Kevin Kelly: Excellent Advice for Living

0:00 I've had the privilege. Of knowing Lot of Accomplished people. successful people.

0:07 Famous people. Super rich people. And man. The outsides not represent their insides. And we tend to want to compare ourselves to their outsides.

0:19 To their own ideas of what success is. I'm better. And I do better. when I am not trying to imitate Someone else's success.

0:30 I mean, in a certain way what you wanna do is you wanna kinda grow your own metric for what you What would be successful for you? You wanna have a different metric. Welcome to the Knowledge Project, a podcast about mastering the best of what other people have already figured out, so you can apply their insights to your life.

1:06 I'm your host. Shane Parish. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like access to the podcast before public release, special episodes that don't appear anywhere else. hand edited transcripts, or you just want to support the show that you love, you can join at fs.blog slash membership. Check out the show notes for a link.

1:26 Today my guest is the legendary Kevin Kelly, who might just be the most interesting man in the world. He co-founded Wired magazine, which along with twenty six hundred was a regular on my night stand growing up. He also co founded the All Species Foundation. A non profit aimed at cataloging every living species on earth. written a host of books on technology and life, and serves on the board of the Long Now Foundation.

1:51 This episode covers a lot of ground. We start with a dive into some of Kevin's wisdom from his new book Excellent Advice for Living, Wisdom I Wish I Had Known Earlier. And this started on his sixty eighth birthday when Kevin began to write down For all of his young adult children, some of the things he had learned about life and that he wished he had known earlier. He kept adding to this advice over the years, compiling a lot.

2:16 Sort of like a life's wisdom. That I eagerly seek out and read every year when he publishes his bits of advice around his birthday. Kevin's timeless advice covers An astonishing range from right living, to setting ambitious goals, to optimizing

2:33 generosity and cultivating compassion. We're gonna go deeper on some of my favorite passages from the book on learning, deadlines, perfection, forgiveness, living a meaningful life, reasoning. what to do when you're stuck, and so much more. Of course, I couldn't have him on the show without talking about artificial intelligence. And we sort of explore this through two lenses. What he's excited about

2:57 And what scares him? It's time. To listen. And learn. Mm.

3:08 Where I wanna start today is on your sixty eighth birthday, you wrote down Sixty eight bits of advice for your adult children about what you wish you had known. I I read all of your advice across sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy. I I wanna dive into some of this advice and go to the stories behind them. that created this sort of pithy wisdom that you expouse. And so let's start with

3:34 Learn how to learn from those you disagree with or Or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe. So so just to back up the general the general thing of what I was doing was in a curious way I was writing these bits of advice for myself

3:52 I found that I could make a habit out of something by reducing the idea of it to a little capsule. And give it a handle so that I can Repeat it to myself.

4:05 I could remind myself of it. And so I wanted some way to take A lot of big Weighty large advice and reduce it into a Proverb.

4:15 That I could repeat. So that's sort of the origin, I was kind of doing that in my head. uh I would hear something and and I would repeat it to me to remind myself of it. And so these k things have the origin in a sense of like

4:30 Did they work for me? Do they Work for me first and then I can passed in this idea of I I should pass it on. So the the the second

4:41 element of this was um I have three kids. They're all kind of adult now and um We were not a family that My wife and I were not preachy. I don't

4:52 I I very rarely ever would give my kids advice. I was of the old school that said the kids don't listen to what they what you say, they just watch what you do. So we try to model the behavior that we wanted. But As I got older, I also realized that some of these little things that I was working on I wished I had known earlier. I you know, it took me kind of seventy years to kind of arrive at then. It's like, you know, if I'd had this little thing that I kind of have in my own head now earlier, it would be so much better.

5:22 So I decided to try to write them down. For that. And and give him as a present. to um My kids. And so so when I'm doing that, when I'm trying to write down I'm I'm

5:34 Thinking of of of a way to kind of encapsulate a lot of information. and advice and wisdom into a little tiny device that I can hold on to.

5:46 And and and the other thing, just to just to pause here, because I think this is an important distinction. that I get a lot of times online, you probably get two Th this isn't about precision. This is about utility. Exactly. This is

6:01 Practicality. So so so I have several filters I I I I think through this. One is like, you know Do I really believe this? This is something that I Think is really works? And then secondly, is it practical? Does it

6:15 Is it actionable? Can would it change how I do the my day? And thirdly was was um I'm I'm trying to um Following my own device. Uplift and be positive.

6:29 as much as possible. So yeah. Giving advice is uh really Is a really tough assignment because it's obvious that just varies tremendously on the

6:43 context of who it is and what the situation is. And so trying to give it of general advice is definitely not about precision. It's about a general What I call direction. It's about moving in the right direction. So back to this particular one, trying to learn from others that you disagree with and maybe even find offensive is

7:04 I'm I I guess I'm been surprised in my own Life. to find that people that I really fundamentally disagree with Could say something.

7:18 That's I found was well, yeah, that's true. Like I I remember I remember myself coming around to agree with Dick Cheney about something.

7:30 And what Dick Cheney said was the um climate change and environmentalists was not about Personal virtue. That had to be changed at the systems level. I was like Yeah.

7:41 That's right. Here I am, I'm agreeing with Dick Cheney. Because He had You know.

7:48 Something to say that was that was true. And so so I've sort of Um learnt to try and To spend some time Two

7:58 Listen to people and Not to cancel them, basically. And that is it's tough because be a natural A natural evolution and and also there's personality types. I mean w We're not obligated to like everybody.

8:13 I I I feel no duty. to have to like everybody, but I feel that there is some duty to kind of respect people. In a certain sense. And and this I this idea of kind of Respecting someone that you don't like and disagree with

8:28 It's it's it's difficult, but For me, it pays off is I guess what I'm saying. There's a practical benefit for doing so. Do you feel a need to be liked by other people? I think Everybody has some element where they need to be light.

8:42 And so yes, I would like to be liked by everybody. Motionally, yes. Intellectually I understand that that's not gonna happen. One of the curious things, and this is I don't think I I wrote this down, but this is something I've learned over time, is that with enough numbers, if an audience of enough numbers, um No matter what it is you do, somebody will not like it. And and vice versa, like this take I have this book of advice. There's four hundred and fifty. When you ask people their favorite one, the best ones.

9:12 There's no agreement on the best ones. Everybody's list of the favorite ones is there's none there's no overlap. And so I I I think Part of what I've learned is that There's gonna be

9:24 People who some people Who don't like what you do All the time. But they're not gonna be the same people. And when I was running a magazine called Co Evolution and Whole Worth Review,

9:35 I was the editor. And we kind of ran a little maybe provocative. kind of articles and my goal was to Piss off. One

9:45 Fifth of the Audience. But keep rotating it. Make sure it wasn't the same one. You know, just just like everybody gets your turn to be to be riled. And so um And so that's the kind of idea is is that um I'm not gonna be liked by everybody, but I don't want it kinda be a predictable

10:04 I'm liking you know. I like that. It's it with your reach, it's like you're the mayor of New York, right? Like not everybody's gonna be happy all the time with what you're doing. I like the idea of rotating the unhappiness, sharing it equally. Exactly. Equal opportunity disruptor. So um you know, by the way, this is one of my bits of advice. If your if your views on other things can be predicted from your views on one thing, you need to be very careful that you're not in a grip of an

10:36 ideologically that's what it is. It it means that you you're Your opinions are too highly correlated. With each other. And that's suspicious because most people are much more complicated if you're really genuine. You're gonna be much more complicated.

10:53 than that. And and also by the way, this is a new piece of advice. If you're unpredictable in that way, you're much less likely To be um Taken over by an AI.

11:08 The AI cannot predict what you're gonna do. They cannot kind of fake you or cannot Imitate you. go deeper on that a little bit in terms of AI and disruption about how you think. Yeah.

11:21 There's a lot of concern about artists and even writers about Training. In AI. To produce

11:29 work to generate work. Mm. creative work. And they're the the concern is as well, you know uh my m material that I've worked really hard for has been used to train this AI And

11:41 People can use it. To imitate me. And sometimes those imitations are quite Amazing. Really what you want to be able to do

11:50 Is To have a style, so to speak, to have something. That's unpredictable. That's in imitable. That you you that you can't be imitated. And this Again goes back to my other piece of advice about

12:03 Don't Aim to be the best. Name to be the only So if you are in this category that it's hard to imitate you That's a

12:13 That's a really good place to be in in the human world and also a really good place to be in the AI world because AIs will have difficulty in imitating you. I think I'm in trouble. My kids went into chat G G or GPT the other day And they they drafted this email on why should they should get like more video game time. But they did it in the style of Shane Parrish.

12:33 Yeah. So they basically like it was an email from myself. To me. And I was like, This sounds awfully familiar. I was like what was your what was your query here? And they were like Uh, draft an email to Dad about uh in the style of Shane Parish, I was like, Oh my god, this is in tr I'm in trouble.

12:51 Yes, yes. So so yeah, so you you you if you were if that was hard to to do, then you have an advantage'cause your your job is not going to be taken by an AI. And so the idea is is to Not

13:06 be so predictable. in the sense particularly i again if you have If you Your views on The environment.

13:16 Can be deduced from your views on religion or something That's gonna be that means that you're kind of not really that much of an independent thinker. And that's gonna become more valuable'cause AI, at least at first, is gonna give away uh standard thinking for free.

13:33 So it'll raise the bar for some people. But it'll be so conventional for independent and original thinkers. Right. Exactly. R right now the best way to think of these AI is the the chat training the L the L L Ms is that they're um They're the epitome of um With them with a crowd.

13:52 Okay, the wisdom of the crowd thinking. This that's what it is. It's the collective, all the average people in the world and all their average foibbles and all the average Genius. And it's gonna get a very kind of average Thing that is often very correct. But oftentimes not because it's the average.

14:09 And so um it's it's so it's the it's the wisdom of the crowd AI. um, which is really good if that's where you want to be. I've been trying to figure out the practical use of these things and how people are actually using them. I have a friend who runs a very, very popular blog site and he uses them to help them write headlines. To write a punchline at the end?

14:34 And he said. It's often Very generic and he has to kind of Pushed them. to be snarky. He'll say, No, no, no, make it more snarky, or pretend you're a snarky editor, or pretend that you're a conspira.

14:49 Standard average. deliberately say, No, you can be a little bit um on fr a little fringier. You've got to be a little bit angrier. You've got to be um Something. And then The role play. If you don't do that, you won't get the kind of as you said.

15:04 the the standard average. I wanna come back to AI a little later because I think we'll have a broader conversation on it. I wanna go to the next piece of advice that sort of stood out as I was reading these, which is always demand a deadline because it weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. A deadline prevents you from trying to make it perfect. So you have to make it different. Different is better. It is, right. Different is better.

15:28 So so so deadlines This again took me a long time. to kind of figure out that I needed deadlines and deadlines were the difference between, you know, a a dream and a Something that you complete and um What happens with deadlines for me anyway is you've got a ship. You're you you're you you have to abandon the project and it's not perfect.

15:50 Oh my gosh, it's not perfect. But Because it's not perfect, you kind of have to be ingenious about Making a little Different. And that and and and I find the deadlines force me to

16:05 Make decisions That you you You don't have enough time. You never have enough time. Um and so you you you think of something to I wouldn't say it's a shortcut, you think of a way to finish it and that little those little decisions are

16:20 What make it A little different. W w w one of the shocks to me about um working a wired on a monthly magazine was Every single issue after years and years and years was a miracle

16:33 That it got done on time. It's like you would think it would come down to some some formula and you just you be done on Friday afternoon. But no, it was it was this last second getting it out the door. Every single time.

16:49 And part of that was because We kind of kept Up being the The goal, the quality. We're you know, we're we're trying to make it better than last time. And so you come down to the same thing where you are

17:02 Bing. Driven by the deadline. To try to Excel but not making it perfect by but by but doing something a little differently than you did before. 'Cause without a deadline you can convince yourself that you can always make it a little bit better, but then you never ship.

17:19 Right. How do you find that balance between In a world of leverage Right, like where an internet article can go viral. and reach a hundred million people or it can reach ten people.

17:30 How do you find that point at which I've done enough. I'm comfortable with this. Versus the trade off of Do I raise the bar? Do I make this better? What is the advantage to doing that?

17:43 So there's couple of things, couple of bits of advice buried in a book about that. w one is this rule which was actually based on some research Uh in a Various different Fields of life.

17:56 That When you Trying to optimize something versus trying to explore. Where where you you have something that works and you just wanna make it kind of Better.

18:06 And go, you know, and optimize it versus doing the i inefficient thing of going out to try and Try something new. And comes down to something like when you go out to eat at a restaurant, do you

18:19 Get your favorite. thing that you know works or do you try something that is a new dish that may not work. And so the ratio is actually One to three. Two to three. One to three. So you you actually want to spend um two thirds of your time trying optimize things that you

18:38 when it go deeper and better, and then a third try trying new things. And that's Many, many ways to t to be roughly true. So that's one answer is yes. Lots of times you're gonna just

18:51 try and make it really, really better or not thing, but a third of the time you want to be Taking a chance. The second thing is this idea that um I learned from Doing art.

19:03 There was actually a book called Writer's Time. About how to write a book. And it and it said that basically look the the the the the the amount of work to write a book is infinite. It just could go on and on. And that's true of almost any project in terms of perfecting. It's bottomless. So really the only thing you control is your time.

19:23 You say I have this much time to give to it. I'm gonna do the very, very best in this amount of time. And that's sort of what a deadline's about. It's saying like Yeah, I mean i it could go on forever, but but I have a deadline so I'm gonna do the best I'm gonna write the best book I can in a year or year and a half, whatever it is, or I'm gonna do the best podcasting I can make in a week. And so

19:45 that is a deadline and what it's doing is it's giving you some way to control because you can't control the amount of work. Which is Infinite because you're always can find some way to perfect it. So

19:57 So this is the idea that you control things by controlling the time. I wonder if if part of us is hiding behind fear too. We don't want the deadline Because we actually don't want to put the work out there. We can convince ourselves that hiding, you know, making it better, hiding behind this perfection is in and of itself work.

20:18 And that we're accomplishing something. We don't have to put it out in the world and get feedback and Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, that's that that's true'cause it's Not good enough yet. Um I I one of the things I have become

20:31 um a really big proponent of, which is, you know, doing things on a regular basis. So the advantage of someone like you doing a podcast on a regular basis like if this one's a complete flop, that's okay. Tomorrow you have another one. We'll try again. And you just do it over and over again and you put out whatever it is that you do, you w you know you're trying your very best, but you know that that that there's more from where that's come from. And that gives you some kind of freedom Two

20:56 fail in a certain sense because I'm gonna do it again. Yeah. And that's true of a making art, which I do every day. I make a piece of art every every day. So I'm gonna put it out no matter what. And if it Isn't up to the best standards. It's okay, because tomorrow I'm gonna Do it again.

21:12 And that's true about writing or anything else, is this this idea that you wanna do things on a regular basis because that is the source Oh Great stuff. But also gives you that

21:26 Confidence. And liberty. to put out something that's not quite the best and not get really hung up on it because we're gonna do it again. You get another ep out, you get another crack at it. Right.

21:38 The next piece of advice I want to talk about is when you forgive others, they may not notice, but you will heal. Forgiveness is Not something we do for others, it's a gift to ourselves. That one's profound. Talk to me about that.

21:52 I it's just something I've seen in my life and and I found that the easier I was to forgive The better I felt. You know, a lot of the golden rules are this weird, weird thing that don't make any logical sense at all. But happens the universe somehow seems to be constructed this way.

22:13 the the most selfish thing you can do is to forgive other people. The most selfish thing you can do is to give money away. The most selfish thing you can do is to help other people and you'll be You know, you'll get. It's like That's weird, but that seems to be how the universe is set up.

22:30 There's this kind of Paradox. It's at its core. And that's All these principles are s are somewhat

22:37 Based on the same weird Logic of the universe, which is yes. The most selfish thing you could do is to be selfless. It g it goes almost to to our biological

22:51 instinct towards group survival, if you will, right? Where You're supposed to sacrifice for the good of your species. Yes, I think I mean I think there are probably evolutionary.

23:04 reasons why that works. But It's so reliable. that I d I I'm just guessing that there's some other larger reason Because

23:17 You you can count on it. Are are there times when you've learned not to forgive and it's best to uh Move on without forgiveness? I haven't seen that. Forgiveness is sort of a way of

23:30 uh there's another piece of advice of kind of Accepting the apology you're never gonna get. Right, you're you're not gonna get the point. So you just sort of in your mind you accept it and it's like I I think there has to be some some kind of closure. Because often we're waiting we're waiting for that, right? We're waiting for the apology, we're waiting for the other person to go first. We're waiting for the world to give us sort of what we want, and yet we're

23:51 incapable of going first. Right. So so that's what forgiveness is, is you accept the apology you're not gonna get. The n the next bit of advice that I love, which is don't measure your life with someone else's ruler. Tell me the backstory to this one. I've had the privilege.

24:10 Of knowing lot of maybe I would say um Accomplished people, successful people. Famous people. Super rich people.

24:21 And man The outsides not represent their insides. And we tend to want to compare ourselves to their outsides. to their own ideas of what success is. This goes back to

24:34 don't aim to be the best, don't aim to be the only. I I I think we're I I'm better. And I do better. when I am not trying to imitate someone else's success.

24:47 State. How they define success. I mean in a certain way what you wanna do is you wanna kind of grow your own metric for what you what would be successful for you.

24:59 And that is Hard to do. Because we're kind of Bombarded with Images and

25:09 suggestions about what would make a successful person But if you talk to people who seem to have success, you realize that You wanna have a different metric. I I spent some time with the Amish. A lot of time with the Amish.

25:26 It's really interesting'cause They had a very different measure of success. for the Amish, what they're trying to use tech uh one of the reasons how how one of the r ways that they decide which technology they're gonna use or not use is They have a very clear idea of success. And so their goal

25:44 Their goal. Yeah. To have a lot of kids and to have every Meal. with their kids until they leave leave home.

25:54 You wanna have breakfast? Lunch and dinner with them every day. And if they can arrange their lives to do that, there's a couple other things, but if they can arrange their lives to do that, that's Tiled success. And so they

26:09 Spent a lot of time and lot of routines and rigmarole and crazy stuff with the They're hacking. To try and do that. But that's

26:20 For them, it's like oh That's interesting. That's for them, that's a successful person is They were able to do that and everybody in the community really kind of honors that and wow, that's really good. So It was like, All right, that's interesting. That's that's a different measure.

26:37 We all have sort of like our own measure of what success is and what we think it is and In a world of Instagram What we're seeing is the best successes from everybody else and that we're feeling less about our own Self.

26:54 In part because Maybe that ruler. uh that we're using is sort of um malleable in a way. It's like Well, I want I want Kevin Kelly's brain and I want this person's body and I want this person's vacations and I want this person's cars. But this is what you're exposed to every day. You're exposed to the best of everybody else in a way that you never were before. Yeah. Um it's actually that's an interesting statement'cause there's'cause I think it goes even further.

27:22 And and and and and I don't think we have really absorbed this. And here's the furtherness in the kind of s it's beyond TikTok into YouTube. We see the superlative of everything. We see

27:34 The best human achievement of like, you know, the people who can use Count cups or the Rubik Cube. speed surfs or people jumping off of

27:44 Snowboard down houses. Just the weirdest stuff of human achievement. We're seeing it. And so we have we're being exposed to the superlative world. We're seeing lightning strikes striking people. It's like things that we would never see it's not ordinary, but we're seeing this

28:03 extreme superlative version of the world. Which does several things. One is the kind of can inspire us to say well that's I didn't know that was possible for humans to do. I want to do something

28:16 that level. That's great. But of course at the same time there's this other thing of like well my life is Nothing like that. I must not be worth very much. So there's two sides to it. But I think there is a positive side to that.

28:29 Which is to to to to see And appreciate kind of the full range of human potential for the first time. And and and that can be inspiring as well. The extraordinary has become ordinary in some ways. Yes. Yeah. Exactly.

28:45 Right. Every a and and it's like we're seeing it all day long. We're seeing the extraordinary all day long. It's like H that must affect us in some way. that we don't really f appreciate where I can see the best that's ever happened again and again and again.

29:02 And and the weirdnesses and You know, it's kind of like Um, I mean actually I actually subscribe to a channel. That just shows these weird accidents, coincidences, just just strange stuff every day that people get on their

29:17 on their phones and security cameras and like you kind of realize You know, there's I don't know there's like hundred thousand airplane flights every day and uh almost every day there's some Airline mishap? That we

29:31 Would normally Even think about. But if you see that, you think Oh, this is actually not that rare. I mean it's rare and but but you this idea of the extraordinary becoming the ordinary is I think a very profound thing that we haven't really absorbed yet. So with you with your thinking of success, I have to ask, what is success for you?

29:52 Mm. Individually. Great question. Um I would say um

30:00 I I I I asked that. in a slightly different way in my own vocabulary, which w which I ask other people is what are what am I trying to optimize? What I'm trying to optimize is um Learning? for myself an increasing

30:17 Other people learning in the collective Learning of the world. And I'm also To my own advice. I I I mean so that

30:28 On the day before I die, I can say I fully become myself. And I want to Help that. for everybody else is that I want as many people in the world to be able to say

30:40 On the day before the die I have fulcelf. And requires tools and stuff around us. to allow. So so the story that I like to tell

30:56 is just to do the thought experiment of Imagining Mozart being born. Two thousand years before he was born, before they invented pianos or symphonies and the way that his genius

31:10 Would have been loss. We would not have he would you know maybe he could play some drums or whatever was around, but it would not have We've not have had his genius. Exposed that way, illuminated and fulfilled.

31:26 So we needed to invent those technologies of pianos and stuff and so Van Gogh before there was oil paint. What a loss that would have been, or George Lucas.

31:39 Before we invented cinematography. What a loss that would have been. So that means that there is a Shakespeare today alive. in the world and she's waiting for us. To invent. the tools that she needs to best express her genius. And so I think we have a moral obligation to kind of

31:59 Make stuff. So that everybody born and unborn would be able to express their genius. And that stuff includes things like clean water and education and stuff. So it's not just technology, it's cultural stuff. But we we have it and that we want I want To unleash. That and myself.

32:19 And others. And that's sort of what I'm trying to optimize. I love that it's beautiful. I love the word unleash too. There's unleashing human potential. Um, by creating equal opportunity and creating better tools so that people's potential can shine through. Yeah. Yeah. I w we know we're all a different mix. Each one of us has a different face. We have a different personality face, we have a different talent face.

32:43 And we each have our own genius. I truly believe that. And so what we want to do is arrange things so that you can arrive somewhere where you can actually Express it. And and I have to say that this is a very, very difficult thing. It it it

33:00 It's taken me most of my life to kind of figure out what I'm really good at. And I think most people It just takes almost their entire life to kind of figure out where their genius is. There are some occasionally prodigies of people who have a very clear idea where they're very Young exactly what it is.

33:19 But for most people we Need our lives to kinda figure out what our lives are really about and The other important Part of that is we absolutely need everybody around us.

33:31 We need parents, we need friends, we need colleagues, we need customers, we need clients. to help us see who we're becoming who we should be because It is really, really almost impossible to do that. Introspectively by ourselves. Yeah, it's hard to understand a system

33:48 That you're a part of You need those outside. People pointing at your blind spots in a way. You need to listen to them. when they're right and ignore them when they're wrong. Which is That's another piece of advice is that yeah, you want to be able to um

34:03 Uh, never quit. And then Quit when it's right. Right, right. But quit when it's necessary. And you need your friends and family and everyone else to help you decide between those two. Th that's why we've been put here with other people around us, is that we really do need others. To help. Help us become who we should be.

34:23 I I love that beautiful. Again, it's about the group. I like that. There's a common theme here. Well, one of your other pieces of advice was you can't reason someone out of a notion that they didn't reason themselves into. Yeah, trying to argue. I mean, th this is something I have learned. To not do. Yes, yes, yes. argue with people.

34:42 Even though I like to argue. You have to you know, you have to find someone who's arguingly authentically you're wanting to learn just And True.

34:53 lots of people that's not really the case. And so um often we have Things that we believe. that we inherit or that we don't know why we believe, or we certainly haven't arrived through logic. And so therefore Logic is not going to work.

35:08 Um another piece of advice I have about changing people's minds is I have found by far the best way to have any hope of changing someone's mind is to try and listen and understand. Truly understand. why do you think what they were thinking how they got there.

35:26 And that conversation. Well often give you the position to say something honest that might help them

35:41 Move. Otherwise it's not going to to work. Um Because you were kind of operating at that point and more emotionally at the emotional level of having a conversation rather than uh uh intellectual reasoning um option. Nobody's irrational from the way that they see the world. Yeah. It's all about how do they see the world? What what would the world have to look like

36:03 For me to exhibit that behaviour or that belief. And that goes a long way to helping you understand how other people see it because nobody's intentionally uh acting irrationally. Right. believes and also by the way, they also believe that they're good and

36:20 doing good things and That's another piece of advice is that in my In my view, and this again took me a long time to kinda realize this, but in my view The worst Crimes against humanity are have all been done in trying to eliminate evil.

36:39 And so The lesson to me is like if you are in the business of trying to eliminate evil, you gotta be really careful. Because That's where That's where most of the harm happens, when people trying to eliminate evil.

36:54 Politics is full of the Yeah, exactly right. So so I'm really wary of anybody left or right. Who's trying to eliminate evil in the world. Or the bad things or whatever. So because Most of the really bad things are done in that name. The next piece of advice I wanna talk about is a great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on

37:15 Everything you find irritating in others. Yeah. What's the story behind that one? I think we're kind of s we're really sensitized. It's kind of like a self criticism, but we're really sensitized to The things I'm I'm not sure what the mechanism is. I don't have a deep understanding of that, but that's just my observation is that um

37:34 There's something fundamental about things that really Tick us off. And it's because It's like the resonant frequency. It's because We're sort of operating at a very similar frequency.

37:47 And so Um we become sensitized to that and we find it annoying, but it's actually Because it's something that we are revolving around in some ways. I'm not saying that

38:01 You know. If you find someone lying, it means that you're a liar. It just means that there's some fundamental thing about telling the truth or whatever that is really core

38:15 to you and you need to Look at it. To be sure about your own Behavior in our department. Yeah, I I I think that there's a lot of there's a signal in our body when other people are doing something that irritates us, that's a part of ourself.

38:33 That we don't We don't like. And the and that's where we're getting that signal from. The the the next I only want to do a couple more of these and then we'll we'll switch to sort of broader topics but the next one is whenever you have a choice between being right or being kind. Be kind with no exceptions, and don't confuse kindness with weakness.

38:55 Yeah. Um there's gotta be a story behind this one. Yeah, and and and by the way, you know, the the sub theme of the book throughout the whole book is about Kindness, compassion, gratitude. These kind of Elemental timeless ancient

39:09 virtues. Um So kindness Is a kind of compassion. Um

39:18 And It goes back to the again this for me this kind of the weird paradox of the universe that um kindness is not weakness because in fact it's a strength. It's it's it's power. It's Weak.

39:33 people, small people are unkind. You can be generous when you are confident and true and honest and So cultivating kindness. Is

39:45 is you're cultivating a superpower. And so It it it's it's this kind of this again, this really weird thing that Reaching out helping others is the most selfish thing you can do in the long term. So it's a little bit of long term isn't and that's another thing that goes through is this idea that yeah, you for immediate payback you know, be angry, be snarky, whatever it is. But if you are patient

40:09 You take the long view. Of your own life and what we're doing. It's very clear that that that you'll gain more in that way. So you can afford to be kind.

40:24 Give away something. Give away your time. Be humble, give away your own status, whatever it is. Because What I've seen

40:35 among myself and other people is that you'll be rewarded more. So so it's kind of like There's a there's a reason to do it just on the base of it of of being human, but I'm saying no no, it's the most practical selfish thing you could possibly do. Totally. I l I love the idea of the long view.

40:53 Because it it It's a frame that changes everything, right? So if you take a long view to life, you eliminate a lot of negative behavior. But if you even remind yourself before you talk to somebody at work or colleague, And you just think I'm gonna have a relationship with this person for twenty years. It changes. the conversation you're about to have with them, especially if you're upset with them. Because now you're like oh I'm gonna approach this almost like I would my partner

41:18 instead of a colleague that is disposable or transactional or I'm gonna approach this as we're gonna be working together for a long time. Here's this thing that's bothering me. How do we get this out of the way so we can keep going forward versus like stop doing this. This is, you know It just changes the notion of the conversation and that allows for compounding. So if we look at sort of like one of the major, major forces in the world that people don't take advantage of. It's compounding. But what how does a relationship compound? Well, it compounds over time. But you need to stay on the timeline. So anything that you do that negates being in a long term relationship takes you off compounding to begin with. So if you think long term and you know from compounding that all the advantages come at the end, not at the beginning.

42:05 They're very slow to accrue, but then they're too large to ignore. Right. It's like how do I how do I be in a relationship with this person for twenty years? And that Compounding gives you again the

42:18 It will overcome All kind of temporary setbacks. Right. I mean the thing we know about investing is yeah, if you're there for a long time then Things could go up. There could be recessions coming and going and you're not bothered by them. Because you're

42:33 You're taking a longer view. So because those gains in the end will overwhelm even fairly large. setbacks. And so if you say, Okay, this Yeah, we have a set you know, we're we're We have an argument or whatever it is, but in the long view it's okay because

42:49 the gains in there are gonna overwhelm Whatever losses we had. Along the way. And or mistakes too. I mean you can make that's the other thing is you can make mistakes. even fairly large mistakes.

43:00 But if you have a long view. the total gains outweigh them. So so it's it's um and that's and we're we're talking about personal relationships, but it's also true about civilizations and societies. And um this is, of course, my involvement with the Long Nail Foundation trying to promote this idea of doing generational things. Um

43:20 Because when we have ourselves benefited from what previous generations have made, but it also allows us to um To do things that are maybe even riskier. Um No, because we are we will we will make mistakes.

43:34 But the long term games are taking a longer view and are rising are or horizon, um will give us greater gains if we if we do that. Okay, last piece of advice before we move on, which is before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen. Nobody talks about the departed's achievements. The only thing people will remember is Is what kind of person you were while you were achieving. So that

44:01 Came from my attending funerals. It was just a A hundred percent. Direct. Observation of the data.

44:10 Where I was going to um Funerals. And I was Noticing this weird. Thing.

44:20 And You know, then you kind of play forward. It's like what are people gonna say at my funeral? It was really sobering. Um Two To reflect on that and

44:32 There's you know, a couple of people who were prominent and I was just Kind of Maybe shocked or amazed. Th that's what people wanted to talk about was

44:45 what they were like and what they did and their sense of humor and all these other things. And it wasn't about The trophies that they had at all or what they had even accomplished. And so That was for me like a wake up call. Mm okay.

45:01 I Uh I understand that it's gonna be about the So um So that means that I should

45:12 Focus a little bit more on my character development, growth of my character as is rather than You know. another certificate. And another

45:23 Thing to brag about. I think that's so important. If you if you sort of close your eyes and do a thought experiment and Imagine yourself at you know a hundred lying in a hospital bed with a few hours to live and And you look back on your life. You're not gonna think about, you know, how many Twitter followers you had, how much money's in your bank account.

45:44 You're gonna think about was I there for the people I cared for? How was I as a person? Right. All the moments where you Where you chose to be Unkind and you could have been kind.

45:58 Those are the things you're gonna think about. Was I there for my kids? Did I skip the meals? Did I work extra to get that promotion that I now realize suddenly that uh it doesn't matter, right? What matters is time with my kids and my family and yeah. Yeah, they're yeah. So they're all they're all a lot of these vices are all kind of woven together. I know you said that this was the last one, but you know, one of my piece of advice is, you know, spend half as much money on your kids as you think you need to and twice as much time because that's what they're gonna they're gonna value and um

46:31 Again, that's another technique. people call self distancing. That's really good about this. Which is Imagine yourself a future self looking back or imagining yourself

46:41 hold and looking back and seeing what um you would do now to to change things. And I think um we you might rearrange your your priorities, um, which is sort of I did over time. Again, I wish I had known this earlier, so I'm putting it all together in this little book. Hope you enjoy it.

46:59 I I love that. I think like you you're just trying to get a different perspective on your own life. You don't have to like we look back at like I look back anyway at what I did when I was sixteen. I was like oh that was profoundly stupid. My sixteen year old self did not think that was stupid. But we can use this sort of time shifting to give ourselves a different perspective into our own lives. I exactly right. Yeah. So yeah, this kind of zooming around with time is a very important tool that um Again, I I I use and I would encourage others to to play with.

47:32 I I wanna come back to something we started talking about a little bit earlier, which is artificial intelligence. Why are you so excited about AI and what do you fear about AI? I'm very excited about AI. Incredibly excited. There are there are books writ to be written about what's happening right now. And I really I I in some ways I think we have We're still under hyping it.

47:54 For the long term. that that that the the consequences are so profound this is By far are biggest invention after the scientific method. And um

48:06 We humans are incredibly opaque to ourselves. We don't know how we work. We don't know how our brains work. We don't know what consciousness is. We don't know what intelligence is. We don't know what humans are.

48:21 And The major th the way that we're gonna find out about who we are is through AI robots. As we Like us and not like us and how do we

48:33 have other kinds of thinking, and all these things are going to come back. And then In addition to that Making other and trying to replicate ourselves is is that um We're also gonna use them to compete.

48:47 to become better humans. So it's like one of the things going on right now is you have these language models and Chat bots. That are trained on All human writing and

49:00 Behavior. And we're kind of. We're shocked that there are racists and ageists and sexists. When That's kind of like the average human.

49:11 But here's the thing is we don't accept that. We're saying no They need to be better than us. This thing This thing they were making. Cannot be racist, cannot be sexists.

49:23 It has to be better than we are. Which we can code in because that's just code. Ethics and morality is code. We can put it in. But the problem is is that we don't have any idea. Or consensus. what it means to be better than us. We don't know what a better human looks like. We don't we don't have that in our head. We don't know.

49:41 We don't know what a an ethic our own ethics. as humans are very shallow and inconsistent and terribly vague. But we want robots to be better than us, but we don't have a picture in our head of how to do that. So we are now

49:57 gonna be using these AIs and robots to Imagine articulate. And Help us. Become better humans.

50:07 So that's why I'm excited, is is is that it's gonna help us become better humans. What does that mean? We don't know. That's that's the conversation we're having right now. Every day we're we're coming up with these things with How what what does better than us look like?

50:23 That is incredibly profound question. How does our own brains work? We don't know, but we're gonna be Finding out because we're trying to make them think and be conscious. So this is a huge

50:39 Centuries long. Identity crisis centuries long. a journey for us Of understanding us and then trying to change ourselves. And that's that's why it's so exciting.

50:53 So We can talk more about that and then To your question, but what am I afraid of? Well The more powerful the technology, the more powerfully it can be abused.

51:03 This is the most powerful technology we've ever made. It will be Abused. I'm sorry to say it will probably be used it will be weaponized. And

51:14 Those are always something to worry about. So um I'm not worried about the kind of commercialization and stuff. Uh I I go along with uh Tichang's idea that most of our worries about technology are really worries about capitalism.

51:31 I am worried about Weaponization of these things? And then I have a second worry which is a little harder to explain, which is um I'm a f uh I'm worry about whether we will take on The

51:45 Yeah. the relationship with some of these Oh. Master slave. Treat them like

51:51 Slaves. If we treat them like slaves That's incredibly corrosive to our own Humanity. Okay, just just just that stance. Just the stance of

52:03 These are These are gonna do our bidding. They're just machines, they Um Help help me understand that'cause that's a different relationship than I feel like we have with computers right now.

52:16 Well it it is. And and and one of the things The we're trying to figure out is what is that relationship. And so uh uh one of the things I will say about the chats is that they're the universal intern.

52:29 That's what we're making. We're making these universal interns that do all the work of interns. You have to check their work, but they're kind of like doing first drafts and they're helping the research. And so that's a relationship that we can understand and that's a You know, it's there's still a power thing, but it's okay. It's a It it's not degenerative like I think a master slave relationship would be.

52:49 So Um we I don't I don't see any evidence that we're going down that way, but that's a worry. that we would and that and and to some people They're just machines.

53:02 And I'm saying, No, no, just that Uh stance itself. It doesn't matter that the machines if if we have that kind of we're just you'll do my bidding no matter what. I don't know. I'm not going to You're not human, so therefore I can

53:18 have me do whatever I want you to do. So um So that's A worry that we would Do that. I don't see any evidence that we're doing that so far.

53:28 W what would be the signs that AI has been being weaponized? How would we know? Oh, oh, oh well There's all different levels of it. There's

53:39 In a curious way. Um You know there's this idea that t take humans out of the kill decision. So you have

53:50 uh robots soldiers and drones that make Uh. Autonomously decide. Whether to fire the The gun or not.

54:01 I actually am okay with that. in a weird way because one is I think Wait. I think it's possible that we could make them better than us and so they don't do war crimes. So that they're actually

54:13 Do we have the rules of war? Which is a weird concept, but it's better than not having rules of war. And that we kind of say okay, these are gonna follow it, and so they do follow it. Uh my hope is that w that process of doing that We realize how absurd it is. To have war.'Cause right now we're saying

54:33 No no we don't want robots killing people. We only want humans to kill other people. It's like that's not No no, we don't want humans to kill people either. And so I think I think by having to write the laws of war for the robot soldiers it will

54:50 Illuminate. How screwed up the idea of of of accepting war as as a legitimate um process. So so so that's so that's that's part of it. Uh

55:08 Not every country would agree to encode that into all of their devices. The country that defects would gain an advantage. But the AIs would also learn that not everybody's following the rules of war and then it would autonomously adapt to not following them because Like w am I thinking about this wrong? Well the the one thing I I feel is the

55:32 I have a she was just agreeing with the singularitans. Because I don't believe AI is ever gonna be out of our control in the sense of Yes, I mean Th there may be occasions when it does something, but we're gonna be quick to to

55:45 Correct it and say no no So so if there's if there's uh people uh or countries that don't uh that are having soldiers that fight the other way, it would be like having war crimes. It's like Yeah.

55:59 Do does the rest of the world accept that? Are we going to are they going to be punished? So so um The thing about the world that we're headed into is is that for better or worse we're heading in To a global world and this idea that we're gonna stop globalism or stop the globalists it's it's It's like we're not gonna become Amish. We're not going backwards. We are making integrated world

56:25 And the more the complex technology we make, like the internet and what's ever coming next. is very, very complex, requires thousands and thousands of people to Cooperate. To make it work.

56:39 And Even the AI running, it's not It's very the the the the fantasy, the Hollywood fantasy of the lone villain on the mountaintop who has all this technology that works. And there's no there's no IT support. There's just Works the first time.

56:56 And they can gain control of these very complic th that's just that's just that's just It's like dragons. It's it's uh It's just a fantasy. There's the only the technologies that we're making today, the more powerful ones, just require so many people to buy into the vision to make it work and keep it going.

57:17 That Um there's a there's there's a natural Resistance. No. That's going to come so so to to get something accepted, you have to have millions of people.

57:30 millions of people buy into the vision. And so there are you know, and and there are things that we bought into without knowing it. You know, we w there's all kinds of Things that we have. that we're collectively supporting without having Articulated them, but

57:44 The important thing is is that it takes Huge buy in to make things happen today. And that's A conservative force in the Classical sense of it.

57:56 Um And so That's one of the reasons why I don't worry too much about These rogue ideas of things. Yes, th there may be occasional thing, but there it's not really uh a a force at work in the world. Do do you think we're at the

58:14 Hockey stick inflection point of AI. Finally. I mean, we've been talking about AI for twenty years. No, I don't. I I I think we're still At day one.

58:25 And Um So here's the thing about AI artificial intelligence is is that most people think of um intelligence, including a lot of AI researchers, as a single dimension, like a decibels.

58:39 IQ. It's multi-dimensional. There's multi vector. Just all gradient. None of it's binary. There's there's there's probably hundreds of different dimensions and different c types of cognition in our own minds. And um

58:57 So far we've synthesized basically two varieties. Pattern recognition? And little bit of kind of generative ability. There's just L logical deduction, um

59:11 You know, symbolic reasoning. None of these things have we come close To synthesize it. What's shocking to us is how far we can go with just these Two things. We've

59:24 And then and they're and they're very flat and kind of bottom up. into this connectionist idea, which is like yeah. And what I've learned from that is that That bottom up. Will take you much further than you thought you could go, but will never take you all the way.

59:40 to where you want to go. So Wikipedia This classic bottom up thing. Over time. There's a more and more top down

59:50 Editorial. Control. And eventually over time there'll be even more to get where we want, to get that kind of encyclopedia that's totally reliable. It does what we want to do. There's gonna be

1:00:04 Some more top down Control given to that bottom up power, but you can't get all the way just from the bottom up. And that's sort of what the neural nets are. They're they're they're very flat bottom up. But

1:00:17 And they're gonna take us much further than we ever thought. But They're nowhere g not gonna take us to where we wanna get to. One of my fears I think with AI that we'll have to deal with at some point is that The news isn't the news anymore. The news is tailored to me. And by tailored to me, I mean you and I can look at the same

1:00:38 article which is generated in real time. Based on our political preference, based on how much coffee we had in the morning. It's gonna have enough information to tailor the article. Toward us in a way that Uh Can manipulate or mislead or engage or drive clicks or or do whatever.

1:00:59 And we'll have no way of telling what the actual News is Because we'll all have an individual view into the news. Yeah, uh uh so so I think this Epistemological

1:01:14 Front that we've um entered into is a very significant And very potent. Frontier which is um How

1:01:24 Do we know things? Do we Need. To be convinced something is true. Again, we have kind of like in our own past sort of waved our hands and thought Oh I know, I know, but what's this

1:01:37 Coming up to illuminate is in fact. We don't know. We we we we don't really have a very scientific measurement for that or or process. And so what this is illuminating It is like okay. Chat G is making things up. Well, what would we what would we need?

1:01:57 To believe that. Is it right the source? Well can we believe the source? How how many levels do we need to go on three levels of footnotes or does it need seven levels? Or Do they have to be verified by Something, uh it's some other AI. So so this this issue. I think is a really fundamental

1:02:17 thing. It's not a trivial thing of like disinformation for the election. No, no, it goes way beyond that. This is this is a really core thing at the level of What is truth? How do we it's a consensus of some sort. Well, how how do we come to that consensus? And what do we what's what are the diff the different categories? Maybe there's different categories of things.

1:02:41 You know, there's maybe levels or varieties. I don't know. But and and that's very exciting because we're gonna have to head into that to kind of Um, and it's not a matter of something Facebook is gonna figure out. This is Big

1:02:57 Big. Challenge is How do we know things? Which was begun. By the scientific method.

1:03:05 the side of the method began to change. How we decided we knew things. But that's So I did a study of the scientific method. I did the first study of the scientific. And what I realized is a lot of the things that we consider essential to the scientific method were very recent.

1:03:22 The double blind. Study was like in The nineteen fifties. Pasebos. We're not invented. Until it was in my lifetime. And so

1:03:31 Um, the scientific method itself is changing very, very rapidly. And so I'd try to imagine what's the scientific method gonna look like in the other fifty years. And I think part of what's happening is that's gonna have an AI component and all these other things. But how we know things has been changing and we're in this process right now of kind of being now illuminated the fact that we're in this thing. We're we're changing how we decide we know things. And

1:03:57 That's very, very exciting. And scary. Yeah, I mean uh it's gonna be fascinating to watch all those play out. Uh I wanna switch gears just a little bit because I wanted to hit on this before before we end. We talked a little bit earlier about religion. I'm curious what role

1:04:14 you see religion playing in society today. And how that might evolve in the future. That's a really Good question. I am

1:04:24 Myself. I have a religious belief. Um I I I think that um If we look at the evidence right now, it's pretty clear.

1:04:36 The Organized religions are on the wing. They're just they're they're disappearing around the world. The US is almost Exceptional in the sense of it's a very modern Yeah.

1:04:49 has a high living standard and a high religiosity, which is very, very um unique. Um All the countries that have gone atheist were Christians.

1:05:03 First. Christianity's the closest thing to atheism. It's really strange It's really strange. Um So I think I s so I would say uh standing back, there's several things you can say about Christ about religion. One is there's gonna be less of the current organized versions of them. And secondly the other pattern we see is the schizism where we're where where even the organized ones become

1:05:30 more finely divided in different little local niches. So it's kind of like mass nitification. That we see in other parts of the culture. I I'm going to

1:05:44 I would not be surprised to see some new religions based on AI come up. Religions have always been about Throughout history People have converted and and gravitated to religions that

1:05:57 They felt Made them More powerful, more successful. Look Korea. Kore Korea Went from a kind of a

1:06:05 Semi Buddhist To a Christian state because It was being driven by the people that they saw who were Christian who were successful and like I want to be like that. Or or your gods are more powerful than my gods. That was a that was a very common thing. in the a in the ancient world was whose God was more powerful?

1:06:25 And People who were successful believing these gods. It was like, Yeah, I want that, so I'm going to worship that God because I want

1:06:35 To be like them. And that's that that's been one of the major causes is not not just I I mean we think there's also some intellectual thing all the The theology sounds better, but generally has not operated that way. It's been much more

1:06:49 I want to be like that person. What do they believe? There's there's a lot of encoded ancient wisdom in religion though that is beneficial to create success. Exactly right.

1:07:01 Right. So in the modern world, yeah, if if if you don't drink and don't woman eyes around and stuff and you are a family man, you're probably gonna be more successful. Then somebody else. And so yeah, I want to be that. I want to be that is you know

1:07:17 I wanna be the Islamic guy. Because they were they all were more successful because it because of their beliefs. You know, again, if you're some of the things in my book about, you know, kindness and compassion and gratitude Or ancient Ancient

1:07:30 Wisdom of the religions. And In my observation, people who believe that do better. So yes. So there is a lot of

1:07:41 Encoded. wisdom in the religions. Um But the other stuff about them or is not working as well. And I think There could be

1:07:51 Um A new some new powers f from people who Kinda dive into AI, maybe AI Helps them understand who they are better, maybe they can become more themselves.

1:08:02 By using AI. And that therefore there could be something Not Scientology, but that's one Hint. at that kind of a thing. Imagine if Scientology really worked.

1:08:13 Right. I mean the other The Gizmo stuff. Well that would be You know, there are a lot of people m could move into that. And so I think um

1:08:23 So wouldn't that surprise me to to to see some new religions based around AI. emerging. in the kind of vacuum Of

1:08:34 the waning of the established religions. And and let me say one last thing. And I would expect it to see these first In China and maybe Russia. Because they have a total vacuum of this. So so so here's the thing about China.

1:08:49 Which I Spend a lot of time in There's nothing to believe in. They don't have a religion to believe in, they don't have a scripture, they don't have a constitution that they believe in. There's only about making money and they and that's not enough.

1:09:03 And so they there is this hunger. For Something to believe in. And If there was something like

1:09:13 An AI religion that could sweep the country. Because of his vacuum. Of you know Something greater than themselves to believe it. I think we miss the fact that as humans

1:09:28 We have this. Instinct. To be a part of something larger than ourselves. And when that instinct is not fulfilled, it leads to All sorts of unpredictable

1:09:41 Behavior. Right, right, right. Exactly. So In the absence of that, so nationalism?

1:09:48 Something bigger than yourself to believe in? And so That's why there's gonna be a rise in China of nationalism. That's sort of almost inevitable. Because that's bigger than yourself and you can believe in that. It's your team. Um China. So um

1:10:03 But there could be even bigger bigger things and that's Yeah, you wanted to believe in your your your purpose in life should suit you, but your Meaning in life. Your passion should suit you, but your purpose and meaning should exceed you. Should be bigger than you.

1:10:19 And um Uh we we we crave that. individually and so therefore um You know. Wait.

1:10:29 We wanna sign up. We wanna be part of a big story. and arc going through it. For me that big story is technology and uh in life. I I see technology as a extension of the same process of of life. in the mind. And so

1:10:44 For me the big arc is this sort of what I call exotropic Growth of Planets forming and Life forming and then

1:10:56 minds forming and then technology for me. That's all one long arc through the universe. And so that's what I'm aligned or that's what I'm trying to align myself with. There's a bigger story of bringing choices and possibilities to

1:11:10 Everybody so that Everybody has a chance to um Fulfill their be the most full of themselves as possible. That's a beautiful place to end this conversation. Thank you so much, Kevin.

1:11:35 It was my Pleasure. Thanks for the great questions and for your insight. I really appreciate I'm a fan. And um

1:11:45 You know, I I I really did enjoy this. What fun. Thank you. Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes. Show notes.

1:12:00 Transcripts, and more. Go to fs.blog slash podcast. Or just Google the Knowledge Project. Until next time.

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