AI Girlfriends & Immigration Angst

You know? Yeah. You told me when we started this 15 minutes, was it 10 minutes? I can’t remember what ludicrous number you gave me, but it was, it was cool. It was great. Um, yeah. 10 minutes max. 10 minutes max. Lets make this tight. Yeah. Make fast. Like a, like a Corvette sailing upon the ocean. That’s right.

That’s right. Um, let’s start with the first topic, because that’s what people have come here for our, that’s it. 20 listeners that we had last week. By the way, if you’re one of the 20. My hat’s off team. My, I’m I’m saluting you right now. [00:01:00] I’m on. Um, yeah. Um, so we’re, we talked a little bit about this before, but you brought up this topic of immigration, da da da.

What? Yeah. What’s on your mind about that? What, what would you say? You know, it’s just, it, it’s like with everything else I see the current administration, you know, a lot of the politicians at the top have a very extreme take on it, right? Like if you see the immigrations are, talk about this on TV and there’ll be interlocutors who say things like, didn’t you say you were only going to go after criminal immigrants?

Which is a very popular concept, right? Go after criminals who are in the United States illegally, under the Obama administration. They talked about it under the Trump administration. They talked about it. They talked about it during the campaign. That’s how you know it’s popular, right? The campaign is the time to pull out the popular things.

And when confronted with this, the border czar immigration czar [00:02:00] said, well, they’re all criminals. Which, I mean, you know, he is technically right. Right. You’re a criminal if you’re speeding on the highway as well. Right? Yeah. So now it’s just a question of, well, okay, if you went after all the criminals in the world, you’d have to go after people who tear off the little tags off of pillows.

I mean, that’s not technically true, but that’s the idea, right? Yeah. Like discernment. And I think most of the American people signed on for an immigration policy that, yeah. Among other things, prioritizes people who are here illegally who have committed crimes. Right. And I think there, I watch a lot of news media that highlights the more violent kind of crimes that some immigrants who are in the United States illegally have done.

And I don’t know anyone who would say like, oh, you know, let this person stay. Right? So to me, that’s a very reasonable middle of the road idea, is that we want violent criminals if they’re here illegally to be deported. And even though immigrant communities, whether [00:03:00] legal or illegal, tend to have a lower criminal rate than, um, native populations in the United States.

Right. You know, the argument a lot of people make is Sure, but if they’re here illegally, they shouldn’t be here at all. So none of their crimes should exist. Mm-hmm. It’s interesting, you know, on a, on a person to person level, I understand that argument, but when you’re talking about policy, now you’re talking about a big country, every time you enact a policy, innocent people will always get caught up in it.

It’s impossible. Right. You wanna go after murderers, I wanna go after murderers. Well, the police, the, you know, prosecutors in, in their efforts to go after murderers will probably at some point end up arresting someone innocent. Right? Well, same thing with immigration. You want immigrants cohere, illegally committing crimes.

To be deported. To be arrested, of course. But if you enact that policy, you’re gonna get, you’re gonna catch up. People that I think some, some will argue [00:04:00] weren’t part of that initial policy. And there’s been stories about this, the media covers this really well, these one-offs, uh, of, you know, of an ex-military member’s wife who was breastfeeding, who got arrested and deported, separated from their kids.

And these are really sad stories to me. Mm-hmm. This is a human element, right. I mean, I think, yeah. A lot of us who live in big cities have known people who might be in the US illegally, but I mean, I’ve known a lot of people who are working and to me, contributing to the communities, but they’re here illegally.

How do you, how do you square that circle? Right, right. As an, as a person to person conversation. It takes one form because we have empathy, but also we have a sense of like, what is right and wrong. But when you go to the policy level and you start taking extreme positions, like, don’t arrest illegal immigrants for anything or.

Ignore that. An illegal immigrant, if they commit a crime mm-hmm. Just don’t treat that differently than you would any other crime. On the one hand. On the other hand, it’s like, yeah, they’re all here [00:05:00] illegally, round them all up, do whatever you have to. Uh, I will let out that I am of Latin descent, so I worry that they’re just going after Latin looking people.

They don’t really do that. It’s not like ICE is in the streets looking for people who look like Latinos, but they go to places where they know that you could find an immigrant who’s here illegally. Sure. If you are a Latino who just happens to be in that place with them, then yeah, you’re gonna get asked what country you’re from.

You might get arrested. You might get detained. And that’s not something non-Latinos have to deal with for the most part. Mm-hmm. So it, it stresses me out. It kind of angers me a little bit. It feels unfair. I think Americans have a sense, a general sense of what fairness is and someone just looking at you and then treating you badly because of it.

I think most Americans would say, yeah, we don’t like that, no matter who you are. Yeah. Right. So. To just bring it all back ’cause we are not rambling on this episode. I have been looking at the news. I see some stuff I like, I see some stuff I don’t like around this administration’s [00:06:00] view on illegal immigration.

I see protestors, some people doing stuff. I like some people doing stuff I don’t like. Mm mm-hmm. Why would you get ice is trying to arrest someone from a courthouse? Maybe they’re on trial for some sort of, uh, stealing or some other crime and you’re making a political dance, you’re getting in front of an ice vehicle.

You’re actively trying to stop them from arresting this person, whether you believe they should be arrested or not as a matter of policy, the best place to fight that stuff. In the media, it’s in the courthouse. Maybe that’s just case. Well, do you think that that’s true? I, I had read that there were cases where people were going to their court appointments and then finding themselves arrested by ice there.

Well, there’s a, I mean, there’s a thousand examples. That’s a problem, Ryan. Okay. People cherry pick the example, they realize their point. There’s a thousand pieces, uh, of data [00:07:00] in, in the, in, in the aggregate. What do we do as a matter of policy? That’s a completely different question. Mm-hmm. My, just my experience from where I sit and I don’t live in the US anymore.

I’ve gone abroad, um, to work to me, but I have immigrants in my family. I know people who have immigrated both legally and illegally. And to me it’s like, you know, I see some protestors. Putting themselves in a dangerous position, getting kind of pushing ice officers, getting in in their way. And there’s the basic empathy I have.

’cause I also know people who work for dhs. Mm-hmm. There’s my basic sympathy of like, hey look, this, this person is doing a job. How they feel about it is kind of not even not the point the person has a job to do. That’s their job. So they get paid. Mm-hmm So they get their family. Sure. And they’re just making their job more difficult and then you’re turning it into an us versus them.

They feel sie, besieged, which is probably the point. A lot of these protesters want them to feel like that way. But what are they gonna do? Quit not do their job, they’ll get fired. So to me it’s [00:08:00] like, because I am kind of like relatively ProE establishment, which is a rare political opinion to have nowadays, I do feel like the best way to fight this is in the courts.

In, in, in the media there’s such a thing as passive resistance, but there’s some, some, some of this stuff. I see. And, and that’s all happening. Right. But then I see cases where, you know, someone’s actively trying to push and stop a, a, a federal law enforcement officer. To me it’s like, well, I, I don’t like seeing that.

And I think most Americans feel that way too. But what do I know? I’m not an activist and I’ve never really been kind of that kind of person. Mm-hmm. But then I also see the fact that the raids they do, they’ve scooped up US citizens. I have honestly only heard of maybe like a dozen or so cases in the social media, in the media that I watch.

Right. Um, you know, there are media that will never report that ’cause that’s not their angle. But I have seen not pretty mainstream media report on [00:09:00] American citizens getting detained. Mm-hmm. Most of the time it’s because they’ve either tried to stop the immigration officials Yeah. From doing something and they’ve the arrested them to stop them from doing that.

But uh, yeah, A handful of times it’s been like they’re a Latin descendant person with people who are there illegally who are the target of the raid and they get swept up because they look Latin. I mean, I don’t know a lot of non-Latin Americans who would put up with being arrested and detained on false premises.

You say you’re an American citizen, they don’t believe you. They’ll arrest you. That’s not okay. That to me, that’s not acceptable collateral damage. So some of the stuff I see in the news, I just, you know, the stuff that gets the most press is extreme stuff. It’s the administration officials. Sure. Talking about how values don’t matter.

Heritage does. There’s administration officials talking about how America is not an idea. America’s a real country with real people and what he probably meant is white people. Mm-hmm. When you say heritage matters more than values, that America’s not an idea. To [00:10:00] me, it’s very interesting because it sets up this like straw man thing of like.

You’re saying anyone who disagrees with you is prole immigration. That’s, that’s insane. Heritage matters for a lot, but so do values America is an idea. It is also a country with people who deserve fairness, workers’ rights, you know, defend our borders. Absolutely. But it’s also an idea and anyone who doesn’t see that I think completely loses the whole point of America.

It’s the constitution, it’s the rule of law, it’s capitalism, um, in its most empowering form. I really do believe those things and, and I think that’s our whole system. And it, it’s always a fight. And I think people who think that you should get rid of anyone who is different because of their culture, ’cause they’re immigrants, that’s an easy thing to do, to say.

And people will agree with it ’cause they’re, oh, you know, these criminals. But I think most people write down in the middle of the center. And I [00:11:00] wonder what it takes to get politicians. Who will fight for that middle, who want to have a secure border, who want to keep the immigrants, whether illegal or not, who contribute to society and the economy.

Find a way to make an immigration system that makes sense. Find a way to protect people who are, who are from this country, multiple generations, but who are poor and, and they live in rural areas and they feel like they’ve lost out on the American dream. How, you know, we have to do something for them too.

So to me it’s like, where are these politicians, man, like it, that’s what bugs me the most. And, and I’ve seen it’s been in the news lately, right? I think the vice president made a speech where he talked about heritage ma matters more than values because he said the people who are out there, uh, what is it who hate America because they wanna criticize its history, deserve to be citizens less than people who fought in the Civil War.

To me. It’s a dog whistle, right? He’s talking about brown and black protestors, pro-Palestinian protestors. He’s [00:12:00] talking about those are the bad people who don’t deserve to be Americans. And he is talking about people who fought in the Civil War. He’s talking about con people who, who love the Confederacy, right?

He’s talking about people who should, you know, these conservative media outlets talk about how during the protest, the ice protest in Los Angeles, which I have a very kind of strong opinion about criticisms about the protestors and mm-hmm. What the government has done at every step state and federal.

But you, they said the biggest criticism was they come in under a foreign flag. They’re terrorists, they’re foreign invaders ’cause they’re waving a Mexican flag or a right Guatemalan flag or a Nicaragua flag. And to me it’s like, well, okay, A lot of those people are just Latinos who are desperate to feel Latino enough, so they feel like they have to like hug the flags of the countries, right?

That maybe their parents or their parents’ parents are from. Um, that to me is the same when you go to Boston, you see all these guys who claim to be Irish. Yep. And they’re like two or three steps removed from Ireland, but they wave an Irish flag, you know, St. Patty’s [00:13:00] Day or on Columbus Day, they’re wa waving, waving an Italian flag and they have an Italian last name.

And they love to mispronounce Italian words because it makes feel more Italian. I get that man. You know, I’m also descendant from immigrants very recently. I get how you want to feel like that identity and it’s empowering in the United States as a country where you can be an American and have this attachment to your Italian Irish, English, German past Mexican past whatever.

And to me it’s like, well, when you see someone in the, in the capitol making a protest and they have a Confederate flag, that’s a foreign flag too. Man. The United States Army fought and claimed victory over the Confederacy. We beat them. Mm-hmm. That’s our country. The United States beat the Confederacy.

Mm-hmm. The Confederacy is a foreign flag. But that’s not how these social media, these like, uh, conservative media people see it, right? Oh, it’s a Mexican flag. You’re a foreigner. No you’re not. It’s probably an American citizen of Mexican descent who wants to feel more Mexican. I think it’s kind of weird.

I wouldn’t do that. I [00:14:00] don’t, you know, I don’t get it, but I, I see why that person did it. Same reason when I see a people waving a Boston in these Boston St. Patty’s days, things they, they wa they wave their Irish flag Columbus, they’re waving an Italian flag. Even people from the south wave a Confederacy flag.

I mean, I kind of get it, I get why they do it. But these, some people would call the Confederacy flag. Oh, that’s, that’s really American, and you wave a Mexican flag. And that’s really, it’s a foreigner. As a terrorist, it’s, that’s an extremist point of view, and I wonder how many people actually have thought carefully about it.

I wonder what most people think about it. Anyway, that’s, that’s my ramble about this immigration topic that has kind of hit me recently. I just find myself occupying a lot of middle ground and I, I wonder where the voices are on that middle ground. I do watch, like, for example, NPR, uh, I do watch Fox News.

I go on the CNN website. Sometimes I’ll watch CNN clips. Sometimes I watch Newsmax clips. Sometimes I’ll watch some, um, other foreign stuff. Uh, maybe B, [00:15:00] uh, BBC, maybe Australian Newsmax every now and then just to kind of get a hit of something that is outside of my comfort zone, I’ll kind of spread really far and wide.

Mm-hmm. Look at these things and I just wonder where the middle is. ’cause I know from opinion polls that most people feel about immigration the way I do. So I just wonder where are the politicians who are talking about that? Maybe there are out there, maybe I just don’t have access to it. Where is it, where are the media outlets?

And, you know, NPR, I think at PBS do a good job of fleshing out that middle. Although I think I’ve heard people, people I respect recently referred to PBS and NPR as being leftist. James Mcw of the New York Times, he called them kind of leftist, which is kind of weird. Who? The NPR? Yeah. Um, he basically, he is very leftist, I would say.

I mean, would you not say that? They claim that they’re not, I mean, they claim to be this middle ground, but I mean, if you actually listen, here’s how you can tell their, they’re leaning leftwards. Um, listen to their business, marketing, whatever, marketplace or business, any of the business podcasts. [00:16:00] Yeah. 80% of them.

Yeah. Rizzo, 80% of the stories are more about unfair employee practices and, you know, aspects of like this bad company doing something bad. I mean, it’s, it, it is very much from the perspective of a left, of a left leaning point of view. And I’m not saying it’s, it’s, I’m not saying there’s not a need for that in the space.

I mean, there’s a lot of business podcasts that could care less about those topics, but it does show very much, I think that it is a very left-leaning, um, that that’s what they care about. And I don’t even think they even know it. I think that they’re in their mind. This is, they couldn’t believe that.

They’re like, Hey, we’re, we look at both sides of the picture all, all the time. And we listened to the other person. We had the, the guy on who was a Republican, so we did our job. But I don’t think it’s any different than if you were in Fox and you’re, and you’re having a, a, you know, a token Democrat on, and you’re like, well, I’m, I’m listening.

[00:17:00] CNBC is very, from the corporate world’s point of view, absolute view. Absolutely. Watch CN BBC sometimes. Yeah. And, you know, uh, so like, just I’ve, I’ve, I’ve kind of worked in different circles, uh, as you have. Um, and I would say when I’m working for the private sector in a sales position, really focused on business development Yeah.

And sales, uh, which I, which I, I have worked in that ambit to me. Yeah. I mean, I was gung-ho. I’m like, let’s, let’s do this, man. Let’s win. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, and even now, where I see a lot of American businesses overseas, really promoting the American brand, which I’m really on board with. Uh, yeah, you’re right.

And it’s funny, I didn’t really realize it until you pointed it out. I’m not, again, I’m not against it. Um, no, no, no, no. But I just Right. It is, it is one perspective. Yeah. And the country, our country, the United States consists of everyone, right, right. Including corporate raiders, including, uh, private [00:18:00] industry.

It is private industry that chases growth mm-hmm. And products and consumers. Sure. And in the process, uh, does things that, you know, it has both negative and positive effects for all sorts of people. It depends where you stand. So everyone based off of who you are, are you a blue collar worker? Are you a white collar worker?

What sector, where are you like Right. You know, who are you, what is your day to day like? That will determine whether you are having a net benefit from us going on in any part of. Yeah. Society of Politics, which is why it’s really important to get news sources, um, that kind of help you hone in on what your interests are.

Yeah. If you can, but you just kind of adopting one that is outside of, I mean, you’re right, man. I mean, honestly, I, if you think about it, the way you’re doing it is actually smart. I mean, I think the only way to get a decent source of news is to kind of be willing to look at both sides. I have [00:19:00] trouble doing that.

And to your point, the editorial bi bias. Yeah. You might only, you might only be on an issue that only has like a, picking the topics of what you report on, it’s another form of bias. That’s a good point. Yes. Good point. And I think with, I think that’s what NPR r and PBS do in retrospect, in what they are selecting to talk about.

Absolutely. They are kind of already showing you where they’re coming from. Whereas I think Fox News Exactly. Yeah. They pick their stories and you can tell where they’re coming from based on the story they pick. And it’s important to realize that no matter what you’re looking at. They have to pick. I mean they have to, there’s no choice.

They have absolutely pick finite resources. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean I think that the, you know, a good example would be during the, during COVID, maybe six months to a year in, there were enough rumors and murmurs about where, you know, about the, this lab leak theory, um, out there. And [00:20:00] I had started to read up on it ’cause I was following some, I guess a bunch of fairly interest, you know, fairly different YouTube channels I must’ve been doing.

’cause I was like curious about it all. And I, you know, when I, I remember reading or hearing. There’s a Wuhan lab that studies coronaviruses. That’s interesting. I just remember thinking like, that’s, that’s weird. Why is no one talking about that? And then I went to look at, I remember looking it up like, okay, well what is it in New York Times about nothing.

Okay. What is CN said? It’s true. Nothing. This is when this went on forever. And it wasn’t until, what’s his name? Um, John Stewart. John Stewart gets on. Yeah. The other guy. He, he did that. He did that in a very popular medium. He did. Uh, Stephen Colbert goes on the show, Colbert Late Show, which has, he has a broad audience Right center.

Left, left, left. Oh, absolutely. Not too crazy left by the way, people, and people have no idea, I think of how Left, left goes and or how. Right, right. Goes right. I think you have a better idea of [00:21:00] how Right, right. Goes nowadays. ’cause we’ve seen actual face in, in militias. The news is really good at reporting that.

Yeah. But I don’t think we have a great idea in mainstream media about how left, left goes we’re, you know. Good point. And it was very Seattle. Yeah. Um, the protests in LA are pretty left, left. Like we’ve o you know, in the mainstream media you see Glimmers, Fox News only focuses on that. So Absolutely.

That’s how I know about it, is ’cause I, I, I consume enough Fox News to know mm-hmm. That the, the left left gets pretty far left. Well, you, you’re right. And I think it, it was an interesting thing because there was a fear in the media of, well, if we allow this story in, what could it do? And everyone could go crazy and then there, there’s, that’s it.

There have sort of a paternal. Yep. You know, it’s like, we don’t want, we don’t wanna, uh, cause mayhem and anger towards, um, you know, uh, China and all this. I mean, it was just like, they’re almost like, well, what [00:22:00] we, that’s irresponsible of us. But it’s like, well, you know, there’s some smoke here. And in some cases there’s, it’s just smoke.

And in other cases there could be fire. And I think when he went on and was like, dude, are we dumb? Like this is the obvious. Can we not tie obvious connections together and just say what they are? And I really appreciated that, that he did that. It was, it was shocking to Stephen Colbert. He was probably offended and upset that he did, he took over his show and did that.

But it, it is, it does show how people can get really strong, uh, strongly into one, one aspect of their political mindset. And then they’ll, like you say, they’ll choose the stories that reinforce their political kind of, and, and you know what, and that’s like, and, and you know, I, I’ve heard a lot of people say this about like the, the MAGA movement, Trump.

Supporters, like, oh, they’re dug in. There’s nothing he could do that he wouldn’t. Right? Yeah. There’s that base that supports him. Or I’ve heard people just talk about like, oh, you know, ’cause that’s what’s, that’s what’s in power right now is the MAGA [00:23:00] movement. And people will say, well, they’re not really thinking about their politics or, so, you know, these people are stupid.

And I, I think we’ve gotten, luckily I think that this course has, has moved past that because he won twice. It was, um, a pretty convincing win. It wasn’t an overwhelming historic win because mm-hmm. Yeah. That’s the marketing he lays on. Sure. That’s how he is. But it, I mean, it was a significant win. A lot of, yeah.

Significant. A lot of left-leaning voters did not come out. They were disenchanted. Right. And when that happens. Yeah. You, you have a significant part of the, of the population Yeah. That will come out and tell you what they’re looking for. So to me it’s like, but this, but this bias, this idea that he can do whatever he wants and, you know, people will just accept it.

Or in them, in, in the, in the conservative media, there’s just like a viewpoint. People support it no matter what they need to, they need to see all of it. Well, but we all do that. That’s a human thing. Sure. We all, we all want to think that the opinions we, we, we have, we wanna think the things we do are good.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And we don’t wanna be confronted with the [00:24:00] idea that we might support a point of view or a person or a movement that does bad things. Right. And so we will only go after media comments, opinion, even friends who Yeah. Who agree with us. ’cause we don’t like disagreement, you know, and Absolutely.

Or there’s people who just wanna fight all the time, but that’s not really that they go into a venue to fight all the time. When they go back to their base, you know, people, they talk to. Their friends, the things they watch, um, they’re not looking for a fight, you know, for example, like, uh, I see a lot of videos where, you know, Ben Shapiro destroys the lips or whatever because he has a, he has money to make and he has a good thing to defend.

And I get it. Um, I don’t hate him, but it’s, you know, when he goes home at the end of the night and he talks and he has friends and he has family and he has like, the stuff he watches and the stuff he listens to, most of it, you know, will probably be things that like Yeah, I’m right. Yeah. And, and he seems like the kind of person who [00:25:00] spends a lot of time in, in environments where people disagree with him.

But that’s like, that’s like work. That’s what it’s for work. Right. At the end of the day, he probably goes home and has people who kind of reinforce. Sure. And I think that’s the key is to find friends and people who can disagree with you, who just like, essentially who you are as a person. Yeah. But who you are as a person is not.

Necessarily your political opinions or political opinions come from somewhere and it’s really hard to get them challenged. ’cause they have to be challenged in a way that doesn’t attack you, the person, right? Like you and I. Oh yeah. We disagree in a lot of stuff. Um, yeah. Everything actually. But it’s just, it is just, I don’t know.

I like you as a person, so when you tell me something that disagrees with what I fundamentally believe, I might actually take a second look at it. Right. But, but I do it too. I do it too. I, I, you know, my and, and the algorithms on YouTube, on Instagram and other places, they’re not helping the confirmation bias problem.

I, you know, so I do, I am kind of everywhere when it comes [00:26:00] to political stuff I consume. So Instagram, and I take this as a point of pride, started sending me some pretty crude right wing race baiting, uh, memes. Yeah. You made it every, every, you know, every part of the political spectrum has their means. And it, I haven’t gotten to that loop actually.

I’ve, I’m on the one they’ve given me the, um, doom scrolling of, of how AI is gonna destroy Yeah. And that’s his own, that’s the one I’m on. It’s like I’m on my own package. It’s like you, your own like, uh, friends and family package. I’m on the one where I, I literally the other day was I woke up. On Wednesday morning depressed.

And I was like, why do I feel so depressed? And I’d become it, it was because I had been doom scrolling ai. Yeah. Uh, terrible things are gonna happen to us for about three or four hours the night before. So Yeah. Once you get into those, it’s very hard too, because you start to believe that everyone else is seeing [00:27:00] what you’re seeing.

Yes. And believing what you’re believing. And you’re like, is it, Hey, aren’t you freaked out about this? And they’re like, what are you talking about? And you have to kind of like, whoa. I, I’ve been in a world of, of, uh, my own making or I guess of the AI is making and it’s, it is dangerous and No, no, I mean completely.

And the technology is built to reinforce this really terrible Yeah. Um, human habit, but the algorithm is just, is just digitized now, which makes it automatic, fast and powerful. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But something like this has always existed and, and that’s true. The one example I always think of is sugar and fat.

Mm. People who design food products. Uh, you know, people who I, I’ve walked in these circles. This is, and this is not a right or left wing thing. I mean, the, the community of wanting organic food and hating GMOs is very left and right wing. It has this weird thing where they meet up in the middle, but to me it’s like, well, okay, processed food has [00:28:00] saved this country.

GMO food has saved this world. Hmm. It got us past the population bomb. Right. And I’m, you know, this is a, this is the example people talk about when they talk about GMOs, right. Cross breeding wheat. Um, when they made, when they invented dwarf wheat, wheat, I made the ability to support so many more billions of people in this world.

Whether that’s good or bad, I mean, you know, it can be debated, but yeah. To argue you want a bunch of poor people to die of, starvation is a pretty hard hearted place to come from. Sure that’s, that’s genetically modified. Mm-hmm. The tools to genetically modify food have always existed. We humans have been changing our environment.

Mm-hmm. Since we’ve existed, we, because that’s what tools are. Sure. To a certain extent, other animals do this. Now, I’m not, you know, I’m not stupid. I know that we do it on a fundamentally molecular level. Yeah. Companies do this in order to make food taste better to us and make it cheaper to make, [00:29:00] and they don’t care what the health effects are.

And I mean, they really don’t care. It’s not like they don’t care. They’re ruleish wanting us to suffer. But processed food got us through World War ii. We didn’t really think long term about the effects. Once the effects were known, companies weren’t eager to stop. Right. Well, I mean, it’s like, yeah, the Romans were.

Great at plumbing and irrigation and, you know, there were a bit of lead pipes. I mean, there’s a, there’s a plus and a minus to it all. I mean, you got, hey, you got fresh water, what are you complaining about? Just ’cause it’s poisoning you. Yeah. Um, so don’t, don’t make a big deal. Yeah. But I, all this stuff has, it’s, it’s, you know, a pendulum where, you know, you have, you get some benefits from it and then you get the, the problems with it, you know?

That’s right. And, and, and so to me, right, like this, I mean, just kind of taking it back to, uh, when, when I think about this topic, the fact like, COVID or process for you. Oh yeah. The fact that it’s become politicized is intriguing to me. Um, it, I think [00:30:00] maybe it, I, I won’t say it’s a concerted effort, but I would say that the, i, the fact that it has been, has become politicized, for example, right.

Fluoride in water. Uh, taking a second. What in water? Fluoride in water. A fluoride in water. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Um. Taking a second look at vaccine safety and vaccine production, the economics around vaccines. Taking a second look at that. These should not be political hot buttons. Yeah, but they are. But they are.

Yeah. I, I couldn’t say what I’m saying to you right now without someone out there, I, I’m sure someone’s hearing this and being like, oh, you know, it’s like a MAGA guy or Yeah. Wait, what exactly is this guy’s politics? What two camps do you fit into? ’cause there’s only two camps. Right? That’s, that’s, that shows you, it’s been politicized and it being politicized means that the middle sensible solution that benefits most people will never be taken up.

That avoiding of the middle is what a lot of [00:31:00] powerful and mm-hmm. Rich actors benefit from. I’m not saying they’ve created our politics to be this way, so they could benefit. All I know is that they benefit from it. But I think it’s also just a human thing. Chimpanzees will murder chimpanzees from any other tribe that wanders into their area.

I wouldn’t do that. This is, this is part of like our own weird Simeon desire to just like murder any other part of our species that wanders into our tribal territory. We have fought and resisted this urge since the beginning of time. Uh, and, and it’s a constant theme in our human existence, right? So it’s, it’s interesting to me that these have been politicized and I love the fact that you and I can create a space where we try to depoliticize it.

We can, ’cause we know each other and I mm-hmm. Assume their intentions. How can we make this happen with other people that we don’t know? I don’t know. Uh, it’s a good question. [00:32:00] Yeah. Well, anyway, and I would say with the one thing I wanted to say about the immigration thing was that, um. I don’t know why I want say this.

I, I dunno if you, if it even matters, but um, you know, I do think that we have seen this stuff before in the us We’ve gone through. I think it’s, I think we look at the past in kind of a naive way and we think to ourselves, I think they’re so bad right now. It’s so hateful. Back in the previous days it was so much kinder and I’m not sure.

I think what we’re really thinking about is maybe the nineties, which I think keeps coming up for me as the peak humanity, peak civilization as the nineties in every way ship and form. Um, yeah, I dunno if you’ve seen these memes. This was just the nineties. Were like, oh yeah, perfect technology. Yeah. Who cares if it’s the nineties or something, right?

It’s like, it was great technology but not too great. You know, you still had to like. Go out and play as a kid. Um, it was great [00:33:00] music. It was all this stuff, but not too great. I mean, it was all this stuff, AI before, ai, before, you know, social media. It was a, it was kind of a neat time and it was fairly like, you know, people were kind of starting to appreciate each other a little more.

But if you go back further than that, I was thinking about the 1920s where, uh, you know, Italians, this is my, my people. When, when my people were coming over, uh, were, you know, dynamite was like the new thing. And they were notorious. These Italians would come into like places like Chicago and, and throw dynamite into buildings and blow up people and kill people.

They were basically terrorists. And this happened so much that I think Congress prevented Italians from immigrating for at least four years. I mean, a full stop to all Italians was the law. And if you think about that, that’s a pretty big law. If you had that today, people would be going outta their minds.

And yet we kind of just like, oh yeah, yeah, that was just four years. No big deal. And then they, they, you know, returned. But it was basically like, these, these people [00:34:00] are so dangerous and they’re so untrustworthy and they’re so slimy and, and they’re also bringing in their mafia wish they were, um, that we just gotta stop this.

We, you know, sorry, we’ve gotta get rid of ’em. And at the same time, you’re right, we were, they were coming in, they were very proud of their culture. They did not adopt the Irish diet. They started, you know, they brought in their pastas and their mm-hmm. Sausage and they pushed their flags all around. Like you say, they’re very proud of their background.

So I think, uh, and you know, and then you look at, so in the 1950s this shift happened and, you know, it’s sort of like, I would say the equivalent of it now is like Korean food. I’m not saying this ’cause I, I know a lot of Koreans, but Korean food, uh, is now exotic and cool. Maybe also ’cause of K-pop and stuff like that in the us.

Uh, the equivalent of that back in the fifties was Italian food. Italian food was exotic. If, if one can believe it. Mm-hmm. And [00:35:00] interesting and different. Whoa, my tomatoes and like this acidic taste and wow, like sausage is a little spicy. It’s blowing our minds. Um, these, like going to an Italian dinner for a bland kind of a white American person was like living on the edge.

It was wild. And, and so if you think about it, these, these cultures, uh, come into the US and then it takes a while. The other thing I wanted to kind of talk about, by the way, which I think is very interesting is, um, is have you seen gangs in New York? I assume you have. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s, that was an interesting story.

Yeah. Right. So based on a real, on the real political. On the real political. So if you think about what. Everyone’s upset about with immigration. Uh oh. You know, immigrants come in, they cause problems and all this stuff. Or, and you can even think of like, uh, the attitude towards, um, Muslim Americans or something like that.

Um, you have [00:36:00] this in, you have this, um. Ingestion of immigrants in the, in the country. Yeah. And at the beginning, they’re ostracized, pushed away, usually get the worst jobs and all this stuff. And of course what happens, they become criminals. Right. Of course they become criminals. That’s what you do. Yeah.

Push the margins of society. That’s right. You push ’em to the margins of society. They become criminals. They start creating gangs. And I think the reason that Scorsese wanted to make that movie, ’cause I watched a few interviews with him, is here he is, and a Sicilian guy growing up in New York and everyone’s telling him, you’re a piece of shit.

You are slimy Italian, Sicilian, dude, you’re people are criminals. You’re a piece of crap, da da da. And he hears this story and he thinks, oh, I must be, I’m Italians bad. Italians are bad people. He hears this story about how the Irish were like that. And he is like, oh my God. Maybe it’s not personal, maybe it isn’t just a thing that happens.

And what happens, right? So they, they have all these gangs, they do all this stuff. Did they continue to be criminals? No. [00:37:00] Irish people at that time moved away. They moved spread across the country. They became the most uninteresting people and not criminals. And eventually it all comes and we just, you know, this is what happens to all these cultures is that we just, they, it comes in the, there’s a, there’s a strong, the criminality gets to a quiescent level.

I mean, correct. Whitey Bulger, Boston, uh, that, you know, the Irish gangs Oh yeah. Did continue in criminality around the, the descendants did, but like, not more so. Yes. Not in a way that’s like, to me like. Not a, not a pervasive issue. That’s like blowing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It normalizes exactly. I mean, arguably it never was a super pers pervasive issue that required the deportation or the prohibition of alions.

But because the same thing happened with, uh, Chinese people in the mm-hmm. At the end of the 18th, uh, the end of the 19th [00:38:00] century where the Chinese exclusion act, which wasn’t legally, I mean, it wasn’t actually lifted into World War ii, right? Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Um, so to me it’s like not, and, and, and see this is where the sensible middle comes from.

It’s like, you know, and not everything has hair on fire all the time. Yeah. Just because something is bad. And I think civil society, people who vote, people who have a conscience should try to do something to solve problems. Something is, something is worth fixing. Doesn’t mean it’s hair on fire, what it’s ever been.

And there are politicians who stoke this flame on purpose so they can for the private gain. Right. You know, anytime I see an extremist point of view, kind of make the rounds, every time I see a politician take up a stance that is not part of the middle, I think to myself, well, who benefits from this? Yeah.

And they’ve used them out far enough, like I said before, uh, a completely polarized [00:39:00] electorate politically where everything is a political issue. Yeah. COVID lab leak theory, you know, hunter Biden’s laptop. Mm-hmm. You know, people rail about Trump’s family and benefits they’ve gotten from the office. You know, sure.

There, these are all political lightning rods and to me, they shouldn’t be to me. Right. It’s not MAGA versus liberals or progressives, whatever the word is now, it’s not left versus right. It’s not Republicans and Democrats. To me, it’s, there’s this multifaceted, not just two sides American people, and what do we want from our federal government?

And then you look at your state and be like, Hey, we, whatever we Virginians, what do we want from our state? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then it’s like, hey, you know, we, people who live in X place where, I mean, whatever your hometown is, right. You know, what do we want from our town? That’s the beauty of America to me.

And I, I have not [00:40:00] experienced that in a lot of other countries. Right. I’ve been to a handful of countries and I have not really experienced this federalism, marble layer cake, whatever you want to call it. Mm. This system in which an American, I think the source of our political and personal freedom comes from our form of government institutions.

It comes from the fact that you have state, local, federal government each with a responsibility to you, the citizen, the government is where we come together to make a country that works for us. The government doesn’t have to do everything for us. There’s a lot of things we do for ourselves. ’cause society is bigger than the government and that’s like a very basic idea of America.

I think it’s a unique idea. I think I look at other forms of government, even European countries that have better metrics around happiness and Sure. Health, uh, outcomes. [00:41:00] I think we have a unique formulation of what we imagine to be the government’s role, civil society’s role. Sure. With economy, uh, should be like for us, the people.

That’s a unique idea. That is one of the reasons why I get up so upset when people start talking about heritage over values. It’s both. Yeah. Yeah. It’s both. Well, it’s a popular thing right now. Values matter because if this country turns into a fastest country Right, right. Turns into a capitalist country that only works for the oligarchs.

That’s not America anymore. No. Right. It’s true. And so, and so to me, a lot that would be very difficult to do that because, you know, just on the surface we have, if you look at the, um, the Magnificent seven, is that right? The Mag seven? Uh, these are the most seven most valuable con companies in the world right now.

Um, we have Nvidia led by a Taiwanese American. We have Microsoft led by an Indian American. We have Google led by an Indian American. I could go on. Um, but how do you, [00:42:00] how do you. Basically decide, oh, we have, there’s one heritage that works, the rest are not valid. And then you’d, well also, oh, by the way, we wanna be a superpower and keep that going around like, well, you can’t do both.

You, you gotta choose one or the other. And you have to let go of this, uh, silly ideology that is, um, you know, at best. Yeah. Native. Right, exactly. ’cause, but nativism is a way of politicians trying to divide up the electorate, because once again, to me is the American people. What do we want out of our country, out of our government?

And if a politician points to another subset of the American people who are to blame, that politician is doing you a disservice. Right. That politician is trying to gain something from you. Oh, absolutely. Dividing up the American people. The poli, the political class is here to serve the American people.

The political class have become an interest unto themselves. They are supposed to serve. The [00:43:00] interests of the American people. They are supposed to, to, by the way, and to include companies, you know, companies are actors in our society that mm-hmm. Provide us services, benefits. Sure. And that, uh, impose costs on us.

Yeah. We, the American people should be able to tweak that. We should be able to decide, you know, what, this is not worth the harm it does to society. Sure. I think social media is one of those things I think a lot of people can agree on. Yeah. I think social media are amazing. I think it’s really changed our world.

Yeah. But it doesn’t matter what part of the political spectrum you rely on. I don’t know anyone who’s a parent who loves their kid, who wants to see a 12-year-old get depressed, commit suicide because of the insane amount of social and emotional conditioning that happens. Terrible. Or myself. It’s happening to me.

But you’re right now. Absolutely. With my kids. I mean, I, I just read an article that, um, China just banned OnlyFans, and they said this, I led their quote too. It was like. We’re banning [00:44:00] OnlyFans because it is a, um, what was it? It’s like a virus from the west or whatever. And I looked at the comments in the article and everyone was like, I can’t agree more.

Like, this is a, this is a virus. Why are we allowing this to, like, it’s actually hurting ourselves? And you know, like that’s a whole different topic. I mean, I, I think there could be a place for that. But, you know, it’s a fascinating topic to me too, because there are some interesting con, you know, there’s some interesting ideas about like, what happens when, um, what happens to dating, what happens to relationships when, you know, a woman can decide, oh, I can make more money.

I can make a lot of money just exposing myself or whatever like that. And what does that do to pairing and what does that do to, you know, there’s so many, and so the, so you have a divide of like the. Producers and the consumers, and it’s a gender divide and is that [00:45:00] healthy for the society? So it’s a very interesting point, right?

Actually China, there’s a huge this balance. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it’s a very interesting point that the, it’s an interesting point and it’s an interesting action by the Chinese government that I can’t say I, I can’t argue with. I, in, in some ways I wanna say, well, yeah, let everything be free. But on the other hand, I am seeing like, to your point, but we we’re seeing the dangers and the destruction of society via social media.

So maybe there are times where, you know, taking a, and if you’re a popul, if you’re a populist American politician, then it’s like, well, the Chinese are evil. Everything I do is evil. Sure. Well, that wasn’t a bad idea. It was not, and I mean, there are what I mean, uh, Florida I think banned, um, social media accounts.

That’s great. Yeah. I’m all for anyone under, I think Utah as well, 12, 14, 16, like yeah, I know people who like just rail against Florida politics, but. I mean, they’ve done a lot of things really well. I mean, well, you know, you’re gonna hit some things that are good and you’re gonna get some other things wrong.

People get [00:46:00] attached to the messenger. Right. And I mean, we talked about this before. You should never, you should be, you should never stop being a thinking person. Always be a thinking person. Yeah. If you, if someone is attempting to manipulate your politics or your emotions, why, why are they doing that?

What do they stand to gain? Oh, I like this guy. ’cause he sounds just like, oh, you do, you can, you know, ex party. These guys, they’re doing nothing about this real problem. And it’s like, yeah. Anyway, I mean, I think everyone should, every state should pass a law to ban social media and every state should put in a, um, a jail surrounded by alligators.

I mean, we all need, those are, oh, those are what we need. Okay. So you do one of, one column and then one of the other. That way it all just kind of balances out. Exactly. We all need to have, here we go. I can I contrast? Okay. I can get on board with this. Okay. So, uh, one law. Um, one law saying that there are only two genders you pick which two you.

I don’t care. Just as long as we only have two. I’m fine with you just picking whatever two they are [00:47:00] and, and, uh, a huge corporate tax. Oh, I like it. Yeah. All right. Right. Just go, go draw straight down the middle. Right? I like it. I like it. I mean it triangulates middle. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. All right. Great.

By zigzagging violently between two. Lemme ask you this. Um, due to timing, um, I wanna throw this theory by you, which is, um, related to ai. What am I most, um. Bothersome topics of all that I will keep coming back to. I feel bad we’re not talking more about this. We should talk more about this. I hate talking this, this is more in your wheelhouse and I use it lot.

It’s, but I just can’t stand it. I, I use it too, but I really, I have such hostility internally from, I have such resistance to it, I think is my, it my main thing. Yeah. Anyway, a woman made it skeptical. You’re an ai s Yeah. Very skeptical. You AI hesitant. Oh gosh. There was a woman on reels, I’ll say. I watched her and, and she had a, I dunno if you [00:48:00] saw this thing, I sent it to you, but she had an argument, which I thought was interesting, which was in the, the printing press in 14 hundreds, whatever.

I won’t claim. I know. The year, maybe 15 hundreds. Um, that’s what we, we have our AI assistant. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It democratizes if you, I hate that word actually. I think all it did was it, it it empowered, let’s say the, um, the peasant class. The, the, the common, the common man, let’s say. By transforming illiterate folks into literate.

Now, the only, as you remember, the only literate folks at the time were mostly clergymen and stuff like that. This, this printing press puts in the hands of, of folks, um, you know, the ability to start reading, understanding writing. It was really transformative to society. And you can look at all the benefits that came with that, including, um, hundreds of years in the, at least in, you know, in certain places of the world where you have a, you know, if three or 400 years later you have a [00:49:00] transformation from, from monarchy to more democratic systems and stuff.

You could argue that a lot of that came from, from this more literate society, uh, science, all this amazing stuff. Now that science has gotten so good, it’s created a new technology that. That she argues is going the opposite. It’s, it’s actually going to dumbify the population in a way that we’ve never seen before.

So, so while the pretty impressed, uh, made more people, more intelligent, AI has the real potential of making people dumber because of their new dependence upon it, and Yes. Um, and therefore less powerful, turning them back into peasants, taking away their jobs. And so I thought it was a very interesting dynamic of, like, you, you have all these folks go from peasants to more intellectual, more empowered, and then the technology strikes again, and we’re going the opposite direction.

What, what are your thoughts on that? So this is interesting. You know, what [00:50:00] if, if you would’ve just told me this, right outta blue, this opinion like AI’s gonna make us dumber. Like a few months ago, I’ve been like, oh, that’s like a reactionary thing. You’re afraid. Sure. Blah, blah, blah. But you know what, you’ve, you’ve really brought up so many things with this and really made me think about it in such a way that like, I don’t think that’s that crazy of an idea.

I think it’s a potential. Mm-hmm. Uh, I think it has a potential to dumb us down because I’ve seen it play out. For example, um, I was at a, I was at a meeting with my boss who’s responsible for evaluating my work. I do writing Cool on economics, uh, in Southeast Asia. And so it was interesting, you know, I, I had been asked to, to draft something and it was a topic I’m really interested in, but it was one thing among other things that I’m working on.

And I said, yeah, okay. I mean, you know, and I’m very open and transparent at work about my use of AI to help me draft. Oh, okay. That’s the issue. To help me draft. Mm. Not to [00:51:00] draft. And so I will feed, uh, a chat. I have, uh, about this particular job because I’ve had other jobs and e each one of those prior jobs I would treat way differently.

So I fe I fed it documents from other people who’ve done the kind of writing I do. And people were, you actually trained it people. Exactly. So I kind of feed it kind of where I wanted to focus on. It has its own training, obviously, like all AI do. Got it. But, you know, I, I’ve been using it to, to make a draft and then I, I read it and I, you know, every time I ask it to make a draft, I tell to put it sources, and sometimes it’s pulled a source and gotten it completely wrong.

Mm-hmm. I recently, I had to write a paper on tariffs and it, and this is like last week after the tariffs all got changed after July 31st. Oh sure. And I wanted to write a quick blurb about it, a little piece of news. And it said that, um, oon had. Um, welcomed the tariff rates and it had not [00:52:00] actually, no, doesn’t sound like it, but what, what Ossian ministers had commented on was the positive role of the United States and the Thailand Cambodia conflict.

Interesting. And it had convoluted that Got it. With tariffs. ’cause it was happening at the same time. Yep. But I knew that wasn’t true ’cause I keep myself informed. Mm-hmm. I’ve read a ton of articles, but I read, I read, um, summaries of articles, uh, I scan headlines and I read reporting from like, think tanks and other authors that work in the same space I do.

And so I read that stuff and so I have a general sense of what’s going on, but if I want to draft, I’ll have this thing, draft something, and then I go back in. I, I kind of, I, I wanna tweak it to have a certain voice and I wanna double check the facts. And man, thank God, because when I went back to this, I’m like, no, that is not true.

Right. I will look stupid if I write that and it’s a, and it’s a wide audience look stupid or look like you didn’t pay enough [00:53:00] attention or look lazy, which is worse. Like, I lose my job. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, it was interesting, uh, and I thought to myself, wow, I have to maintain my rigor. Yes. Being up to the, up to the, you know, I got, I have to know the latest of what’s going on.

I have to mm-hmm. Make the ai, ai who advises me and does a first draft, tell me where I got it stuff from. Right. Because there are some things where I didn’t know and like, well, I’m gonna pop into this. And then, yeah. I mean, 95% of what it wrote, I looked at the source, I’m like, yeah, this is a good summary or this is a good inclusion.

I took a transcript of a meeting I went to, it was meeting, it was an event. Sure. Um, and there are ministers and people there, business people there. And I wrote, and I wanted to write a piece about it. And I. Uh, I recorded the audio and I put it in an AI transcript writer, and then I, I then asked AI to write a summary mm-hmm.

That I could [00:54:00] use to then write my piece. Well, in its summary, it left out a pretty significant comment from, got it. An Indonesian minister who said that, you know, basically this Indonesian trade minister said we should work with the US even though they’re doing this destabilizing tariffs. But the, the, the deals, because Indonesia recently made a deal with the US a trade deal.

Mm-hmm. The details are scarce ’cause it’s a framework and, and people say like, oh, there’s no real trade deal. Well, it is a framework. You have to be specific when you’re describing what’s going on nowadays. ’cause everyone’s eager to characterize it one way or another. And I noticed it left out a, a, a pretty serious comment and it’s significant ’cause it’s a trade minister in Indonesia saying it.

About how the US tariff rate, actually it’s not good, but it won’t really affect it because it’s relatively low compared to other countries. Got it. So it’s still the best place to be involved with tech, with supply chains on tech [00:55:00] products. Cool. So it says like, and uh, as far as the bilateral trade agreement goes, another thing they did not like and they think it’s destabilizing to a multilateral system, which Southeast Asian nations need multilateralism.

’cause they don’t swing a big bat like the US does. That’s the reason the US wants bilateral trade agreements. ’cause that’s where it has its strength, it’s obvious. Um, and so the AI miss that entire dynamic. Yeah. They don’t like it. They think it’s destabilizing, but they’re willing to do it. And if and if they’re gonna do it, they’re gonna get the best, you know, they’re gonna, they’re gonna make it work for them.

And this minister said by we’re gonna eliminate the trade surplus. We’re gonna reduce the trade surplus with the us. They get a better tariff rate. Buy buying things we need anyway. Buying things from the US where, whereas before we were buying it from other larger countries. Right. And it gives us the ability to diversify.

We’re getting energy from, we’re buying ag products from the United States, which are high quality, and they’re forcing us to remove non Ontario non-tariff barriers, [00:56:00] such as, for example, Indonesia has a halal certification process. Hmm. The US does too, by the way. Yeah. And, and it’s industry led. So Indonesia agreed to start letting in accepting those a halal.

And so they had to deregulate their own economy Yeah. To this trade negotiation requirement. And she said, you know what? We’ve been wanting to reform and deregulate our economy for a long time. Interesting. And they’ve given us a way of doing it that makes it look like we’re doing it to get a better tariff rate.

Passing the AI missed everything I just told you. Yeah. And that is a significant piece of news. And so I thought like. Okay. Is it because AI’s not there yet? What, what happens when it is there though, right? It, am I gonna let it do everything? No. ’cause then I lose the ability to be in the know myself. You absolutely will.

And so this is the, this is, I think exactly what you’re touching upon is that if I let it do everything for me and turned in its work, [00:57:00] um, I’m gonna lose this edge I have, which is I know what it should be telling me about. I let it do most of the driving, but I do have to check it. So basically I treat AI like someone who’s reporting to me and I have to supervise their work.

Sure. I know where their shortcomings are. I know what I can rely on them for. I know what I can rely on them for. Yeah. Yeah. But just like any other manager who lets their subordinate do all their work for them and just call it their work. Yeah. Same thing. If you’re a manager and you’re especially working in a job where you’re working on news or think pieces, if you let your subordinates do everything for you, you’re gonna find yourself pretty useless.

Um, after a, after a while and replaceable. Super reflect. ’cause the truth is the only thing we have left is that discernment. Yes. And our sense of priority about what we think is important. Basically, like if you think about our ability to curate and to know what style is and know what value is, those are [00:58:00] now, now relish to humans.

And if you give that up, which I think you’d, you could easily do by just, um, turning off your brain and just letting it do all your work for you and just, you know, if you’re, if you’re doing that and you’re quite dumb, um, I actually help, uh, one of my, in one of my businesses, we help people write, um, personal statements for college and stuff like that.

And, um, and pro versus like, uh, graduate programs. And I cannot tell you the number of people that I meet with that have written their personal statement with ai and they all look quite dumb. I mean, I, I shouldn’t say this. They’re well written, but that’s the problem. They’re way too well written. And anyone who’s read, anyone who’s ever read them before knows that there’s a, a shift.

There’s like, they were not well written before and now they’re all suddenly well written. And once you’re reading this stuff, you know, once you’ve allowed AI to kind of take over and shut off your brain, it says a lot about who you are in general. Um, there’s a lot [00:59:00] of people who would love that. Careless.

You’re lazy, you’re perfectly willing to not put in the work. And that’s, you know, to me, you know, people who are willing to put in the work. Uh, I think that’s just like a, its own value. And whether you give them AI or not, they’re not gonna give that up. People who want to work and, and do the thing, good point.

And have the skill that will continue on. And people who want to fund their work off on other people take care of further things and basically steal work and not work very hard themselves. Yeah, that will continue. How they do it will always change. And now they can do it with ai. I can’t think of any other technology that, that.

Follows. This just makes it easy. Right. But there’s not, can you think of any, you kill someone, you kill someone with a frying pan, but a gun just makes it way easier. True. In a way that is DA different Exactly. Category of thing. Yeah. Like, you know, there was, I guess that’s true. There’s like a knife attack recently and people are like, well, no one’s talking about knife control.

It’s like, yeah, it’s really fucking hard to kill. It’s 20 people with a night. It’s unpleasant. It happened, it happened in [01:00:00] China, uh, a couple decades ago, and it became a part of their security institution. Interesting. But, but a gun makes it way easier. In a way that is significant and worth wanting to monitor and perhaps control.

But the best way to monitor it is through norms. And I think, and I’m talking about ai, I mean, I’m also talking about guns. I mean, norms are way stronger than laws ever happened. But, um, as far as AI is concerned, this viewpoint that you introduced to me of, it’ll make you dumber. I never really thought about that, but I, but I’ve seen it.

Mm-hmm. And I, you know, I pitched to my boss like, Hey, well, why don’t I write this one? Kind of like, whatever kind of piece. It’s like a five minute read. What if I just do it real quick with ai? And she’s like, no. She’s like, I’ve seen too many people. And she said that, she says, AI’s not good at writing stuff.

I’m like, well, that’s not true. She goes, no, no. I’ve seen people try it. And it, it uses old, it uses bits of old news. It has no new [01:01:00] thinking in there. And it, uh, what is it? It, it uses recycled like talking points. So, and now you have this, now you have this piece that looks like older pieces and people will think we’re not transforming.

Yeah. I’m like, okay. And I told her, I’m like, but I’m not having it. Write it for me. I’m having it write the first draft. She’s like, no, it doesn’t work. And I’m like, well, it does actually, but it needs to be in this position of being an advisor and a drafter. I need to bring, I need to tell it to include that new stuff.

But that’s where my role is, is discernment. It’s, I feed it what I’m looking for. But the a, the AI can’t do that yet. So lemme turn things around. What happens when I can this discernment. You speak of what happens? ’cause it’s doing things now that I don’t think people thought it could have done. Yes. Right.

Could, this is a really good question. What happens when it does get, and by the way, what does better discernment look like, for example? Mm-hmm. I’ll give you one little example. I am about 15 [01:02:00] pounds heavier than I want to be. My discernment is, uh, I will exercise. I’ll lose weight by intermittent fasting, but then every now mm-hmm.

And then I’ll have half of a ice cream cake. Sure. What does that mean about my discernment? If I let an AI control my exercise and my food, like, let’s say, could literally feed me, it’s an AI that controls a little valve that lets food go into my cage. I would be 20 pounds lighter in, in two months. AI’s sermon is better than mine.

Now. What it can and can’t put into an article that I’ve written about, a topic that my readership wants to read about. My discernment is better there. So what happens when the ai, and these are two, these are two different types of discernment. One is like discipline related, maybe. I Well, you do know that it’s not good to eat the ice cream, though.

That is, you’re still discerning, you’re just, you’re just having The other aspect would be like control, you know, ability to kind of control yourself. I, I know this [01:03:00] as a, I’m a type one diabetic, so I know all about. You know, I agree with you. It’s, it’s, you understand, I know better understand who I made the decisions that foot, but then there’s also people who don’t know that this is that bad.

And they, you know, maybe they’re, most people by now do, but let’s say you took a look at diabetes. They, there are people who really believe that and are actually told by, you know, their doctors like, you know, eat that ice cream, that’s fine for your diabetic. Oh, I see. And so they don’t have the discernment to even, but not the decision making.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. But what, but what happens when, okay, well then the AI’s discernment on nutrition actually might be better than mine. It would be, but, but I do wonder. Yeah. But it’s easy to just like, if you had, you could also give that job to a human and they would do just as good of a job. They would just say, no, Carl’s true.

No’s True. That’s actually true. Um, okay, you’re right. Wow. That’s actually pretty, it’s about your self-control versus other, like, you know, theoretically you can tell someone. [01:04:00] Then let me come at it from a different perspective. And these, and I’m, you know, we’re in the process. No, we’re debating right now.

I’m in the process of, of, I’m curious. Yeah. And I’m, I’m in the process of trying to decide what I think. Using what you think as a guide. What about what if what we decide, what we decide is good discernment or bad discernment. Like, okay, this AI doesn’t know what to put in this article. ’cause it doesn’t know that you just can’t recycle stuff.

You can put insightful things, but I’m guessing what other humans think is good to put in there. So discernment, being on this one dimensional thing, which is good to bad. Right? That’s one dimension. Good to bad discernment. Yeah. What if it’s not objective? What if it’s Well, good. The bad discernment for the audience I’m talking about, which could be value neutral.

The readership that I wanna sell my pieces to. What if I’m aiming for them and if I do a good job, my good discernment means I’ve hit center of mass with, of what they like to read about my topics. But that’s ’cause they’re [01:05:00] human. What if the humans I write for should actually be wanting something else from me, but they don’t ask for it ’cause their discernment is off.

If AI made products, for example, Hey ai, fix this region economically and politically, the AI would suck at that ’cause it would have to interact with humans to do it. But if every human who was in charge of every political and economic decision in the region were to put an AI in charge of it, and now this AI was in charge of talking to those ais to reach this goal, they would reach it.

I think you’re right. I actually think you’re onto something, which is that the difference, uh, between you and this AI in this situation you’re talking about, let’s say with a discerning about which to put what to stuff to put in the essay or not. Is based upon your interactions with other humans over time.

Water cooler talks. Yep. Casual conversations, meetings, et cetera. Right. You’re sucking in a lot of [01:06:00] data that you don’t even think about. Right. And then, and you’re having conversations with your boss. Yep. Now, if ai, which it’s starting to do now, is, is so in integrated and injected in every society, in every conversation that, you know, people are walking around with these little devices now and they’re, it’s listening all day long to them, like, I think they’re a bunch of morons, but they have these devices and they’re like, oh, look at this thing is listening all day long to me.

Okay, great idiot. Um, I, no privacy, but, but there, but let’s say the AI is now programmed to train itself on everything you ever say and everything it hears we’re just not really doing right now. They create a model that model’s fairly static. Then every so often they update the model with new information.

And that’s kind of how it’s working right now. But if that model was dynamic and it would changing every moment, and so the model is, is shifting all the time, then it would start acting more like a human does. [01:07:00] And I would agree with you that it, within very short amount of time, it could start to pick up on these nuances and be just as good as you.

Uh yeah. Humans are not infinitely complex. Yeah. I think, uh, a, a sufficient amount of computing done to a sufficient amount of human data Yeah. Could pick out our patterns and emulate us perfectly with no, no possible way of differentiating. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m not about the turn test right. Where you, you could fool a panel of humans, um, into thinking you’re human or them not being able to tell.

Yeah. I, I mean no fucking around Westworld shit. Yeah. Right. Good point. What the pattern to being a human is, is actually doable by a computer. I mean, but then the only difference is, is input. Because if you think about it, what makes a great song? Sometimes it is experiencing pain and discomfort [01:08:00] and, and some interesting points of view mixed together.

And now you have an interesting, and then you, you know, some musical stuff, music theory, and then you have an interesting song that’s about pain and suffering that you went through. Mm-hmm. Now can an ai, that’s my question still actually is even if it could pick up all that stuff, can an AI feel anything?

Enough to actually generate a passionate song. And I’m not that, where I’m, that one I’m not sure about. It might be able to pick up on nuances that you would like it to, but can it actually be creative enough to do, do something, do something new, or say, I’m sick of this type of music. I, I want to try something rebellious and, and, and there’s a certain amount of passion and energy and like, um, emotion there that it, that can create, you know, what is it like punk?

Like, think about it, like the genre of punk. Uh, right. There’s a, oh, I don’t like this old fashioned thing. I want to do this. I’m angry. I’m, I’m angry because my mother yelled at me. Let me create this new [01:09:00] form of music. Now will an AI. Do that. It could probably pretend to do it if you told it like, oh, be rebellious.

Okay, here’s a rebellious style, but could it actually feel it? And that’s where, I don’t know if it could. Now I sent you another thing in there a couple days ago, which was that, um, my, what is it? The gr did you see this thing? It’s, yes. Rock is hot or whatever’s. Let, let’s go, let’s get into this as our final topics, I feel.

Okay. Final topic. This is a great transition. Speaking of feeling, did you watch it by the way? I did. Oh good. All right. I just know there the wi it’s the wi the Bronx, the girlfriend, the FU thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel a lot of different things about this. I have been a borderline incel, like, you know, virgin, I’ve been a dateless wonder and I have heard the siren song of artificial human contact as an alternative to [01:10:00] real human contact.

Hmm. You know, in my ears. Got it. And I’m familiar with the, like, otaku culture of like, Japan, of these like shut-ins. I don’t know, what is o what is Otaku culture rather? It’s a deep nerd culture. You know, our listeners can correct me if I’m wrong. Okay. As I understand it, there are these people who, in the most extreme, um, kind of areas of this, they never leave their room.

Yeah. Their mothers still makes some food, leaves it outside their door, they’re in the computers in the virtual world, these are people who are like, go on sims and that kind of thing. Right. And they just, they just, and, and you know, and I’ve seen sexual versions of this, and to me, sex is just one facet of the human experience and it mm-hmm.

I mean, a ladder can mean nothing to some people, but this idea that, you know, an artificial interaction is better for you if it’s soothing and keeps you in your comfort zone. I, I just think there’s a personality type that is okay with that. Yeah. I am not, my personality type is [01:11:00] vain and egoistic and arrogant, and I want to feel like I have earned the attention of people and, uh, occasionally when it’s a sexual, and when I mean sexual, I mean like the human phenomenon of of, of wanting to couple with the opposite gender.

Yeah. In order to do the introductory thing. I mean it from a purely biological point of view. Like, I need to copulate with another human of an opposite gender in order to fulfill this biological drive. Sexual, yes. So even in the sexual realm of I’ve had an interaction that makes me feel like I’ve copulate Sure you have not.

Yeah. Um. You wanna challenge? Yeah. I, I’ve, I’ve, you know, I have the internet, I’ve delved into that. I’ve owned a pair of virtual reality goggles. Mm-hmm. And it’s, I’ve always felt deeply unsatisfied. I have met people who are okay with that. And it’s, you know, they’re interesting [01:12:00] socially, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, so I, I kind of, I’ve, I’ve d dabbled in these circles and seeing this AI grok girlfriend clip you have sent me.

I mean, you know, you have a person who’s interacting with it from a almost this weird point of view of they’re not into it. Sure. They’re right. It’s tongue in cheek. They’re playing around with it. They’re playing around with it. Uh, it, it is interesting, i, I, I think, but every time I’m confronted one of, one of these AI things, I think of the human element.

For example, my previous example where the boss said like, people have used AI and they’ve come up with like dull recycled talking points. And I thought to myself, well, I know, I know my colleagues who without using AI, do the same thing. They recycle talking points and put out bland paper. Sure. Put out bland stories.

But they’ve done that without ai. AI is emulating what we do. True. Right. So there are men and women who have very superficial social interactions. True. Absolutely. That’s [01:13:00] a very good point. To get them closer to their own goals. Good point. And it’s not a true passion. It’s not like I love you the way you love me, and I just wanna be around you and hear your voice.

And feel your skin and smell you. Yeah. And that is my goal. My goal is just to spend more time with you so I can experience you. I also wanna spend more time with you to experience you Well when one, when one of them is like, well, I want to feel loved and appreciated. And the other one’s like, I would like to have a regular salary and a car, and trips to Europe.

And so I’m gonna superficially give you the sensation that you are receiving the attention and the social value you need. There are humans who are capable of that too. True. So when I look at this ai, very good point, girlfriend. I thought to myself like, oh, okay, this is, they’re copying poorly. One aspect of this human thing that we do, which is we socially, uh, artificially contrive to get something from someone [01:14:00] else.

Yeah. By pretending to give them something that they want from us. Mm-hmm. They want interesting. Really love them and think they’re attractive and interesting so that we can get what we want. Maybe it’s a better job. Maybe it’s money, maybe it’s trips, um, maybe it’s social stability, I don’t know. But now someone has created a, a, a digital computing brain that does this now too.

Right. And it’s, and, and you have to think about what is its desire. Does it have a desire? If it does have a desire, I guess the desire would be to follow its program to goals. That’s right. Um, if it doesn’t have a desire, then it’s just following program goals. But it is a good question. If it follows, if it follows program goals and makes you sincerely feel these things, I feel loved.

I feel like I’m, yeah. I’m being attended to. I feel sexual gratification. I feel like I’ve copulate even though I haven’t. Mm-hmm. Uh, if you’re getting those things, then what’s the difference? If it’s this AI or if it’s a [01:15:00] human pretending to also try to give you those things for Its true. Yeah. You could, you could totally be conned into believing someone’s into you and they could just, like you say, they’d be, I, I actually think that what you’ve said is very accurate, which is that there’s a lot of probably wealthy men who are not particularly attractive.

They don’t have much of a personality. And the kind of women maybe that would, well they’ll end up with are women that. Really want the lifestyle that they offer, but not the personality that they offer. Right. So they’ll give them whatever they want, you know, they’ll be like, all right. Yeah. But it, it only becomes undesired when the person who is receiving the emotions mm-hmm.

Who is creating emotions for themselves, uh, topic for another podcast. Yeah. When the person is making themselves fall in love with themselves through this AI avatar and programming. Mm-hmm. When they come to the realization of like, oh, wait a second. But it is just a program and I don’t, I’m not actually [01:16:00] attractive to, to, to this person.

I’m not really desired. Yeah. Just like if you were in a relationship, I was in a relationship once where, uh, this person, she was very physically attractive. And much younger and it had all this shiny social value to it that made me think I was, look at this cool person. I am. I’m such a man. Right? Yeah.

Young, very attractive. Everyone. Tell me about how physically attractive she is. But, uh, she broke up with me after a few months and it, she was just following some weird social programming she had. She never actually truly loved me. These are the things she said. True. Who knows if they’re true or not? Who gives a shit?

’cause it’s old news. Uh, but when that, when she broke up with me and told me she didn’t really love me, then I felt like my pain and desperation was from my illusions going away. Okay. I thought I was a very highly valuable, right, highly socially attractive person. And then now she’s running away from me.

It’s go, I’m not, I am a terrible little troll person and I knew I [01:17:00] was and I thought I wasn’t. And it’s confirmed. N nothing changed. Right? Because, you know, it, nothing changed except for my own illusions perception. So that’s like, it has nothing to do with the other person and it almost never does. I mean, we, I think you and I are in agreement about this.

We’ve done a lot of work on this topic separately. Uh, if I find out that you’re just an AI avatar, I have met you in person. I knew you in person, but let’s say you died and someone made an AI version of you. Mm-hmm. That’s why I’ve been interacting with these months because we haven’t physically met in Sure.

Years. And if I right now it all, I just find out that you’re an AI avatar, I would be devastated even though nothing has changed. Yeah, good point. Um, so to me it’s like interesting. It, it, it comes down to the human in their own world and what they’re experiencing. Interesting. And if they interact with this ai gr thing and it gives them a feel, but then later makes ’em feel bad ’cause they realize, oh no, I’ve been yeah, getting all this human experience from this thing, but you never did.

Every human feeling you get isn’t from the other person you’re interacting with. [01:18:00] It’s that you get it from yourself. Oh. And you feel like you have to go through someone else to unlock it. So I don’t think anything has really changed from, if I, if I put on that hat, if I put on the hat of my emotions or me experiencing my world, that probably may not even exist then.

This is just kind of eating around the edges of it. But I, I get you. It is, if, if we accept the illusion that society is real and humans are real, this is a as is a, is an attempt to cut someone off from society, I don’t think that’s gonna get us to a good place as a species, a more fulfilled, happier, peaceful place.

I don’t think it will, it will not. It will probably. Continue to, to sep separate people from interacting more and more as they go more into their silos. Um, I it is a good point. I mean, I was actually at the end of that video and we can put a link into the show notes. Um, it was interesting because I saw how strong, you know, most LMS [01:19:00] you work, you interact with are fairly balanced.

And if you ask them questions, they’re fairly, their personality is fairly balanced. She was highly imbalanced as a ai. Yeah. She was so programmed towards sexual sexuality that like, she would turn making you feel like giving you compliments. Exactly. Like she would be upset. It didn’t make her people like you and me wouldn’t like that.

You and me would want like a little challenge, right? Oh, she’s an intellectual. She’s debating us. Oh. But then she seed some ground to us, like, oh, I’ve earned that. Right. So this is what I’m, I’m concerned at. Because in a way she was so. At tuned towards sexuality that it became hollow and you, and, and it was the first time I’ve seen an AI just be like, wow, it’s very smart.

But I can see that if it’s tuned so strongly, it’s um, there’s nobody there. I, it was the first time I actually saw the AI for kind of what it was, which is just a program. Whereas normally I’m personifying it like, oh, this is a real, I’m saying thank you and stuff. And this was the one where I [01:20:00] was like, I don’t have to say thank you because it’s clearly right.

Extreme says you wasting data cycles by doing. Yeah, he said that. And so, um, with. The, the, the danger, actually, in a way, this is kind of a, it’s like a toy. It’s silly because she’s overly sexualized. Yep. And you know, you ask her about the weather and she’ll make that into a sexual thing. And so, but what if they were, and when, when they do actually come out with one that’s has the same ability for, for the sexuality, it has the same capacity for having that kind of sexual interplay.

But it also has, it’s not tweaked to that level. And it’s, it is more about hitting you in a way that you do feel like, oh, I’m, I’m earning her respect, I’m earning her, she’s now proving of me. And you’re really kind of, but anyone’s been a story telling yourself a story. Oh, that’s true. Right. You can, I mean, you really, they want something, right?

Yeah, exactly. We have the amazing potential to fool ourselves into [01:21:00] believing that something that we know deep down isn’t happening. We still can tell ourselves that it’s happening. Right. And, and this happens all the time. Uh, very attractive women or any women really get this all the time too. A bunch of guys pretending to be interested Yeah.

In them with their opinion or who they are or the dress wearing. Sure. Because they wanna have sex with them. Absolutely. And there are, and you know, plenty of women wanna have sex too, man. It’s like the whole point of the species, but they won’t be selective. And if you’ve come in like you are her boss, wow, you’ve done really great work lately.

You know, let’s talk about this over coffee or grab after work or whatever. And then now she’s like, wait a second, do you actually think I did a good job? Or are you going after this thing? Right. So to me, yeah. This is not a new phenomenon. I mean, and this roc examples pretty hamfisted. Yeah. Um, I have no doubt right now out there there are more sophisticated models that make you work for it and that Right.

So the point isn’t that this AI gr is kind of tuned in a way that is built for someone who’s probably [01:22:00] socially kept and doesn’t know that it is so therapy. Mm-hmm. I mean, the question is, would you wanna spend time with this AI after you’ve had an orgasm? Probably not. I think of Good question. I think of my partner and I’m like, you know what, the sex stuff is great.

Yeah. Also, when we’re done and we’re talking about like parties we like, or music we like, or we’re talking about, like what we each think about topics, that’s great too. Right? Absolutely. And it’s like, because we have this ability to, to switch gears depending on what the mood we’re in. Yes. Right. And so this one, grok AI girlfriend didn’t, but I, it wouldnt be hard.

It wouldn’t, wouldn’t not be hard to change it. And I think it, you know, the, the closest thing I think with this stuff is, you know, it’s sort of like the, the heroine of technology that I think as a society we, we’ve as a society we’ve had to deal with stronger and stronger. [01:23:00] Say drugs and we start with alcohol.

Yeah. I mean, opioids, opioid opioids gots got stronger. Stronger. Absolutely. That led to an epidemic. Hundreds of thousands of Americans dead. Yes. Because they made a drug that was so irresistible, so strong. Right. So strong. Mm-hmm. So the same, same potential on the, on the horizon with this is social media is already bad enough, as you said earlier.

This is, this is social media, you know, version two or three. And it’s gonna be pretty powerful and hard for people who, so I, what I think with all this stuff is for you and I were lucky we were born before ai. Yeah. And we grew up before ai. And so therefore we still know how to use our brains. ’cause we had to, we learned that way.

We still know how to have relationships because we had to work through it. This whole new generation where they’re gonna be inundated by it and they don’t have to actually do the work and they don’t have to actually interact with real people. It’s gonna be very depressing. Um, and that, that doesn’t concern me.

This isn’t, and my viewpoint has shifted on this. It’s not a [01:24:00] skill like, well, neither of you, neither of you, nor nor I know how to make fire in the woods without, right. Yeah. No one showed this to us. Right. Because they didn’t think it was important. Um, this is important. This isn’t, this is important. Yeah.

Just being able to camp or catch fish. Sure, sure. If, if society collapses, then it suddenly becomes very important. Yeah. But, but uh, being able to think critically, evaluate information and be a thinking person mm-hmm. Is a skill you will have to inoculate your children. Uh, you will to resist this.

Absolutely. But guess what? The world we live in right now, you and I, this political polarization exists because there are many people our age and older who are not inoculated against critical thinking and thinking for themselves. Highly partisan extremist people. Lost the ability to evaluate information.

True. Switch it out. Mm-hmm. And think about it carefully. Yeah. Good point. And not fall [01:25:00] into the camp of someone who’s trying to manipulate them. Right. That’s true. Like, that’s happening now without ai. Without ai, ai. Good point. It makes it much worse. This is, this is going from a knife to a gun, just like Yeah, good point.

And, and both dangerous, but one and a fucking 6-year-old could pull a trigger. True. Yeah. Well, it’s a good point. And I think, to your point, sweet ass, like a, like the sweet ass tuned gun. Like you got that, you got that puppy down to like a 200 gram. Uh, kind of like pressure trigger with, uh, yes, like a highly tuned laser scope, maybe, uh, uh, a highly customized hand grip.

I mean, that puppy, it wants to shoot itself. Um, I can see that. Um, I would say that if you, if you’re a parent out there or you’re planning on having kids, all, here’s a quick hack. Don’t let your children have access to AI until their 18th birthday [01:26:00] for writing for entertainment, et cetera. And they, once they have access to it, they will be the smartest people in any room they walk into compared to their peers.

So, anyway, sir, this has been fun. This has been great, man. You know, I, I get so much outta talking to you. Uh, my one hope is that this, these podcasts can be popular enough so that someone who is like me who wants to have a conversation like this and doesn’t have. Necessarily other people to have it with thinking outside of political paradigms, I think.

Mm-hmm. You’re really good at that. I hope I am, uh, people who don’t have access to that on a regular basis. I think you are, for whatever reason, I hope they’re able to stumble onto this and then create it for themselves or get something out of it when they hear us do it and, and even interact with us.

’cause we have the website now. Yeah, that’s right. Don’t tell my wife comments on YouTube. Yeah, that’s right. Uh, exactly. Put a comment on the YouTube, especially if you didn’t like it. [01:27:00] We’d love to hear that. Uh, if you’re watching this on YouTube. Yeah. What, what are we completely doing wrong? Amen. Yeah, exactly.

Feedback is feedback. Feedback is feedback. Uh, go to don’t tell my wife pod.com if you wanna send us a message. Uh, and that’s also the name to shoot for on your, uh, on your podcast player. Look for us. And, uh, e it’s been great. I, uh, fantastic. Hey, I hope to see you next time. Yeah. We drop the show tomorrow.

We’ll, we’ll see you next time. Ooh.