sinister, because it's a simulacra, and simulacra are necessarily sinister.

Divia (32:20)

Sure.

Okay, I think, but I feel like this is, when you say it like this, I'm like, okay, then I think you're agreeing with me a lot. I'm like, my objection to treating the word ego is sinister is I'm like, no, but we need to be able to talk about the regular thing.

Michael Vassar (32:41)

We need to be able to talk about the regular thing, but other entities than us need us not to be able to talk about the regular thing.

Divia (32:50)

Yeah, no, this is why, okay, then I agree. This is my objection. I'm like, I think that's the original point of my tweet. I'm like, look, and I was also talking about status. like, that one I'm more like, it just almost seems simpler to just not ever use that word given how many problems it seems to cause. But I can't stop, yeah, but I can't stop using the word I, not really. And so.

Michael Vassar (32:54)

Okay.

I agree, we should never use the word status. It's actually just a

Now, the word I is great, it's just you have to recognize that people, when grownups say I, they are being ironic.

Divia (33:29)

This is related to your Twitter bio, right? Something about how, I don't know, I was just looking at it. You said your Twitter bio currently says the most ironic outcome is the most likely, reducing the irony is your job.

Michael Vassar (33:41)

Yeah. So, I...

think that we need to be able to talk about two human natures. And there is a political conflict that is prior to other political conflicts about which of those two human natures is to be normalized. The human nature after secondary socialization or human nature before secondary but after primary socialization.

Divia (34:00)

Hmm.

Yeah, neither. I don't, I guess my instinct or something about that is, neither, because the first one, I wanna keep a lot about the first one, but it's not up to navigating the actual world as an adult, which then seems, that's a problem.

Michael Vassar (34:31)

So, I mean, it is up to navigating the actual world as an adult, so long as you...

Stay out of situations where you might possibly have class privilege.

Divia (34:53)

Maybe, I don't know, I'm not currently, I mean, I agree that that's sort of, insofar as we're talking about the same thing, the sort of more normal ego. Okay, fine, the thing I would call like the more normal ego, it seems capable of doing plenty, but there's a reason that people don't, I'm like, I don't know, class pr - I don't know, I'm skeptical.

Michael Vassar (35:00)

I'm sure we're talking about the same thing.

So like if you are an Uber driver, if you are an Uber driver, you can navigate the world completely with normal ego. That's why it's fun to talk to Uber drivers and not fun to talk to PhDs. Right. And not PhDs, even though most people, when they were much younger, when they were 10, you would have rather talked to the PhD than to the Uber driver. But now that they're 30, you'd rather talk to the Uber driver than the PhD because they're navigating with a normal ego.

Divia (35:22)

I do talk to Uber drivers a lot.

I don't know. don't know that I spend much time talking to PhDs, but if I do, I think they seem fine to talk to.

Michael Vassar (35:50)

OK, let's see MBAs if you prefer.

Divia (35:52)

I don't, maybe I just don't come across. I feel like almost everyone I've personally come across is pretty fun to talk to unless it's like I'm interacting with a bureaucracy and then they're really not.

Michael Vassar (36:05)

So.

Divia (36:08)

Okay, so sorry, let me go back. the, when you say the thing about...

memory perspective and epistemology concepts are better and less susceptible to memetic imperfection. What do you mean by that?

Michael Vassar (36:28)

feel like if we have a idea of self that is coming partly from the vibe -y thing, you know, and that vibe -y thing, you know, there's a type of guy, there's a actual particular animal that is part of a self -image.

But there's also a generalization about a cluster of Mimesis targets that is also part of the self image.

Divia (37:06)

cluster of mimesis targets. What does that mean?

Michael Vassar (37:09)

Like, there are other people who seem to be...

to getting things that you do not seem to be getting and suggesting that you ought to emulate them and maybe ought to envy them. And those people are performing archetypes and they are granting recognition only insofar as one's are driven by that sort of performative imitation and not

Divia (37:21)

Yes.

Okay. Yeah.

Michael Vassar (37:46)

and refusing to recognize, coordinating to not acknowledge behaviors that are driven from the individual set of memory traces and perspectives.

Divia (38:06)

I think one thing that I don't really understand, you seem to have a model of it.

The thing that, and I keep struggling to describe it, even though you've just pointed at it, something about like some kind of life force or whatever. I don't really want to call it that, but some sort of motive power maybe that the social world is giving to people when they act in accordance with these types of expectations.

Michael Vassar (38:36)

I think I'd go in recognition. Maybe maybe maybe ego and ego.

Divia (38:39)

with the acts, okay, so they get some motive power from recognition.

Michael Vassar (38:44)

Yeah.

Divia (38:46)

Okay, so but how does that work? Like in a, mechanical a way as you can, I think I hesitate, I hesitate to call it validation because like it seems like there's a, cause again, I'm like, no, but I think there's a very normal thing that isn't what you're talking about that people get from validation.

Michael Vassar (38:48)

or validation, but recognition seems more than validation.

Yeah, recognition seems more it.

Divia (39:08)

Okay, so I'll use recognition and you're saying people get, does it seem fair to say people get some sort of motive force from this recognition?

Michael Vassar (39:16)

Yes.

Divia (39:17)

Okay, how does that work in your model?

Michael Vassar (39:20)

It seems like...

when people

interacting with secondarily socialized people.

and communicating from their perspective, trying to communicate to a secondarily socialized person as an ego to another ego, the secondarily socialized person will stonewall. They will present blank, inane objections, not process, eyes glaze over. Yes.

Divia (40:06)

is like what Scott Aronson calls a blank face, right?

which is I think people will know what that means in the context of a bureaucracy for sure. Like if you're going to the, I don't know, right?

Michael Vassar (40:20)

Well, people will know from experience, but they will actively and specifically mischaracterize. They will like very specifically claim that it means something else. And you see that in the comments of Scott Erickson's article on blank faces.

Divia (40:35)

What do they, don't know that I looked at the comments. What do you mean? What do they claim and what is it actually?

Michael Vassar (40:38)

So, everybody claimed that bureaucracies are mindlessly following rules when they are doing nothing of the sort. There are... yeah.

Divia (40:46)

because they're not actually following the rules. Like if you try to be like, no, but the rule says this, they won't be like, in that case I'll do it. Is that what you're talking about?

Michael Vassar (40:53)

Yeah, not at all. Right. They're just making s**t up. They're blank -facing. They're stone -bowling. are...

Divia (40:59)

We do mostly follow a bunch of the rules.

Michael Vassar (41:02)

They mostly, that's because, right, okay, so that's because they're a low status bureaucracy. If you go to the DMV or you pay your taxes, they will almost perfectly follow the procedure. If you go to the post office, they will almost perfectly follow the procedure.

Divia (41:04)

Like if I go to the DMV, it's annoying, but they are mostly following the procedure.

And though I think it is true that if for some reason they're not and I try to complain about it and be like, but that's what the procedure says, that didn't usually get me anywhere.

Michael Vassar (41:29)

I'm not even sure that it wouldn't with the DMV. I'm not sure, but I think it would with taxes. usually, yeah. I, but if you are trying to get a license to put orange juice vending machines, like trust -based orange juice vending machines in the local park, you will.

Divia (41:38)

With Texas, that seems right, yeah.

Michael Vassar (41:55)

at some point get stone rolled by bureaucrats. And if you talk to like a very skillful bureaucrat about it, they're like, okay, you even suggested that they ought to do things because the rules say to do them. You spoke to, you wrote to them from a framework that assumes that their job is to implement a set of rules and that negates them.

You're done after that. You have no hope. You're, you know, merely acknowledging, merely pinning down that rules exist will mean that you can't get a grant. you can't, like, there's a difference between, think about it as bureaucracies versus HR bureaucracies, like low -class bureaucracies versus HR bureaucracies.

Divia (42:42)

Okay, but I have very little, okay, I have no experience with things like trying to get a license to do business. I expect most people don't. So I would think the comments of Scott Aronson's thing are mostly people thinking of the bureaucracies that people, that almost everyone does deal with.

Michael Vassar (42:58)

you know, I think you have experience trying to get into elite universities. There you're dealing with bureaucracy and the bureaucracy will definitely not be impressed by your saying the rules say you should admit me, even if you could like prove it.

Divia (43:06)

Yeah, that's true.

No, for sure. have to... But you know, I mean, did... And I'm sure it's all different now, but at the time I like bought books about it and I was like, what do they say to do? And I tried to do those things.

Michael Vassar (43:29)

Yeah, you're trying to do those things.

Divia (43:33)

Yeah, which is different. mean, it does seem like for most elite admissions procedures, there's a bunch of stuff that, I mean, you could maybe find it written down, but then it'll change once it is, at least somewhat.

Michael Vassar (43:45)

And even if it is written down, it just won't be adhered to, basically at all.

Divia (43:53)

No, no, I don't mean that the rules are written down. I mean, sometimes, like, I don't know, I read some, I read some How to Get into College book. It wasn't written by, it was like a former admissions officer that was like, they're periodically those. Correct, they're not rules.

Michael Vassar (44:02)

But that's not rules. I'm saying the elite world is full of things that just plain claim they have rules, like the FDA, and that in fact make a reasonable show of having rules, but it's absolutely awful show. When push comes to shove and actual decisions made, the causal chain that leads to decision is like never driven by the rules.

Divia (44:26)

Yeah, I don't, again, I'm like, just, think I don't have personal experience there. It's true, I have some personal experience with admissions. The FDA for sure seems like it's really messed up and very perverse. That seems easy to see.

Michael Vassar (44:43)

So the thing is the FDA seems like it has an incredibly well thought through, totally reasonable, non -perverse, gigantic bureaucratic machine that doesn't actually connect to reality, that doesn't actually ultimately get to determine whether a drug gets approved or not, but like creates a fairly thorough impression of

reasonable, rigorous investigation of the sort that you would actually want.

Divia (45:16)

Yeah, okay, so leaving that aside, let me go back to, you're saying that there's some sort of motive force that people get from recognition, post -secondary socialization. What's your model of how that works?

Michael Vassar (45:27)

So it.

Divia (45:29)

Like why can they then do stuff or whatever? Because then that is your claim, right?

Michael Vassar (45:33)

Yeah, it sounds like...

It seems like...

Roughly, the original ego construct is a construct for mutual recognition of territorial claims to a pretty high degree.

Divia (46:00)

you're talking about which type of ego construct, the first one or the second one.

Michael Vassar (46:02)

The original one, the first one, the primary socialization. The primary socialization creates an ego construct, which is about recognition of territorial claims to at least a significant degree. And then it's not entirely, not nearly entirely, but that's at least a big part of it.

Divia (46:16)

Okay, can basically, yeah, I'll take that.

Yeah, I can see it.

Michael Vassar (46:26)

And like the secondary socialization one, ego construct, the secondary socialization dissolves the ego as a way of dissolving territory claims. And it also constructs novel temporary egos as a way of making territorial incursions. So like

When I think of anger versus outrage as the material for this, if your primary socialization ego is affronted, you feel anger and a desire to resolve and make things right. If you are forced to never resolve things in the more important parts of your life,

Divia (47:02)

Okay.

Yeah.

Michael Vassar (47:24)

through efforts at resolution. Eventually your ego breaks down and with it motivation and you join in.

Divia (47:34)

Well, I think I'm like, how though? How does that, how is your model of that working? Like what breaks it down?

Michael Vassar (47:41)

So speculatively, you're familiar with the idea of predictive processing theory, first -gen free energy minimization.

Divia (47:50)

Predictive processing theory, yes. First in free energy minimization, sort of. keep trying to, I've read the Wikipedia page, Emmet Scherer on Twitter explained some stuff about it, so it was helpful, but I'm like, I think there's something that people keep talking about that I don't know what it is also. So, sort of.

Michael Vassar (48:05)

OK, so free energy minimization is very, very clearly not the driver of all behavior. But it is very clearly something that has to happen at some limit when you have no available free energy.

Divia (48:17)

Okay, can you explain to me slash anyone maybe who's listening what you mean by free energy minimization?

Michael Vassar (48:22)

So free energy is an analogy from energetic landscapes in chemistry and other parts of physics where you have like a metaphorical energetic, I don't know how to say it more directly than that, but it's an analogy from the types of

Divia (48:46)

Can you give an example of like a social phenomenon that would seem natural to you to describe in terms of this analogy of free energy minimization?

Michael Vassar (48:53)

So stealing is the most natural one. So like when you are violating territorial boundaries, you have to keep track of the fact that you might get in trouble. And when you're surrounded by social threats,

Divia (49:07)

Okay, can you say that in a sentence that includes the term free energy minimization? That seems true, but I want to understand it better.

Michael Vassar (49:17)

Your attention is automatically drawn to territorial violations you might make. And your attention is automatically drawn to threats against you.

And when you're surrounded by more threats than you can track with like consciously in the high resolution way that you learned to do from primary socialization, when that method of tracking threats no longer serves you.

But when you find that as long as you are being moved by vibes, the threats don't manifest and people spontaneously organize to protect you from them. When you find that you can't make claims from anger, but you can violate territory from vibes and be supported.

Divia (50:02)

Okay, but what does...

Okay, but what? Same request. Can you say that sentence with the term free energy in it?

Michael Vassar (50:19)

It, there's a lot of information that you have to be tracking and all of that information that you're tracking takes energy in a literal sense. You have to be like checking things. And when you don't have enough energy in the literal sense to check the things to get, you know, to outland territorial violations, you can't avoid transgressing. You can't avoid.

Divia (50:25)

Yeah.

Michael Vassar (50:49)

threats by not doing anything that would give people

Divia (50:52)

So what does that have to do with free energy minimization?

Michael Vassar (50:57)

in my model, relaxing into archetypal behaviors is easy. It doesn't bottleneck things on the hippocampus and the amygdala.

And that makes it, it's relaxing. You hold, when you're angry, you hold it in your body. When you're outraged, you don't hold it in your body.

Divia (51:24)

For sure, yeah.

I never thought about that. I don't know if that I agree with that or not, but I'll go with it. Okay.

Michael Vassar (51:37)

like

Divia (51:37)

So you.

Okay, so I still have this open question about what exactly people mean by free energy. But if I leave that aside, yes, it does seem, I think I understand your argument that there's something people start doing that involves more tracking effort on the individual level. And if instead, people can defer to the vibes and then it's more like outsourcing that, they don't have to do it themselves.

It doesn't get them the same answer, but then they don't have to do it themselves and it gets them a similar result where nobody's bothered.

Michael Vassar (52:16)

And it gives them much better result, it gives them people helping them, which they weren't getting before.

Divia (52:20)

them. Okay.

Michael Vassar (52:24)

So rather, gets them secondarily socialized people helping them. Specifically, gets them secondarily socialized people protecting them from other people's eager claims.

Divia (52:35)

from other people's legitimate ego, including legitimate ones, you're saying.

Michael Vassar (52:38)

Yes, especially legitimate ones. It gets much more dedicated protection from legitimate than from illegitimate Euroclaims.

Divia (52:48)

Okay, and so then this is meant to be your answer for why do people get motive force from this type of recognition? And you're saying basically that they correctly predict that they will be able to easily do things if they are synced up this way and they correctly predict that insofar as they're trying to do the same class of things, they won't really be able to if they're not. And so then they're like, I don't have the energy to do it. Is that the claim?

Michael Vassar (53:13)

Yeah. Yeah. And when they get recognition, they are inspired, the villages term, it affects their breath, it affects their posture, to create a simulated, a local simulated ego that transgresses.

Divia (53:16)

Okay.

Meaning, so what do you mean by that local stimulated ego?

Michael Vassar (53:36)

So the thing that AIs do, like chatbots, a local simulated ego. They don't have a persistent self. They don't have memories. They have like a context window, but they don't have a set of boundaries that is tracked in the same sort of way.

Divia (53:38)

Okay.

Okay.

And the reason that it appears in the form of a simulated ego is why to interface with people's real normal ego structures or what? Because you need...

Michael Vassar (54:08)

Yes, yes.

The secondarily socialized people cannot produce enough resources to sustain themselves. have their album get extractive from primarily socialized people.

Divia (54:30)

You're saying because you need.

Michael Vassar (54:30)

Like secondary socialization is a pre -commitment to be confused about the nature of one's primary socialization.

Divia (54:45)

You're saying that in order to actually create value for real, you need to do a certain type of tracking of.

closer to object level, like object level reality and less convoluted social reality. And you think that the secondarily socialized people can't do this. And so they couldn't be creating value.

Michael Vassar (55:05)

Yeah, you have... I mean, they can create some value, but they can't create enough value to maintain themselves fully. They need to be net extracting too.

Divia (55:20)

Okay, so let me go back to your tweet and see if I can understand it in light of what you just said. You said, self -concepts are load -bearing but suboptimal. And by self -concepts here, you mean secondarily socialized eco -structures or egos or whatever. You say memory, perspective, and epistemology concepts are better and less vulnerable to memetic infections. And by that, is what you mean.

Michael Vassar (55:33)

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm trying to pin down the primary ego, but...

Divia (55:44)

Okay, all right, well, yeah, I think I agree with that. It certainly does seem better to me with the big caveat of like, okay, but people then do need to be able to interface with the world. Also, including secondarily socialized people, at least sometimes. Some people do.

Michael Vassar (56:04)

They do, they absolutely do.

Divia (56:07)

So the first thing seems close to strictly better except for... No, sorry. That's not even true either. It seems like overall, I'm like, yes, that seems better. And then people also need to be able to interface with that world, which seems to me like a... I don't know. When I look around, I'm like, it seems broadly, not exactly like an unsolved problem, but like people have their own special, this is kind of how I do it, kind of kludgy solutions to that insofar as they're trying to solve it, right?

Michael Vassar (56:34)

Yes. Like the primarily socialized thing is too self -protective. doesn't, like, if you want to have a nation, if you want to have people who are holding territory against other people, there's a free rider problem. You know, the primary socialization that produces value doesn't create enough commitment to fighting to like hold territory.

Divia (56:41)

What does that mean?

Michael Vassar (57:03)

against another nation or another group.

Divia (57:10)

Yeah, I mean, it does seem to be the big problem with, I don't know, I'm very sympathetic to the NCAP thing, but then it's like, okay, but then what about that there are these other countries and they're not gonna really let you do that? Is that what you're saying?

Michael Vassar (57:22)

Yeah

You need people who are, from a primary socialization perspective, irrationally motivated to fight for specific things and not for other things in order to have enough people fighting on the same side to like...

Divia (57:27)

Okay.

You want some sort of patriotism type thing you're saying and you can't do it with primary socialization, that's the claim.

Michael Vassar (57:46)

Yeah.

You can do a lot more of it with primary socialization, but everyone will hate you. That's what Israel is doing. They're incredibly effective.

Divia (58:07)

Was your claim, wait, is your claim that people in Israel don't have secondary socialization? It seems like a bold claim.

Michael Vassar (58:12)

much much much much less.

My claim is that that's what Judaism is. It's a minimum viable secondary socialization for preserving almost all of primary socialization while having enough secondary socialization for collective defense.

but not necessarily for collective territorial defense, just for collective physical defense.

Divia (58:34)

Okay.

not necessarily for collective territorial defense. What does that mean? Israel is still there. It's still on the map. It still exists. So it seems like empirically.

Michael Vassar (58:46)

Right, but like

It, but it has a lot of difficulties in continuing to exist. hasn't existed for that long. It doesn't seem obvious that it can continue to exist for that long. It seems pretty likely that it can't continue to exist for that long and stay the same sort of culture that it is now.

Divia (58:58)

For sure.

Yeah, I mean, it's also in a pretty...

Like you think it might develop a different type of socialization in order to continue existing? More of it?

Michael Vassar (59:17)

Yeah, it would have to. It seems likely to have to.

Divia (59:21)

It's an interesting prediction. can you say more about how how do you expect it to play out with Israel?

Michael Vassar (59:30)

I am very uncertain. I think that...

It will be very, very hard for Israel to be accorded the same types of rights to self -defense that all other nations are accorded. It has so far been very, hard for Israel to be accorded those sorts of rights of self -defense.

Divia (59:56)

By accorded, you mean in terms of like how other countries talk about Israel and how other countries treat Israel or... Yeah, I mean, this is the thing people say a lot. They'll be like, well, you look at like, people complain a lot about, they're killing too many civilians compared to combatants. And I think everybody agrees it's a cost, it's bad to kill civilians. But then people are like, okay, but look at like any sort of urban warfare, any sort of embedded enemy, any other nation doing the same thing, their ratios are not better, right? Does that sort of thing you mean?

Michael Vassar (1:00:00)

Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Yes.

Divia (1:00:25)

Okay.

And you claim.

Michael Vassar (1:00:29)

And in every other conflict in the world, the conflict is less morally unambiguously one -sided. In any other conflict in the world, the people who are calling for their deaths very, very explicitly and recording it and bragging about it, don't get this sort of sympathy.

Divia (1:00:51)

Right, for sure. That seems true to me.

that people are, I mean, there's some, I don't know, but there's some tendency, I think, for people to try to sympathize with the underdog no matter what that will apply to in other places too. But it does seem different in the case of Israel, for sure.

Michael Vassar (1:01:13)

I mean, even Israel being seen as not the underdog is weird.

Divia (1:01:17)

as not the underdog. Well, I but they do have, I agree, but they do have much better military for reasons that make sense, but I think that's why they're not, right? By the people who don't see them.

Michael Vassar (1:01:27)

Well, no, I don't think so, because Iran has a powerful military, Turkey has a powerful military.

Divia (1:01:33)

But I think people are less sympathetic to Iran than they are to Palestine.

Michael Vassar (1:01:39)

They are, but the war with Palestine is a proxy war with Iran and everyone knows it.

Divia (1:01:46)

I mean, everyone, that's one of those things, like you know it's V's post, right? Like, does everyone really know it? Kind of everyone knows it, but are the actual -

Michael Vassar (1:01:53)

Everyone's socialized, knows it. Nobody's secondarily socialized, knows it.

Divia (1:01:59)

Right. Which I think is many of the people with the loudest objections, right?

Michael Vassar (1:02:01)

That's the opposite of what everybody, no, but I'm saying that's what everybody, everybody knows normally. No, no, the everybody knows phrase means everybody secondarily socialized knows it.

Divia (1:02:06)

you're saying that's the meaning of the phrase.

I see.

Michael Vassar (1:02:15)

I was using it in the, in inverted meaning. you know, it is actually common knowledge. If you take the situation and have like chat GPT three or 3 .5 to educate yourself. Yeah.

Divia (1:02:16)

Okay, got it, got it, got it, okay.

Or I ask my Uber driver. No, like I do sometimes actually, not about this exact thing, but I have asked my, cause you know, had a bunch of Uber drivers that were in Afghanistan and they were all like, yeah, everybody knows these things are coming from, you know, Iran and these things. And I'm like, well, how do you know that? They're like, well, we see the trucks. I don't know. Like they seem to know it.

Michael Vassar (1:02:48)

Right.

Right. So like that, or if you have a kid investigate for, for now we're on chat GPT, it'll be, you know, like, how is this a question? How is this confusion?

Divia (1:03:04)

Okay, I mean, but most people don't like it's just classic, like people, the classic result is you ask people who are chanting from river to sea, like which river and sea are you talking about? Can you identify any of this on a map? And they're like, no, can't, right?

Michael Vassar (1:03:15)

Sure, but they're secondarily socialized, that's the point. They're engaging in outrage display, not an anger display.

And you can see that on their bodies in terms of the way they hold themselves.

Divia (1:03:27)

How do you identify it?

Michael Vassar (1:03:30)

So like their shoulders will be less crunched in. Their shoulders will be like more rolled back. Their posture will be more swaying side to side and less upright.

Divia (1:03:41)

Because you're saying it's a less energetically expensive thing because they sort of know that the social context has their back in a particular way? They're outsourcing that part of it?

Michael Vassar (1:03:49)

Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (1:03:57)

Alright, well, good

Michael Vassar (1:03:57)

They're in a sense literally not keeping track of things on their fingers. There's less tension from their shoulders to their fingers, whereby things can be kept track of.

Divia (1:04:06)

interesting.

Okay, well, ultimately, I don't know. I feel pretty satisfied about, think we, I now think that we no longer have much of a disagree, like about details of how the world is, especially in a bunch of parts. I'm like, I don't know about that. I think we don't have a major disagreement based on the tweets. Tons of, tons of interesting things we talked about, but I do want to respect your time. know you don't have it forever today. So I don't know. Is there anything else you want to hit before we?

Michael Vassar (1:04:21)

Yeah, agreed.

Divia (1:04:38)

Stop recording this.

Michael Vassar (1:04:40)

feel like this was pretty good, but let's talk again sometime. Alright, nice talking. Alright, bye, Devia.

Divia (1:04:43)

Okay, thanks so much. Thanks for coming on the podcast and talk to you later.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

In this episode, Daniel Filan and I talk about Elliot Thornley’s LessWrong post There are no coherence theorems.

Some other LessWrong posts we reference include:

* A stylized dialogue on John Wentworth's claims about markets and optimization

* Why Not Subagents

Transcript:

Divia (00:03)

I'm here today with Elliot Thornley, who goes by EJT on less wrong and Daniel Phylin and Elliot is currently a postdoc at the global priorities Institute working on this sort of AI stuff and also some global population work. And at the end we're going to be discussing the his post on less wrong. There are no coherence theorems, which he wrote as part of the.

the case philosophy fellowship. And Daniel, you are currently doing ML, you're research manager at MATS, which is the ML alignment and theory scholars. And you also have your own AI risk research podcast. So welcome to the podcast, both of you guys.

Elliott Thornley (00:56)

All right, yeah, thanks.

Daniel (00:56)

Thanks, great to be here.

Divia (00:58)

Yeah, so I had read this post, There Are No Coherence Theorems. I missed it when it first came out and then someone linked it to me on Twitter recently and I was like, this is pretty interesting to me. It's very relevant to my interests and I also thought the discussion of it was pretty interesting. yeah, Elliot, would you mind summarizing for our audience what the post is and what it says?

Elliott Thornley (01:22)

Yeah, the sort of background context is I was reading about all this AI safety stuff, just getting into it and looking for places I felt like I could contribute. And in particular, I came across these coherence arguments. And coherence arguments are supposed to be ways in which we can predict the behavior of advanced artificial agents. you know, maybe we can't know exactly what they'll want, but maybe we can sort of

know the form in which they're wanting will take, namely that they'll be expected utility maximizers. So this means that they'll at least choose as if they assigned a real valued utility and probability to each outcome and makes choices that maximize the expectation of utility. They'll maximize expected utility in this sense. Coherence arguments are arguments for thinking that advanced artificial agents are going to be expected utility maximizers.

And the argument basically goes that if agents aren't representable as expected utility maximizers, if they don't behave in this kind of way, then they're going to be liable to pursue dominated strategies, which basically means like you present them with a series of choices or gambles or something like that. And they sort of plot away through this decision tree. They make this sequence of choices that leaves them with an outcome or lottery that they dis -prefer to some outcome or lottery that they.

could have preferred instead. And this seems like a bad consequence. If that was going to happen, then maybe it would put some pressure on you as an agent to revise your preferences. And so the thought of these coherence arguments goes that agents that are not representable as expected utility maximizers will recognize this vulnerability and so be motivated to change their preferences to the extent necessary to make them invulnerable, which will in turn make them

expected utility maximizers. And the post that I wrote is pushing it back against these arguments. So in particular, the sort of canonical version of the argument, seems to me, appeals to these so -called coherence theorems, which I define in the posters, theorems which imply sort of the result, theorems which imply that unless an agent can be represented as an expected utility maximizer,

then it's liable to pursue dominated strategies. And this seemed like kind of surprising to me. I'd sort of not heard of these coherence theorems before, like theorems that imply this particular thing before. So I went looking and I sort of read the theorems that had in various places been called coherence theorems. seems to be some like haziness or disagreement about exactly which theorems were supposed to be the coherence theorems. And I found that sort of none of the listed theorems had that particular implication.

And so this was sort of my way of pushing back against these coherence arguments and thinking like, no, actually, no, this argument isn't a good reason to think that advanced artificial agents are going to be representable as expected utility maximizers.

Divia (04:33)

Yeah, thank you so much for the summary. And is it fair in like, is it a fair summary in like somewhat less technical terms to say that the reason people think that AIs will be expected utility maximizers is because otherwise they get Dutch booked? Or is that not a not a very good summary?

Elliott Thornley (04:50)

That's a pretty good summary. like Dutch books, people kind of use it in different ways. Sometimes people use it just to mean like a particular kind of exploitation or like pursuit of a dominated strategy. But yeah, that's pretty much it.

Divia (05:05)

And then thank you for that summary. Can you also say a little bit about what your impression was about the discussion? And I think most of it's on Les Wrong, maybe a little bit of his on the alignment forum and a little bit is on the EA forum. I think this was on all in all three places. Is that right?

Elliott Thornley (05:18)

Yeah, the comments sort of all over the place, basically. Yeah, so I'm trying to remember with the comments. I think the comments were a mixed bag. So part of it was in the post, I defined coherence theorems in this particular way. So I say that coherence theorems are theorems that imply that unless an agent can be represented as an expected utility maximizer, then they're liable to pursue dominated strategies. And I sort of took this to be the

way that the term was used, at least based on my background reading. But some people said, no, that's not the way that I, like the people, use the term. They use them in some different way. And of course, if you use it in some different way, then it kind of seems silly to deny that there are no coherence theorems. if you use the term coherence theorems to refer to the von Neumann -Morgenstern theorem, like...

looks like I'm denying the existence of the von Neumann -Morgenstern term, which would be a kind of a silly thing to do. So yeah, that kind of comment, I feel, wasn't so useful. I guess maybe I sort of invited this kind of comment with the title that I gave to the post. But the sort of the main point remains like despite that comment, which is like, this coherence argument doesn't work. You for the coherence argument to work, you need this claim that

unless an agent can be represented as an expected utility maximizer, then it's liable to pursue dominated strategies. My point is that there aren't any theorems which imply that claim and sort of that remains true no matter how you define the term coherence theorems. So I feel like those lines of comments weren't so productive. There were some more productive lines of comments. I don't know if you want me to talk about those or we should hold off for a moment.

Divia (07:15)

Yeah, I think if you could briefly say something about them and then I have a few questions about why this is important.

Elliott Thornley (07:22)

Yeah, good. So, there aren't any theorems which imply that unless an agent is representable as an expected utility maximizer, then they're liable to pursue dominated strategies. That's not to say that you can't argue for that claim. So, a theorem, as I understand it and as I use the term, it's kind of like an argument with no undischarged assumptions. You sort of don't have to rely on any premises to get the conclusion.

Divia (07:38)

Mm

Elliott Thornley (07:51)

But if you are happy to bring in some premises, then you can argue for the conclusion. You can say, unless an agent is representable as an expected utility maximizer, and if that agent satisfies x and y and z, then they're liable to pursue dominated strategies. it's like, expected use

Divia (08:14)

Which is the way the VNM theory that is actually formulated, right?

Elliott Thornley (08:18)

Not quite. So, Von Neumann's Morgenstern Theorem, and this is important, makes sort of no reference to money pumps or exploitation or Dutch booking or anything like that.

Divia (08:20)

Right? Okay.

I thought it doesn't have premises about like independence and like that sort of thing.

Elliott Thornley (08:35)

Yeah, so it's purely a representation theorem. So there are four von Neumann -Morgenstern axioms, independence, continuity, completeness, and transitivity. And the theorem says that an agent is representable as an expected utility maximizer if and only if it satisfies the four axioms. And then I guess like, so you're like kind of right because often people go on to defend

one or more of the axioms by means of like money pump arguments, sort of like motivating saying, you must satisfy independence, otherwise you're liable to pursue dominated strategies. So it's like money pump arguments plus the VNM theorem can sort of make a coherence theorem or a coherence argument. Yeah, but then my point in the post is like the money pump arguments part of that equation.

Divia (09:07)

Thank

Mm

Got it.

Elliott Thornley (09:32)

rely on these premises that are sort of contentious in the normative case. And I think like very likely false in the descriptive case, the case that we're interested in, when we're talking about what artificial advanced artificial agents will be like.

Divia (09:47)

All right, thanks. And just to check, Daniel, did you read this post when it came out?

Daniel (09:50)

I think I got... So, okay, I'm going to be real. This post sort of triggered me. I read the title and I was like, I think I've seen some coherence theorems. And then I think the way you put it in the post is like, you know, a coherence argument, has to have like no substantive assumptions. Sorry, a coherence theorem has to have no substantive assumptions. And I'm like, well, that's not theorem. The way I read that, I was like, well, theorems always...

or the form A implies B or whatever, you assume A and you get B, and that's what proves A implies B. And so then I gave up on your post, which I think it was wrong. So I think like, I did read it later. I actually have not. It's been a little, it's been some time since I've read it, I'm gonna be honest. But the, yeah, maybe to say a little bit more. I think like when I originally read,

Divia (10:39)

Yeah, it is.

Daniel (10:48)

something like the introduction or first few paragraphs of Eliot's post. Like I thought it was going to be something like, you have to have some minor assumptions in order to prove these like coherence arguments. You know, like you have to assume something like, you live in a world where like you have choices or whatever. And I was going to be like, well, okay, like whatever. I'm those are good assumptions to make. So it's fine to make those assumptions and they still deserve name coherence theorems.

But I think the actual state of play is there are these von Neumann Mortgage Trader axioms, right? There are like these claims about what your preferences should be like. And the von Neumann Mortgage Trader theorem says that if your preferences are like that, then you're an expected utility maximizer. And the state of play is that if you assume like one of those von Neumann Mortgage Trader arguments, one of those axioms rather, then you can make these money pump arguments for the other axioms, right?

If you have this axiom, then if you don't obey this axiom, you're to shoot yourself in the foot or whatever. But you actually can't get there from zero of the axioms about your preferences. And so basically like,

Divia (12:00)

And sorry, for people who can't see the video, Ellie, you're nodding, right? That seems about right to you. Okay.

Elliott Thornley (12:03)

Yeah, yeah,

Daniel (12:06)

Yeah, and so the thing that seems to be true that I did not realize for a while, even after Elliot wrote his post, that the actual, the arguments, the things you need to rely on to get expected utility maximization, or the things you need to rely on to say that if you're not an expected utility maximizer, then you shoot yourself in the foot, they're just like seed -affirmatively more substantive assumptions than you might have guessed just based on the zeitgeist or just based on the way people

at least talked about these things one year ago. Yeah.

Elliott Thornley (12:40)

Yeah, I think that's great way to put it.

Divia (12:42)

Yeah, thanks. Okay, and now just to talk about another thing, we touched on this a little before we started recording, but Elliot, what was your motivation for writing the post? There's sort of, I think you say a bit about it in the post about why it seemed important, but can you lay that out for our listeners?

Elliott Thornley (13:01)

Yeah, yeah, so part of my motivation for writing the post was to sort of point out this thing that seemed like a mistake to me and a mistake about something important. Yeah, so in particular, coherence arguments appeared in this big Katya Grace post, I think it's called like counter arguments to the basic AI ex -risk case. And it sort of place in that post made me think

Divia (13:27)

Bye.

Elliott Thornley (13:31)

that people are taking coherence arguments as at least like a moderately important part of the basic case for existential risk from AI. And so it seemed important to point out this weakness as I perceived it in these coherence arguments. I say only a moderately important part because I take the point of coherence arguments to be that showing that advanced artificial agents are going to be

sort of goal -directed in a sort of concerted and concerning way. And there are other reasons to expect that besides coherence arguments. So in particular, you might think that like AI labs are in fact going to train agents to be goal -directed in some concerting way because they'll be more valuable or they'll be better able to solve problems or do things in the real world. So like only moderately important for those reasons I think coherence arguments are.

But I think, as maybe we'll get into later, I think coherence arguments are very important for another reason, which is something like this. So, you know, we've got these alignment proposals, proposals for keeping agents aligned or shut downable or corrigible or something like that. Some of them, including my own, rely on being able to create an advanced artificial agent that's not representable as an expected utility maximizer. And if you sort of...

bind coherence arguments, might think these kinds of alignment or shutdown ability proposals can't even get off the ground because as soon as your agent is sort of reflective enough to realize that it's vulnerable to pursuing all these dominated strategies, and in fact, you know, the claim is that it is vulnerable to pursuing all these dominated strategies, then it's sort of going to turn itself into an expected utility maximizer, and you're going to lose the property that kept it aligned or shutdownable. So it's like that second thing that

See, it's the main importance of pushing back on these coherence arguments, which is like making space for these proposals that rely on agents not being expected utility maximizers.

Divia (15:40)

Cool, yeah, so I think, let me try to summarize something about why this matters as I understand it. So one thing is, and I'm actually, I did look into this a little. didn't find sort of, like Daniel, you were talking about the zeitgeist. Like I think that there's sort of an impression of, yeah, these coherence theorems, of course it'll have a utility function. Maybe more than people have actually really said that anywhere.

precisely or maybe they have said it and I couldn't find it. So I'm a little bit confused about that point. But I think it's true that a lot of people, I think I had the impression like, yeah, at least people seem to think that it's gonna be some sort of expected utility maximizer. Yeah.

Daniel (16:21)

Yeah, I can maybe I say something about this. was like, so the reason that I sort of got, I don't know, developed more thoughts about this topic is that in the second half of last year, I, well, okay, first what happened is I read this comment on less wrong by someone who was complaining about like how people think that AIs are going to be expected utility maximizers. And I was like, guys, we've like proved, you know, there are proofs like in places and I'm just, I'm going to give a talk and I'm just going to like.

Divia (16:45)

Right.

Daniel (16:49)

collect all the proofs, I'm just going to make a really solid argument, and then that person will have to shut up from now on. And basically, yeah, I mean, I was under the impression that this would be really solid. And I still think you don't need that much, like the assumptions you need to get expected utility maximization.

On the one hand, they're not huge, but you only get like, you get a surprisingly weak form of expected utility maximization. And like, in order for me to make the argument that I wanted to make properly, I ended up like basically hypothesizing that, you know, this agent is going to like, try and narrow, try and like ensure that the state of the world and the future is in some like small set, which might, which you might think is the kind of assumption that you wanted to like, prove instead of the kind of thing you wanted to prove instead of assume.

But anyway, point being, I definitely assumed that the arguments here were better than they turned out to actually be.

Divia (17:51)

Yeah. Okay, so that's one thing. It seems like a bunch of people, regardless of what exactly anyone said, which I'm not sure about, a bunch of people assume that they're really solid, like, then we proved it with math type arguments for that the AI is going to be expected utility maximizer and that at least the three of us seem to agree, not true, right? And I read the comments and my impression from the comments is also like, think nobody has any real counter to that thing. And yeah, and this matters. I mean, I think it sort of matters for its own sake, part of what it means.

I know if you, I certainly identify as a rationalist. think Daniel does, Elliot, I don't know if you do, but that we care about what's true just for its own sake. And yeah, in so far as it's something that people say as part of the AI risk argument, that matters. Though again, I think all three of us are here are like, okay, but we're not trying to say like, look, we disproved it, AI is not risky. Like I think we all think probably still is risky and.

At least I will say the basic argument of like, you make something smarter than people and you have all these companies that are like, I'm going to try to connect it to the internet and have them do as powerful things as possible. I don't know. It seems kind of dangerous. I think that argument for sure is still, is still there. But then also what you're saying, Elliot is look, but if we are going to try to actually make proposals for making AI aligned and making AI safe and try to game out how this will work, then, then no, really does matter to try to pin down what we do and do not know.

about AIs so that we can have proposals that, like we can evaluate which proposals seem promising or not. Is that, is that everything I said seemed right?

Elliott Thornley (19:24)

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, so at least in so far as you mistakenly think that these coherence arguments are rock solid, you're sort of from the from the very outset ruling out this whole class of proposals, which might seem promising. And in fact, after writing this post, I sort of looked into incomplete preferences in more detail and thought that, yeah, proposal along these lines does seem promising. So in particular, like,

You don't really need to get into the whole thing here, but one reason you might think that incomplete preferences are promising is an agent with incomplete preferences can just sort of be more chill than an expected utility maximizer. So in particular, can like lack a preference between many more pairs of options. And you might think that we want this in so far as we want our artificial agents to be more sort of like chill and lacking preferences.

it's useful because like, if you lack a preference between A and B, very likely you're not going to like pay costs to shift probability mass between A and B. you know, two identical cans of, Coca -Cola, you lack a preference between them. And so you don't like, pay a dollar to get the right one with probability 0 .9 rather than like get the left one, the probability 0 .9. And so, you know, if we can create these agents with

Daniel (20:23)

Maybe.

Elliott Thornley (20:51)

incomplete preferences, we can create them such that there are sort of many more things such that they're unwilling to pay costs to shift probability mass between those things. And so sort of like, you get a sort of more chill artificial agent in this respect.

Divia (21:07)

And am I right that this, part about the agents with incomplete preferences and that motivation, that was not in the original post, right?

Elliott Thornley (21:14)

no, this is all like later thinking.

Divia (21:17)

Cool, all right. Yeah, because I do think some people, like maybe Daniel, what you're saying, saw it as more like, you're trying to nitpick and why does it even matter? Like, I think this is not a very virtuous way to, sorry Daniel, as far as I'm you, it doesn't seem like a totally virtuous way to read it. Like, well, why does it matter? Because the basic conclusion is probably right. And I think it's fine in the sense like everybody has limited time and.

Daniel (21:31)

Yeah.

Divia (21:43)

and whatever, but in terms of like actually responding to it substantively, I don't know, maybe this is just a little of my agenda. I'm like, yeah, often things matter for reasons that people hadn't even thought of at the time. And your thing about incomplete preferences seems like one of them, maybe.

Elliott Thornley (21:58)

Yeah, that's right. Although I do want to point out something that Daniel said earlier, which I think is also right, which is insofar as you're relying on these money pump arguments for the von Neumann -Morgenstern axioms and taking those two things together as like your coherence argument, it's important to note that at least the of the sort of most up -to -date, most sophisticated, weakest assumptions, money pump arguments

Divia (22:18)

Mm

Elliott Thornley (22:26)

all get found in this book by Johan Gustafsson from 2022 called Money Pump Arguments with Daniel Hens. Yeah, and the way that book is structured, he presents the money pump argument for completeness first, and then uses completeness to create the money pump for transitivity, uses completeness and transitivity, create the money pump for independence, and then uses all three, I think, maybe, maybe just like one of them to create the money pump for continuity.

Divia (22:30)

Good. That was the book here. Nice.

Elliott Thornley (22:55)

And so in that respect, like the money pumps are kind of like a house of cards where if you don't have the completeness money pump, if you're not compelled by that one, then it's hard to like get the other money pumps going as well. And this might be another reason to think that these coherence arguments are important besides like making space for these alignment proposals that depend on non -expected utility maximizers.

Divia (23:19)

Also, are you familiar with Scott Garment's work, like his geometric rationality sequence?

Elliott Thornley (23:25)

No, I haven't read that unfortunately. It's on my list.

Divia (23:26)

Okay, well, we'll leave that aside. Maybe for a different day though, as like a footnote, I found his post where he gave an example for why he's not compelled by independence to be, it certainly stuck with me and I was like, yeah, okay. And so before I had engaged with what you wrote, when people were always like, okay, but what about V I was always like, well, I'm not persuaded on the independence point. But yeah, anyway, I'll leave that aside. Okay, so yeah.

I think I'm hoping at this point for Danielle, you and Elliot to talk a little more about what in practice, what you do expect and why in terms of which in terms of the expected utility maximization stuff.

Daniel (24:10)

Yeah, it's a little bit hard for me to say this because if you take... There's this question, what does it mean to be an expected utility maximizer? Literally, what are we saying when we say that? And it means something like, for each state of the world or for each way things could be, there's some utility value attached to that. And for each thing you could do, you consider... Or there's some probabilities of...

various outcomes, and you basically reliably pick the thing that maximizes the expected value of the utility. So the expected value being like sort of probability weighted average, right? I think there are various versions of this. Like, do you have to be like thinking about the probabilities in your head or whatever? I'm a bit less concerned about that. But like one thing about this is that

The thing we're assigning utilities to is, I don't know, maybe something like states of the world or something like that. And if you're allowed to be like very, very fine grained about what counts as a state of the world, you can really just, like expected utility theory can be super expressive, right? Like if you're allowed to distinguish between tons and tons and tons of states of the world, then maybe like expected utility theory constrains you very little because you just have tons and tons and tons of utility functions that you can optimize the expectation of.

So all of that is to say, like, what do I actually expect with maximizing expected utility? I'm like, I think...

Divia (25:43)

Wait, so I can summarize that in case people didn't Maybe there's some sense that people have before they really think about it that, if you have a utility function, then you must be sort of like an act utilitarian where you're, I don't know, trying to do the good for the greatest number or at least for yourself in some kind of pretty naive seeming way. And you're like, no, it really doesn't say that at all. You could, you could formalize almost anything this way.

Daniel (25:46)

Hmm, sure.

Yeah, I think that's right. if you... Yeah, not quite everything.

Divia (26:15)

You could be like, assign super high. Yeah, but like I could assign super high utility to having this first and then that later for these reasons. And I could super low utility to having what seems like the same thing, but at a different time for different reasons. Like that type of thing.

Daniel (26:22)

Yeah.

Yeah, think the one thing that it does rule out is you've expected utility theory, if you're justifying it by money pump arguments, it does say something like, for some notion of resources in the world, it does say something like you don't give up resources for literally nothing. So you don't choose to have just less rather than more, but with literally all else held equal. But like,

What counts as all else held equal? Well, it sort of depends how strictly you want to model it. Yeah, or like, I don't know. You look at the phonon and mortgagetern axioms, like completeness, transitivity, independence, and continuity. And they're very, like they look really minimal. They look like they're not assuming all that much. And then if you read the phonon and mortgagetern theorem, you might get the sense that like,

Divia (27:23)

You say what they are, again, for people's benefit.

Daniel (27:26)

Yeah, so, yeah, let's go through them. So completeness says.

Divia (27:31)

And Elliot, I would say feel free to weigh in on these as you wish.

Elliott Thornley (27:34)

Okay.

Daniel (27:35)

Yeah. So let's start with completeness because it sounds like it's basically nothing, as I guess Elliot has written about, it's actually kind of non -trivial. So completeness says that for any two options, A and B, you either prefer A to B, or you prefer B to A, or you're indifferent between A and B, right? And so you might be thinking, wait, how is that even an assumption? Isn't that just like, isn't indifferent

doesn't indifferent just mean you don't prefer one to the other? Yeah, but it's not, but it's not because the way that you want to, or at least for the purpose of money pump arguments, guess, the way that you want to define indifferent is that if you're indifferent between like A and B and you make A slightly better, then you prefer A. Or if you make A slightly worse, then you prefer B.

Divia (28:08)

Right, so it seems almost like a tautology at first.

Daniel (28:34)

So here's an example of a way you could fail to satisfy completeness. Suppose you're asking yourself, should I become a doctor or should I become a monk? And you're like, man, I have really no idea. I just have no concrete idea of which one of those I should do. And then suppose I tell you, actually, when you were thinking about becoming a doctor versus becoming a monk,

You're using slightly out of date numbers for doctor's salaries and the salaries of doctors are actually like 3 % higher than you realized.

Divia (29:10)

Or assuming you're like, okay, well then, so if I give you this dollar to become a monk, then you will, and you'd have to see this. Yeah. Right, which it does not, that's not really how people, like that's not really how human beings behave, right?

Daniel (29:14)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that would...

that...

Divia (29:28)

I guess there's a question about that.

Daniel (29:28)

that's probably, yeah, there's some, it seems like it's not how human beings behave. So that's completeness. Transitivity says that if you prefer A to B and if you prefer B to C, then you also prefer A to C.

Independence basically says that suppose you prefer A to B, right? Like if you could choose between A and B, pick A. Independence says suppose that you've got some probability of C and some probability of A. That's one option. Or you can get the same probability of C and some probability of B, right? maybe like, basically it says you prefer maybe C, maybe A.

to maybe C, maybe B. So one example of this is like, suppose that you prefer eating pizza tonight than eating Thai tonight. And then like someone like basically says, hey, I'm do a coin flip, right? If the coin comes up heads, then you're definitely getting Mexican. If it comes up tails, then like maybe you're gonna get pizza and maybe you're gonna get a...

Thai, whatever the other one I said was. Yeah. But like right now you've got to decide like what's going to happen if the coin comes up tails, right? And independence says that like, if you prefer pizza to Thai, then right now you've got to say that like, if the coin comes up tails, you want the pizza world rather than the Thai world. So that's independence.

Divia (30:44)

tired.

Which through the record, I think this is often actually not true for sort of fairness reasons, given that agents I think are often best modeled as having something like internal conflict or like internally at least different preferences, which was basically the argument as I understand it that Scott Garibrand made in his post in the geometric rationality sequence.

Daniel (31:25)

Yeah, a lot of, you're not the only one to not, yeah, a lot of people don't like independence. I think it's actually pretty good, but people disagree about this. And then finally there's continuity. And continuity basically says that like small enough probabilities don't matter. So basically all these axioms are about like, you know, what you choose when your options are like having certain probabilities over just different outcomes, right? And

I forgot what continuity actually says, but it roughly says that like, if I prefer like this, you know, if I prefer this doing this thing, which has like some probabilities over various outcomes versus this other thing with some probabilities over various outcomes, there's some like tiny amount by which I can change the probabilities so that my preference remains the same. So if I'm like, I suppose someone offers me a gamble and I want to take that gamble over doing nothing.

If somebody says like, the probabilities are actually 0 .001 % different than what I said, then I'm still happy to take the gamble.

Elliott Thornley (32:32)

Yeah, think the continuity in the VNM theorem is slightly different, or at least like it's expressed slightly differently. basically, it goes, if you prefer A to B to C, then there's some combination of A and C that you prefer to be, and some combination of A and C that you dis -prefer to be. So like, yeah.

Divia (32:32)

Thanks. Appreciate it.

Daniel (32:41)

okay.

right.

have the impression that those are like, that you could do one of those assumptions or the other, like there are a different versions of continuity that can get you the same results. Is an impression.

Elliott Thornley (33:07)

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they're equivalent, actually. yeah, at least in the Gustafsson book and in the V theorem, that's how it's expressed.

Daniel (33:18)

Anyway, so that's what those assumptions are, right? And, well, if you thought those assumptions were uncontroversial or something, you might think that like, the VNM theorem is like saying that if I, if I obey those assumptions, then there's actually a whole bunch of other things I have to do with my behavior or whatever to like, you know, to be consistent or whatever. But actually, like, as Elliot said earlier, the VNM theorem is a representation theorem. It says that like, if you satisfy those assumptions, then

there's some utility function for which you're maximizing it. And so it's, in some sense, utility maximization is just as weak as those four assumptions. And those four assumptions, don't tell you that much. Anyway, all this is a tangent from what do I expect in terms of utility maximization. And I'm like, yeah, there's probably going to be some sense in which AIs are going to be utility maximizers, because I think, probably because I coherence arguments are kind of good.

and partly they're persuasive to me. think that like the assumptions are stronger than one might think, but they're still like relatively, I think they're weak enough that I think they're basically right.

Divia (34:20)

Like they're persuasive, like they're...

Daniel (34:35)

Yeah, but I don't know. I'm sort of in the place where like, will AIs be expected utility maximizers? What do I expect with about that? I'm like, it feels like a weird question to ask to me.

Elliott Thornley (34:49)

Yeah, yeah, I think one thing that's worth emphasizing and that Daniel and Divya, you talked about earlier as well, which is like, if you sort of place no restriction on how you innovate, individually outcomes, no restriction on the objects of preference, that any behavior can be rationalized as expected utility maximization. So in particular, like the classic example of

Divia (35:13)

Maybe there's some trivial sense in which I'm like, the exact thing I did is worth a lot and everything else in my utility fraction is worth zero. Is that one way you can do it?

Elliott Thornley (35:24)

Yeah, that's exactly right. So yeah, if you want to get some like non -trivial prediction out of coherence arguments, then you need to like place some restriction, at least probabilistic on like how you individuate outcomes. You've got to say like, no, this artificial agent doesn't just care about like the entire history of the universe and there's sort of no more structure to their preferences than this like ordering over histories of the universe. Actually they care about

ice cream flavors or slices of pizza or something like that. And they're indifferent between any two histories of the universe that are the same with respect to slices of pizza. And if you sort of make that restriction, then you can get some predictions out of coherence arguments. Because then you can sort of think, okay, well, you the agent is trading sausage pizza for pepperoni and then they're pepperoni for mushroom and then they're trading

mushroom for sausage, and they're sort of paying to choose in this cycle. And they're doing this dominated strategy. And so now they're going to like revise their preferences and remove the cycle and things like that.

Divia (36:31)

and then they get money pumped.

Yeah, so can one of you describe like, do you think people, because again, there are these money pump arguments. So how far, or like, what do think the practical implications of the things people say about money pumping are? Or are there none? I think there's some, right?

Daniel (36:57)

mean, you utility theory is a really nice language. Like if you, if you give yourself utility functions and if you, if you're allowed to just say, yeah, my agent is going to be an expected utility maximizer and the utilities are going to be over states as defined in this way, then it becomes very, it becomes nicer to approve a variety of theorems. Right. So like, like utility functions, their functions over things, they're continuous. can like optimize things with respect to those functions. You can like vary the functions smoothly to

Divia (37:01)

Mm

Daniel (37:27)

I don't know. I mean, one -up shot is just a very nice modeling language. In terms of actual substantive risk arguments from modeling things as expected utility optimizers, I'm honestly not aware. Maybe Elliot has some in mind. I guess there's things like shutdown ability under some assumptions of

Yeah, maybe Elliot should go here.

Divia (37:56)

Okay, no, but there's something else that I'm trying to ask first, though I do want to get there that's like, okay, I, as a person, I definitely have some intuition of like, okay, yeah, I don't want to be that thing. Like it's sort of incoherent for me to be that thing that has those cyclical preferences about the pizza toppings because I don't want to lose all my money. And so there's some sort of intuition there that I think people tend to then expand. And I probably historically have sort of expanded it and I could try to speak to it, but I'm wondering like,

Do you guys know what I'm talking about with this sort of expanded intuition? Like, no, but surely I've got to kind of be like this or else.

Elliott Thornley (38:33)

Yeah, this sounds right to me. In particular, think it was the Eliezer Yudkowski post that I read. think it's called Coherent Decisions Imply Consistent Utilities or something like that, where it does this kind of thing. You give the example of the person that fails to be an expected utility maximizer by having cyclic preferences. They prefer A to B, B to C, C to A. This is really sort of like the

classic money pump, the money pump that really works if any of them do, because then you can sort of say, all right, pay me $1 and I'll switch you from A to B, pay me $1 and I'll switch you from B to C, pay me $1 and switch you from C to A. Yeah, so I think that money pump kind of basically just works. There are some technicalities, but like, it's pretty convincing to me. And so I think you shouldn't have cyclic preferences. I think the error is in extrapolating from that to the whole like

expected utility maximization, all the von Neumann, Morgenstern axioms. Because the money pump for completeness, I think in particular, is not nearly as convincing as the money pump for acyclicity, the one that says you shouldn't have cyclic preferences.

Daniel (39:46)

Yeah.

Divia (39:46)

Can you lay that out? what is, I don't think I actually know what the money pump is for completeness.

Elliott Thornley (39:52)

Yeah, okay, so I'll give the sort of non -forcing version first and then talk about the second one that Gustafsson talks about, which is supposed to be the forcing version. recall that completeness or having incomplete preferences is about having preferences that are like insensitive to some sweetening or souring, in particular, lacks of preference that are insensitive to some sweetening or souring.

Divia (40:20)

So like, I'm, yeah, I said, don't know if I want to be a doctor or a monk and then you offered to pay me a dollar to be a doctor. I'm like, yeah, I still don't know. Actually. I refuse to. Yeah.

Elliott Thornley (40:28)

Yeah, exactly. And the money pump for completeness, the non -forcing one that we'll talk about first, sort of uses this fact. So the first choice is between a doctor or monk, and you're stipulated to lack of preference. So you can choose monk at this point. And then at some later period of time, you know that you'll be offered the choice between sticking as a monk or switching to a slightly worse paid doctor than you were before, the one that you, the first choice that you had.

And then if you have incomplete preferences and in particular you lack preferences between both careers as a doctor and the careers of monk, but you prefer to be a better paid doctor to a lower paid doctor, then it seems like you could be money pumped in this situation because what you could do is you could decide to choose monk at node one instead of higher paid doctor and then later change your mind and choose

lower paid doctor at node two instead of sticking with the monk. And then you'd be money pumped in that case. And this is like.

Divia (41:30)

Okay.

Well, is it like infinitely because people could keep doing this? I get it. From my perspective, money problems don't seem that compelling unless it's infinite.

Elliott Thornley (41:44)

Yeah, good. So this is one thing to consider, which is like, yeah, the money pump for completeness is less compelling than the one for acyclicity exactly for this reason, because you couldn't sort of extract infinite money out of someone. Or at least like from the bare fact that they have incomplete preferences, you couldn't extract infinite money out of them. If they had like extremely incomplete preferences, maybe you still could extract a lot.

Divia (41:56)

Okay.

Sure, but if people are like, okay, we're gonna keep switching you from monk to even worse paid doctor, then I would think at a certain point, I'd be like, okay, well now that you're asking me to pay to become a doctor, like now I'm out. So you can't keep doing this, right?

Elliott Thornley (42:20)

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, but okay, so the main way in which I think this money pump for completeness isn't particularly compelling is it relies on this premise that Johann Gustafsson calls decision tree separability. And decision tree separability basically says that you can ignore parts of the decision tree that are no longer accessible. So in particular, like

If xNihilo you had the choice between monk and lower paid doctor, you'd lack a preference and so would maybe choose like each with some positive probability. And so since you'd do that thing xNihilo, you'll also do that thing if you previously turned down the option to be a better paid doctor.

Divia (43:12)

I see. But you're saying, no, you can just not do that. You can be like, well, I turned it down before, so I'm going to sort of stick with that.

Elliott Thornley (43:19)

Yeah, yeah. So this is the proposal for like, how you avoid this money pump for completeness is by denying decision tree separability. And actually, okay, so the sort of complication is that Gustafson is arguing about whether being representable as an expected utility maximizer is rationally required. Whereas in a, say again,

Divia (43:40)

What is it?

What does that mean, if it's rationally required?

Elliott Thornley (43:45)

Yeah, it's kind of like, it's, we're getting into like normativity and stuff. It's like a requirement of rationality, you like prudentially ought to be a von Neumann Morgenstern accent.

Divia (43:56)

Just like, prudentially, I ought to not have cyclic preferences, we might say. Is it in that sort of sense? Like, is that sort of how you mean it?

Elliott Thornley (44:00)

Yeah, yeah, it's like, I'm gonna go now. I will say that again.

Yeah, it's like arguments about what we prudentially ought to do or be. It's like rationality requires that you are.

Divia (44:13)

Okay. And so this is not like a mathematically rigorous thing. Or is it?

Elliott Thornley (44:18)

Well, it's kind of like, it's a way of interpreting this claim of decision tree separability, which might affect how compelling you find it. You know, we come into theorizing with some intuitions about what rationality requires. And maybe we think that rationality requires that we satisfy decision tree separability, that like, our decision shouldn't depend on

parts of the decision tree that we can no longer access.

Divia (44:49)

which some people have an intuition about that or some sort of moral impression about that.

Elliott Thornley (44:54)

Yeah, I think that's basically what it comes down to. And my point that I make in the post is like, know, decision tree separability interpreted as a claim about rationality is somewhat contentious. But when we're thinking about how advanced artificial agents will in fact behave, we need this like analog of the premise, which is instead claims about how artificial agents will in fact behave, namely that they will in fact

Daniel (44:58)

Yeah.

Elliott Thornley (45:24)

ignore parts of the decision tree to which they no longer have access and behave the same no matter what happened in the past. And this claim is very easy to doubt, right? So if you create an artificial agent that in fact modulates its behavior depending on what happened in the past, then you can falsify this claim. And so you could quite easily create this artificial agent that failed to satisfy decision tree separability and thereby avoid the money pump for completeness.

Divia (45:34)

Yeah.

Elliott Thornley (45:54)

yep.

Daniel (45:55)

Can I maybe use this as a jumping off point to say a slightly weird thing about this literature, which is that you might have thought that money pump arguments, or you might have thought that the way you should talk about for Norman rationality or whatever, is some theorem like, if you don't do this, then a bad thing will actually happen to you. And maybe you might think that the theorems would be something about what kinds of things agents actually do.

And if you don't actually do this thing, then a bad thing will in fact happen to you. And like, I think some arguments are kind of like this. And then some arguments are basically talking about, you know, the object of von Neumann rationality is just like your preferences, which are just things inside your head about like how you rank various outcomes that might not even be things that you actually do. And then the theorems are like, well, if you, you know, if your preferences inside your head are arranged a certain way.

then some preferences will depend on other things. But that's a crazy way for the inside of your head to be arranged. And that's like really bad. And, yeah, they'll use these words that send you to dictionary, like cognitive attitudes, which is a word for like cognitive, which I had to look up. means like relating to your desires, I believe. Yeah, so C -O -N.

Divia (47:12)

So, what attitudes?

We'll work on that later.

Hm. Can you spell that? Sorry. Yeah. cognitive. OK. Interesting.

Daniel (47:22)

A -T -I -V -E, if I recall correctly. Anyway, and so like, from my point of view, if I'm trying to think about AIs, I sort of want to think like, I want to say something like, if they aren't, or I don't know if I would like to say this, but the kind of theorem that I'm interested in hearing is if they don't actually do expected utility maximizing behavior, then a bad thing will happen to them and I'll be able to take all of their stuff and, you know.

Divia (47:51)

Right.

Daniel (47:52)

Whereas theorems that are like, if you, you know, that's like a bad way for the inside of your head to be, I'm sort of like, well, does a bad thing actually happen? And it's relevant because like, so the thing about bad things for the insides of your head to be, like, I'm saying that in a sort of dismissive way, but I think some people are tempted to cite these money pump arguments to say like, if my preferences

you know, if like the preferences I have represented in the insides of my head are a certain way, I will realize that that's a bad way for them to be. And then I will choose to arrange them in a slightly different way. And statements like that are about like the insides of your head and what you'll be tempted to do. And so in those settings, you're almost tempted to take the versions of the theorems that say like, yeah, if the insides of your heads have to be like this, otherwise it's bad for some reason.

But like, then you have to really make sure you believe the assumptions about like, hey, why would it be bad for some reason for the insides of your heads to be another way? Like, if you want to get a non -trivial assumption about like, if the insides of your head are one way, you will realize that it's bad and change them to be another way. Like, well, the bit where you realize that it's bad, like that's a non -trivial assumption about what the inside of your head is going to be. like, who knows?

Divia (49:17)

Yeah, I'm like, don't, in this moment, certainly, I don't feel very compelled by what, like, why would that be bad? Which I guess is what you're saying.

Daniel (49:23)

Yeah, well, it's the thing about the insights of your heads maybe being bad is just like a surprising amount of the literature is focused on this question. Surprising to me.

Divia (49:35)

And the bad is some sort of intuition that, for example, it's bad to have what you're going to choose now be affected by your memory of what you didn't choose before. That's an example of badness.

Daniel (49:48)

Maybe that kind of thing, maybe Elliot can go into this further. But yeah.

Divia (49:52)

Elliot's nodding. You think maybe it is?

Elliott Thornley (49:54)

Yeah, yeah. So Gustafsson, like, yeah, he gives these arguments and, you know, they're very inventive and I think like fairly compelling when we're interpreting them in terms of rational requirements, where like, the point is that when we're interpreting them as in terms of rational requirements, we can sort of appeal to intuitions about

rationality and what you prudentially ought to do and then maybe to some extent these premises about like, badness in the head become more compelling. But in the context of coherence arguments, I totally agree that they kind of lose all force and it's kind of disappointing to realize that these arguments that seem like they're just relying on math alone are actually depending at root on premises like

artificial agents won't in fact modulate their behavior, depending on what happened in the past or like artificial agents will in fact be indifferent between B when they could have had a and B when they couldn't have had a or something like that. You really like need these things and it's kind of disappointing that you do.

Divia (51:08)

This is.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's sort of, I don't know, thanks for talking this through because now it sort of reminds me a little bit, a lot actually of like, sort of how I used the word rationality before I encountered the rationalist community. But like colloquially people will be like, well it wouldn't be rational if whatever. Where like now that I've engaged so much with, I don't know, like, you know, I stick around the sequences, I hang out with rationalists for like.

God, over a decade or whatever. And if anything now in those sort of colloquial situations where they're like, well, that wouldn't be rational, I'm always like, no, sure, sure, could be like almost anything could be. I feel like saying that you're going to be rational actually rules out a lot less than how people colloquially use it. what am I trying to say precisely? Like, I guess it's an analogy where in this case you're talking about the math, but with me and the rationality community, I'm more just talking about like,

the way my vibes about it sort of converge over like listening to a lot of arguments and hanging out with a lot of people and stuff like that. Like maybe a classic example is that's really the same thing is I think when I was a kid, if someone would be like, it's sort of irrational to like turn down something out of like, you don't, because it has, because out of like spite or something. And then I thought about it more and I'm like, no.

sorts of like that could totally make sense or like it wouldn't be rational to do something just because you didn't want other people to see that you've done that and now I'm like why not like that could be part of my goals too or I don't like things like that's I don't know if that resonates with anyone else

Elliott Thornley (52:55)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think part of it is when we talk about rationality, we're sometimes talking about this kind of purely instrumental rationality, where it's about sort of taking effective means to your ends. And sometimes we're talking about this more substantive conception where like, not only is it about taking effective means to your ends, it's partly about having the right ends. You know,

Divia (53:08)

Mm

And it's also partly about having the right ends, I think, in a way that's like legible to outside observers so that people can expect a certain sort of coordination that they think is normative. Is that, I don't know, that's the thing I think.

Elliott Thornley (53:19)

You

Yeah, that sounds fairly compelling to me.

Divia (53:33)

Like I read, this is maybe a bit of an aside, but the thing that I think about all the time, Kevin Simmler has an essay called, Personhood, a game for two or more players or something, something that looks very similar to that title, where he talks about like what it means to be recognized as a person in society. And a lot of what that means is to do things for reasons. And it means, I mean, of course it's a little bit contextual and nebulous and all of that, but like, I think a lot of what that means is things that other people recognize as reasons.

Like I've also spent a lot of time with children, because I have children and I've been doing that for them, especially young children. Often people are like, well, that's completely unreasonable. And I think what they mean is not that they don't have reasons, but that they don't have the sort of approved like, okay, if sort of adult persons have those sorts of reasons, then we can kind of expect society to be able to coordinate in these types of ways. Which is maybe a little bit of my soapbox, but I think it's relevant.

Elliott Thornley (54:26)

Mm

Daniel (54:30)

relevant. Can I maybe like say something in defense of the people who are like, who are telling you what you have to want and stuff? So, so I mean, this sort of gets to, I don't know, I think this is closely related to arguments about what counts as expected utility theory or whatever. And it gets back to this question of like, well, how do you like how do you motivate these money pump arguments? And like, the way you motivate the money pump arguments broadly is there's a thing called money, and you can have

Divia (54:38)

Yeah, yeah, go.

Daniel (54:59)

more of it or less of it. It's better to have more of it, right? And like, we actually do live. Okay, I'm about to say some things and they're like math adjacent, but like, don't know. I'm going to use mathy concepts, but like in a loose way. Okay. So

Divia (55:16)

Defense from the potential accusation that you're trying to pretend like something math is, math when it's not, no, it's not real math. Cool. We got it.

Daniel (55:19)

Yeah. Yeah. And it's good for people to know that. we live in a universe, right? And the universe has like, there's this thing called free energy, right? Like if I have

Divia (55:33)

Do you mean like in the first instance? I've just been trying to...

Daniel (55:35)

No, I mean in the physics -y, just like literal, like I can have a battery, right? And can put it in a machine and the machine will do a thing and the machine will heat up and then I like can't use that energy to do stuff anymore, right?

Divia (55:48)

Okay, true.

Daniel (55:50)

So like.

Like, I don't know, the universe is made of objects and stuff that could be moved around. if you are in control, in control, in scare quotes, because what does that even mean? But if you're in control of more resources, more energy to actually go about doing stuff, you can change the state of the universe more. Similarly, I don't know, if you really believe in probabilities or something, you could imagine the kind of agent

So one of the assumptions in the von Neumann -Morgenstern theorem is continuity. We talked a bit about it before. And basically, what it comes down to is you don't care about super tiny probability worlds. And like,

Divia (56:32)

I'm compelled by this. Maybe I shouldn't be, but it seems intuitive to me.

Daniel (56:35)

Yeah, I mean, it's intuitive to me, but like, imagine somebody who says like, no, I actually just do care about like incredibly tiny probability worlds. care about like probability of things being greater than zero. Like if something has probability greater than zero, that's like a billion times better to me than having probability zero. On the one hand, like, what can you really say to that person? But on the other hand, like in the world that we're actually going to live in with very high probability, they're not going to get their way and you're going to get your way if you get into some conflict. Right. So like, like if you, if you buy this

Divia (57:00)

Yeah, I'm compelled. Yeah.

Daniel (57:05)

picture of a world with just like physical constraints and like physical stuff that you can actually do if you're managing like free energy and if you're just like managing sort of the macro state of the world, not like the micro state of, you know, which atoms are exactly in what place.

Divia (57:18)

having some like one billionth of a percent of a probability that I get a lot of stuff. Yeah, okay.

Daniel (57:23)

Yeah, like, like, basically, there are certain types of preference structures, which mean that, like, in the actual physical world, you're not going to be reflected in it, you're not gonna like control that much of it, you're not gonna steer it. ones where you care about, like, are these two atoms swapped or not? Or the ones where you're like, it's rational for me to, to just delete all of my, like, like, suppose I have a hard

Divia (57:33)

But which ones? Which ones?

Daniel (57:52)

drive with some Bitcoin on it. And I'm like, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to delete just the private key for that. I'm going to like make it impossible for me to spend that Bitcoin. And this is actually better than not doing that because even though I have less resources, my computer is a little bit hotter and I typed out some commands and like, therefore it's rational for me to do that thing. And you can't tell me that that's irrational. And I'm like, well,

Divia (58:02)

Yeah.

Okay, I'm not gonna defend one.

Daniel (58:20)

Okay, I'm not saying you're gonna defend that one. I'm just like

Divia (58:22)

I don't think that's a good defense of the people that were trying to, and I don't even, I'm not trying to blame individual people, but some vibes I got from society about what and was not rational for me to want as a kid. I think it wasn't that type of stuff. I think it wasn't me being like, let me just delete my private key to my Bitcoin. I basically agree. I think there's some sort of sense that I agree with where I'm like, that seems like a terrible idea for almost everyone to

point where it seemed kind of rational when the person's going to go, like, yes, they could have their special snowflake preferences if I just get so much utility from deleting my private key. But for the most part, and I can think of edge cases where someone might want to, like real ones that I have thought about, but I think it's

Daniel (59:00)

Hmm. Yeah, I guess I'm like, I'm not exactly, I'm more doing something that's adjacent to defending the Divya bothers than like actually defending them. But like, I don't know, it feels relevant to me for understanding, like especially if we're trying to like form rigorous arguments about what AI's will do and people will be like, well, who used to say that this thing is irrational? Like, I do just want to say like, look, some preference, like some ways of behaving mean that you don't get reflected in the future very much.

Divia (59:29)

Yeah, I you can be like a causally relevant thing and some things mean you can't. Yeah, okay, I agree with that. No, okay, I think that's right. But no one's really formalized those ways necessarily that we know of.

Daniel (59:33)

Yeah, yeah. don't know. That's... Yeah.

Elliott Thornley (59:37)

Yeah.

Daniel (59:44)

I'm unaware of anyone doing that, maybe Elliot is.

Elliott Thornley (59:47)

Yeah, guess, yeah, so Daniel, what you say sounds right, but it's not so much a care adherence argument at that point is more like a selection argument or something like that.

Daniel (59:58)

Yeah, think, well, I think that like these money and pop arguments, you can like view them as coherence arguments or selection arguments. I feel kind of indifferent to which ones you use, but like, if you say like, the reason that traveling in cycles, like suppose I'm paying money to travel in a circle, is that like incoherent or is that selected against? Well, I'm sure it matters which one you say, but I'm sort of like...

It doesn't matter that much to me right now.

Divia (1:00:30)

Okay, sorry, I think I wanna make one thing, which is I think, and people make arguments that at a certain point, it's sort of natural for the AI to become a single set. I'm not currently like totally persuasive. Like sometimes these scenes seem a little persuasive to me, it doesn't seem obvious to me that that's what's gonna happen. So if I set that aside, I think...

Elliott Thornley (1:00:30)

Yeah

Divia (1:00:58)

So if I'm gonna fight with the like vibes I got from society when I was a kid about what rationality meant, I think actually there's a very natural set of strategies for an agent type thing to use in a situation where there are other agent type things that roughly look like, does it seem like some weird adversarial thing is going on? If so, do some stuff that might not otherwise be considered rational.

for good reason, because it seems like if I do that, then I'm gonna, partly because I'm predictable and partly because whatever, somebody is gonna do some weird thing to me and so I should not. And yeah, I think a lot of the things people were like, well, that wouldn't be rational, were in fact for good social reasons. And I think that is legitimate analogy to some sort of impression about like, okay, but is this thing gonna get like infinitely money pumped or is this thing gonna get whatever? And I think that's distinct from like, are you just sort of,

giving up all of your power to affect the universe in the future, which is like the deleting your private key thing. I don't know if I, obviously I feel very far from any ability to formalize any of this, but that's maybe where I would start is to try to separate out like, am I dealing with somebody trying to mess with me or am I doing some other activity that's like giving away all my power?

Daniel (1:02:21)

I've talked to -

Divia (1:02:21)

I know, Ellie, do you have thoughts on this latest round of back and forth?

Elliott Thornley (1:02:28)

Yeah, I don't know what you say sounds sounds compelling to me. I feel like I don't have much to add to that point.

Daniel (1:02:36)

Maybe it gets to this thing again of just like what counts as a thing that you might have preferences over, right? So like, if someone's allowed to expand, like, you know, the definition of what a thing is to include, like, it seems like someone is f*****g with me, and I can have different utilities for like this situation, but someone is trying to mess with me than this situation, but it's not true that someone is trying to mess with me, then it's like a lot easier to recover expected utility theory. That's question of like, is that even a legit move?

Divia (1:02:42)

Mm

I intuit that it is because it's so much of what human beings are be up to.

Daniel (1:03:06)

Well, there's a legit move of behaving differently in those situations. And there's a question of, it a legit move to say, no, that counts as expected utility maximizing. And therefore, expected utility maximizing is rational, because this thing that you're doing that is rational counts as expected utility maximizing.

Divia (1:03:20)

I see.

Okay, there's a sentence, I probably should have it pulled up, but I don't. Daniel, I'm guessing you are, at least there's some document that Eliezer wrote about a cheerful price.

Daniel (1:03:38)

so I think, yes, I think someone else originally wrote a document about a happy price and Eliezer was like, no, it's going to be cheerful.

Divia (1:03:44)

Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah. Elliot, do you know this document?

Elliott Thornley (1:03:48)

Yeah, I think I read this.

Divia (1:03:50)

Okay, so there's something there where, and to me it gets at like the part of, like something that resonates with what you're saying, Daniel, about like, okay, but it is kind of irrational to elude your private key, where Eliezer says something, and maybe I'll get the exact quote in a minute, but first I'll say what I remember from it, which is, and look, if you're the sort of person where it feels terrible to exchange money just because that's sort of how you are, whatever, yes, I respect that footnote, but there is this thing where if you deeply understood the mathematical structure of the universe, then probably you wouldn't really be

Daniel (1:04:23)

I

I can scroll through, I don't know that quite off the top of my head.

Divia (1:04:35)

Okay, well, I think what I get from it is like, no, but if you really have thought about that resources are good for stuff and that money is a resource, that there may still be some like, ick factor of like, what does it mean to exchange money that is real and matters, but there will be this counter balancing thing that's like, okay, but something real is happening when we exchange money that really does.

matter and in ways that can be used for good things. Where someone could maybe be like, but if we do that, then it'll hurt. Like if we exchange money, then maybe I won't feel as close to you. And the inner person who has really thought about this then asks themselves some question that's like, okay, but is there some way I could use money then to translate into us feeling closer together that isn't dumb?

like maybe we spend it having some experience together or something like that. And like thinking about that sort of fungible, that some resources really are pretty fungible and trade -offs are a thing and there was never really an option of 0 % chance of that anyway. And like, I don't know, or the way that like people I think often can, and it interacts with sacred values and I'm not trying to dismiss that, but be pretty weird about people taking jobs, for example, that have like some.

Because they'll be like, well, I wouldn't do that if it would maybe kill me and be really sensitive to framings of like, is there some upside of like not dying or, and then in practice, I look at like some chart of wages and employment and it'll be like, yeah, people seem to be willing to trade off some chance of dying at their job for some higher income. And so maybe that does make it, even though it's really fraught, a little less ridiculous to be like, and that's, we're going to pick these sorts of numbers to value people's lives.

I don't know this is too much of a rant. There's something there that's resources are real and it's sort of related to like instrumental convergence is a thing and that that's sort of maybe it hasn't been formalized, but it matters for being an agent and acting in ways that make sense.

Daniel (1:06:23)

I agree with the rants.

Maybe it sort of connects to this question of proposed ways of acting that don't count as expected utility maximization, but involve not throwing away all your money. And to what extent are there such ways and how do we feel about them? I guess I broadly agree, but.

Maybe one thing to say is like, expected utility, like when people are looking at expected utility theory, they're, typically looking at a very, like, like a very sort of bare bones set of options and like, you know, you have A, B and C and like B is like A, but you got paid five cents and like, like, like, like these sorts of considerations of like, but, like, you can use the five cents to do something else, like tend not to come up or yeah, I don't know.

Maybe Elliot has more here.

Divia (1:07:33)

I found the quote. It's interesting. I actually didn't realize Eliezer was going to use the word coherence theorems in the quote. I'm going to read it. The question, but okay, but as you admit, some people, even most people would rather not put financial prices on things at all and their friendships, they'd rather just do things for favors without a blah, blah, blah. He says, I was speaking mostly tongue in cheek, but in fact, there are coherence theorems saying that you either have to have consistent quantitative trade -offs between the things you want or your strategies can be rearranged to get you strictly more of everything you want.

I think that truly understanding these theorems is not compatible with being horrified at the prospect of pricing one thing in terms of another thing. I think there is a true bit of mathematical enlightenment you get and see into the structure of choice -making, and then you are less horrified by the thought of pricing things in money.

And so I read that and I'm like, okay, maybe, I don't know about these coherence theorems, but I think he's right about a thing that is true that I predict exists and makes the people less horrified about it.

Elliott Thornley (1:08:30)

Yeah, I don't know. think it's complicated. I think insofar as your squeamishness about money is forcing you to have acyclic preferences, then if you think carefully about that, you'll probably want to change those preferences in some way and so resolve the acyclicity. There's another kind of coherency thing that Eliezer talks about in either this post or another one, which is about like,

putting inconsistent prices on things. And I agree that the consequence of that is getting at most as much of something as you want and strictly less of something else than you want. And so that's a reason like not to put inconsistent prices on things. But I think again, it's sort of like extrapolating too far from these cases where the coherence -ish arguments work to cases where they don't in fact work from like

acyclicity and inconsistent prices to all the other von Neumann -Morgenstern axioms and full -blown expected utility maximization.

Divia (1:09:38)

Okay, so and you're saying you would put inconsistent prices in sort of roughly the same category as having those cyclical preferences as like, yeah, you probably if you notice that normatively, you kind of think people should change them.

Elliott Thornley (1:09:52)

Yeah, I think so. Exactly. Because, yeah, the distribution you in fact get is going to be dominated by some other available distribution. And in fact, Carl Schulman and I make an argument like this in this Global Catastrophes paper that we published a couple years ago, where it's like, you know, the US government is willing to pay $10 million to save a life in expectation when it comes to road traffic regulations. And so they should also be willing to

pay that much in expectation to prevent people from dying in global catastrophes. Exactly because if you pay $10 million to save someone on the road, but don't pay $5 million to save someone from dying of a global catastrophe, there's some other distribution of money spent such that you pay no more and save more people or save the same number of people and pay less.

Divia (1:10:50)

And a global, and when you say global catastrophe, you mean like something that affects everyone. You're not necessarily, because I'm like, I think there's some argument that the US government wants to pay more to protect citizens, but you're like, no, no, these are, these are US citizens in both cases that you're comparing.

Elliott Thornley (1:11:03)

yeah, US citizens both cases.

Divia (1:11:06)

Cool. Okay. All right. So I do want to segue a little into, Elliot, so your proposals for alignment, can you lay out both about them in general and about what, like the, what you, how you think this, this agent could work and not be doing the stuff that really people shouldn't do, but not be obeying all those axioms and therefore you could shut them off or something. Can you explain how that would go?

Elliott Thornley (1:11:36)

Yeah, so I call it the incomplete preferences proposal and incomplete preferences is really the key thing. in a nutshell, the idea is you train your agent to lack a preference between every pair of different length trajectories, where different length trajectories are sort of like, you can think of them as different length lives of the agent. So, you know, if in one possible life, the agent lives 10 minutes and another possible life, they live 20 minutes, then they lack a preference between.

Daniel (1:11:47)

you

Elliott Thornley (1:12:06)

those two.

Divia (1:12:06)

assuming there aren't any other major differences between these things or even if there are.

Elliott Thornley (1:12:12)

yeah, no matter what. you know, if it's 10 minutes versus 20 minutes, the agent lacks a preference no matter what. And the reason why... yeah.

Divia (1:12:20)

So even it, and this, I should maybe just let you go with that. This is a maybe surprising thing. So like the one where it is on for 10 minutes and then it's off versus the one where it's on for 11 minutes and gets all of its wildest dreams fulfilled and then gets shut off a minute later, it's supposed to lack of preference.

Elliott Thornley (1:12:38)

Yeah, that's right. And I agree it is surprising, but okay. So the idea is that if you train this agent that lacks a preference between every pair of different length trajectories, then it's never going to like pay costs to shift probability mass between different trajectory lengths, different possible lengths of life. And this is sort of exactly the thing that you want to keep the agent shut downable to ensure that it never resists shut down. It's sort of never going to be willing to pay any kind of cost to resist shut down.

won't spend some seconds thinking about it, won't spend some jewels trying to make it Yeah.

Divia (1:13:12)

This is so.

And you think it would be tractable to train an agent that way and it wouldn't create any sort of situation where it kind of notices that and it's like, no, that's incoherent so I better not. You think it could work and it would not be flagged as incoherent by the agent.

Elliott Thornley (1:13:31)

Yeah, so this is the hope at least. So, you know, I pushed back on these coherence arguments to think that incomplete preferences can be reflectively coherent. You know, this agent could have these incomplete references and think, I'm okay, I'm not going to pursue a dominated strategy exactly because I violate this decision tree separability axiom that we talked about earlier. And I can like make choices that prevent me from pursuing dominated strategies, even though my preferences are incomplete.

Divia (1:14:02)

Okay, and then, but now I'm trying to compare that to, I don't know what I'm thinking of Daniel's proposal for like, okay, but there's some intuitive sense that you should want to be like a powerful type agent.

Elliott Thornley (1:14:15)

Mm

Daniel (1:14:15)

Yeah.

Divia (1:14:16)

something. I seem to violate that one, right?

Elliott Thornley (1:14:20)

Well, yeah, I don't know. It's kind of an open question. think.

Yeah, so the agent sort of lacks a preference between every pair of different length trajectories. If you think about like powerful humans are often going to have incomplete preferences and that seems to indicate at least to some extent that incomplete preferences don't preclude this power seeking. Yeah.

Daniel (1:14:48)

Can I give you my concern about this proposal and you can respond. So if I sort of anthropomorphize this, right? This sounds like me being like totally indifferent about how long my life is, right? And like a short life that's like really bad or something. I'm indifferent between that and a long life that's like really awesome. And I take control of every continent or something. And my worry about that is...

Elliott Thornley (1:14:53)

There we go.

Daniel (1:15:18)

Okay, firstly, that sounds crazy to me, which maybe this is something I've got to get over. But like, that's, that's just my intuitive reaction. If I'm like, why, what's bad about that? Well, one problem is,

Like there might be threats to the agent's longevity that aren't just like humans shutting it down. For instance, there are threats like, you know, there's just like some random problem and you know, the, there's an interruption to the power supply to its data center or like, you know, some, like we're in a world with like a few AIs and there's this nasty AI trying to shut off our nice AI and the nice AI doesn't like try to stop it or whatever. And I'm like,

Well, if your agent is vulnerable to those things, that seems like it would be bad because it can't do as much good stuff that you wanted out of an agent. So I don't know. That's my first pass concern. I'm wondering, what do think of that?

Elliott Thornley (1:16:18)

Yeah, yeah, on that concern, I think, you you train your agent to lack a preference between different length trajectories, where importantly, like different length trajectories are trajectories in which like the shutdown button is pressed after different lengths of time, say, and the shutdown button never being pressed is just one more possible trajectory length. And if those are your agent's preferences, then the agent could still prefer not to be like incapacitated in some way.

not mediated by the shutdown button, because it's like, you know, the agent has a choice between either being destroyed by the evil AI or not being destroyed by the evil AI. And suppose that the shutdown button is never going to get pressed. And no matter what, those are like same length trajectories in the relevant sense. If the good AI gets more of what it wants in the trajectory where it doesn't. yeah.

Divia (1:17:12)

So I don't think I follow that. You're not saying, one thing that you could have been saying is that it only sort of counts if the human presses the shutoff button for the thing you're talking about. But I don't think that's what you're saying. And then I don't understand it.

Elliott Thornley (1:17:28)

Yeah, so you want your different length trajectories, like you want your length of trajectory to be decided in a particular way. So maybe like one possible implementation is you have like some physical button somewhere that transmits some signal that tells the AI it's time to shut down or something like that. And it's sort of the time at which that signal is transmitted that the

AI.

Divia (1:17:58)

people couldn't then the evil AI just be like, okay, my new plan is to press that button. And so now it can't stop me.

Elliott Thornley (1:18:04)

Yeah, so this is good. This is exactly right. But I feel like this is a problem not to be solved by some clever shutdown ability proposal, but to be solved in like the usual way that we solve things. It's like my shutdown button, now I've got to protect it from the evil AI.

Divia (1:18:19)

Go.

it and put it in a very safe location and that's the plan for that or something like that.

Elliott Thornley (1:18:30)

Yeah.

Daniel (1:18:30)

So when you say my shutdown button, I've got to protect it from the evil AI, is the first person voice there? Is that supposed to be like what the human designer of the AI system is thinking, or is that supposed to be what the AI is thinking?

Elliott Thornley (1:18:43)

yeah, sorry, human designer. So the...

Daniel (1:18:46)

Okay.

Divia (1:18:47)

I mean, the human's allowed to ask the AI, how do I protect the shutdown button, presumably.

Elliott Thornley (1:18:52)

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel (1:18:54)

Yes, although I worry that in your proposal, the AI is going to be indifferent between telling the truth to the human and telling a lie. if the AI tells the truth to a human about how to protect the shutdown button, then probably that will mean that the shutdown button will be pressed at a different time than it would otherwise.

Divia (1:19:05)

No, but...

It changes the expected value of the trajectory and therefore it doesn't can't even have its usual preference for truth in that scenario. Yeah, I see.

Daniel (1:19:25)

If I understand correctly, but I might not.

Elliott Thornley (1:19:28)

Yeah, so Daniel, you're right. the AI doesn't have a reason to tell the truth purely from like wanting to extend its life. So it's going to depend on the AI's preferences between staying on the truth.

Divia (1:19:40)

But it affirmatively doesn't have a preference about anything it could do that would affect its potential lifespan, right?

Elliott Thornley (1:19:48)

well, okay. So we've just talked about the AI's lack of preference so far. It lacks a preference between every pair of different length trajectories. The agent can have preferences between same length trajectories. And this is the key thing that incomplete preferences let you do. You you can have an agent that lacks a preference between every pair of different length trajectories that has preferences between same length trajectories. And it could well be that, you you train your AI to prefer to tell you the truth in every same length trajectory. And that

Daniel (1:20:17)

You're right.

Elliott Thornley (1:20:18)

United States and the world truth.

Divia (1:20:18)

But this is dumb. I think I'm still missing something. I'm like, isn't it kind of true that literally everything the AI does will affect the probability of it will affect its expected trajectory?

Elliott Thornley (1:20:32)

Yeah, I think that's right. So in particular, so we've been talking about preference relation between trajectories, which are like getting particular outcomes for certain. In deployment, the agent is going to always be choosing between lotteries plausibly. There's going to be some uncertainty about the consequences of each action. And what the incomplete preferences sort of lead on to naturally is this principle that I call time step dominance.

Divia (1:20:34)

then how do I, sorry.

Mm

Elliott Thornley (1:21:01)

And time step dominance basically says when the agent is choosing between lotteries, the agent is not going to be willing to pay costs to shift probability mass between different trajectory lengths. And this is the key.

Divia (1:21:14)

Can you give a more concrete example of what that means to shift probability mass between trajectory lengths?

Elliott Thornley (1:21:20)

Yeah, your classic example or like very simple example is by default, the agent is with 90 % probability going to get shut down at time step one and 10 % probability going to get shut down at time step two. And, you know, suppose it cares about paper clips and no matter what, it's going to get five paper clips conditional on shut down at each time step. What it can do is

spend one paperclip to shift the probability mass such that now there's only a 10 % chance it gets shut down at time step one and 90 % chance it gets shut down at time step two. In each case, it gets like four paperclips now conditional on each trajectory length. So this would be an example of like paying costs to shift probability mass between different trajectory lengths.

Divia (1:22:10)

Okay, got it.

Daniel (1:22:12)

Can I see if I understand the case where I ask the AI how to protect the shutdown button? So maybe the thing that's going on is something like the AI just like for any given lifetime it could have until the shutdown button is pressed, the AI has a preference to tell me the truth rather than lie to me. Let's just say that it has that. Then when I ask you the question, how do I protect the shutdown button, it will like

basically tell me the truth. Like that does change the it's expected lifespan, but like, you know, there's some probability that like, you know, there's some probability that I, it tells me the answer and I like failed to protect it. And it like gets shut down exactly the same time as it would have been. and if that happens, then, it prefers to have told me the truth and I've gotten shut down early rather than to have lied to me and have gotten shut down early. and so, so if, telling me the truth, we're like,

super reliable and like definitely changing which times it would get shut down, then it might be indifferent. But because there's like some overlap in the probabilities, then it's going to want to tell me the truth. Is that, do I understand that correctly?

Elliott Thornley (1:23:24)

Yeah, that's exactly right. yeah, we're like hoping that in deployment, the agent is choosing between lotteries. And we're hoping that exactly because if the agent is choosing between different length trajectories, it's going to always lack a preference. Whereas in cases like the one you outlined, we want the agent to prefer telling the truth. And we expect the agent to tell the truth exactly because it sort of looks better conditional on each trajectory length. You know, if it gets shut down at time step one,

It's glad that it told the truth. If it gets shut down at time step two, it's glad that it told the truth and so on. Or like that's too anthropomorph -fisey. Prefer that it told the truth. Yeah.

Divia (1:24:06)

Okay, so I appreciate you talking about the proposal. I think given that we don't have a ton more time, I wanna talk a little bit about, and I can't tell if I'm mostly the one interested in this, but sort of like the sociological situation with the coherence theorems, which maybe we did a little bit before, but I think I wanna circle back to it. And maybe, I don't know, maybe Elliot, if we could start with you, like what is, I don't know, you wrote this, I don't know how much you have engaged on Less Wrong before you wrote this post. Is it?

Do you like to read your frequent reader? Do you post other things?

Elliott Thornley (1:24:36)

Again, no, not very much. think this was my first post. Maybe I'd posted like one or two comments before, I've, yeah, fair bit. And I've been spinning.

Divia (1:24:43)

And had you been reading much?

Okay, so you're a regular Less Wrong reader, but this was maybe your first post. Like, I don't know, what was your impression after posting it of like sort of the state of Less Wrong's ability to have a decent discussion of epistemic rationality on Less Wrong of like sort of epistemic health of the AI safety space, etc.

Elliott Thornley (1:25:09)

Yeah, I haven't thought too much about this, but in general, I hold less wrong and pretty high esteem. think a lot of the posts are interesting. A lot of smart people saying interesting and convincing things. lot of the comment sections and discussion seems very good. In the comment section of the Coherence Theorem's post, I think I'm partly at fault because it was like a provocative title and

I define coherence theorems in a particular way, and I think people didn't like that definition, and so a lot of discussion centered around that definition, which... yeah.

Divia (1:25:47)

It reminds me a lot, Sarah Constantine, ages ago, wrote a post on her personal blog called EA Has a Lying Problem, which I think she put, I don't know, but it's been a long time since I've revisited. I think it also has the quality of like generated a lot of interesting discussion. I think she made some substantive points. I think naturally a lot of the focus was on the title.

Elliott Thornley (1:25:57)

Mm

Mm -hmm. yeah. Yeah, I guess the title is the only thing that you can guarantee everyone is right, I think, and that's part of it.

Divia (1:26:11)

where people are like, that's not what lying means. Anyway, yeah.

Right.

Daniel (1:26:20)

Yeah, although I do think, I mean, to come to your defense a little bit, I do think that one of the types of things that less wrong, I think is supposed to be good at is just handling stipulative definitions. Like if someone's like, hey, I want to use a word in this particular way in this case. And it's like within the range of things that people sometimes mean by this word or whatever, I'm like,

I do think that's the sort of thing that you're supposed to be okay with. Or, I don't know, you might be bit annoyed if it's in the title and people might get a misimpression from the title, I actually think, I don't know, I would hope that we could handle at least this particular instance of a stipulative definition, because I think it's fine enough for its context. Yeah.

Elliott Thornley (1:27:11)

Yeah, yeah. And I should say also that I didn't expect this. Like I genuinely thought this was the less wrong definition from my like various readings of less wrong posts and things like that. And I think it's worth saying as well that like, in the decision theory literature, no such thing as a coherence theorem, like it's not a not a phrase that it comes up. So it's like a really doesn't look to be like a less wrong coining. And so I thought that

Daniel (1:27:37)

Right.

Elliott Thornley (1:27:41)

If I just read it, I'll figure out the definition and use the right definition.

Divia (1:27:41)

What an eye

Yeah, and I wasn't actually, I thought of that thing from cheerful price without thinking it would have, it have used the phrase coherence there, but then it did. I'm like, yeah, that does seem to be an example of Eliezer using it sort of kind of like how I think you were assuming people used it.

Elliott Thornley (1:28:01)

Yeah, maybe. don't know. sort of in preparation for this podcast, I went back and read the post and yeah, since maybe I'm not as confident as I once was that this was the definition. I still think like on balance, a lot of posts use it in this way, but like I'm, it's sort of more up in the air than.

Divia (1:28:22)

Yeah, this is sort of why I think I tried to add some weasel words also, because I'm like, maybe that's not what anyone really meant. But I think it's what a lot of people read. I think it's what I thought that he meant, reading it. And I think it's not just me. Because I think, Daniel, you were saying the same thing of like, were like, yeah, isn't that stuff like all proved and whatever? I think that was my point too. And I think I guess it's the majority. don't know. I'm always wrong when I say things like that. I think a significant chunk of less wrong users also had the impression when people said things like,

Daniel (1:28:39)

Yeah. Er -

Divia (1:28:50)

coherence theorem, they'll be like, yeah, it's like, prove that you like basically have to be that way or else something terrible happens, like you lose all your money.

Daniel (1:28:57)

I think maybe there's something a bit slightly more subtle here where there really are... So, I don't know, proofs generally involve, okay, if you assume, like, I'm going to assume these premises and I'm going to get this conclusion, right? And the question is, I think less wrong types are maybe more happy than they perhaps should be to accept, like, yeah, p implies q when actually p and also some additional assumption, p prime or...

whatever, which like one may or may not accept. Like, if I make some assumptions and like, feel like one is like basically solid to get Q, I might like just mentally forget the other assumption. And then there's this question of like, just how solid are your other assumptions, right? Because even with like the money pump arguments in the money pump arguments book or whatever, like those have this assumption that like, you know, you can just take a state of the world and just make it definitely better or definitely worse, right? And that's like a substantive assumption. And if

If money pump arguments were proved just up to like, have to assume the existence of money or whatever, then I'd be like, come on. Don't like, don't nitpick about that. If money pump arguments were proved up to, you have to assume one, like you're a pretty controversial claim or whatever, then that does matter. so, or it almost reminds me of like the way physicists reason. So, so like, I studied physics in undergrad to some degree, and I also studied math in undergrad to some degree and like,

physicists and mathematicians have a bit of a disagreement about just how rigorous you're supposed to be. Physicists are just very loose with, yeah, every function is twice differentiable and everything, every operation you kind of want to do that works in nice cases, we're just going to say that it works and mathematicians are not like this. And to me, feels a little bit similar except.

Also, with you drop the thing of you remember exactly which assumptions you needed.

Divia (1:30:57)

that you're saying basically the sort of less wrong style about talking about AI stuff is more like the physics level of, but you think physicists do a better job of being like, if you ask them, they'll be like, yeah, yeah, we remember what we were assuming.

Daniel (1:31:03)

It's more like the physics level, yeah.

or it'll be in a textbook somewhere that they can look up. And also like physics, a cool thing about physics as a discipline is it's like more successful than Less Wrong as a forum, as much as I love Less Wrong. Sorry.

Divia (1:31:22)

I mean, it's very empirical, right? Not very. It's a lot more empirical than like, less wrong theorizing.

Daniel (1:31:28)

Yeah, yeah, like, I think they they've got more, I don't know, somehow there's a longer intellectual tradition of like people being careful and knowing like which things you can skimp on or not. I don't know, that's the analogy that feels that comes to my mind.

Divia (1:31:43)

this year. Yeah, that there's like a real sort of history that you can trust about good heuristics for when to be rigorous and when not to be and that you don't necessarily have that same trust in like less wrong culture sense of where you need to be rigorous.

Daniel (1:31:58)

Yeah, or I have a bit less Tress. Honestly, I still like Lesserong.

Divia (1:32:02)

That makes sense to The amount you would have in physics would be quite high. So yeah, I don't know.

Daniel (1:32:06)

Yeah.

Yeah, no, no, it should be significantly less stressed, actually. I mean, I don't want to say that I totally distrust the last wrong thing. like, I don't know, often.

Like, yeah, how do I think about money pump arguments? I still think like the case where you violate one of the VNM axioms, you can't just violate one. You have to like violate a couple, I think. So if you violate completeness.

Divia (1:32:38)

Wait, sorry, Elliot, is that, I thought you said if you just violated completeness, then those are like a house of cards. You don't get any of

Elliott Thornley (1:32:45)

yeah, that's right, but I don't know if Daniel if that was what you were saying.

Divia (1:32:48)

Maybe you're saying.

Daniel (1:32:48)

yeah, yeah. What I'm saying is that you can't just get rid of one without getting rid of the others, right? It's a case where if you violate completeness, you can't still get the other three. also have to have like, you have to also violate independence. And I guess a lot of people don't mind violating independence, but.

Divia (1:32:56)

We'll see.

Elliott Thornley (1:33:14)

wait, so agents could satisfy just, transitivity, independence, and continuity.

Daniel (1:33:20)

They can?

Elliott Thornley (1:33:21)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Daniel (1:33:24)

I really thought they couldn't. Hang on, I thought I had a proof of this, but maybe I'm wrong.

Elliott Thornley (1:33:31)

yeah, I don't think so. So in particular, there are these representation theorems for agents that just violate completeness. And it's like these multi expected utility representations.

Daniel (1:33:46)

interesting. Okay, maybe that's another thing that I'm wrong about. Okay. Huh.

Elliott Thornley (1:33:55)

Yeah, if so one thing to think is like, if completeness implied independence or vice versa, then you'd only need like three VNM axioms rather than four.

Daniel (1:34:04)

sorry, I mean independence, sorry. I mean like if you have three of them, then you can use a money pump argument to get the fourth is what I meant. Sorry, that.

Elliott Thornley (1:34:14)

Okay, yeah, yeah, that's right. But the order is important. So from completeness, can get transitivity, but you can't like, from transitivity, independence and continuity get completeness, I don't think.

Daniel (1:34:19)

yeah.

I have seen an argument that purports to do that.

Divia (1:34:30)

even with a money box.

Elliott Thornley (1:34:32)

Okay, interesting. I'd be interested to check that out.

Daniel (1:34:35)

can send you the... Actually, it doesn't purport to do that. It just purports to show completeness. But like, if you actually think about it, it assumes independence. Which is fun. This is, so roughly the argument. So, so this is on Less Wrong. It's by John Wentworth, David Larell. And I can send you, it is called, why, maybe it's called, it's called Why Not Subagents by Wentworth and Larell.

Elliott Thornley (1:34:42)

Okay, nice. What's the argument?

Daniel (1:35:05)

And basically the rough argument is, suppose that you have no preference between A and B, but you prefer like A to C and, or it's like you have no preference, but you have some preferences the other way. like roughly the, yeah, you have no preference between A and C, but you prefer A to B and you prefer B to C. And you imagine that you're going to,

be in a world where sometimes you're going to have to choose between A and C, sometimes you're going to have to choose between A and B, sometimes you're going have to choose between B and C. If you don't have a preference between A and C, then you might accidentally choose A like... You might end up picking one over the other and that might end up getting you like B rather than A when you prefer A or the other way around. I forget exactly which one it is. But roughly the argument is if you just decide to add a...

If you randomly decide to add a preference between A and C either way, instead of being indifferent between them, then you decrease the probability that you like do multi -step trade downs. But because you're like randomly adding it, in order for the argument, like the argument says something like,

Divia (1:36:20)

Sorry, can I read a maybe relevant sentence? Okay, or two sentences actually. So it seems like part of what's going on is that...

Daniel (1:36:24)

Yeah, sure.

Divia (1:36:34)

Wentworth, I assume, was saying that, you could have a market of subagents, utility maximizing traders, it's inexploitable, but incomplete. And Nate was like, no, they would use contracts that agents with incomplete preferences will tend to pre -commit slash self -modify in ways which complete their preferences.

Daniel (1:36:53)

Yeah, that's what they're trying to demonstrate. Yeah.

Divia (1:36:57)

Yeah, okay.

Elliott Thornley (1:36:58)

Yeah, so I read this post, I have a comment underneath it where I tried to diagnose where the disagreement is. And I think it's been a while, but they assume that their agent is choosing with this like myopic veto rule.

Divia (1:37:10)

yeah, I see your comment now.

Yep, that's what you said. According to which the agent turns down a trade if the offered option is ranked lower than its current option according to one or more of the agent's utility function would lead to pursue dominated strategies in single sweetening money pumps. But the My Epic B2 rule isn't the only possible rule for decision making with incomplete preferences.

Daniel (1:37:15)

yeah.

Right.

Elliott Thornley (1:37:34)

Yeah, so I tried to push back on.

Divia (1:37:36)

Don't make a sequence of trades if there's another available sequence such that, So anyways, I continue to be very interested in this. However, I think this is really running up and get like past the time where we said we were probably gonna keep going. So I would say, let's do any final words, call this for now. And if we wanna reconvade or anything like that, or continue this argument elsewhere on the internet, that sounds awesome to me.

Daniel (1:37:47)

Right, right.

Elliott Thornley (1:38:01)

yeah, yeah, sounds good to me. Yeah.

Divia (1:38:03)

Okay. Yeah, Daniel, any closing statements from you?

Daniel (1:38:06)

closing statements. I think that maybe one thing to say is that like, it's actually like just, I don't know, if you have some time just like digging into like what these money pump arguments are and like what the arguments for expected utility maximization are. It's like, I actually found it kind of just an interesting exercise to be like, okay, what are the arguments for this and like, which things that I believe actually rely on this. And I ended up thinking that expected utility maximization

I still kind of like it as a model. I'm kind of unconvinced by proposed alternatives, but it's sort of, I don't know, just the notion of expected utility maximization. I feel like it sort of dissolves for me in a kind of interesting way. So I don't know, it's interesting to actually just think about how you might motivate these and what you can actually prove.

Divia (1:39:02)

All right, Elliot, any final thoughts?

Elliott Thornley (1:39:05)

Yeah, I feel like I don't have much more to say than what we said. I agree with Daniel that it's a very interesting area. I encourage people to have a look at the Money Pump Arguments book and have a think about this kind of thing. I think it's especially interesting to think about the arguments in the context of advanced artificial agents and what we expect from them, as opposed to the context in which Johann is writing where it's about like

rational requirements. And I feel like there's a lot of work to be done on thinking about what gets more compelling and what gets less compelling when you sort of do this mental shift in context.

Daniel (1:39:46)

I agree with that. One final thing I want to add, we're referring to this book called Money Pump Arguments by the guy, Johan Gustafsson. The listener might be like, I'm not going to read a book. Like this book is a total of 81 pages before the ends. And it's like, there's a PDF of it online. It's like, as books go, it's like pretty short and readable. So, well, it's pretty short.

Divia (1:40:02)

Nice.

Cool. All right, I appreciate the plug. I'm gonna try to link things in the show notes, but ultimately I can't promise to do that. But thanks everyone for coming. I really appreciate it. I definitely think I learned a bunch of things and I hope some of our listeners did too.

Elliott Thornley (1:40:08)

Yeah, yeah.

All right, yeah, thanks for having me.

Daniel (1:40:24)

Great chatting.

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