The Exchanges

Q And does that help your sleep? Like what happens if you eat later? I assume this was all like sort of measured and.

A The, the, the fasting, I eat my last meal of the day at 11 AM for the objectives of good sleep, because I mean, there's supposedly good benefits on fasting. I think the evidence is still maybe developing. So I mostly do it for sleep because when I eat my last meal of the day, I have all my digestion finished. So when I go to bed, my resting heart rate is around 46 beats per minute. And if it's a 46, I'm going to have a perfect night's sleep. If I eat at five PM or six PM, then my resting heart rate is going to be 56. And when I do that, I'm going to knock off about 50% of my REM and 50% of my deep and I'll increase my wake time by about 35 minutes. And so I've done these, I've done so many experiments now is algorithmic. And I know exactly what happens when I eat what, at what time and how it affects my sleep.

AI assessment note: “If I eat at five PM or six PM, then my resting heart rate is going to be 56”

Q And does that help your sleep? Like what happens if you eat later? I assume this was all like sort of measured and.

A The, the, the fasting, I eat my last meal of the day at 11 AM for the objectives of good sleep, because I mean, there's supposedly good benefits on fasting. I think the evidence is still maybe developing. So I mostly do it for sleep because when I eat my last meal of the day, I have all my digestion finished. So when I go to bed, my resting heart rate is around 46 beats per minute. And if it's a 46, I'm going to have a perfect night's sleep. If I eat at five PM or six PM, then my resting heart rate is going to be 56. And when I do that, I'm going to knock off about 50% of my REM and 50% of my deep and I'll increase my wake time by about 35 minutes. And so I've done these, I've done so many experiments now is algorithmic. And I know exactly what happens when I eat what, at what time and how it affects my sleep.

AI assessment note: “If I eat at five PM or six PM, then my resting heart rate is going to be 56.”

Q I was listening in previous interviews and you said, I think it was age 24 you got depressed. What happened?

A Yeah, I think it was, the onset was circumstantial. I had my first baby and he was colicky, so he just cried nonstop. And I don't think his mother and I got a night of sleep of good rest for, for six months. Meanwhile, I was building a startup and I was grinding at that with all the stresses of not having income and trying to make something work that was new. And then I was in a new marriage. And then I was also dealing with some internal term turmoil related to My religious situation where I wanted to leave my religion, but I was pretty stuck in the system, my community and the family and all the societal, like all of all my community structure. And it was just a chaotic time in life. And yeah, one day it, it, I remember it as the day my brain snapped. I just felt like something broke and I couldn't put my finger on it, but it just felt something felt different. Yeah. Yeah. And I was in that hole for 10 years.

AI assessment note: “the onset was circumstantial. I had my first baby and he was colicky”

Q It sounds like blueprint is optimized for the sole variable of sleep. Is that correct?

A I mean, so sleep is an important one. It's the number one priority because everything else rests, you know, hinges upon that. But it also, we are the first endeavor in history to focus on trying to rejuvenate every organ of the body. So we have 70 plus organs and we've tried to quantify and rejuvenate every organ of my body. So we just tried to rejuvenate my thymus, which is a gland right behind your, your, uh, chest here responsible for your immune system. And so, you know, if I can say I'm chronologically 46 years old, but the more important number is what is the biological age of my heart and of my lungs and of my liver. And that's really the, the more powerful predictor than a chronological number.

AI assessment note: “sleep is an important one. It's the number one priority... But it also”

Q And finally, the guy who is beating death, Brian Johnson. If you can walk me through at a high level, sort of the overarching day of Blueprint, and what does it mean to live like Brian Johnson?

A So the, the premise on this is I, I was posing the question in the early 21st century, is it the case that we have achieved longevity escape velocity, which means that for every One year of chronological time that passes. Can I stay the same age biologically? And if not, where are we at? And so that's the backdrop on what my daily routine is. And so what we did to establish this routine is we looked at every single scientific publication that's ever been done on health span and lifespan. We then graded the evidence of these papers and we then stack rank them according to effect size. And then we've systematically been implementing each one of these, these protocols. So becoming the most measured person in history and then using all the scientific evidence, I wake up. So my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30 PM. I just changed my bedtime from 8:30. But it's eight, it's nine 30 on the dot. So it's, it's not, uh, I don't have a two hour window of time. And I, I recently logged eight months of perfect sleep using my wearable, which no human in history had ever done. So I wanted to demonstrate that you can get reliable high quality sleep for this extended period of time. And then I wake up naturally. I never wake up with an alarm, uh, roughly four 35 30 in the morning. And I will I'll weigh myself, do body composition, like weight, hydration, fat, et ce…

AI assessment note: “So my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30”

Q And finally, the guy who is beating death, Brian Johnson. If you can walk me through at a high level, sort of the overarching day of Blueprint, and what does it mean to live like Brian Johnson?

A So the, the premise on this is I, I was posing the question in the early 21st century, is it the case that we have achieved longevity escape velocity, which means that for every One year of chronological time that passes. Can I stay the same age biologically? And if not, where are we at? And so that's the backdrop on what my daily routine is. And so what we did to establish this routine is we looked at every single scientific publication that's ever been done on health span and lifespan. We then graded the evidence of these papers and we then stack rank them according to effect size. And then we've systematically been implementing each one of these, these protocols. So becoming the most measured person in history and then using all the scientific evidence, I wake up. So my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30 PM. I just changed my bedtime from 8:30. But it's eight, it's nine 30 on the dot. So it's, it's not, uh, I don't have a two hour window of time. And I, I recently logged eight months of perfect sleep using my wearable, which no human in history had ever done. So I wanted to demonstrate that you can get reliable high quality sleep for this extended period of time. And then I wake up naturally. I never wake up with an alarm, uh, roughly four 35 30 in the morning. And I will I'll weigh myself, do body composition, like weight, hydration, fat, et ce…

AI assessment note: “So my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30”

Q out of the hospital and there isn't a lot of pain. And so he's like, people, people change a lot less than they used to. And I thought that, that, that sort of related to what you were talking about. I'm wondering if you can walk me through at a high level, sort of the overarching day of blueprint and w what does it mean to live like Brian Johnson?

A The premise on this is I. I was posing the question, in the early 21st century, is it the case that we have achieved longevity escape velocity, which means that for every one year of chronological time that passes, can I stay the same age biologically? And if not, where are we at? And so that's the backdrop on what my daily routine is. And so what we did to establish this routine is we looked at every single scientific publication that's ever been done on health span and lifespan. We then graded the evidence of these papers and we then stack rank them according to effect size. And then we've systematically been implementing each one of these, these protocols. So becoming the most measured person in history and then using all the scientific evidence, I wake up. So my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30 PM. I just changed my bedtime from 8:30, but it's eight, it's nine 30 on the dot. So it's, it's not, uh, I don't have a two hour window of time. And I, I recently logged eight months of perfect sleep using my wearable, which no human in history had ever done. So I wanted to demonstrate that you can get reliable high quality sleep for this extended period of time. And then I wake up naturally. I never wake up with an alarm, uh, roughly four 35 30 in the morning, and I will, I'll weigh myself, the body composition, like weight, hydration, fat, et cetera.…

AI assessment note: “my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30 PM”

Q If I inherited or, you know, suddenly came into five hundred million dollars tomorrow and I came to you and said, Brian, I just got this big chunk of money. Give me the lessons that you've learned over the last 12 years that I should put in place today. What would they be?

A One is I would suggest you not change anything in your life for six to 12 months. Keep on with your same habits and have the money so you can distinguish between your preferred lifestyle and what money would otherwise alter Your perception of what you want, because once you start acquiring things, you start losing your perspective on where your baseline is. So, and the shock of going from zero to five or a million is so S it's so sudden that it scrambles your reality. And then number two is it is, um, reasonable that a, a large majority of people Are going to want something from you at all times. And it's, it will be small things like, you know, a, a niece or a nephew, when you're invited to their wedding, most people will give a gift, you know, a hundred dollars or 200 dollars or 20 dollars, whatever the number is in that cultural norm for the family. They're going to expect you to give something for 500 dollars or a thousand dollars because you have so much money. And so people just assume, uh, that because you have so much money that you have more obligation, uh, to them. So there's like this, this, uh, a typical relationship. And then three is I'd say identify what you want the money to achieve. And that really needs to come from you on what your objectives are, because if you don't determine your objectives in life, money will run you. And so it creates this really, uh, in…

AI assessment note: “One is I would suggest you not change anything in your life for six to 12 months.”

Q What advice would you have today for somebody who might feel depressed having been through that yourself?

A Uh, first, I understand you. Uh, the, the mind is relentless. And so when people feel suicidal, I am deeply empathetic. It is, it is rational to want to kill oneself. Uh, it's reasonable. So when you're in that moment, it's, it feels lonely when you try to explain to somebody how you feel and how life is not worth it. And a response Is something like, get over it, or just feel better, or like, go outside. It's, it's hard. It makes you feel very isolated, and Not able to reach out and get the help you need. And so one is I would say I understand you deeply and I empathize with you deeply. And then I would say there's some basic things you can do to increase your circumstances. One would be sleep. I would make sleep your number one life priority. Like the most important thing you do in any given day is high quality sleep. And I would build your life around it because when you have good sleep, So many of the things in life are much better, and then if you get good sleep, you can start doing some baby steps into exercise, even going on a walk every day, doing something small, and then starting to add a few good foods and a few fewer bad foods, but just baby stepping your way, because when you're depressed, you don't have the ambition and energy to do big stuff. And so the, really it's the winds are in the baby steps and it starts with sleep because once you can sleep well, your ene…

AI assessment note: “I would say there's some basic things you can do to increase your circumstances.”

Q I thought your workouts were like 25 reps of exercise and stuff. Are you, is that giving you the, the incredible strength?

A Uh, yes. So it's about an hour a day, and you're right. It's like, uh, you know, 20 plus. And so it's mostly, I try to flex and stretch every muscle of my body. So I don't do heavy weights that are, uh, hard in the joints. But yes, even doing these things, I do it every single day. I don't take any rest days. And yeah, I'm on my bench press. It's a top 10% of eighteen-year-olds, and we use eighteen-year-olds. A lot of people, I mean, with 99% certainty when I say this, people are like, but wait a second, why not a thirty-year-old? It's because you max out your weight to rep ratio at age 18. So even though you can lift more in your twenties and maybe even your thirties, your ratio peaks at 18 The same is true with your VO two max, your cardiovascular fitness. And so we do a reference to an age, not because it's an easy way to pick off a number. We do it because according to these age, these biological age standards, you're looking at when the human, when a, when a male peaks perform peak performance.

AI assessment note: “Uh, yes. So it's about an hour a day, and you're right.”

Q I'm asking this as a bald dude, but can you prevent your hairline from receding? I mean, I imagine it's way too late for me now, but do you do that? Like, can you?

A Yeah. Hair loss is an enormous amount of work. The technology is really not great. So what I do currently Is in the morning, I, I put a topical application on my hair that is, was based upon my genetics of what things I do and don't respond to and metabolize. And then I put a red light cap on my head and activate certain things. I then work out, eat breakfast, and I'll shower, and I'll use a certain shampoo that basically creates the right environment on the scalp. And then I'll do, um, once a month, I just started this new therapy where I'll use this laser, um, across the scalp, and then I'll apply exosomes. And that's a combo therapy to help hair grow stronger and faster. And then I used to do PRP, which is you draw blood out, you pull the plasma, you re-inject the growth factors. I stopped doing that because we're now doing this laser exosome treatment. Yeah, that's it. So basically it's a topical application, which you've probably heard minoxidil is the most common thing. So it's minoxidil plus a few little goodies, plus red light cap therapy, plus this laser and exosome treatment. Yeah, I mean, I, I should be bald at this point. I started losing my hair in my late twenties and the men in my family are bald basically. So I'm grateful I have some hair.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Hair loss is an enormous amount of work. The technology is really not great.”

Q What I love about you is that you're living life on your own terms, and you're not hurting anybody, and yet what you're doing is so outside of what we consider normal. That you get so much hate and vitriol. How do you handle that?

A I love it. I, I have such a positive relationship with the hate. Uh, it energizes me. I am endlessly amused by it. I think it's just fun to engage with. And you know, I, Depression was a much better troll than anyone online. You know, like my, my depression could eat me up pretty efficiently. It knew the zingers and the dunks. Everyone else, uh, you know, like it's just play for me. I guess like, you know, like you, you can think about these two phases, like Okay. Phase one is like, do something that is unrecognizable in your time and place. Okay. So we've seen this throughout history. Phase two is people come with pitchforks. Like we know this phase three is you've got to survive a whole bunch of attacks. You know, like the power to be, you're going to want to start taking you down. And then phase, if you get past phase two and phase three, You get to open up a little bit, and you kind of have some open horizon. And so that's where I'm at now is I've survived the, the major dunk, you know, where people try to cancel me in society. I've survived several attempts at takedowns and now I'm still at it. And so I'm really happy. I'm on a stage four now, and now it's just opening up into a bigger gameplay.

AI assessment note: “I love it. I, I have such a positive relationship with the hate.”

Q It sounds like blueprint is optimized for the sole variable of sleep. Is that correct?

A I mean, so sleep is an important one. It's the number one priority because everything else rests, you know, hinges upon that. We are the first endeavor in history to focus on trying to rejuvenate every organ of the body. So we have 70 plus organs and we've tried to quantify and rejuvenate every organ of my body. So we just tried to rejuvenate my thymus, which is a gland right behind your, your, uh, chest here responsible for your immune system. And so, you know, I can say I'm chronologically 46 years old, but the more important number is what is the biological age of my heart and of my lungs and of my liver? And that's really the, the more powerful predictor than a chronological number.

AI assessment note: “sleep is an important one. It's the number one priority because everything else rests”

Q I thought your workouts were like 25 reps of exercise and stuff. Are you, is that giving you the, the incredible strength?

A Uh, yes. So it's about an hour a day and you're right. It's like, uh, you know, 20 plus. And so it's mostly I try to flex and stretch every muscle of my body. So I don't do heavy weights that are, uh, hard on the joints, but yes, even doing these things, I do it every single day. I don't take any rest days and yeah, I'm on my bench press. It's a top 10% of 18 year olds. And we use 18 years. A lot of people, I mean, the with 99% certainty when I say this, people are like, but wait a second, why not a 30 year old? It's because, uh, you max out your weight to, uh, rep ratio at age 18. So even though you can lift more in your twenties and maybe even your thirties, your ratio peaks at 18. The same is true with your VO two max, your cardiovascular fitness. And so we do a reference to an age and yield, not because it's an easy way to pick off a number. We do it because according to these age, these biological age standards, you're looking at when the human, when, when a male peaks perform peak performance.

AI assessment note: “Uh, yes. So it's about an hour a day and you're right.”

Q to change their mind. How do we take blueprint and build habits with it? So it's one thing to know, okay, here's this manual, follow this manual. And this manual is going to be better at running your life than you are. You can take your evening, Brian, you can put them away and just follow the instructions. But how do we actually turn that into habits that we follow?

A Every person is different in how they go about change, and there's many ways that people go about habit, you know, behavioral change with very habit formation techniques. For me, it's really helpful to Understand my own behavioral change in a larger context where I say I'm endeavoring to maintain my health so that I don't die so that I can participate in what may be the most spectacular existence in the galaxy. Now, for me, that's really motivating because I have, I have a goal, and I have a reason to live, and I have something to look forward to. Now, a side effect of that is my body feels great, and it looks great, and, you know, I can do all sorts of things, but for me, it's the bigger goal that motivates me. For other people, they may have much, you know, different goals of, like, they, they want to fit into a certain, uh, pair of, of clothing, or they want to look good for a certain event, Or they want to achieve a certain physical, uh, outcome. It's like the end goal. I think that I think the motivation is really important. And then I go through the process as you heard me say is I like to break myself out into my various selves because I am, you know, dozens of different kinds of people. I am morning Brian. I'm evening Brian. I'm after workout Brian. I'm your dad Brian. Like I'm in every one of those situations. I'm biochemically a different human. I have I have a differ…

AI assessment note: “I like to break myself out into my various selves because I am... different kinds of people”

Q It, it's almost auto auto catalytic for the negative, right? Like you, because you're depressed, you become more depressed. Like it feeds into itself.

A It does. And it, sometimes I suppose in a dark humor, uh, sort of way, we humans kind of got stuck in this really weird level of consciousness, you know, like, A dog seems to be optimal and its level of happiness about existence. And we humans are smart enough to do the remarkable things we've done, but yet our mental existence can be extraordinarily challenging. And it seems to be, we share many of these challenging traits that it's not, uh, often that we're given a default mental state that is just nice all the time. It's a pretty brutal place in our minds. Most of our minds. And I wonder if in how we're moving as a species, if we can evolve past this, and if we do look back and like, yeah, we, we got stuck in that narrow band that was pretty uncomfortable.

AI assessment note: “It does. And it, sometimes I suppose in a dark humor”

Q Why does posture matter? You have, like, the best posture of, I'm, like, conscious of this, and, like, I'm actually having better posture during this interview because of you.

A You know, like, I, I realize that I present complexity in people's lives, that, you know, if someone sees an article about me, or a video, or something And if they're not in the same place as me, uh, it can have a net negative reaction where the person's like, damn it. I'm never going to be able to do what he does. So that makes me feel bad about myself. And so why even try? And I'm deeply empathetic about that. And I, I wish that wasn't the outcome. And so I really try to be thoughtful and meet everyone where they're at, where I hope that When someone thinks about me and if they view my posture or they view my eating habits that they can think of me like an angel on their shoulder of like, I'm, I'm there. I'm there with you friend. Like I, I want you to be your best self and I understand you and there's no judgment coming from me and it's fine. If you make mistakes, it's cool. Um, but it's, it's, it's complicated and I understand that it's difficult. And so posture, I do work extraordinarily hard. I'm also mindful that it potentially has this boomerang effect, uh, where people get discouraged. But yeah, I mean, I, I maintain good posture because I discovered I've got genetically narrow internal jugular veins, these two pipes on the side of the neck. And so I've have restricted blood flow out of my brain when I have bad posture. So it kinks my veins. And so I, we did a whole bu…

AI assessment note: “restricted blood flow out of my brain when I have bad posture”

Q When did you start to overeat or binge eat as you, you mentioned before?

A It was a soothing mechanism for my depression. I, I wanted to feel some form of stimulation. I was so dead inside. Something, some sort of arousal, some sort of pleasure. And my life was just devoid of pleasure. I mean, in, in the religion I was in, it's like you, you don't do caffeine, you don't smoke, you don't drink, you don't go to clubs, you don't, you know, like you don't look at porn. You're basically just devoid of those kinds of pleasures, and you're, you're supposed to derive pleasure from being in service of others, and obeying God's commandments, and like those are your rewards that generate. Now, of course, those things do generate rewards, and you, we all, And I understand that when we do help someone else, we do feel that. Uh, but you know, when you're grinding 2407 on a startup, startups are just pure pain. Like you don't feel joy for years. And when you're raising babies, you have these glimpses of joy, but most of it's just really hard work with a little, with a newborn. And so I think my life is just devoid of pleasure. And I was trying to find a vector where I could feel something and that's what it would do for me.

AI assessment note: “when you're grinding 2407 on a startup... when you're raising babies”

Q of you better than you. We can use self-driving cars as an example, right? Which we know statistically they're better at driving, uh, than we are as individuals or co collectively, maybe not individually. What percentage of people are comfortable handing over the reins to an algorithm, which is sort of like a purely scientific process, right? Which assumes nothing, measures everything, and adapts as it, it gets input and...

A Yeah, this, this topic is sufficiently rich and nuanced. I wrote an entire book about it titled Don't Die. And in the book, I break myself out into multiple characters, like Evening Brian's present Depression. You know, this guy scribe dark humor, Brian, like all these people are there and they have this discussion on what does it mean to have individual individual choice? What does it mean to be run by an algorithm? What does, uh, an ideal existence even mean? What does it mean to have choice? So it's a really nuanced conversation, but I'd say I've been, I've been hosting dinners at my house for the past few years. And having two and a half hour long conversations about this topic, and it does take about two and a half hours to get people warmed up. I can abbreviate it for you though, and I can tell you the five big emotional swings that happen. So one is I say, I pose the question, if you could have access to an algorithm that can take better care of you than you can yourself, would you say yes? Now immediately people are like, but what about, so it branches into a thousand You know, questions. And I just say, just like assume what you want. Let's just keep it high level and abstract. Yes or no. And then people go through this process where the majority of people are vomiting distaste. Like this is the worst idea. I hate it for all these reasons. A teeny number of people are …

AI assessment note: “the majority of people are vomiting distaste... A teeny number of people are like”

Q Yeah. I was amazed at some of the stuff that I read online and some of the stuff that you've been through. And I don't know if you want to share some of that or not. What's been the hardest moments for you?

A I'm so happy to be alive. I appreciate existence, uh, with an intensity that I've never felt before. I know what it feels like to want to end your life. You know, like I desperately wanted to kill myself for 10 years, and I'm grateful I didn't, and I'm grateful I'm alive. So, you know, when When people come and dunk on me or when they're trying to attack, attack me or when they're saying things about me, it's okay. Like it's fine. Um, everyone's just trying to do their thing and deal with themselves. So it's not really worth getting caught up in. I think it's possible that, um, you know, we'll look back at ourselves right now and we'll say, Oh man. Like, can you believe how hard it was to be human? Like, can you, like, do you remember how bad it was? Like the anxiety and the depression and the jealousy and the angst and the FOMO and the like, you know, all the things we felt like, God, that was just so hard. Like, can you imagine going back to doing that in the same way we imagine You know, previous areas not having the technology we do today. I think it's possible that we're just in this moment in time of a conscious existence. It's really brutal. And so I guess I don't really expect anything different. If, if people's internal experiences are beating them up, they're going to try to beat other people up too. It's just, it's like kind of the situation. It's okay.

AI assessment note: “I desperately wanted to kill myself for 10 years, and I'm grateful I didn't”

Q sunscreen, frying pans, and so much more. What I love about Brian is that he's living life on his own terms, and he's not harming anybody else. It's time to listen and learn. I was thinking about where to start, and I think we'll start with your love of biographies. Where did this start, and what are the, what are a few of the lessons that you've learned from them?

A I mean, I suppose I approached this question with the contemplation, how do you understand reality? There's a few ways of doing it. We're born into this world and we're given a narrative about existence. And that narrative depends upon when you're born and where you're born and to whom you're born. But you're told certain things about yourself and why you exist and what to care about and How society works and what ethics are norms. And there's never been universals. If you look at the thousands of different societies that have emerged on earth, it's extremely varied. If you, if you're posing, if you're poking at this situation or you're saying, okay, I know that I am born into a given system and this system is not a universal truth system. It's just where I'm at in time and place. And it's going to change in time. Then, you know, you can go about poking at a few ways. Like you can try to say, I'm going to take a quantitative approach and say, I'm going to learn the world through mathematics or through physics or through some scientific, uh, discipline, or I'm going to understand it through behavioral psychology. And, and so you, you kind of have to approach systems understanding and biographies for me. Was something that always intuitively helped me make sense because I was able to transport myself in time and be in different times and places instantaneously and understand with…

AI assessment note: “biographies for me. Was something that always intuitively helped me make sense”

Q Like average, uh, average life expectancy. So not people. So yes, there's people who will learn from what you're doing. They'll change their habits and they'll extend their personal life expectancy. But do you think we're going to see a collective big leap? I mean, like you have sort of Jeff Bezos and Patrick and John Collison and people pouring money into Billions of dollars into research on this topic.

A To me, the most compelling contemplation is trying to predict how fast intelligence is improving. So we humans have been the dominant force of intelligence on this planet for 200,000 years. And we've been able to increase our abilities of intelligence by forming better cooperation in our society. With language and all kinds of organizational methodologies. We've increased our ability to utilize our intelligence with technological tools. We've now created intelligence and AI that is creating better intelligence. And if you say, what is the speed at which intelligence is improving? It's fast, faster than we can comprehend. And so when you, when we make these, uh, when we model out the future, the future and we say, what's going to happen on a 10 year time span? We are unqualified to answer that question because that time, that timeframe exceeds our own intellectual capacity to imagine. So it's the first time in human history where we, the superior form of intelligence are up against a wall of not knowing what to predict, what comes next, because it's going to supersede us so fast. And so this is the thing. This is why I come down to the only thing I know to be true in the year of 20, 24 is don't die. That's it. I don't know anything else other than I want to be around for what could be the most spectacular existence in this part of the galaxy.

AI assessment note: “we are unqualified to answer that question because that time, that timeframe exceeds”

Q And then I want to ask, uh, just before we sort of wrap up here, how do you envision, and I know we don't have a long window in terms of what we can see, but if you zoom out, how do you see AI helping us?

A I actually, I tried to embody the problem of AI. I tried to become the species as a problem. And so I did that with a thought experiment where I said, okay, I'm a collection of 35 trillion cells. And that's a lot of intelligent agents all doing their own thing with different objectives. The body doesn't have a singular objective. The body has all kinds of conflicting objectives at all moments. And I wanted to see, could I achieve goal alignment within me, Brian Johnson? And that's what I've been trying to do. And so first I had to say, okay, in order to understand these 35 trillion cells, I need to get a read of as many of them as possible. Then I need to find the evidence to tell me how I align the cells, and then I need to implement it with exactitude. Now this is a problem that is identical to AI. So we're, we're building the super intelligence and we then are going to give it objective functions. I say, all right, AI do this, you know, like solve this math problem or help me write this thing or have this conversation with me, whatever the thing we're asking it to do, it has goals and it has goals. We've, we've programmed into it. It has goals that it emerges from the system itself. So we're basically trying to say, what are our goals, under what circumstances, and for whom? So it's a giant goal alignment problem. So my situation, I had to say, okay, is 10 p.m. Brian in char…

AI assessment note: “I tried to embody the problem of AI... it's a giant goal alignment problem”

Q And where were you when you started Blueprint? Were you basically your, your biological age for your Like, was everything the same?

A No, I was, I was coming from a pretty bad place. I, after being depressed for a decade and running, you know, being a startup entrepreneur my entire life and having just gone through a bunch of stuff, uh, I was pretty beat up and I was in a bad state. So I definitely subscribe to grind culture where, you know, you do things in society to try to earn people's respect. And have a position of a status in a social group to when you conform with these social norms. And so like when you hear a story about a colleague who Worked on a program, a problem for two days straight and didn't sleep. It's like, wow, they're so awesome and amazing. You know, like that it's very hard to not to be induced to think that that's an emulation worthy behavior. So I had to peel myself out of grind culture and find out that this is the thing is we are accustomed death is the enabler of all things. Immortality. You know, if you love country, die for your country. If you want to, if you want to pay the ultimate price of being a hero, sacrifice your life. You know, if you, um, want to achieve immortality in your professional endeavor, have your works live beyond your death. Everything we, we think about existence is around death. And I was calling question to death that maybe we have reached this time and place in human history where death is no longer inevitable. And if that is true, everything about our …

AI assessment note: “No, I was, I was coming from a pretty bad place.”