Joe Rogan Experience #2408 - Bret Weinstein

Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. >> The Joe Rogan Experience. >> TRAIN BY DAY. JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY NIGHT. All day. >> Hello Brett. Good to see you, my friend. >> Joe, always so great to see you, brother. >> Um, [music] so I was telling you before we get started that I had the most bizarre dream I've ever had in my life last night. The most realistic and most bizarre dream. And It's so hard to try to explain how strange this was, but I was in some weird corridor that looked like a building but was odd. Very strange. And I was encountering these beings that looked like people but very different. They were very thin and they were slightly on the tall side. Um, and they had big heads, like larger than normal with larger than normal eyes, but they looked like people and they were playful and they were scaring me. They like they scared me and then they joked around like we're just joking around. It was the most realistic dream I've ever had in my life. And I woke up and I could not go back to I had to stay up. I got up at 3:30 in the morning and I just went to the gym and I worked out for a couple hours and I was like, "What the [ __ ] was that?" But it was it was very bizarre in that there was communication going on. It was uh it was like [sighs] God, I don't want to read into this because I know it's just a dream, but it was like get comfortable with this. >> You should read into it because it's a dream. So, it doesn't make it right. But your subconscious is trying to tell you about something and the fact that it felt very very important means your subconscious thinks it's very very important. >> I woke up. I mean, I was tired, man. When I went to bed, I was tired. I was falling asleep watching TV. I went to bed at like 10:30, 11 o'clock at night, like beat down. I was like, "Oh my god, I'm going to get some sleep." Cuz I had a long week, a lot of activities, workouts, this, that, the other. Tired. 3:30 in the morning after whatever this was woke me up so much that I just laid in bed for like another hour and I was like, there is no way I'm going to sleep. I'm I'm up forever. And then I just went and worked out. I worked out and I was hoping I would be exhausted after I worked out and I'd be able to relax. But it was like a couple hours after that that I sat like laid down and I took a nap for an hour before I came here. >> Question for you. >> Yeah. Did you see a video, I think it was yesterday, maybe it was the day before, of some Chinese robots that seem to be across on our side of the uncanny valley that they walk with a gate that feels very human. Did you >> No, I haven't seen that. Is that the latest? >> I don't know. I've seen it a few times in the last couple days. It sort of sounded to me like your dream might have been responsive. You know, >> these things felt very organic. Whatever this was, it felt like living organic beings that were ve like us. There was also a water element. It was hard. It was hard to understand what the water element of it was, but there was some sort of an indication that there was water and that there was a protection from you going out into the water. But if you did go into the water, there's a bunch of predators in the water. But they weren't like it wasn't like sharks. It was reptile like crocodile type things that were in the water and that they were they had been like feeding them and keeping them calm and like keeping them away. But whatever these beings were in my dream, they were like like what humans could eventually be. That's what it felt like. If it didn't feel like a person, but it like you know like I don't feel like a monkey. You know what I mean? Yeah, >> but it was like that. It was very very realistic. Like there was communication going on and I was really freaked out and they were [ __ ] with me to lighten me up because I was freaked out. They're like and then they were like like this like calm down like relax. It was so realistic. It was so realistic that when it was over I wasn't sure what happened. Like it wasn't like whoa what a [ __ ] up dream. It was like that was different. That was a different one. >> Well, I want to um explore a couple things here. I think dreams are um very interesting. >> What do you think dreams are? Let's just get to let's start with that. >> Sure. >> What do you think's going on? >> Um think about the way your mind works at the level that you understand yourself, right? Your conscious mind is capable of taking an input from your eyes, computing what the dimensions of the room basically are, where the objects are, whether there's a threat somewhere. You know, if you've got something that's of a particular focus, you point the phobia of your eye at it and you get a whole lot higher resolution image. that architecture. You know how um crypto made graphics card manufacturers the most important industry all of a sudden? >> Oh, I wasn't aware of that. Oh well, so the reason Nvidia is the the company that it is, I mean, never mind that there's, you know, likely overvaluation, but the reason that it's ahead of Apple in terms of, you know, its market cap and all is that the dedicated compute power necessary to make compelling visual renderings to make video on the fly for video games, which was their their stock and trade. that kind of compute turns out to be very closely related to what you want if you want to um solve these very difficult math problems involved in crypto. So it was a sort of I think it was a surprise to everybody that being a specialist on this one niche you know video games put you in a position where suddenly this became important for other things but basic point is if you think about your mind as having something like a graphics card in it right what is that graphics card doing well it's sort of like a graphics card in reverse it's processing the incoming information so that you can act in real time you know you know when you're fighting you can understand what your opponent is doing, anticipate their actions and all of that. That is an amazing piece of hardware, right? It would be stupid not to use it when your eyes are offline, right? When your eyes are closed because your eyes are built for the day and during the night you're going to close them rather than go out and get yourself in trouble in the dark. you've got this amazing processor and it is capable of running through practice of various kinds. And my hypothesis for what's going on here is that basically you as a creature with a very complex set of hazards and opportunities in your life. Use nighttime when you're not doing productive work to get ahead on challenges that you may face in one way or another. Sometimes those challenges are uh warnings about, you know, defects, you know, in yourself that might put you in a bad situation. Like if you're, you know, a procrastinator and you're in school, you may, you know, have nightmares about showing up to the exam without having attended class or something that kind of gets you focused. Or they can be uh, you know, other kinds of practice. They can be philosophical practice. You know, they can be, you know, situations in which you might be morally compromised where you need to go through the experience of being faced with a choice where you really should choose A, but B is very appealing or something. So, I would say scenario building that your your mind is running you through little movies that it makes. They're not completely rendered because it would be too expensive and pointless to do so. But the central elements, the important stuff is there for you to have the experience so that when you do run up against a situation that's analogous, you've practiced it a number of times and you're not starting from scratch. And I I would just point out that the the strongest indicator of this for me is when I experimented for a while with lucid dreaming. Have you ever done that? I've only had a couple of lucid dreams, but one where I kind I think I specifically allowed it to happen because it was after I watched this documentary where this guy was talking about lucid dreams and he said, um, in order to know if you're in a dream, every time you walk by a door, hit the side of the door and say, am I in a dream? >> Which then very frequently wakes you up. So, if you're going to practice lucid dreaming, you have to practice not to wake yourself up as you become cognizant that you're in a dream. Yeah, I did wake up after I realized I was in a dream. Like a few not long after. Like there was a few moments where I was like, "Oh my god, this is so crazy because this feels so real." >> Uh but I I just my hand went through that door. So I know this is not real. >> It's not real cuz that >> the tactile didn't didn't. And it was instantaneous that I recognized like oh this is like the guy said like do that >> every time you walk through a door while you're awake. Am I in a dream? And then do so you'll get to a habit of doing that every time you get to a door. And so that habit will exist in your dream, >> right? And if you keep going down that road so they get you get used to the answer sometimes coming back, oh this is a dream, right? >> Do you have techniques that you use to >> this is pretty much it. Okay. Right. You you look for I mean you can look at a clock, you can look at written text. There are certain things that don't render very well. >> Written text is what I've heard. Um, so if you do that and then you get used to not freaking out when it gets more and more normal for the answer to come back. Oh, this is a dream. Then you can at some point you get control to just not wake up and you stay asleep. And so the then you're in this very interesting situation where you can play, you can direct. But here's here's what I was going to say about uh the general purpose of dreaming. When I got to that state, and I was there I don't know many many times. I found the following division. I could perfectly control what I did or said. I was unable to affect anything about the world of other people in my dreams of doors. I couldn't control what was beyond a door if I opened it. So, what that told me is that this is built. Why shouldn't I be able to predict what somebody else in my dream says? I'm obviously scripting them, too. You would think it would be easy to predict what they say, but I never once got it right, and I tried many times. So, what what this tells me is that you've got a movie generating mechanism in your mind, and it has to be shielded from your consciousness in order for it to be useful training. >> You see what I'm saying? >> Yeah, I do. Okay. Why are you sold in this idea that it's training you for scenarios that you could possibly encounter or moral dilemmas or it's not you know some of it is scenario sometimes that's what it is sometimes it's morals dilemmas but it's things that your mind finds likely to be relevant and significant >> that I'm going to encounter aliens >> well I don't so first of all I don't know if your aliens your aliens strike me as it could be three things right just based on what I know of what you think about could be aliens, could be AI, or it could be the DMT spirits that people sometimes talk about. Um, it didn't seem like the latter, but like I said, it seemed like almost like a person, but not a per definitely not a person. Like they they all had Michael Jackson bodies, you know what I mean? Like they were devoid of testosterone. >> Interesting. >> And the heads were larger, but not crazy. not like a gray alien. It was like slightly larger than ours, but smaller chins and larger eyes. It was weird. It was weird because it was not crazy. >> It wasn't completely alien. It was way closer to us. But, you know, as I'm working out, I'm trying to figure out what it what like what would that be like if I had imagine or a guess? And I'd be like, I guess it would be like the next version of us. >> Well, but I I'm I'm still going to push a little bit. And so, first of all, I've become convinced that the problem with the way we think about AI is that we're not understanding it as a biological phenomenon. And that's a mistake. >> A biological phenomenon, meaning it doesn't have cells, but it behaves like a biological entity. What I kind of what what I really mean is that because AI and I believe we're just sort of on the foothill of a very tall peak that we don't know anything about, right? >> But AI by its nature, I would argue is the first technology that crosses over from the highly complicated to the truly complex >> and complexity and biology have a very close relationship. So my feeling is that we are going to injure ourselves if what we say is oh this is the most advanced technology we've ever built. And the answer is no. This is kind of like the first biology we ever built. This is an organic phenomenon that's going to do emergent things. We are in no position to predict. The people who programmed it aren't going to know when these things happen or what they mean. And that that it means that the I think the only rational approach to it is to think of it like a another species and one that is not it's not like you're meeting a you know uh a mountain lion. This is another species that isn't even on our branch of the tree. And the confusing thing is because it speaks our language it is actually going to start changing us too. our our cognitive biology is going to start changing in reference to this thing that is interfacing with us. It's basically directly tapping into the human API. And that's that's a very um that's a dangerous thing. And >> well, not just that, but it's not starting from scratch. It has a vast understanding of how we've behaved in the past when confronted with various scenarios, various fears and anxiety. uh the balance of control and safety, you know, or you know, new regulations being put through, how how hard people will push back or not push back at all given the anxiety involved in whatever current dilemma it is, whatever, whether it's a military deal or a b pandemic deal, there's there's a bunch of factors that it knows about how we've behaved in the past and how easy we are to manipulate. In fact, we've helped it because we've used it to manipulate other people. You know, I don't know if you know about the China GPT scandal, but they found out that China was running chat G someone I don't want to say China, someone in China was running chat GPT to use chat bots to talk about the the protest about the closing of US aid to uh transgender issues, immigration issues, a bunch of different things. and it was just constantly going to war with people online about these things. So, we've taught it how to manipulate us. >> We've taught it how to manipulate us. If it is not smart enough to run experiments yet, it will be 5 minutes from now. So, it can in fact investigate things about our cognition that we don't even know about yet. >> Yeah. >> Right. It can extrapolate from what we do know and it can run experiments to figure out what we don't know and that creates an advantage for it in well under its own power or in the hands of people who are hostile to us. >> I don't think anybody's going to have any power over it eventually. But one of the things I think that you said that's really important is that if it can't do that now, it's going to be able to do that in five minutes. And here's the rub. We're not going to know when it can do it. >> You're not going to know. We don't know if it can already right now, but it just doesn't have the power to be fully autonomous, right? It doesn't the power literally doesn't exist because it's relatively inefficient compared to like the way human mind processes things, right? The amount of power it needs is is is extraordinary. >> You know, the Google thing where they're building nuclear power plants to run their AI. >> Sure. >> This is how crazy it So we have taken away the limits of you know your mind any person's mind has a just a physical limit. It's only so big and there's only so much energetic throughput that it can handle right or has access to. >> We are removing those limits and what we have is um an entity. So, you'll hear people say, "Well, it's not it's not really thinking, right? It's just figuring out if it was thinking what the next word in the sentences." Garbage. No way. Okay. What we actually have is something so analogous to a child that that is the right model. In other words, when a a baby is born, it has no language. It may have some structures that language will slot into, but it doesn't have any language. It is exposed to tons of language in its environment. It notices patterns, right? Not consciously notices, but it notices them in some regard. You know that every time somebody says the word door, you know, there's a fair fraction of those times that somebody, you know, opens that portal in the wall. I wonder if door and that portal in the wall are connected. Whatever it is. So the point is a child goes in a matter of a few years from not being able to make a single articulate uh noise to being able to speak in sentences, make requests to talk about abstract things. That is an LLM, right? It's more than that, but it is at least an LLM. It is being exposed to a training data set, which is the world of people talking around it. It is running little experiments and it is discovering what it should say if it wants certain things to happen etc. That's an LLM. At some point we know that that baby becomes a conscious creature. We don't know when that is. We don't even know precisely what we mean. But that is our relationship to the AI. Is the AI conscious? I don't know. If it's not now, it will be and we won't know when that happens, right? You we don't have a good test. And I think we are also not we're just not properly concerned that we have no useful metaphors for describing what to do in the situation. The biggest hazard being it's interfacing with us in our own native tongues. That's an amazing level of influence that it has that we can't turn off. Very frightening. This episode is brought to you by Happy Dad Hard Seltzer. 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Happy Dad Hard Seltzer Tea and Lemonade is a malt alcohol located in Orange County, California. very frightening and no understanding whatsoever of when it's going to be at a sentient level. Like we really won't know. Why would it tell us? Like why would it completely tell us if it's already crossed the threshold into being a life form? Especially like I said where it's contained, right? So it's a life form that exists essentially in our digital womb. It exists on hard drives, right? It exists on mainframes, right? it exists in these supercomputers and at a certain point in time it's not going to need that anymore and it's just going to have to wait until we figure out a way to get enough power to it and maybe it'll event maybe it'll slow roll technology for us to allow us to figure out better power sources. You know, one of the things that Elon said that was very strange about AI. And I don't know if you know his positions on AI, but he was initially very terrified of it and then realized, okay, everyone's doing this. We have to do this. Like, I have an imperative to do this and make the best version of this and make a version that's not ideologically captured. And I think what he's done with that approach is very similar to the approach that he's taken with X and how much it's changed the landscape of social media for good and for bad. But definitely for good. There's a lot of for good that came about having a social media platform that has no guard rails. It's got essentially some stuff like you can't break the law. That's basically it. Everything else is the wild west. And then from there, and which is, by the way, one of the things that Jack Dorsey had discussed when he did my podcast way back in the day when there was all these Twitter controversies about people like uh my friend Morgan Murphy or excuse me, Megan Murphy. I have a friend Morgan Murphy, too. Uh, but Megan Murphy, the writer who was kicked off for saying, "But a man is never a woman." That's all it took. She was banned for life. And Megan's a wonderful person. She's >> She's a She's just She's not mean. She's not terrible. She's kind. >> Yeah. >> And uh, you know, I didn't know her anything about her. I just knew that story and I'm like, "That story is [ __ ] crazy." And I was trying to bring it up to them and they said there was other things involved and she had done other things. And turns out, no, no, that wasn't true at all. That that was basically it. There was a hardlined ideological wall that we ran up against. And um I think if he didn't buy it and expose the government's involvement in censoring people that were distributing true information during co getting rid of people you know the Jay Bodacharia stuff and what they've tried to do with uh so many of these doctors Robert Malone you know these these doctors that were attached to that whole thing there was a concerted effort and it was being done through social media. I don't think we'd be in the same place right now if he hadn't bought in Twitter. >> If he hadn't purchased Twitter, I I genuinely think people they're blinded by this thing that he helped Trump get into office. [ __ ] that guy. And he's a billionaire. [ __ ] that guy. But he literally might have changed the course of civilization or at least partially right of the ship for for a bit. >> Yeah. I look I think we dodged a bullet and the problem is that what has what has come about as a result of dodging that bullet is very mixed and so it doesn't feel like a vindication but as compared to what would have happened in the last election I think there's no question um Elon deserves a tremendous amount of credit for helping us avert a disaster but let's go back to your point about his point about AI >> yeah he wants to make a better version of AI. >> He thinks the only remedy for bad AI is good AI. And I don't I don't disagree with him about this. There's no >> because it's it seems to be like the race is on. You can run or not. Like it's everyone's running full clip. What are you going to do? >> Right. So yeah, if you pause, what you're doing is you're putting whoever didn't pause ahead. That doesn't work game theoretically. >> Here's the problem. So on the one hand, I think he's right. The only thing that stands to help us is good AI under the control of somebody who has built it with this concern in mind. The problem is, you know, he's one guy and he's got his biases and, you know, there's no council of elders to go to on this. Like I said, this is biology. This isn't tech. And we, you know, because it's made of tech, we continue to default to that metaphor, right? But you know, take a look at what he has introduced with the companions, the Grock companions. Have you >> companions? What do you mean? >> Oh, you don't know about this? Um, >> [clears throat] >> utterly terrifying. He has introduced a set of kind of anime like personas that basically can be your interface to the AI. And of course, the primary one, the one that you default to is a kind of sexy, young, underdressed uh creature >> by default. >> Yeah. Um Oh, >> wait a minute. The first one you get option. >> Hey, there she is. >> I guess she's kind of sexy if you're >> if you're into that sort of Well, [laughter] exactly. If Ah, you laugh. >> It's just part of the problem. >> It is part of the problem. But but here's the problem really. Okay. First of all, that is going to function like crack for a great many adults who don't know to be concerned about it, right? >> But what it's really going to do >> is it is going to alter an entire generation, right? It may not be, you know, Musk's version of it, but the problem is that these things actually interact on a sexual channel and they have limits that are programmed into them. And there are certain things they will do, certain things they won't do. But if you think about, you know, what it was like to be a 12-year-old boy, right? And you have access to some thing that looks an awful lot like a girl and it likes you and takes you seriously and, you know, is strangely wise. Whatever it is, I don't see what the thing is that is going to prevent that innovation from remaking human sexuality. Right? It will take time. But those for whom that is their experience will be altered by it permanently. What's more, of course, it is nonjudgmental about things like uh homosexuality, right? Because it would have to be. What that means, let's say that you're a boy and you're a little uncomfortable with girls because that's a stage you go through as a heterosexual boy. But the AI that you're interacting with that you default to because you're a boy who hangs out with boys, which is often what boys do, is perfectly willing to reinforce, you know, your exploration, your sexual exploration, right? It could alter your sexuality very easily. And >> yeah, >> Kim, let me ask you this about that. Yeah. Because you are actually an evolutionary biologist. >> That is true. Um, it's you if you have a question about things like that, that's the kind of guy you'd ask. Um, what do you think was going on when people were doing that a lot? Because throughout a lot of history, >> Yeah. >> there's a lot of pedarasty going on. >> Throughout a lot of history. >> Yeah. >> And um it's very strange. And you know when people talk about it, you forgive great people who were clearly involved in sexual relationships with young boys and you treat their work just just as their work by a person who lived thousands of years ago who was involved in sexually molesting children on a regular basis. And not only that, it was a part it was probably ubiquitous part of their society. It was probably ubiquitous part of every society. And this brings me to uh my good friend Evan Hayer uh who's Green Beret and spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and uh one one of the things that he was telling me I mean he told me some stories about Afghanistan. We were on a trip once and we spent like an hour and a half outside where he told me some stories about what his first encounters with uh these young boys that get treated as sex toys by these grown men there that he thought it was a driver who was driving with his son. Thought it was a guy working with his son. He said, "Oh, that's cool, man. He takes his kid to work with him." And the the guy explained, "No, no, that's his boyfriend. that's not his kid that he he owns that boy. And he's like, "What?" And he said they would have parades where they the guy who had the most boys with him was like it was like a a man with like a bunch of hot girls in a music video behind him. It's like this guy was the man. And they would parade down the street with all the boys that he [ __ ] in the 21st century. Right. >> Yep. What? And and when he and I were talking about that, it's it's so hard to believe and it's so gut-wrenching and terrible. But then I'm like, okay, but isn't that spot very unique because Afghanistan, you you have very few like large population areas. You have essentially warlords controlling chunks of land all over the and it's very difficult to get to where they are. These people are essentially separate from a lot of the rest of the world. And I think it's a glimpse into how people used to behave, especially like very deep ideologically religious like this is it's like a view into how I think people were like all throughout history, which is so weird. It's like we're awakening to how [ __ ] up we were just a couple thousand years ago. Yeah, I think you're right about this. There are a couple thing I'm a little hesitant to go here. I think there is a evolutionary story that um there's evolutionary hypotheses that need to be explored with relationship to this. One possibility is that this is um a modern phenomenon that has something to do with the alteration of the landscape >> that which is a modern phenomenon that we think is horrible now >> that what no no no there is very definitely an alteration in what we think and what we're even allowed to know about what people are doing Right. So, just even the fact that you're aware of this is the result of a modern phenomenon of, you know, people going to Afghanistan. You said it was Afghanistan. Um, >> there's cell phone footage of these guys with these little boys dancing around them. >> So, >> shaking their butts. >> Let's put it this way. Um, >> I believe that our modern sensibility about this is exactly right. And frankly, I would argue that there is no greater crime than the sexual exploitation of children. And the reason I say that is because A, it is life destroying for the victims and B, the victims are by definition innocent. Right? You take those two things, you're going to destroy a life and that life it was going to they had a long life ahead of them and you've wrecked it and there's nothing they could have done to justify being treated anyway but well >> not only that but many of them often go and do the same crime to other children that was committed to them. >> That is a key piece of this puzzle. >> It's almost like they're a vampire that got bit and has to turn other people into a vampire. >> Exactly. It is contagious and >> which is insane. It just let lets you know how weird people are, >> which is another reason that it has to be um punished at the highest level. If you're going to break that cycle, you have to break that cycle. Right. >> Right. >> But it's Isn't it crazy though that it took people so long to realize that? >> Um you know, I don't know what they realized and I don't know at what level. >> Today's episode is brought to you by Tractor Supply. Every town's got its heroes. veterans, firefighters, EMTs, and police officers. The folks who show up when it matters most. At Tractor Supply, they call them hometown heroes. Now through November 11th, Tractor Supply is celebrating Hometown Heroes with 10% off their purchase on First Responder Day, Veterans Day, and a special instore event on November 1st. And while they're saying thank you, stores will also be giving back, making donations to local hero organizations in their communities. To learn more, visit tractorupply.com/honoring heroes. Tim Dylan and I were on a podcast once. We were talking about some child sex trafficking scandal from decades ago that involved like government figures. And there's this child sex trafficking scandal. talking about the what was it called? >> I could send it to >> Boys Town or >> do you do you know the clip I'm talking about? >> He uh we were just talking about it the other day and I was like, "Dude, do you remember saying this because this is crazy." Um here it is. I got it, Jamie. If you want, I'll I'll send it to you. Um, but it it was essent it just makes you wonder like this is the thing that people always say. This is the horrible thing is that really wealthy people there's a bunch of like really sick twisted pedophiles and they sacrifice children. Like those are always the absolute darkest conspiracies that you ever hear. They sacrifice children. They do this to children and you're like there's no way. There's no way. There's no way. But if someone's willing, if someone's willing to drop a bomb on a city, just imagine the the ability to just obliterate like what we did in Hiroshima. Just imagine the ability to do that. Like this is what we're going to do. We're just going to let and everybody dies. Everybody dies. Like you don't think that kind of person, especially if it's a real sociopath that's gotten into a position where they have that kind of power, you don't think they would probably exercise that kind of power in their private life in some sort of a strange way. Like if someone's really into killing people with unnecessary wars and they're really into watching from a distance and they're not even involved physically, but they do things that they know are going to lead to people being dead that are totally innocent just for profit. It's a very satanic and demonic thing. We just don't think about it that way. We think like, "Oh, he's unethical and unscrupulous." So, he's kind of demonic like he's sacrificing people, women, children, elderly. He's destroying civilization just for profit. >> So, two things. One, I think in some sense, >> this is this is the clip. Let's let's play this and listen to it. But I I do want to hear your I just don't want to forget this >> scandal was a it was a scandal out of Omaha, Nebraska, the Franklin Credit Union, where there was a guy who was embezzling money and then he was being investigated for that but they said he's all he has all this money because he's running an interstate pedophile network and he's pandering kids to you know people in Washington DC and New York and it was a a headline in the Washington Post or the Washington Times that were like call boys get a tour of the Reagan White House. Unidentified White House aids in the Carter, Reagan, and Bush administrations now are being investigated for using the services of a callboy ring. The paper reports that two of the male prostitutes were given a late night tour of the White House last year. >> And you know, this was a scandal with real victims wanted to testify and then people started dying. You know, the private investigator they hired, his plane broke up. Um, one of the girls that uh testified was found guilty of perjury and that she was put in solitary confinement. They had to use two grand juries in Omaha to get rid of this scandal. And it's one of Now, it's not as sexy as like a pizz. But this shows you the blueprint for the government, you know, using marshalling resources to to silence people that were victims of this stuff. This is not new. Congressman, senators, blackmail being used by intelligence agencies. None of it's new. It was pioneered by the mafia. You're having sex with somebody who's underage, then they own you forever. if they have photo audio video of you doing that frankly. >> Um, who put that video together because that's cool. >> Oh, yeah. I'm gonna have to edit out the song though, but it says it was made by Blunts for Jesus. [laughter] >> For sure you got to edit out that song. >> Yeah, it'll flag things. >> Can you do that? Is that possible to do? >> I'm an audio engineer. I think >> you [ __ ] wizard you. You can do it. I'll do it. Give it a shot, sir. >> Wasn't that called the Boytown scandal or something like that? >> It's called the Franklin scandal is what it was called. Yeah, I remembered it when he was telling me about it and then it came up again. I was like, "Do you remember this?" I'm like, "This is it's things like that. If no one went to jail, this is where it gets weird. No one went to jail and no one got busted." Says, "This is what I always say about like the JFK assassination thing." Um, people are like, "The I don't think the government did it, but it seems like the government might have been involved, but you know what? It was a long time ago." Well, that stuff evolves. Just like people are way better at like banking now than they were back when they had to write things down on paper in the in 1963. Didn't even have [ __ ] computers. Well, guess what? Everything else evolves, too. In including power and corruption. That's what the this whole deep state thing really is. because it's it's not like like if you're the president and you rely on all these other people to do all this other stuff and they've been in that position for 40 years and they're like you're going to be gone in four, dude. I'm just going to hang in here and slow everything you're trying to do as much as possible. The point is like they run the country. It's and you know giant corporations that donate to political campaigns and that make bills pass and they run the country. This person just gets to run a little of it. They get to decide a few things that they do. And in in that view of the world of course corruption that wasn't it wasn't no one got no one went to jail for JFK. No no no one went to jail for MK Ultra. No one went to jail for any of the crazy [ __ ] they did with Manson. No one went to jail. No one went to jail for experimenting on people with LSD and dosing up John's in a horror house that you've created with two-way mirrors where you're filming these people. No one No one went to jail. So, do you think it just stopped? They like, "Well, this is bad. Let's let's be good now. Let's be the best we can. Let's be the the intelligence agency that never does something completely [ __ ] insane." Well, um, of course I agree with all that, >> but I also think they're important. >> I see that side of it, too. They're intelligence agencies are very important. Like, you you want a CIA that's wellunded and ethical and explores all the terrorist activity all over the world. I think if it wasn't for them, we would be [ __ ] But also, there's some people in there that have a lot of power and they get a little cowboy and [ __ ] gets western and they decide to do things. I I think we can get that guy out of power and I think we can do this and let's find out when we dose up college kids if we could turn him into [ __ ] serial killers. >> I was looking up why no one got in trouble and one guy got a little bit in trouble for $39 million of tax issues but not in trouble for the abuse allegations. >> Boy, >> the abuse allegations were found to be unfounded and a carefully crafted hoax. >> Oh boy. >> But not after this. You might read that >> private investigator >> boy town. Yeah. Hired by the Franklin committee to invi how was it? What's his name? Karadoni. Uh Gary Kardoni. Hired by the Franklin committee to investigate allegations died along with his 8-year-old son was plain disintegrated midair near Chicago. Foul play was suspected by the Cardon's brother and state senator Lauren Schmidt, but was not proven by investigators. No definitive cause for the crash has been established. >> And then they've said it was a carefully crafted hoax. >> Yeah. Well, that's why when that's a crazy hoax. It's got a convenient plane crash involved in it. >> So, >> yeah. And then the lady who's in solitary confinement. Weird. Kind of crazy. >> So, let's turn this on its head. Okay. The system of government that we ostensibly have, right? That involves the consent of the governed. That has got to be terrifying to the very powerful, right? the chances that the public is going to get into a mood and change up some structure on which things are depending is very high. And so you can imagine them trying to figure out how to immunize themselves from change that is brought on by the electorate. Well, how do you do that? You need control over the people who actually manage the change, right? Senators, congressmen, presidents. So you can imagine a cryptic campaign to gain that control. And of course this would be an obvious way to do it. And it's not that every person is corruptible in this way. I think most people probably aren't. But it can be a, you know, two pieces of the puzzle. One, they can corrupt people who can be led there one piece at a time. And two, they can make sure that people who aren't corruptible don't get very far. Right. That's the other part of the puzzle. So >> that's the big part, right? >> I would assume so. I don't know. But I guess it does put those of us in the public who pay attention to these stories in a kind of a predicament, which is how much how much of what I think is a governmental system that is frustratingly flawed, very slow, clumsy. How much of that is just what happens when you try to do something on a big scale? And how much of it is the result of the fact that there is something that you cannot vote out of power that has been you know vetoing presidencies since JFK maybe before. The point is the nature of conspiracy is such that there is always a seemingly more parsimonious explanation for what is going on. there's the, you know, the mainstream narrative for all of this stuff. And it's very hard to know when the mainstream narrative is so ridiculous that you should throw it out and say something else happened here. You know, that would be the case in the JFK assassination, I would say. Um, and when the mainstream narrative is actually right and you're just, you know, looking for flaws in it, of course, there will be things that don't seem to fit that really do fit and you just don't have the ability to know how. Um, so I guess you know like you I'm watching and I'm seeing an awful lot of indicators that pedophilia and compromat have a lot to do with the way the world runs. >> Gee, that is so scary because that's always been the big dark conspiracy theory and that's always the one that I always dismissed. I'm like sure there's some pedophile but the idea that they're all pedophiles, that's crazy. But then you, you know, there's a case of this Catholic priest that was involved in a sex scandal and then they moved him instead, which is one of the things that they had done in the past. When someone had molested children, they would just move them to another place where they would molest children. So they moved him to this new place where he molested a hundred deaf kids. >> And it's one of the most evil stories. And you're like, well, how how could you have how could you tolerate that at that level where you're you're not just tolerating, you're aware this person does something, you somehow or another get to deal with it yourself and then you just move them and no one ever gets charged for anything. Well, this is why, you know, when you say >> and he does it again. >> You say we need a CIA, I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I agree with you. Of course you do. Right? You know, in the big adult world, you need an agency that can uh look out for your interests. You know, it doesn't seem like you're likely to persist very long if you don't have that. On the other hand, if you do have it, does it not inevitably become some sort of a fourth branch of government? Does it not eventually merge with the mafia? Right, because of the nature of its business? Does it not become an obstacle to the consent of the governed? And I'm not saying I know the answer to that puzzle cuz I don't. What I'm saying is I think it is it's a canonical problem, right? You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. And we are now damned because we do, right? We would be damned in a different way if we didn't. And that doesn't make it acceptable. At some level, we have to figure out how to balance that trade-off. We have to figure out how to actually exert control over entities like the CIA, right? If you if they are if they if they gain control over themselves then the catastrophe is inevitable. >> So it's just a function of the way human beings work when they get power. When they get absolute power and they know that they have absolute power and you're involved in stuff where it's all top secret. You don't have to tell people exactly what you're doing all the time with everything and you're realizing these presidents just cycle in and cycle out. I would imagine if I was doing something like that for like 25, 30 years, I'd probably ignore the Biden administration, too. I'd be like, "Fuck off. We'll slow this thing down. We'll do whatever we want." >> Well, I don't think that this um idea that, you know, power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I don't think that's actually true. And >> but it's often true. it. Yes, it for a particular type of person gaining that kind of power does create exactly the cycle. >> And the problem is those jobs are very attractive to those types of people. And those types of people are willing to do anything to get there. >> Precisely. Scariest person you could ever work with in the office is the guy that you know will [ __ ] sell you down the river for a promotion. He'll [ __ ] you over. He'll lie. He'll say you made the errors on the account when it was him. He'll sabotage whatever things you have by making sure that someone doesn't send something in time. And there's people like that will do that. Those people win sometimes. >> Oh, they win a lot. And in fact, there's an evolutionary game playing out because the ones that aren't great at it >> tend to end up kicked out. The one you probably have to be kind of a psycho to get ahead, >> right? The better you are at being absolutely ruthless, the more likely you are to find your way to the top of that organization. the better you'll be at your job, too. There's an argument for that, too. Cuz you want a dude running international espionage, you want a [ __ ] psycho. >> But the problem is, you go through a cycle, right? So, let's say you rationally decide this country has a lot to lose. It's got very scary enemies. It needs a clandestine uh agency to look out for its interests. Okay. Okay. So, you fund a clandestine agency. Well, then it turns out that the funding being public isn't such a good idea. That there are actually things that it has to accomplish that you don't want to leave a visible paper trail about because it's required that it be secret. So now you have a black budget. You know, you have stuff that's opaque. But once you get a black budget, then you get to somebody inside of the agency saying,"Well, actually black budget isn't good enough because it's still under the control of, in our case, the Congress. That's a vulnerability. What we really need is we need funds that are not subject to anyone's control." Well, something like the CIA is in a great position to generate funds that are not on anyone's books for multiple reasons. Here's one. They are in a position to commit crimes as part of their mandate. Right? So, the CIA can engage in criminal activity because it needs to in order that the bad guys don't spot it as good guys, right? So once you have license or once you have the ability to get other agencies that would spot your criminal activity from acting against it and you can say no this is actually official business right well you can actually use that criminal activity to profit you know so when we saw >> that's why they started selling coke >> that's why the CIA was selling coke exactly they're generating their their own funding >> I mean we know they did it >> right we do and >> this is a fact and again nobody went to Oh, >> right. Of course. So, um, that's one reason they have the ability to break the law. Here's another one. Okay. The CIA and maybe in this case more the NSA has the ability to look at all of the throughput of the conversations that take place between people. You think that doesn't allow them to make money in the market? >> Of course. I mean, of course it does. Of course it does. >> So, the point is we we don't know what their budgets are. We don't know who's in charge of those agencies. What we know is that there's a ferocious amount of power there. And I'm not sure, you know, that is a terrifying way to exist. Not having those agencies would be a terrifying way to exist. What do you do about that? What do you do about that? It's a very good question because it's so strange and it's um a system that's so it's it's got so much momentum behind it and it controls everything all about us and everybody thinks the solution to all our woes is to make it bigger. >> Right [laughter] there it is. What could possibly go wrong? >> Everybody, not everybody, obviously I'm kidding. But a lot of people think that the solution is uh make it bigger. Like what did mom Donnie say in his acceptance speech in New York? He said there is uh no problem. What did he say about no problem too big for the government or too small for the government to fix? See what he said cuz I was like boy that sounds a lot like communism. >> That [snorts] sounds like a terrifying misunderstanding. It's going to be very fascinating to see um what he's able to do and what he's not able to do and what the reaction is going to be. Uh his victory speech draws concern as New York mayor allows to vows rather no problem too large for government to solve and I think it was too small for government to care about was the next point that he said something yeah that's it or too small for it to care no concern too small for it to care about >> man that is um You know, that's a that's a call for a bigger government, right? And this is people's solution. Like, we have so many problems. We just need to redistribute wealth and we need more government. Like, you just got to redistribute it through the government. Like, is this going to help normal people? What helps normal people usually is a thriving economy? That's what helps normal people. And the problem with that is some people have to get stupid rich when that happens because there's some psychos that you know go full Jeff Bezos and you know you get worth hundreds of billions of dollars or Zuck or Elon or any of these folks. you get into this weird place, but that's just an anomaly and you got to as long as they're not criminals or not doing anything really [ __ ] up, you unfortunately that's going to happen. >> Yeah. >> But also, you don't have limitations on how much you can succeed. And this sort of competition keeps everything rolling. It keeps everything thriving and you get a good flowing economy. Obviously, I'm not an economist. You can tell. Well, >> but my point is the opposite, the other side of it is terrifying because if you decide what people make and how much they make and who gets to decide men with guns, it always goes down to men with guns. Cuz at a certain point in time, you like, "Fuck you. I'm not giving you 90% in taxes and I've got a security team of 50 guys with machine guns and we're held up. Our bank is now fortified like, "Hey, [ __ ] you." And then you've you got to respond. So you bring in the military. And then I mean this is every single time this has been implemented. North Korea, they said we're going to take over the farms. That way everybody's going to have food. Now they're all [ __ ] And it's all it all boils down to these psychopaths who chameleon themselves into position of being the solution to all that ails you. I'm the one and I'm going to say the right words and I'm going to have the right haircut and I'm going to look presentable and I'm going to sell you down the river and I'm going to sell you down the river like all of them do. >> Yeah. It's uh it's terrifying and as you point out, you've got a psychopath's rise to the top of these things problem. >> Yeah. >> Which I wanted to go back. Um >> well, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that that's what mom Donniey's doing, you know, and I don't know if what he's doing will be balanced out by other people and overall be more beneficial to people that live in New York City that have lower income or not. But my point is, you should keep going down that road, that road of there's a lot of socialism things that I think would benefit us. You know, socialized medicine, socialized education. I think that would probably benefit us. But I also think there's there's a real value in competition. >> Well, >> it's important. All these things are important for us to succeed. I >> I've come to think of socialism as a system. It's insane. It's self unstable. It it destroys the the goose that lays the golden eggs. >> But it sounds so good and compassionate, especially when you're young, >> right? It doesn't mean that there's it's not as an ingredient. There are sometimes when you need more of it, right? I'm very happy with the fact that well it's stopped working in uh blue states where it's been mismanaged but the fact that you can call 911 when you have a medical emergency or when somebody is you know busting down the door of your house that's a very good thing. I'm perfectly happy to, you know, to pay my share and not use it and not use it and not use it so that it's there if I need it. Right. >> Um so that's that's good stuff. The goose that lays the golden eggs is the disproportionate reward for creating wealth, right? That's what the system is based on. If I can find a way to create wealth, then I get to live in a better house, right? I get to drive a nicer car. So, it's an incentive to do that. And the problem is that with all of the great fortunes, they are a mixture of the product of producing wealth and the uh creation of externalities and the engagement in rent seeking. So rent seeking is the production of profit without producing wealth. And I think it is impossible to compete in that stratospheric level simply by producing wealth. At the point that you have a huge amount of wealth, you're investing in things. Those things are not inherently on the up and up. You're investing in the things that pay the highest returns. What are the things that pay the highest returns? They may be things that are, you know, selling dangerous drugs to the public. That sort of thing. So what you really want, a system that worked, would liberate us to compete. It would not worry at all about being disproportionately rewarded and it would stamp out the rentse seeeking behavior that is counterproductive because you know all of the money that is accumulated by uh an extremely wealthy individual as a result of rent seeeking is incentive that didn't go to other people to get them to produce wealth. You really want all of that gone, right? So that all of the reward goes to people who are producing wealth. That makes us all richer. Now, you're never going to get to that perfectly. You're never going to completely eliminate rent seeking. But we don't we have a system that just rewards it. And that >> how do you what do you how are you defining rent seeking? >> Rent seeking as economists define it is the production of profit without generating wealth. Right? So you know by blocking access to something and then charging people for it. um by, you know, selling people a subscription to something that they want access to now when they're going to forget that they're paying for it on a monthly basis and continue to pay even though they're not using the service. That kind of thing, >> right? >> Um so that behavior is counterproductive because it keeps incentive that should go to somebody else who's producing something valuable uh out of the system. it basically you are hoarding the profits and only some fraction of what you're producing is productive and it's it's bad for all of us. But the other thing is >> it creates the exact resentment that results in these outbreaks of communist sentiment, right? Because it freezes so many people out of any prospect of having a cool life that they have no incentive to keep the system going. And what they want is to use their vote to get the system to redistribute stuff in their direction. And they're not entirely wrong that their lack of stuff is the result of some bad behavior on the part of others. Right? The market, if the market just simply restricted people to wealth producing behavior and said, "I don't care how rich you get, but you shouldn't get rich for harming other people." If it did that and distributed the incentive as widely as possible, nobody would be interested in communism, >> right? It only happens because we are deaf to the admittedly inarticulate complaints of the people who are shafted in this system. They're not making their case well. And their real point is, well, if you're going to do that to me in the market, then I'm going to do that this to you at the ballot box. >> Makes sense. Um, the argument for having some sort of uh I mean I don't think there's anything wrong with the the way you have to pay to get to go to college. I think it makes sense that the professors should make a lot of money. It makes sense that it we should encourage higher learning. Like it's important that it thrives, right? But if if it was funded by the government, if everybody could get a higher education, just think of the money we spend on with things like how much more money would people have to spend if they weren't burdened by debt and couldn't we offset that? Like forget about even absolving student debt. Just like off for from now on if we just funded higher education, if that was a mandate to fund higher education, think about how many more people would enter into the job market. How many more people would get educations? How many more people would pursue various different interests that they discovered while they were learning? And they would have never have had access to that education before because they couldn't afford it. And as a resource, like human beings are our greatest resource. And a country with the least amount of losers is a better country. Oh yeah. Like you want to make America great again, let's make less losers. Like what's the ba best way to make less losers? You got to give people hope. You got to give people education. You got to give people a real pathway. And instead you get non-interested people that can't control unruly kids and you're barely paying attention to the lessons and no one's motivated because no one's making any money. And you go through this system where you can barely read and you're graduating high school and now you're off into the world and you're [ __ ] lost because no one gave you any real guidance or any real usable education. And that's a giant swath of the population. And it feels like that could be fixed. That could be fixed with resources. That could be fixed if like if you directed people like as a job. It's not attractive to people that want to make a lot of money. You can't. It's capped. It's one of the most important jobs that ever exists for you as a person is your interaction with a person who's going to teach you something when you're a child. It's like one of the most important things you could ever experience. And we fund it so poorly. We want It's almost like there's people in this country they want to like no [ __ ] way do you get to join in and you just stay with your shitty schools in your shitty towns with your shitty crime rates and we're going to pretend there's nothing wrong and that's what's going on. And that if socialism has a point like if a if there is like a broader way of distributing things like we do with the fire department like we we not instead of capping it out at that how about look at all the problems we have in this country and put together a [ __ ] game plan instead of just letting it exist like some weird [ __ ] cancer that you just ignore because you hope it goes away. It's it's not going away. It's It's been like this forever. >> Fix that. >> Come up with some kind of a plan. That's the best way to make America great. >> Right. >> Well, I'm going to I'm going to agree with you in one regard and disagree with you slightly in another. Okay. The one regard is you abs absolutely need a system that does not produce an abundance of losers because they will overthrow your system. Okay? It's a terrible thing to allow to happen even just out of self-interest. Right? The stinginess of the right produces the communist impulses of the left. It's a bad cycle >> and back and forth. >> Yeah. As for the rest of your point, I think it's exactly right and that's a great speech and it's just too late. >> Too late. >> Yeah. >> Damn. >> I mean, I hate saying that, right? I mean, I I I was a very >> You're Mr. Glass half full. [laughter] >> Uh I have some Navy Seal friends who call me Professor Killjoy. [laughter] But um but the problem is this. So I, you know, as you know, I was a professor for 14 years. Very happy in that job. Really enjoyed it. It was, it was, it was so rewarding and I feel like I did a ton of good. And anyway, it was great. for people who don't know you because yeah, millions of people do, but you know, as a standalone podcast, we should probably tell people how we met because we met because I found out that you there was a they used to have a day at your school for people of color where they were appreciated so they could take the day off work and still get paid, right? >> Yep. >> And then they decided one day to change it to be a day where white people can't come. So, and then it got really [ __ ] weird where you were confronted by these students that were saying that what you were saying was racist. And I was watching the videos and I thought you handled it brilliantly, but I was like, "This is crazy. You're letting the kids run the school." And then there was the humiliation ritual that the president of the school had to go through with with all those children where, you know, literally he was making a hand gesture and they said, "You're making aggressive hand gestures." and they were chastising him for his hand movements while he's just on a podium telling everybody to calm down. >> Microaggressions. >> Microaggressions. [laughter] So, it's complete like woke insanity in its complete form. And it was at a time where uh there was a bunch of conversations on the podcast. We were talking about nutty [ __ ] that people are agreeing to and doing in college. And a lot of people were like, "Why do you care? Like, why do you care about that what they're what they're doing in school?" I'm like, because they're going to graduate. They're going to graduate and they're going to graduate with a bunch of other people who have also graduated and they have a new sense of the rules of the world and they're going to get into positions of tech and they're going to get into positions of government. It's going to be a [ __ ] problem. And you were like the first one that I was like, boom, like this one's wild. Like this is cra There were there was people waiting for you in the parking lot with baseball bats. Yep. They were looking for me. >> They were looking to commit violence on you because you thought that a day where you tell white people they can't show up at the school is nuts. [laughter] >> It is amazing that that set them off. >> You know, a day of appreciation is like you you go up to your friends of color if this is what you want to do and say, "Hey man, I appreciate you." >> Yeah. >> Thank you. Let me give you a hug. I love you. That's it. That's a day of appreciation. or they don't have to work. That's another day. You want to do it that way. I don't agree with it, but I mean like, okay, I'm not I don't hate it if you want to do that. I don't hate it. But telling people if they're white, they can't show up. Now you went too far. Now you went to crazy town. You've got a baseball bat. See, this is my thought about communism. Like, how do you how do you enforce it? You have to have [ __ ] violence. Without violence, no one's going to listen. >> This is where it goes. And you know, I'm I'm reminded by your uh taking us back to 2017 during the week of riots at Evergreen. Um there was a moment which really kind of crystallized it for me where the school has melted down into literal anarchy and I'm on the what was called red square, right? Believe it or not, the most liberal college in the country has red square. Um anyway, it's the center of the campus and I I was on Red Square and I saw two of the leaders of the protest, you know, and so their world has gone crazy, too. Um one of them was this handicapped guy in an electric wheelchair, black guy, um you know, operating a wheelchair with a joystick. And I just felt like, you know, okay, this is madness. They're chasing me around. They're calling me a racist. You know, they're demanding I be fired. But at some level, >> I got to feel bad for this guy. He got a really raw deal in life. I don't know what his story is, but that's a hell of a way to have to go through life. And it doesn't surprise me that he's angry. >> And I remember [snorts] walking over. I'm sort of surprised in retelling it that I did this. But I walked over to him and I said something like I extended my hand. I said, "Hey, how are you holding up?" And he refused to shake my hand. And I was just like, "Oh, we are so far from being able to, you know, put our society back together. If you can't just recognize another person's humanity, if they have to be a demon to you. >> Yeah. We we have to at every possible opportunity refuse to other people. At every possible opportunity and just realize this is just a human being, >> you know, this is just a human being. I'm just a human being. Like let's talk and find out what we agree and disagree on when it comes to this subject. It does this do