The Exchanges

Q Do you ever sleep badly? Because I saw the tweets of yours a while ago, and yours were like four months of perfect scores, and I was like, God, does this guy never have a siren that goes off, or a plane that goes overhead? Like, talk to me about that.

A Yeah, last, two nights ago, I had a terrible night's sleep. I just started a peptide, and I took it before bed, I did an injection, and it wrecked my sleep. And I woke up the next morning feeling absolutely awful. And the entire day I was ornery and foggy and I was, um, I was more emotional and it was just like the worst day. And last night I had a spectacular night of sleep and now I feel like I can do anything. After doing this for years, when you sleep poorly, you do normalize to it, but you're normalized to a blurred state of reality. You don't remember what the clarity of good sleep feels like. And so what's my biggest enemy? Poor sleep and a bad diet and no exercise. That creates cloudiness that remains invisible because you can no longer see it. It's lethal.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, last, two nights ago, I had a terrible night's sleep.”

Q Do you ever sleep badly? Because I saw the tweets of yours a while ago, and yours were like four months of perfect scores, and I was like, God, does this guy never have a siren that goes off, or a plane that goes overhead? Like, talk to me about that.

A Yeah, last, two nights ago, I had a terrible night's sleep. I just started a peptide, and I took it before bed, I did an injection, and it wrecked my sleep. And I woke up the next morning feeling absolutely awful. And the entire day I was ornery and foggy and I was, um, I was more emotional and it was just like the worst day. And last night I had a spectacular night of sleep and now I feel like I can do anything. After doing this for years, when you sleep poorly, you do normalize to it, but you're normalized to a blurred state of reality. You don't remember what the clarity of good sleep feels like. And so what's my biggest enemy? Poor sleep and a bad diet and no exercise. That creates cloudiness that remains invisible because you can no longer see it. It's lethal.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, last, two nights ago, I had a terrible night's sleep.”

Q Now, I would love to start. We were just saying beforehand, you've done many interviews. You've been asked many questions. My first one was, What are you not asked about that you would like to be asked about?

A Probably how to process new ideas, new frames. There are new ways of thinking, and they challenge the status quo. And I make a rule for myself that whenever I encounter a new idea, I try to set up an alert in my brain that says, alert, new idea has landed. And when a new idea lands, the rule is I can't say anything or think anything to form conclusions for some duration of time, because the challenge is when a new idea lands, Your knee jerk reaction fills the open space and it crams down your existing biases and beliefs and understanding, and it crushes the space for a new idea to breathe. And what I've noticed is the, it's a human tendency that we all have, and it takes a lot of work to develop this habit because the, the impulse to crush new ideas is so strong.

AI assessment note: “Probably how to process new ideas, new frames.”

Q When you think back to the alerting system, what was the most recent idea that caused an alert? And can you share it?

A Yeah, I think that the most significant one when I was personally challenged with That my, the religion I was born into may not be the explanation of reality. And that was so uncomfortable because my entire existence had, I was born into a religion as I, that's all I understood reality to be. And then I started thinking maybe it wasn't true. Like maybe this wasn't the explainer of reality. And that is the most uncomfortable thing I had ever encountered in my life because Every single bit of my reality, my family and my children and my community and my identity and my ambitions, everything was built upon that thing. And to encounter that, you have to basically size up and say, I have to redo myself entirely. And that's so much work. It's you like almost wanted to bury your head back in the thing and be like, I'm just going to avoid this because it's so uncomfortable to think about all this change. Like you have to like, Get a divorce, become a divorced dad. You've got to be in different living conditions. You've got to like, it's so unpleasant to contemplate that change. It's just easier to duck your head back in. And that's what most of us do in life is we encounter something that is so unpleasant. We'd rather not deal with it. We just go back into the habit.

AI assessment note: “the religion I was born into may not be the explanation of reality.”

Q Do you worry about being liked? Leaving religion, it's leaving social security as well, it's leaving friendship groups, it's leaving communities. Do you worry about being liked?

A When I left the religion, I, I had to go through this process and rethink every aspect of my existence, and one of those things was the idea of being liked, because in the religious setting, you're constantly vying for the approval of those in the community. You want to be liked. You want to be respected. You want to obey the rules so that you have status. And with that status, you get, uh, certain privileges in the tribe. And so I wanted to confront the idea head on and say, what if I didn't, uh, desire to be liked? What would that do? Now, in something, in some scenarios, being liked is a necessity of life. If you go into work each day and you're an awful human and no one likes you, That's not going to do you any favors. Like you, you need to have some kind of baseline likability to cooperate in society. But there's also a different place to play in where if you play for likability in, for example, the new ideas space, that's a path for conformity. Because likability is conformity, and new ideas oftentimes disrupt that, and the liberation for me was the thought that basically flipping it and saying that I care about being liked by the 25th century, and specifically do not care about being liked by the people in this time and place. That to me was the most liberating thought experiment of my life, because then I could say, um, I'm no longer limited to the approval of my peers.…

AI assessment note: “specifically do not care about being liked by the people in this time and place”

Q Do you accept anything today as an endurable truth, given the skepticism you bring naturally To, to everything to get that purity. Is anything an endurable truth?

A This is why I arrived at Don't Die. It is the only thing in existence that I know. Is there an afterlife? I don't know. You know, I, when, when death is inevitable, then you really can maintain any opinion you want. Cause you get it. We're all gonna die. So it's like, doesn't matter. But when, if death is not inevitable, Then you have to reconsider all of your existential scaffolding. And that's why don't die. If you, if you use a frame like live long, live great, be great, explore the stars, like whatever you want to say, people hear that and they're like, fuck yeah, I'm doing it. If you say don't die, the person has to reconcile with existence from zero. Because if you don't die, you're not going to die, or you're going to live in some unknown time horizon, every game you're playing in existence May be called into question. All of your beliefs, all of your assumptions, all of your inner endeavors, everything about you may be called into question.

AI assessment note: “This is why I arrived at Don't Die. It is the only thing in existence”

Q I mean by that is like, what must be true? What must remain true? You can have biases towards what you want to really be true, but maybe not be true. It could be religion that makes one bias in terms of their perspective. There are many different things that can bias how you feel about what those three answers are. How do you retain that purity to be objective?

A It begins by being skeptical of all things. And I learned this when I left the religion, you know, I had this authority structure saying, this is how reality is. And then I learned about behavioral psychology and about biases and a 188 proven scientific, you know, biases of how my brain distorts reality to help me understand a complicated world. Now it's, it's doing me a favor because the world is extraordinarily complex. And my biases helped me understand the reality. At the same time, I'm hypocritical. I'm, I'm blinded to certain things. I'm a disaster of cognition. So when I found out that my own mind was just as deceptive and unreliable as other authorities in my life, and then I kind of walked to society and every source of authority or truth I thought might be durable is not including myself. And so I enter all things with this deep skepticism of anything trying to be ultimate truth. And so if you accept that as the opening bid, then you walk into the contemplation in a much more humble way to hold things very lightly. And so then you're trying to say, we probably, we can probably know immediate things with high certainty, and we can probably know long-term things with reasonable certainty, but in the middle, we just have fog and everyone plays in the middle of fog. And so when you're trying to make these big decisions on the future of the species, You've got to figure ou…

AI assessment note: “It begins by being skeptical of all things.”

Q Do you worry about being liked? Leaving religion, it's leaving social security as well, it's leaving friendship groups, it's leaving communities. Do you worry about being liked?

A When I left the religion, I, I had to go through this process and rethink every aspect of my existence, and one of those things was the idea of being liked, because in the religious setting, you're constantly vying for the approval of those in the community. You want to be liked. You want to be respected. You want to obey the rules so that you have status. And with that status, you get, uh, certain privileges in the tribe. And so I wanted to confront the idea head on and say, what if I didn't, uh, desire to be liked? What would that do? Now, in something, in some scenarios, being liked is a necessity of life. If you go into work each day and you're an awful human and no one likes you, That's not going to do you any favors. Like you, you need to have some kind of baseline likability to cooperate in society. But there's also a different place to play in where if you play for likability in, for example, the new ideas space, that's a path for conformity. Because likability is conformity, and new ideas oftentimes disrupt that, and the liberation for me was the thought that basically flipping it and saying that I care about being liked by the 25th century, and specifically do not care about being liked by the people in this time and place. That to me was the most liberating thought experiment of my life, because then I could say, um, I'm no longer limited to the approval of my peers.…

AI assessment note: “specifically do not care about being liked by the people in this time and place”

Q I mean by that is like, what must be true? What must remain true? You can have biases towards what you want to really be true, but maybe not be true. It could be religion that makes one bias in terms of their perspective. There are many different things that can bias how you feel about what those three answers are. How do you retain that purity to be objective?

A It begins by being skeptical of all things. And I learned this when I left the religion, you know, I had this authority structure saying, this is how reality is. And then I learned about behavioral psychology and about biases and a 188 proven scientific, you know, biases of how my brain distorts reality to help me understand a complicated world. Now it's, it's doing me a favor because the world is extraordinarily complex. And my biases helped me understand the reality. At the same time, I'm hypocritical. I'm, I'm blinded to certain things. I'm a disaster of cognition. So when I found out that my own mind was just as deceptive and unreliable as other authorities in my life, and then I kind of walked to society and every source of authority or truth I thought might be durable is not including myself. And so I enter all things with this deep skepticism of anything trying to be ultimate truth. And so if you accept that as the opening bid, then you walk into the contemplation in a much more humble way to hold things very lightly. And so then you're trying to say, we probably, we can probably know immediate things with high certainty, and we can probably know long-term things with reasonable certainty, but in the middle, we just have fog and everyone plays in the middle of fog. And so when you're trying to make these big decisions on the future of the species, You've got to figure ou…

AI assessment note: “It begins by being skeptical of all things.”

Q How do you think about the core underlying threats to human existence? Climate change being worse than ever. Bad global actors with nuclear weapons threatening in ways that we haven't seen in many years. Are those not questioning our continued existence in a way that makes this challenging?

A I'm fundamentally proposing that the human race is no longer qualified to manage our affairs. I started with myself. I said that I, Brian Johnson, am not qualified to manage my own well-being. I make, I do things that lessen my life. I overeat. I eat bad foods. You know, I'll make bad decisions. I do these things that threaten my existence. That is an inferior form of intelligence that would inflict upon itself harm. Now, our minds create these really pretty stories of, like, live fast, die young, we're all gonna die, so what does it matter? But that's a, that is a compensation for what is inherently an inferior form of intelligence, doing something to itself that shortens its conscious existence, no matter how we want to stay in the story. Now, as a species, we're doing that to planet Earth. We're doing that to each other. And we do these, we have these really pretty stories about we're competing for dominance, for ideology of nation state. We're doing this for, for capital, capital improvements. We're doing it for progress for humanity, but we're a species that is self-destructive. And now that we're bringing online new tools of computational intelligence, it's this possibility to bridge ourselves to a new form of intelligence that is not self-destructive. And so don't die is don't die individually. Don't kill each other. Don't kill the earth. Align AI with don't die. And so …

AI assessment note: “I'm fundamentally proposing that the human race is no longer qualified to manage our affairs.”

Q Now, can you get the ball rolling by telling us a little snapshot of yourself and how you've come to where you are today with the OS Fund?

A Yeah, I guess it started when I was 21. I just returned to the U.S. after being in Ecuador for two years, living among extreme poverty. And I came back to the U.S. with this burning desire to spend my life trying to improve people's lives. I mean, seeing how these people lived, and they oftentimes didn't get a shot at life to do the things they really wanted to do. So I thought, you know, I'll become an entrepreneur, I'll make an enormous amount of money, I'll retire by 30, and then I'll spend the rest of my life trying to add value in the world. I didn't know what it meant at the time, I just knew that if I had freedom of time and abundance resources, I could hopefully do something some good, and so I spent the next 13 years building companies. Some, some succeeded, some failed. Um, I spent, during that time, a lot of, spent a lot of time reading science and technology and trying to figure out where the human race was going, and, um, I came to, like, was one realization that changed my outlook and my understanding forever, my relationship with the universe, is that I think that the uniqueness of our time and place is that We can literally program our existence. If you consider tools like biology and genomics, three D printing, robotics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, we can literally program anything. And that was, that hasn't been true in previous generations. And …

AI assessment note: “I started the OS fund to invest in these tools of creation”

Q Now, can you get the ball rolling by telling us a little snapshot of yourself and how you've come to where you are today with the OS Fund?

A Yeah, I guess it started when I was 21. I just returned to the U.S. after being in Ecuador for two years, living among extreme poverty. And I came back to the U.S. with this burning desire to spend my life trying to improve people's lives. I mean, seeing how these people lived, and they oftentimes didn't get a shot at life to do the things they really wanted to do. So I thought, you know, I'll become an entrepreneur, I'll make an enormous amount of money, I'll retire by 30, and then I'll spend the rest of my life trying to add value in the world. I didn't know what it meant at the time, I just knew that if I had freedom of time and abundance resources, I could hopefully do something some good, and so I spent the next 13 years building companies. Some, some succeeded, some failed. Um, I spent, during that time, a lot of, spent a lot of time reading science and technology and trying to figure out where the human race was going, and, um, I came to, like, was one realization that changed my outlook and my understanding forever, my relationship with the universe, is that I think that the uniqueness of our time and place is that We can literally program our existence. If you consider tools like biology and genomics, three D printing, robotics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, we can literally program anything. And that was, that hasn't been true in previous generations. And …

AI assessment note: “I started the OS fund to invest in these tools of creation”

Q And then what would you say was the pivotal moment for you then that transition moment in your career when it really catapulted?

A So I think it was probably the building of a brain tree. We, we were in the right place at the right time with the right product and the right team. And with my previous companies, I just didn't have that. Everything came together, and we were able to build, I think, something really exceptional. And with the exit, it gave me, for the first time, freedom of time and, and, um, and, you know, a lot of resources, which I never had before. At that point, I could, I could literally choose to do anything I wanted. I didn't, there was no more, uh, what I, what I must do. It was a question of what can I do now that I have nothing that I must do.

AI assessment note: “I think it was probably the building of a brain tree.”

Q Can I just kind of dive in there? So you have a new idea alert. What does that post alert look like? Do you then solicit feedback? Do you just ruminate on it? What does that kind of process look like post alerting?

A I try to watch what happens to my internal processes when the idea lands. So typically we are threat response and usually new ideas, usually Are a threat, um, to existing things. And so I watched my own self respond in all the ways where I feel threatened. You know, will this require change from me? Will this require that I do a new habit? Will it require that I have to overcome some existing belief system? What is it going to ask of me? And those things feel threatening. And in response to the threat, the body's like, we're going to shut this fucker down so we don't have to deal with the unpleasantness. Because that's just who we are and what we do. And so I just watch my internal prophecies and it gives me clues which version of me is trying to shut this down and why. And so that to me is more interesting. So for me, uh, what's interesting is the new idea itself is interesting. And then the second layer of interesting nuts is what's provoking inside of me. That gives me clues on who's talking within me.

AI assessment note: “I try to watch what happens to my internal processes when the idea lands.”

Q How do you think about the core underlying threats to human existence? Climate change being worse than ever. Bad global actors with nuclear weapons threatening in ways that we haven't seen in many years. Are those not questioning our continued existence in a way that makes this challenging?

A I'm fundamentally proposing that the human race is no longer qualified to manage our affairs. I started with myself. I said that I, Brian Johnson, am not qualified to manage my own well-being. I make, I do things that lessen my life. I overeat. I eat bad foods. You know, I'll make bad decisions. I do these things that threaten my existence. That is an inferior form of intelligence that would inflict upon itself harm. Now, our minds create these really pretty stories of, like, live fast, die young, we're all gonna die, so what does it matter? But that's a, that is a compensation for what is inherently an inferior form of intelligence, doing something to itself that shortens its conscious existence, no matter how we want to stay in the story. Now, as a species, we're doing that to planet Earth. We're doing that to each other. And we do these, we have these really pretty stories about we're competing for dominance, for ideology of nation state. We're doing this for, for capital, capital improvements. We're doing it for progress for humanity, but we're a species that is self-destructive. And now that we're bringing online new tools of computational intelligence, it's this possibility to bridge ourselves to a new form of intelligence that is not self-destructive. And so don't die is don't die individually. Don't kill each other. Don't kill the earth. Align AI with don't die. And so …

AI assessment note: “as a species, we're doing that to planet Earth. We're doing that to each other.”

Q When you think back to the alerting system, what was the most recent idea that caused an alert? And can you share it?

A Yeah, I think that the most significant one when I was personally challenged with That my, the religion I was born into may not be the explanation of reality. And that was so uncomfortable because my entire existence had, I was born into a religion as I, that's all I understood reality to be. And then I started thinking maybe it wasn't true. Like maybe this wasn't the explainer of reality. And that is the most uncomfortable thing I had ever encountered in my life because Every single bit of my reality, my family and my children and my community and my identity and my ambitions, everything was built upon that thing. And to encounter that, you have to basically size up and say, I have to redo myself entirely. And that's so much work. It's you like almost wanted to bury your head back in the thing and be like, I'm just going to avoid this because it's so uncomfortable to think about all this change. Like you have to like, Get a divorce, become a divorced dad. You've got to be in different living conditions. You've got to like, it's so unpleasant to contemplate that change. It's just easier to duck your head back in. And that's what most of us do in life is we encounter something that is so unpleasant. We'd rather not deal with it. We just go back into the habit.

AI assessment note: “the religion I was born into may not be the explanation of reality”

Q Do you accept anything today as an endurable truth, given the skepticism you bring naturally To, to everything to get that purity. Is anything an endurable truth?

A This is why I arrived at Don't Die. It is the only thing in existence that I know. Is there an afterlife? I don't know. You know, I, when, when death is inevitable, then you really can maintain any opinion you want. Cause you get it. We're all gonna die. So it's like, doesn't matter. But when, if death is not inevitable, Then you have to reconsider all of your existential scaffolding. And that's why don't die. If you, if you use a frame like live long, live great, be great, explore the stars, like whatever you want to say, people hear that and they're like, fuck yeah, I'm doing it. If you say don't die, the person has to reconcile with existence from zero. Because if you don't die, you're not going to die, or you're going to live in some unknown time horizon, every game you're playing in existence May be called into question. All of your beliefs, all of your assumptions, all of your inner endeavors, everything about you may be called into question.

AI assessment note: “This is why I arrived at Don't Die. It is the only thing in existence”

Q How do you know the algorithm isn't based on imperfect data? Scientific literature changes over time too. If we look at it in 20, the 25th century compared to the 18th century, it will be vastly different. Smoking used to be good for you as soon as a hundred years ago. How do you think about imperfectness of literature that guides your algorithm?

A We reference truth. Based upon hundreds of biomarkers of using the best science that the human race has generated that contributes to health span and lifespan. And we use those data markers to say, is this protocol working or not? Could it be wrong? Yes. Is it wrong? Likely. Is it better than me and what I was doing before? Yes. Is it basically, is it saying, is the algorithm saying, you know what? You've had a tough week, curl up on the couch, get those two bags of potato chips and your favorite cookies, and then some ice cream and watch your favorite show until three in the morning. That's something the algorithm is not yet suggesting that maybe it will, it hasn't yet, but it's definitely, uh, steered me away from self-destructive behaviors and tuned my body where I've become the most measured person in history. And the data is pretty interesting.

AI assessment note: “Could it be wrong? Yes. Is it wrong? Likely. Is it better than me”

Q What are those problems that you'd like to see solved then?

A There's four general areas I, I have an interest in. One is, Intelligence. That I think that for the human race to be able to adapt to circumstances that we'll, we'll encounter, we need to maintain adaptability. And I think if, if we can achieve intelligence that allows us to adapt quicker and faster to, uh, circumstances, I think it's better. So we achieve intelligence through artificial intelligence, but also through our own cognitive enhancement. So human cognition enhancement is an area. Two is ideological systems. Anything that, any belief and value system that compels humans to behave a certain way. So it could be capitalism, it could be governance, it could be religious. Anything that creates a framework for us to have motivations and aspirations. And, you know, I think along the lines, if you, if you consider, like, what, what is a child grow up today aspiring to be? What do they aspire to do? And what do they think is possible? And if you put that in the context of tools of creation, that we can literally program anything that Do they understand that? And so, uh, I'm interested in helping children understand the power of these possibilities. Uh, three.

AI assessment note: “There's four general areas I, I have an interest in. One is, Intelligence.”

Q How do you know the algorithm isn't based on imperfect data? Scientific literature changes over time too. If we look at it in 20, the 25th century compared to the 18th century, it will be vastly different. Smoking used to be good for you as soon as a hundred years ago. How do you think about imperfectness of literature that guides your algorithm?

A We reference truth. Based upon hundreds of biomarkers of using the best science that the human race has generated that contributes to health span and lifespan. And we use those data markers to say, is this protocol working or not? Could it be wrong? Yes. Is it wrong? Likely. Is it better than me and what I was doing before? Yes. Is it basically, is it saying, is the algorithm saying, you know what? You've had a tough week, curl up on the couch, get those two bags of potato chips and your favorite cookies, and then some ice cream and watch your favorite show until three in the morning. That's something the algorithm is not yet suggesting that maybe it will, it hasn't yet, but it's definitely, uh, steered me away from self-destructive behaviors and tuned my body where I've become the most measured person in history. And the data is pretty interesting.

AI assessment note: “Could it be wrong? Yes. Is it wrong? Likely. Is it better than me”

Q Can I just kind of dive in there? So you have a new idea alert. What does that post alert look like? Do you then solicit feedback? Do you just ruminate on it? What does that kind of process look like post alerting?

A I try to watch what happens to my internal processes when the idea lands. So typically we are threat response and usually new ideas, usually Are a threat, um, to existing things. And so I watched my own self respond in all the ways where I feel threatened. You know, will this require change from me? Will this require that I do a new habit? Will it require that I have to overcome some existing belief system? What is it going to ask of me? And those things feel threatening. And in response to the threat, the body's like, we're going to shut this fucker down so we don't have to deal with the unpleasantness. Because that's just who we are and what we do. And so I just watch my internal prophecies and it gives me clues which version of me is trying to shut this down and why. And so that to me is more interesting. So for me, uh, what's interesting is the new idea itself is interesting. And then the second layer of interesting nuts is what's provoking inside of me. That gives me clues on who's talking within me.

AI assessment note: “I try to watch what happens to my internal processes when the idea lands.”

Q Given it being the first moment we've achieved that ability, As specific as possible, what is it that we've achieved as specifically as possible that has allowed human intelligence to be at this specific juncture?

A Do we have the intelligence to keep, uh, to maintain To contain disruption, to, to, um, eliminate disruption of our existence. And then you say, okay, what would possibly be required to do that? Well, we are biological systems. We're each about 35 trillion cells. But, you know, like we can swap in and swap out. Like you can, you can print an organ or get an organ from, you know, a pig and like put a new organ in your body. There's two things, there's things you can do to replenish your system. But we can, we can now reliably engineer atoms and molecules and organisms. We have the ability. We have the source code for life. We can engineer the source code for life. We have the computational tools that are, uh, that have exceeded our native intelligence and abilities. So we actually have every primary piece of technology required to continue existence. Now, do we know how to do it yet? We're making progress. The answer is no, but from a first principles perspective, we have everything necessary to figure it out.

AI assessment note: “we can now reliably engineer atoms and molecules and organisms”

Q Given it being the first moment we've achieved that ability, As specific as possible, what is it that we've achieved as specifically as possible that has allowed human intelligence to be at this specific juncture?

A Do we have the intelligence to keep, uh, to maintain To contain disruption, to, to, um, eliminate disruption of our existence. And then you say, okay, what would possibly be required to do that? Well, we are biological systems. We're each about 35 trillion cells. But, you know, like we can swap in and swap out. Like you can, you can print an organ or get an organ from, you know, a pig and like put a new organ in your body. There's two things, there's things you can do to replenish your system. But we can, we can now reliably engineer atoms and molecules and organisms. We have the ability. We have the source code for life. We can engineer the source code for life. We have the computational tools that are, uh, that have exceeded our native intelligence and abilities. So we actually have every primary piece of technology required to continue existence. Now, do we know how to do it yet? We're making progress. The answer is no, but from a first principles perspective, we have everything necessary to figure it out.

AI assessment note: “we can now reliably engineer atoms and molecules and organisms. We have the ability.”

Q That struck me. Final thing before we do a quick fire. How do you think about the societal, um, breakages that happen with do not die? Don't laugh, but pensions are relatively upholding of large nations. Suddenly you have overpopulation, you have pensions breaking, you have an inequality of age distribution. Does society not need to fundamentally reshape to structure to do not die as an existence?

A It does. Yeah. Once you get, I mean, don't die is the most played game in existence. No, there's no game on planet earth that intelligence, all intelligence plays more than don't die. Every second of every day, all of us are playing don't die. And it's played even more than capitalism played it played more than any religion. Don't die is the number one most played game. And so in that context, Once you say don't die, and you step one layer above it, then we fracture into a billion different games. Some of us try to make money, some pursue religion, some pursue, you know, a monk life. Like, people go down a different path, but they're all based upon a don't die disposition towards reality. And so, just like democracy, when democracy was a new form of governance, Governance. It was this basic idea that you have these new representation structures that replace a monarch, and you have these new processes on deciding what to do. And once you establish that basic idea, like, hey, this is a better thing than a monarch, you've got thousands of questions. So we're now 200 years into the process of figuring out how to do democracy. The same is true with don't die. If you just get that basic concept right, You've got an infinite number of follow on questions of what about. And so this is not the case of this is meant to solve everything. It's meant to say if we solve for the primary opera…

AI assessment note: “It does. Yeah. Once you get, I mean, don't die is the most played game”

Q What are those problems that you'd like to see solved then?

A There's four general areas I, I have an interest in. One is, Intelligence. That I think that for the human race to be able to adapt to circumstances that we'll, we'll encounter, we need to maintain adaptability. And I think if, if we can achieve intelligence that allows us to adapt quicker and faster to, uh, circumstances, I think it's better. So we achieve intelligence through artificial intelligence, but also through our own cognitive enhancement. So human cognition enhancement is an area. Two is ideological systems. Anything that, any belief and value system that compels humans to behave a certain way. So it could be capitalism, it could be governance, it could be religious. Anything that creates a framework for us to have motivations and aspirations. And, you know, I think along the lines, if you, if you consider, like, what, what is a child grow up today aspiring to be? What do they aspire to do? And what do they think is possible? And if you put that in the context of tools of creation, that we can literally program anything that Do they understand that? And so, uh, I'm interested in helping children understand the power of these possibilities. Uh, three.

AI assessment note: “There's four general areas I, I have an interest in. One is, Intelligence.”

Q pander to founders and to LPs. So this is a whole new concept for me, Brian, but, uh, I'm learning. Can I go back to the idea process though? Because you ruminate on it, you sit with it and understand the different personas and how they interact with it. What then determines whether you act upon an idea and really pursue it versus disregarded and put it to one side?

A So there's the idea as the information It itself. And then there's all the things around the idea that can't be seen. And so when I look at the idea, I don't try to identify what can be seen. I try to identify everything that can't be seen. And those are basically the unknown unknown. Those like the zero principle concepts. And so for me, new ideas are not something to accept or reject. New ideas are something to excavate. And you're trying to Fill this thing out as broadly as possible, because yeah, new idea may be just the tip of the spear. You know, it may be something of the iceberg. It may be something much, much more, uh, expansive. And so to me, it's the, the possibility of finding new primitives to work with.

AI assessment note: “to me, it's the, the possibility of finding new primitives to work with.”

Q Can I ask a weird one, but it's like, and this is as meta as I've ever bloody asked a question, Brian. Um, life isn't about existence, is it? And what is the meaning of life to you? Is it about existence or is it about fulfillment or is it about love?

A That question yields no truth. That question yields a mirror of time and place. So if we had a recording of people being asked that question for the past 500 years, every year that that question is asked of, you know, 50 people in society, you would see it evolve over that time period into unrecognizable stories. None of it's truth. And this is the thing, we don't know what the meaning of life is. We just run our mouths, and we run our mouths to try to fill the space that the question creates. But we do so, and we're, we aren't, we aren't discerning, is this a question meant to create social cohesion, or is this a question to establish truth? It's not truth. It's to establish social cohesion that people are trying to get along, trying to exchange views. They're trying to be human, understand reality. They're dealing with their own stuff internally. So it's, it's, you know, how do you reduce the pain you're experiencing in this moment? The meaning of life to me is, is like, is this, that when intelligence reaches a certain level of capability, which is right now, like after 4.5 billion years on this earth, In the past few years, we have reached a critical point after 4.5 billion years for the first time. Where intelligence can say the only thing intelligence cares about is continued existence, and not through the, not through the process of having babies, not through work, you k…

AI assessment note: “the meaning of life is, for me, continued existence”

Q I mean, I'm a disciplined guy, but fuck, I don't. Um, what was the most, what was the most surprising truth you revealed in this exploration of yourself as the first true algorithmic guinea pig, respectfully?

A I individually, in the ways of species, are transitioning from being stewards of knowledge, being stewards of knowledge, to not knowing anything, or rather not being the Yeah, moving into a frontier where we are no longer in that role. Where AI is going to be a much better steward of knowledge. It's going to know all things. All things that have been discovered, AI will know it. And AI is also going to do a new discovery. And it's going to do so at a speed that will be, uh, we will be unable to, to, to keep up. In that scenario, AI is knowledge of record. So it's no longer that a person maintains the superior knowledge. And so that calls into question everything you understand about being human is you're going from knowing to not knowing.

AI assessment note: “transitioning from being stewards of knowledge, being stewards of knowledge, to not knowing anything”

Q That struck me. Final thing before we do a quick fire. How do you think about the societal, um, breakages that happen with do not die? Don't laugh, but pensions are relatively upholding of large nations. Suddenly you have overpopulation, you have pensions breaking, you have an inequality of age distribution. Does society not need to fundamentally reshape to structure to do not die as an existence?

A It does. Yeah. Once you get, I mean, don't die is the most played game in existence. No, there's no game on planet earth that intelligence, all intelligence plays more than don't die. Every second of every day, all of us are playing don't die. And it's played even more than capitalism played it played more than any religion. Don't die is the number one most played game. And so in that context, Once you say don't die, and you step one layer above it, then we fracture into a billion different games. Some of us try to make money, some pursue religion, some pursue, you know, a monk life. Like, people go down a different path, but they're all based upon a don't die disposition towards reality. And so, just like democracy, when democracy was a new form of governance, Governance. It was this basic idea that you have these new representation structures that replace a monarch, and you have these new processes on deciding what to do. And once you establish that basic idea, like, hey, this is a better thing than a monarch, you've got thousands of questions. So we're now 200 years into the process of figuring out how to do democracy. The same is true with don't die. If you just get that basic concept right, You've got an infinite number of follow on questions of what about. And so this is not the case of this is meant to solve everything. It's meant to say if we solve for the primary opera…

AI assessment note: “It does. Yeah. Once you get, I mean, don't die is the most played”

Q Can I ask a weird one, but it's like, and this is as meta as I've ever bloody asked a question, Brian. Um, life isn't about existence, is it? And what is the meaning of life to you? Is it about existence or is it about fulfillment or is it about love?

A That question yields no truth. That question yields a mirror of time and place. So if we had a recording of people being asked that question for the past 500 years, every year that that question is asked of, you know, 50 people in society, you would see it evolve over that time period into unrecognizable stories. None of it's truth. And this is the thing, we don't know what the meaning of life is. We just run our mouths, and we run our mouths to try to fill the space that the question creates. But we do so, and we're, we aren't, we aren't discerning, is this a question meant to create social cohesion, or is this a question to establish truth? It's not truth. It's to establish social cohesion that people are trying to get along, trying to exchange views. They're trying to be human, understand reality. They're dealing with their own stuff internally. So it's, it's, you know, how do you reduce the pain you're experiencing in this moment? The meaning of life to me is, is like, is this, that when intelligence reaches a certain level of capability, which is right now, like after 4.5 billion years on this earth, In the past few years, we have reached a critical point after 4.5 billion years for the first time. Where intelligence can say the only thing intelligence cares about is continued existence, and not through the, not through the process of having babies, not through work, you k…

AI assessment note: “the meaning of life is, for me, continued existence”