Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. Daniel, It's so great to
Speaker 1: have you on the show today. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. A lot of things we can
Speaker 1: talk about. You're a very interesting guy, which is why
Speaker 1: I wanted to get you on this show. I knew
Speaker 1: there was lots of areas that we could discuss. I'd
Speaker 1: like to first start talking a little bit about your childhood,
Speaker 1: because you had a very interesting educational path that right,
Speaker 1: or a different I have a different educational path, different
Speaker 1: and interesting, Yeah, both. Yeah, tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about it and sort of how you saw the education system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't know much about the education system because I
Speaker 1: wasn't exposed to it. I was home taught growing up,
Speaker 1: and I went to public school for a very brief
Speaker 1: period a few times as an experiment and a few
Speaker 1: different private schools, but the vast majority of my childhood
Speaker 1: education was homeschooled. And the reason was my parents were
Speaker 1: kind of educational philosophers and were interested to see what
Speaker 1: would happen if the kid didn't have any fixed curriculum
Speaker 1: and was just exposed to all the things they could
Speaker 1: be exposed to, and then their interests were facilitated. So
Speaker 1: it was a very kind of constructivist idea. So that
Speaker 1: was it. I didn't have a certain amount of social
Speaker 1: studies and geography and math and handwriting and English. It
Speaker 1: really was just a facilitation of questions and fascination and interest.
Speaker 1: Times that I did go to school, there were obviously
Speaker 1: gaps in knowledge that everyone else was learning. Like I
Speaker 1: had never shown much interest growing up in American history
Speaker 1: and understanding states and capitals and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: There were areas where I was setting things that were
Speaker 1: well outside of the scope of anything that would normally
Speaker 1: be touched in school, and so it didn't translate very well.
Speaker 1: What was, of course wonderful about it was I got
Speaker 1: to not only go very deep in the areas that
Speaker 1: I had any interest, but my actual interest in life
Speaker 1: itself was fostered by having the interesting topics supported and
Speaker 1: not being forced to focus on stuff that was uninterested. Yes,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you were a pretty curious person and
Speaker 1: you got a chance to actually run with that as
Speaker 1: opposed to being held back by that. The term curious
Speaker 1: person and child are synonymous. That's a good point. That's
Speaker 1: a good point. You do see individual differences though in curiosity,
Speaker 1: and maybe that is partly environment mental supportive and as
Speaker 1: well as I think geneics do play a role, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of dopamine production and their genes that code
Speaker 1: for dopain. But I think that that's a good point
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways from the evolutiony perspective. You
Speaker 1: need curiosity, right, You need or to adapt. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you have a child who's not going to explore
Speaker 1: their environment at all, it'll the child will not be
Speaker 1: able to adapt at all. What do you study in college?
Speaker 1: I studied math, physics, philosophy, and undergrad psychology, more philosophy
Speaker 1: and graduate school, but then getting into ecology, biology, medicine,
Speaker 1: complex systems. Most of that wasn't in a formal academic situation.
Speaker 1: It was in independent studies and research environments. For instance, medicine,
Speaker 1: was working with some different diagnostic laboratories, working with medical
Speaker 1: doctors and clintics on complex bases, and working to trying
Speaker 1: to find insights that were outside of the scope of
Speaker 1: what we currently had insights on. But what was the
Speaker 1: college you went to undergrad was to the Marish University
Speaker 1: in what university? Where's that located? It's in Iowa, Fair Hild, Iowa.
Speaker 1: It was a very kind of unique school that was
Speaker 1: focused on studying the sciences with a deeper thought process
Speaker 1: around subject object relationship. Cool. So when did you start
Speaker 1: to think about putting together this neuroacker collective? How did
Speaker 1: that come about? Neuro Hackers are relatively recent project. We
Speaker 1: started it about three years ago, and I had gotten
Speaker 1: into integrative medicine and kind of diagnostic medicine, therapeutic medicine,
Speaker 1: especially for cases that both alopathic and integrative medicine didn't
Speaker 1: have adequate solutions yet, partially because of my own diagnosed
Speaker 1: illnesses that didn't have adequate solutions that I had to
Speaker 1: work on it, some of which had neurodegenerative components. So
Speaker 1: I got deep into understanding how neuroregular code systems work,
Speaker 1: how dysfunction works, and because there weren't any adequate solutions
Speaker 1: offered anywhere. Of course, the only meaningful option was see
Speaker 1: if novel insights can be generated by approaching in a
Speaker 1: different way, And so I started applying cybernetic theory how
Speaker 1: do the bottom up and top down regulatory systems in
Speaker 1: the human organism work? In whole systems and complexity theory,
Speaker 1: how do all of the different omics and all of
Speaker 1: the different body systems interact and have cascade effects, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And it ended up leading to a set of hypotheses
Speaker 1: about how health works, how aging works, and how illness works,
Speaker 1: and then how illness in a case like mine could
Speaker 1: have worked led to me being able to do some
Speaker 1: kind of unique research diagnostics find things out that traditional
Speaker 1: medicine had not. That led to me actually being able
Speaker 1: to treat and reverse the conditions I had that were,
Speaker 1: you know, reverse autommune antibodies, reverse things that are not
Speaker 1: usually medically thought it as reversible, which led to me
Speaker 1: then doing that with a lot of other people who had,
Speaker 1: you know, working with various integrated doctors who had also
Speaker 1: what are traditionally deemed as uncurable cases, and getting to
Speaker 1: see that we could reliably reverse different kinds of pathology,
Speaker 1: and this was very meaningful and that we could address
Speaker 1: not only physical pathology but meaningfully affect people's cognitive and
Speaker 1: psychological function because with chronic disease, with autoimmune and neurodegen
Speaker 1: people's cognitive capacity and their emotional status is always effective,
Speaker 1: and it's effective in ways that have to be supported
Speaker 1: for them to be able to do what it takes
Speaker 1: to actually do the rest of the treatments, to have
Speaker 1: the focus, drive, etc. To do generally a meaningful amount
Speaker 1: of work. And so that's what really kind of led
Speaker 1: into an integrative approach to the future of psychopharmacology, psychooneor immunology, psychiatry,
Speaker 1: and then starting to look at not just addressing issues
Speaker 1: to come up to baseline, but also could we enhance baseline.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of the intersection of biologic transhumanism,
Speaker 1: can we do fundamental biooptimization and that then intersected with
Speaker 1: the other think tank work I had been doing. Why
Speaker 1: I was working in complex systems, which is how do
Speaker 1: we support the major transitions and civilization writ large that
Speaker 1: need to happen, environmental sustainability for major macro issues that
Speaker 1: we're addressing and there's economic shifts, there's governance shift, there's
Speaker 1: infrastructure and technology shifts that have to happen. But there's
Speaker 1: also recognizing that all of the major issues that we're
Speaker 1: wanting to address are human behavior mediated, and all of
Speaker 1: the new capacities we're wanting to bring about are also
Speaker 1: going to be human behavior mediated. So then looking at
Speaker 1: the human physiological, bold and psychological predispositions for more omni
Speaker 1: considerate or shittier behavior, and what can we do to
Speaker 1: be able to predispose on the physiology side, predispose human
Speaker 1: hardware towards increased complexity of thinking, perspective taking capacity and
Speaker 1: perspective synthesis capacity, emotional resilience, et cetera. All the things
Speaker 1: that would decrease the predisposition for our harm externalizing behavior
Speaker 1: and increase the predisposition and capacity for omni considerate behavior.
Speaker 1: What do you think are some of the aspects of
Speaker 1: human nature that's get in the way of compassion and kindness.
Speaker 1: What are some of the biggest blocks. It's going to
Speaker 1: be a very deep question that we're probably going to
Speaker 1: go into a meaningful rabbit hole if we do, because
Speaker 1: the topic of human nature versus how that nature is
Speaker 1: expressed is a very deep one. What is human nature?
Speaker 1: If by that we mean genetics, who cares because genetic
Speaker 1: expression ends up changing it radically? Or genetics largely predisposed neuroplasticity,
Speaker 1: so we can be radically mimetic creatures. If by nature
Speaker 1: we mean that which is inexorably unchangeable, well that whole
Speaker 1: concept is nonsense in a genetic engineering world. One of
Speaker 1: the things I love about Crisper, even though I actually
Speaker 1: don't think we're nearly as close to being able to
Speaker 1: utilize Crisper safely as we think we are, but one
Speaker 1: of the things I love about it as a thought
Speaker 1: experiment is as soon as we are now realistically thinking
Speaker 1: about being able to change the genome, our whole idea
Speaker 1: of nature has to change. Conceptually. It's a great thought
Speaker 1: experiment to say, well, even if we did evolve to
Speaker 1: have inexorable competitive or whatever trait, now do we want
Speaker 1: to keep those or not. When you have that level
Speaker 1: of exponential tech where you can change the connectome, change
Speaker 1: the genome, the level of existentialism and ethics to say
Speaker 1: what is a desirable set of traits becomes forefront right.
Speaker 1: You have to address it and the course science doesn't
Speaker 1: do and desirable right, it does what is not what
Speaker 1: it odds historically, So how do we actually make a
Speaker 1: scientifically commensurate ethics and existentialism is part of the core
Speaker 1: of our work. But if I was to just fast
Speaker 1: forward over all of the subtleties of it and say,
Speaker 1: what do I think are the aspects of human nature
Speaker 1: that are inexorably problematic? I would say none. I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of aspects of human nature that lead
Speaker 1: to problems when the right conditioning is there. But I
Speaker 1: think other sets of conditioning lead to fundamentally different expressions
Speaker 1: of that same nature. And so there is a propensity
Speaker 1: for human agency, for the impulse to self actualize. If
Speaker 1: that is growing up in the context of zero sum
Speaker 1: game games and finite games. From a game theoretic perspective,
Speaker 1: that can look like lack of empathy, pathological competition, selfishness
Speaker 1: if you're growing up in the context and you're neuroplastically wiring.
Speaker 1: In the contexts of positive sum games where winning doesn't
Speaker 1: require others losing, which then requires numbing to the pain
Speaker 1: of others losing at each shutting off empathy, and in
Speaker 1: infinite games where you are not winning to win, but
Speaker 1: you're winning to keep playing, right, what does it mean
Speaker 1: to keep playing? So you can't externalize harm when you
Speaker 1: change the game theoretic constructs. I think the fundamental impulse
Speaker 1: to agency self expression and actualization, and the fundamental impulse
Speaker 1: to communion connecting with others can be simultaneously optimized without
Speaker 1: any fundamental dichotomy. So the problems are at a game
Speaker 1: theoretic level, which means an economic worldview, mometic structural level,
Speaker 1: not a which then effect of course genetic expression, but
Speaker 1: are not fundamentally at a genetic expression level. Sure, I
Speaker 1: definitely hear what you're saying. And as you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of abrahamham Maslow is thinking and you
Speaker 1: just use the term self actualization. And you know when
Speaker 1: he talked about is man fundamentally good or bad? He
Speaker 1: says he thinks we're neutral, And you know, it just
Speaker 1: depends on what are the sort of conditions that are
Speaker 1: getting what needs met and what needs not met. So
Speaker 1: I do like to think of it from a needs
Speaker 1: protective It looks like you kind of would agree with
Speaker 1: that sort of perspective of neutrality in a way, or
Speaker 1: what part of the human condition to better want to highlight.
Speaker 1: I think that's saying neutral is fair, Meaning we can
Speaker 1: have an environment. Say we go to some part of
Speaker 1: North Africa where female genital mutilation is ubiquitous, or we
Speaker 1: go to the dark Ages were burning women as witches
Speaker 1: was ubiquitous. We can now look at that from outside
Speaker 1: or retrospective as a like ubiquitous insanity right of the
Speaker 1: whole population. They were like infected with a psycho pathologic
Speaker 1: set of means we when we look today at the
Speaker 1: fact that we externalize harm to the environment with almost
Speaker 1: every single action we do, and we still think that
Speaker 1: war is a reasonable solution to differences, and we step
Speaker 1: over homeless people while we go get more shit. Future
Speaker 1: generations will see us as ubiquitously insane psychopathologic mimetically, I'm
Speaker 1: sure of that. Yeah. And yet of course when anyone's
Speaker 1: in their ubiquitous psychopathology, it's just called normal. So we
Speaker 1: obviously have the possibility for a level of terrible shit
Speaker 1: like scientifically optimized torture that no other animal had. We
Speaker 1: also have the capacity for levels of insight and rapture
Speaker 1: and charity and selflessness in other animals. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: these just radical potential capacities. But I wouldn't say we're neutral,
Speaker 1: because universe is neutral. The nature of evolution itself is
Speaker 1: that it selects for more orderly complexity that has new
Speaker 1: emergent properties, and it doesn't select for the opposite. Right Like,
Speaker 1: there is a macro t Los directionality to evolution that
Speaker 1: goes from non life to life, from pro career to
Speaker 1: you carry out, from plant neurology from reptilian the million,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So life isn't mutual. Change is moving in
Speaker 1: an orderly complexity direction. And with humans right now, look,
Speaker 1: we're at this very interesting place where we can actually
Speaker 1: understand that because of our capacity for abstraction and choose
Speaker 1: to participate with it. And our technological capacity is big
Speaker 1: enough that if we don't go self destruct and so
Speaker 1: we're at a very unique point right now at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the escape philosophy on exponential tech where we
Speaker 1: have existential tech. Right nuke was the beginning, but now
Speaker 1: it's becoming decentralized existential tech. So we will either have
Speaker 1: the negative traits that we have had for a long
Speaker 1: time self destruct us, or we will emerge into fundamentally
Speaker 1: net positive traits because it's the only way to make
Speaker 1: it through. So this is cool. So we do have
Speaker 1: existential tech, and you're in a lot of ways developing
Speaker 1: the opposite of that. What do you call that? What's
Speaker 1: the opposite of existential tech? Technology that enhances us in
Speaker 1: a way that makes us more pro social and cooperative?
Speaker 1: What is that called? You could call it omni considerate tech.
Speaker 1: Omni consideration is a term that you could apply at
Speaker 1: different scales. When we're thinking about working in human biology, medicine,
Speaker 1: well being, omni consideration would mean what are all the
Speaker 1: pathways that are affected by this chemical or this therapy,
Speaker 1: other than the ones that we're intentionally affecting, which are
Speaker 1: usually what we call side effects, And how can we
Speaker 1: be considered across the entire system, including what will the
Speaker 1: effects be in the future. Are we downregulating an internal
Speaker 1: regulatory system or are we upregulating its capacity or so.
Speaker 1: Omni considerate at the level of human physiology would be
Speaker 1: just factoring all the externalities progressively better. Omni considered at
Speaker 1: the level of the environment would be factoring all the
Speaker 1: externalities of what affects the whole supply chain the environment right.
Speaker 1: Omni considered at the top level is recognizing that we
Speaker 1: are not really separate parts that can think of our
Speaker 1: own advantage and disadvantage and lose games separately. But we
Speaker 1: interfect each other powerfully enough, and we interfect the biosphere
Speaker 1: powerfully enough that we are all really emergent properties of
Speaker 1: the biosphere, emergent properties of the whole. So we have
Speaker 1: to think about the balance sheet of the whole thing,
Speaker 1: right of civilization and the whole how do we support that.
Speaker 1: That's omni consideration applied to tech and choice making really large.
Speaker 1: We had Dan Siegel on this podcast where we had
Speaker 1: a very similar conversation about the interconnectedness of all life forms.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, I mean, it must be frustrating.
Speaker 1: You must be frustrated, you know. I mean, you see something,
Speaker 1: you kind of see a truth that I think, you know,
Speaker 1: you're quite right. And I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: take this view as well. I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of Buddhists take that view and kind of see that.
Speaker 1: But there's so much in the world of people that
Speaker 1: refuse to see that view. I mean, the American politics, right,
Speaker 1: noll is you know, one example of this polarization seems
Speaker 1: to be hot right now you know, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better word, and so it must be really frustrated
Speaker 1: in and what do you think we can do to
Speaker 1: convince people on the level which they will be receptive
Speaker 1: to it? How can we have them see that true?
Speaker 1: Me may ap prose that question a slightly different way.
Speaker 1: American politics isn't just dysfunctional and it's broken, right, It
Speaker 1: was breaking for some time. And in last election we
Speaker 1: got to see the Republican Party not put forward good
Speaker 1: qualified candidates, the Democratic Party take people's favorite candidate and
Speaker 1: not support them and support someone who is highly unfavored.
Speaker 1: We got to see the two party system as a
Speaker 1: whole breakdown, like it was. The beauty of what happened
Speaker 1: was what only a few people were really acutely aware of.
Speaker 1: Almost everybody became acutely aware of, which is that it
Speaker 1: is a no longer adequate system for how we do governance.
Speaker 1: And so we see this kind of increasing chaos there,
Speaker 1: not just in the US, but with Grexit, with issues
Speaker 1: in Career, with issues in Russia. Like around the world,
Speaker 1: we can see a movement towards nationalism because of problems
Speaker 1: with globalism, but also nationalism, like we didn't have seven
Speaker 1: billion people. Ever, right, we only hit a billion deal
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifteen for the first time after two and
Speaker 1: a half millions of months, and we didn't have this
Speaker 1: level of the technology per capita in the world is
Speaker 1: much resource capita. So we're in a fundamentally different scenario
Speaker 1: than we've ever been, and we needed different kind of
Speaker 1: decision making and different kind of economics, and it would
Speaker 1: take us a while to get into it. But in
Speaker 1: the next fifteen years, thirty percent of all jobs will
Speaker 1: become obsolete from technological automation. That is, that will be
Speaker 1: a complete failure of capitalism unless we do something like
Speaker 1: a basic income, because not only you won't be able
Speaker 1: to move people to other jobs, because AI will be
Speaker 1: automating other jobs. So you've got guys like Elons who
Speaker 1: are famous capitalists saying go to basic income, which is
Speaker 1: not capitalism, and it's also not long term sustainable. The
Speaker 1: critiques of it are also warranted. It's on the path
Speaker 1: to something that is not Marxist socialist capitalist, but fundamentally
Speaker 1: new stuff that's mediated by new technological capacities we didn't
Speaker 1: have in previous levels of ECA theory. So I don't
Speaker 1: think it's just about motivating people to see something different
Speaker 1: because the thing that we need to move to hasn't
Speaker 1: been sealable, right, it's emerging. It's about now actually developing
Speaker 1: what solutions for a ongoingly viable civilization in the presence
Speaker 1: of the technological power. We have what that actually looks
Speaker 1: like and been building that so it's demonstrated. Success creates
Speaker 1: an exodus from the failing system to a viable system.
Speaker 1: I mean there is a in terms of the seeing
Speaker 1: aspect and seeing different perspectives, I mean something more fundamental,
Speaker 1: and that's just seeing the value of not being selfish.
Speaker 1: There is this innate human tendency that to be selfish,
Speaker 1: and I mean I hear you talking, and I hear
Speaker 1: someone who's making abstract arguments that are not implication of
Speaker 1: you and only you, but people. I just see a
Speaker 1: lot everywhere. I see people who are making decisions solely
Speaker 1: based on them and only them. And that's obviously problematic
Speaker 1: form in the long run and the rest of the planet.
Speaker 1: But it's hard to convince people of that because of
Speaker 1: these strong ego protection drives. You notice that as a
Speaker 1: kid they might think about them and only them, and
Speaker 1: then maybe as a parent they think about them and
Speaker 1: their kids. Right as someone who stepped deeply into a
Speaker 1: religious organization, they think about them and their people, whatever
Speaker 1: their group is. If they become nationalists in a deep way,
Speaker 1: as a citizen, they think about them and their people
Speaker 1: as a citizenship or as a race. So this movement
Speaker 1: from egocentric to ethnocentric to right, there's identity of who
Speaker 1: we are connected to that expands, and the direction of
Speaker 1: evolution is more inclusivity than to world centric and cosmocentric.
Speaker 1: How do we recognize more that we're interconnected with and
Speaker 1: include that in our circle of care and choicemaking. I
Speaker 1: think the key thing to recognize right now is, and
Speaker 1: this is a hard one, but civilization. The main ways
Speaker 1: that we have done civilization so far are coming to
Speaker 1: an end, and fundamentally new systems will emerge if we
Speaker 1: are to continue making it. If you talk to people
Speaker 1: who are studying coral and ocean acidification, dead zones in
Speaker 1: the ocean, ocean temperature raise, et cetera, they'll say, we
Speaker 1: have a very short number of years to make the
Speaker 1: oceans cooler than they currently are because before we're actually
Speaker 1: dying slowly at the current temperature, and we depend on
Speaker 1: them existing tidal flankdon that supports the atmosphere. The same
Speaker 1: is true across so many you know, fifteen years to
Speaker 1: thirty percent of the jobs gone. That means a switch
Speaker 1: off of capitalism and a very short time frame. Where
Speaker 1: climate change is not a Chinese issue or an Indian issue,
Speaker 1: or a US issue. It is a human on Earth issue,
Speaker 1: and more than human right It's like a mammal on
Speaker 1: Earth issue. So is nuclear disarmament, so are the threats
Speaker 1: of exponential tech. We've never had a time in the
Speaker 1: history of the world where all of our issues were interconnected,
Speaker 1: global and existential. You had like Gandhi dealing with an
Speaker 1: Indian issue. You had people being written to go find
Speaker 1: some new land to start America. There's no new land
Speaker 1: to go find somewhere else. You can't leave the problem,
Speaker 1: and you can't say somebody else can continue to be problematic,
Speaker 1: like any country continuing in the wrong direction with species
Speaker 1: extinction or climate change strategies is enough to take us
Speaker 1: over the tipping point. So we're at this unique place
Speaker 1: where our global interconnectedness and power is such that we
Speaker 1: either all collectively identify that we're in this together, on
Speaker 1: this tiny, little bitty spaceship called Earth floating through this
Speaker 1: vast cosmos, and we upregulate how we do everything to
Speaker 1: have no externalities, to be omnipositive, or we all don't
Speaker 1: make it together. Basically, win lose games are over because
Speaker 1: we are too big for the playing field. What it
Speaker 1: takes to beat the other guy actually destroys the whole
Speaker 1: playing field. But now we move into either or lose
Speaker 1: lose games. But there's one of those two win win
Speaker 1: or lose lose. Yeah, in order to have that perspective
Speaker 1: that you really have to take the long perspective beyond.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to imagine the planet and
Speaker 1: care about the planet beyond your very puny eighty years
Speaker 1: max if you're lucky, you know, or one hundred years
Speaker 1: in max. You know, perspective. You have to think about
Speaker 1: beyond that. And I don't think a lot of people
Speaker 1: really are thinking beyond that. If you look at the
Speaker 1: fact that we're looking at geoengineering, which could have radical
Speaker 1: consequences to our atmosphere in the world for many generations
Speaker 1: because we are so desperate about temperature change in the
Speaker 1: next few years. The issue with coral is being addressed
Speaker 1: in the next five years. It's not eighty years. The
Speaker 1: issue with everyone losing their current jobs is the next
Speaker 1: fifteen years. This is this is if people have children,
Speaker 1: before their children grow up, they won't be growing up
Speaker 1: into a world anything like the one they grew up in.
Speaker 1: So you actually don't need very long range thinking. You
Speaker 1: just need to pull the ostrich head out of the sand,
Speaker 1: actually have a look and say, thought, what does it
Speaker 1: actually take to close the gap between the trajectory who
Speaker 1: we're on and the one we need to be into.
Speaker 1: Now that's fair. There are certainly our issues that are
Speaker 1: that we need to be awakened to within right now. No,
Speaker 1: I definitely take that point. Can we talk about ewotropics
Speaker 1: and define that that's going to be a new term
Speaker 1: to a lot of our listeners, So I don't want
Speaker 1: to just throw that word out there. Can you explain
Speaker 1: what that word means and what people are doing in
Speaker 1: that space? Sure, No, tropic is a term. It was
Speaker 1: defined with the development of a molecule called paracitin. It's
Speaker 1: the beginning of the research in this area really deeply,
Speaker 1: which means a chemical that can enhance some aspect of
Speaker 1: cognitive capability beyond normal baseline without meaningfully negative side effects.
Speaker 1: And it's a rough definition, but that's still generally how
Speaker 1: it's used. So some aspect of cognitive enhancement could mean
Speaker 1: short term memory or working memory or long term memory,
Speaker 1: or focus or concentration or creativity or analysis or synthesis
Speaker 1: or you know, some of those things and hopefully more
Speaker 1: of them. And beyond baseline means not just taking someone
Speaker 1: who has brain fog and getting them back to normal capacity,
Speaker 1: which say someone has a deficiency of some key nutrient
Speaker 1: the brain needs. Supplementing those brain nutrients could get someone
Speaker 1: back up to baseline, but it's not going to get
Speaker 1: them beyond baseline, because that's part of the evolutionary environment
Speaker 1: that evolved to baseline. These are going to be things
Speaker 1: that are modulating, modifying some aspect of normal physiology. Typically
Speaker 1: when you modify normal physiology, there is some trade off
Speaker 1: effect that occurs, or you get some negative somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So the idea that you could enhance something beyond baseline
Speaker 1: and not have a meaningful negative is this kind of
Speaker 1: like magical unicorn idea, but it actually seems to be
Speaker 1: demonstrating itself as true in a number of areas where
Speaker 1: and this is in contradistinction to both let's say brain
Speaker 1: nutrients that would just bring you back up to baseline
Speaker 1: if you were deficient, or other forms of medicine that
Speaker 1: would bring you up back up to baseline if there's
Speaker 1: some path of physiology, or say you're dealing with anti
Speaker 1: inflammation of brain or inflammation or whatever. Or some smart
Speaker 1: drugs that can increase some aspect of a function beyond
Speaker 1: baseline but have meaningful consequence. Is methanphetamine, adderall, etc. Right,
Speaker 1: And depending upon someone's physiology, these have the ability to
Speaker 1: modify dopamine, modify a sealpoline, whatever it is, depending upon
Speaker 1: what kind of drug it is. But typically those single
Speaker 1: drug synthetic mechanisms, they work through some process that overrides
Speaker 1: the way the body mattually produced that chemical, that transmitter,
Speaker 1: which means if you use some long term you can
Speaker 1: get down regulation and dependence at the addiction. And oftentimes
Speaker 1: they're modifying one chemical in a way where that chemical
Speaker 1: is getting kind of fixed based on an external stimulus,
Speaker 1: so you're less adaptive and that chemical that was in
Speaker 1: a dynamic set of ratio for a bunch of other chemicals.
Speaker 1: The other chemicals aren't also being effected. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you'll get a narrow set of positive effects. It's only
Speaker 1: going to affect some aspects of cognitive function. You can
Speaker 1: get side effects and down regulation. So nootropics are the
Speaker 1: exploration into how to upregulate things ideally lastingly, at minimum
Speaker 1: with out lasting leaders Do we have data on the
Speaker 1: long term effects of trying neotropics, like over the lifespan
Speaker 1: some we have garactam starting that field was started studied
Speaker 1: in the early sixties, and so we now have people
Speaker 1: who've had multi year and multi decade use, and we
Speaker 1: have different kinds of both performative tests as well as
Speaker 1: you know, brain scans, blood chemistry, many other racetams, many
Speaker 1: other amphequines, different categories of nootropics have longer term data,
Speaker 1: but we haven't been able to study this field as
Speaker 1: well as we would study normal things in medicine because
Speaker 1: our kind of Western modern model for medicine is a
Speaker 1: disease based model, where if there is a disease, we're
Speaker 1: looking at treating the disease and we get a lot
Speaker 1: of funding because we'll be able to get FDA approval
Speaker 1: and then sell a drug. So for enhancement, where you're
Speaker 1: not treating a disease, you're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to get FDA approval, you're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to sell it as a drug. And there's a whole
Speaker 1: set of, like our whole process of studies factors, what
Speaker 1: we call risk benefit ratio, where you're willing to have
Speaker 1: some risk in the study because there is a disease
Speaker 1: that if you don't treat, there's a risk of keeping it.
Speaker 1: And so how do we do risk benefit ratio for enhancement.
Speaker 1: It's a totally new topic, but it's a topic that's
Speaker 1: being explored everywhere in transhumanism right now. Brainship, interplant implants,
Speaker 1: you know, genes therapy, et cetera, and nootropics are one
Speaker 1: of those fields. So there's a lot of quantified self data,
Speaker 1: kind of like the early people in steroids who made
Speaker 1: a lot of mistakes but then actually learned a lot
Speaker 1: about indochronology that the intercronologists couldn't learn. That have advanced
Speaker 1: the field of endochronology and now made you know, we
Speaker 1: have psalms today that have this same positive effect with
Speaker 1: the tiny fraction of the negative effects of the early
Speaker 1: anabolic steroids that came about through that kind of citizen
Speaker 1: science testing. Of course, at the cost to some of
Speaker 1: the people. Nootropics has had a similar curve and so
Speaker 1: we have data, but the data is not as deep,
Speaker 1: long term and robot as we would like it to be,
Speaker 1: and it will be. Yeah, I've been reading a lot
Speaker 1: of blogs from people who who are treating themselves human
Speaker 1: guinea pigs and trying lots of things. I have to say,
Speaker 1: I have to thank you for introducing me to the
Speaker 1: whole idea of nootropics. It's a fascinating world and it
Speaker 1: really has inspired me. I would say, to really understand
Speaker 1: what you know. There clearly are some neotropics that are
Speaker 1: more well studied than others, that's for sure. And I
Speaker 1: don't think they're all in an equal footing. I don't
Speaker 1: think you would say they are at all. Now, you
Speaker 1: created something called qualitya right, this was very well researched.
Speaker 1: So you put together forty ingredients is that right, that
Speaker 1: are synergynistic with each other. Yeah, the current version of
Speaker 1: Qualitia has forty two ingredients. But we grant many, many,
Speaker 1: many different iterations and versions. So what's the difference between
Speaker 1: neotropics and what are called smart drugs, the difference between
Speaker 1: neotropics and SSRIs, for instance, what are the difference between those?
Speaker 1: So just to be explicit about something that's probably obvious.
Speaker 1: Medical disclaimer, part nothing that we're sharing here is medical
Speaker 1: advice and not a medical doctor. Thank you for saying
Speaker 1: that your podcast and me and Neurohacker aren't giving medical advice, etc.
Speaker 1: So this is just general information and anything that one
Speaker 1: wants to explore regarding medicine, they should go check with
Speaker 1: a qualified profession on that front. SSRIs are actually a
Speaker 1: gay approved medicine for treating certain diagnosed illnesses, primarily psychiatric
Speaker 1: in some other illnesses, and they are one category of
Speaker 1: psychiatric med There's other meds that modify serotonin in nearly
Speaker 1: opposite ways. Ssrese and tricyclics do different things. There's don't
Speaker 1: mean modifying gobba, modifying, et cetera kind of things in
Speaker 1: the In the field of psychiatry, psychochromacolt smart drugs is
Speaker 1: a term that generally means a pharmaceutical that is being
Speaker 1: used for an off label purpose, meaning a doctor didn't
Speaker 1: give somebody drug for this purpose, but an off label
Speaker 1: purpose for enhancing some aspect of function and These will
Speaker 1: usually either be narcolepsy drugs that are going to promote wakefulness,
Speaker 1: the eguroics, medaphinel, armadaph and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: They will be sometimes anti Alzheimer's, anti Parkinson's kinds of things,
Speaker 1: el dopa and dnapazil, things like that, or psychiatric neds
Speaker 1: well beutrin adderall debrenil, and some of these can actually
Speaker 1: be balancing for certain people's physiology, depending upon what's out
Speaker 1: of balance. But most of the time these will serve
Speaker 1: some kind of psychostimulatory role in a way that will
Speaker 1: lead to long term instability, and the risk benefit is
Speaker 1: deemed worthwhile in the current field of medicine because it's
Speaker 1: addressing some real dysfunction for somebody. But in general, I
Speaker 1: don't recommend much in the way of smart drugs, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that there's no positive application of them,
Speaker 1: but I recommend people be highly educated before exploring, and
Speaker 1: then explore conservatively. I appreciate that what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: understand is how is the difference like your quality neotropics
Speaker 1: in general, they do affect and they do target neurotransmitters.
Speaker 1: They do target like dopamine production, serotone production. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what ssrized will target serotonin production. How is that different?
Speaker 1: So let's take a look at dopamine prinstance. So my favorite,
Speaker 1: it's my favorite molecule. Yeah, it is a favorite for everybody.
Speaker 1: The dopamine opioid axis, right, the kind of pain pleasure
Speaker 1: reward circuit axis is one of the deepest evolutionary biology
Speaker 1: axes in nervous systems for knowing what to avoid and
Speaker 1: what to go towards, and so major aspects of how
Speaker 1: pain pleasure dynamics work, et cetera, are there. Most ocd
Speaker 1: addiction is a dysregulation of that system. It's a profoundly
Speaker 1: deep system, even if someone also has serotonin or babble
Speaker 1: or other things to address. So dopamine is the first
Speaker 1: of the catecholamine. So it converts to northern ephrine and
Speaker 1: then to epinephyrine, and those are all kind of stimulatory neurotransmitters.
Speaker 1: Dopamine has a lot to do with focus, attention, concentration,
Speaker 1: also pattern analysis and pattern recognition. Patternicity. It's why if
Speaker 1: it's excessive, you can get false pattern recognition. Think of
Speaker 1: a schizophrenia. Yeah, and if it's deficient you'll have lack
Speaker 1: of drive, lack of motivation as well as inability to
Speaker 1: recognize patterns adequately. So underperformance, it's not more or less
Speaker 1: that we're interested in. It is the adaptiveness, right, It's
Speaker 1: how the dopamine process can self regulate well. Because when
Speaker 1: you're trying to relax in falsely, if you don't want
Speaker 1: to have dopamine peaking, you want it to be able
Speaker 1: to chill. And when you're trying to concentrate, you want
Speaker 1: your body to be able to up regulate. So one
Speaker 1: thing is, rather than give someone a dopamine agonist that
Speaker 1: is going to elevate dopamine kind of no matter what,
Speaker 1: we would like to be able to give precursors and
Speaker 1: then the conversion factors on those precursors and other things
Speaker 1: that support your body's dopaminergic processes so that it can
Speaker 1: do its own. Basically, you think about it has the
Speaker 1: body has an internal and endogenous regulatory system. How do
Speaker 1: we support that regulatory system to self regulate better? So
Speaker 1: with dopamine. Dopamine is you have an essential amino acid phenylalanine,
Speaker 1: it gets converted to tyrosine, It gets converted to acetyl tyrosine.
Speaker 1: It gets converted to el dopa, it gets converted to dopamine.
Speaker 1: It then has to travel across the set naps where
Speaker 1: it's broken down by chemicals like MAOB, and then it
Speaker 1: has to get uptaken in the post synaptic dopamine receptors.
Speaker 1: And there's differential uptake in the D one, D two,
Speaker 1: D three receptors that affect how it processes. And it
Speaker 1: can also be broken down by hydroxylasin and ouropeneforn, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So if someone doesn't have enough phenylalanine, enough tyrosine, if
Speaker 1: they don't have enough of the phosphorylated version of B
Speaker 1: six that helps convert or vitamin C, or copper that
Speaker 1: helps convert amino acids into el dopa into dopamine, if
Speaker 1: their MOOB levels are excessively high or their hydrox lasers high,
Speaker 1: these are all going to lead to imbalances in their
Speaker 1: own regulatory systems. So we were looking at common regulatory
Speaker 1: difficulties and how to be able to support the system
Speaker 1: to have increased regulatory robustness and so therefore you're less
Speaker 1: likely to see growth side effects. Yeah, right, So think
Speaker 1: about you know when I was talking about the amino acids,
Speaker 1: the vitamins and minerals that were necessary as co factors,
Speaker 1: plus the synaptic transmission, plus the receptor site modulation. We're
Speaker 1: looking at multiple steps across a whole pathway, and we're
Speaker 1: seeing where are the rate limiting effects and how can
Speaker 1: we support those? But then that's just dopamine, right, And
Speaker 1: so increased concentration without increased working memory ends at being
Speaker 1: pretty lank. And so increased working memory is mostly not
Speaker 1: dopamine lot supported, right, It's mostly mediated by acetyl coldine
Speaker 1: and other transmitters. And yeah, well now we're looking at
Speaker 1: enzymes again. And so if we're wanting to increase short
Speaker 1: term and long term and working memory and intensity of
Speaker 1: focusing concentration, but also the capacity for task switching, well,
Speaker 1: it was we kind of modeled from a cognitive science perspective.
Speaker 1: What are all the things we're wanting to affect? Are
Speaker 1: what people call the synergy of those things? Are these
Speaker 1: cognitively available creative productive flow states. If you look at
Speaker 1: what are the underlying physiologic pathways that mediate those, and
Speaker 1: then how do we support those pathways, then let's look
Speaker 1: at synergies between them. Sounds like a fair approach. Well,
Speaker 1: I do wonder though, Okay, someone listening to this could
Speaker 1: be like, well, like, how are you? Why are you?
Speaker 1: Why do you have so much confidence? You were not
Speaker 1: formally trained, You're not You could imagine a doctor listening
Speaker 1: to this and just immediately dismissing this whole thing and saying, well, look,
Speaker 1: I might even going to listen to this because he
Speaker 1: didn't even go through med school. What do you say that?
Speaker 1: You know? So I was like, like, why are you
Speaker 1: so confident in what you're saying? Well, having a lot
Speaker 1: of respect for what we consider better methods of interdisciplinary
Speaker 1: education and traditional specialist education usually does we also have
Speaker 1: a lot of respect for people that at the cutting
Speaker 1: edge of their specialties and have formally trained in it. So,
Speaker 1: you know, this wasn't developed in isolation. This development was
Speaker 1: working with many doctors where we were working in integrated
Speaker 1: facilities running pre and post blood labs. And we actually
Speaker 1: started with, you know, having some medical directors that want
Speaker 1: to play with us and particularly with patients that they
Speaker 1: were having a hard time with and we said we
Speaker 1: so again risk benefit made sense to them because they
Speaker 1: were having a hard time with them, said we think
Speaker 1: we've got an approach that could help, And so we
Speaker 1: were customizing chemistry based on looking at their genome and
Speaker 1: their clinical chemistry, their clinical intake, et cetera, and then
Speaker 1: getting to see really profound shifts not just in subjective reporting,
Speaker 1: but in those same biometrics being tested again. And so
Speaker 1: then that that's actually where we started in the formulation
Speaker 1: propuss It then started to say, well, what things are
Speaker 1: pretty common across most people who have similar desires or
Speaker 1: symptomology that we could before getting into personalized medicine, be
Speaker 1: able to meaningfully affect a scale. So those doctors were
Speaker 1: contributing to the insight of how we did formulation. And
Speaker 1: then we've had a number of PhD neuroscientists of different disciplines, neurochemist,
Speaker 1: computational neuroscientists, etc. Look at what we're doing, give us
Speaker 1: feedback on it. A number of different kinds of doctors,
Speaker 1: psychiatrists and integrative mds and et cetera look at it
Speaker 1: and give us feedback on it. Many doctors just find
Speaker 1: what we were doing, start using it in their clinics
Speaker 1: and contact us and saying, you know, here are the
Speaker 1: effects we're seeing in patients that were very positive. So
Speaker 1: we're actually just starting to put together a program to
Speaker 1: kind of like harvest this data better how we can
Speaker 1: do some distributed science. And of course, once we came
Speaker 1: to a place that we felt good with our own
Speaker 1: internal testing on formulation, which had many rounds, we did
Speaker 1: a formal safety down a sheet we had, you know,
Speaker 1: which looked at all of the research, meta analysis, structure
Speaker 1: review on all the ingredients and those in, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And we had pharmacists look at it, doctors look at it,
Speaker 1: HD neurochemists look at it, et cetera. And I went through,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't take anything at face value, right,
Speaker 1: So I mean I looked every researched every single one
Speaker 1: of the ingredients, and I like spent like a day
Speaker 1: on each one. I was like, because that one's very potent.
Speaker 1: It's very potent. So racetams, starting with paracetam and then
Speaker 1: there's many other racetams, en er acetam, prestam, do different things,
Speaker 1: but their primary effect is upregulating a styl coline uptake
Speaker 1: in the NMDA complex. So they are learning. The helps
Speaker 1: with learning and memory, learning memory, working memory, but also
Speaker 1: sensory motor nerve capacity, and so they are alistairic modulators
Speaker 1: of the NMDA complex and then which racetam will have
Speaker 1: differential effects on GABBA receptors or dopaine receptors, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So racetams are really the first kind of major area
Speaker 1: of nootropics that people get into when anyone gets into
Speaker 1: nootropic and then because they're they're affecting the post synaptic
Speaker 1: neurons uptake of acetyl cooline, then they'll usually start stacking
Speaker 1: them with some chaline donors, maybe some acetyl group donors,
Speaker 1: and then maybe some things to help the acetylcholine get
Speaker 1: across the synapps, like acetylcholine estrays inhibitors, and so you know,
Speaker 1: that's how you can kind of start to stack the
Speaker 1: pathway for acetyl colin. The next major category that people
Speaker 1: really kind of commonly get into with nootropics that are
Speaker 1: very meaningful are ampekines, which are glutamate uptake on the
Speaker 1: post and aptic neurons, so modulators of the ampicomplex and
Speaker 1: upregulating the glutamate up taking increases the speed of synaptic transmission,
Speaker 1: but also decreases excitotoxicity from excessive levels of glutamate and
Speaker 1: staying in the synappse. So new pepts. New pept has
Speaker 1: ampekine like and ractam like properties at the same time,
Speaker 1: meaning it upregulates both glutamate and acetylcholine uptake in the
Speaker 1: postsynaptic neuron, which is quite unique. Anoracitem also does both
Speaker 1: of those, but new pep does it more potently, and
Speaker 1: so there's research showing it as being neuroprotective because it
Speaker 1: is specifically protecting neurons from excitotoxicity damage. While typically you
Speaker 1: could decrease excitotoxicity from glutamate by just scavenging glutamate and
Speaker 1: you can use things like oxlo acetate to do that,
Speaker 1: but then you're decreasing the speed of glutamatic transmission. So
Speaker 1: new pep does this unique thing where it decreases excited
Speaker 1: toxicity while increasing glutamatorgic transit transmission, really supporting it. So
Speaker 1: new pep's a very interesting molecule from the standpoint of
Speaker 1: being both neuroprotective and increasing a number of interesting dimensions
Speaker 1: of learning attention and then one of the big kind
Speaker 1: of holy grails of the spaces working memory. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: see a big in terms of holy grail in terms
Speaker 1: of the future of this, it's obviously a personal dosage
Speaker 1: because there's individual differences in genetics that help regulate neurotransmitter
Speaker 1: production and how environment reactions. So I'm sure you're working
Speaker 1: on that area, right, So we are, and you know,
Speaker 1: being able to have integrative doctors, psychiatrist, neurologists, general practitioners
Speaker 1: get support in better and better methodologies for assessing brain
Speaker 1: chemistry and not just brain chemistry but intocrinology, physiologic chemistry,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And then putting all that together and then
Speaker 1: being able to work to balance and optimize it. That's
Speaker 1: hugely important. And it's an area that you know, we
Speaker 1: are working in and working with some small number of
Speaker 1: doctors prototype methodologies, but also working on structures that could
Speaker 1: be brought more widely. But there's also things that could
Speaker 1: happen that are not doctor or therapist mediated. So imagine
Speaker 1: a portal where someone can take cognitive assessments online using
Speaker 1: best in class online cognitive assessment that has been related
Speaker 1: to best in class in person assessment and shows high accuracy,
Speaker 1: and also online psychometric assessments, and so that people can
Speaker 1: see how their pattern recognition, their work memory, but also
Speaker 1: structured subjective insights into their psychologic state, predisposition, etc. And
Speaker 1: they could track that in time. Then imagine that they
Speaker 1: could load up into that same portal and this ismatically
Speaker 1: secure portal and they control their information so it's not
Speaker 1: being used by anybody in the company for reasons they
Speaker 1: don't want. If they could helpload their motion tracker data,
Speaker 1: their quantified self, their sleeptracker data, and then maybe even
Speaker 1: if they go get medical blood data QEG data, and
Speaker 1: then the system doesn't just look at each one of
Speaker 1: the psychometrics and biometrics on their own relationship to a
Speaker 1: reference range, but starts looking at what is that full
Speaker 1: complex of data with all the other pieces tell us
Speaker 1: that is synergistically more than the separate pieces, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can imagine like a fit bit for this that
Speaker 1: like tracts this stuff throughout the day. Absolutely, we are
Speaker 1: looking at the intersection of quantified self data harvesting better
Speaker 1: actual biometric diagnostics and better psychometric diagnostics, and then the
Speaker 1: synthesis of all that knowledge to then be able to
Speaker 1: customize protocols, both at the level of medical protocols where
Speaker 1: doctors can use it and at the level of just
Speaker 1: direct to consumer wellness protocols. Now, for that, imagine a
Speaker 1: version of quality that is fully customized, where we get
Speaker 1: to take all this data from someone and then customize
Speaker 1: which chemicals and which amounts are in there. That requires
Speaker 1: a robotically automated compounding pharmacy that can make a custom
Speaker 1: formulation from a bunch of powders based on an AI
Speaker 1: generation of their specific formulation based on the biometric data.
Speaker 1: That's complex to do. It's a dream of ours. We
Speaker 1: want to get there and be able to do it,
Speaker 1: and we've definitely worked on how to do that. But
Speaker 1: it's not right around the corner yet, but maybe in
Speaker 1: our lifetime, oh and much sooner than that. Are you
Speaker 1: familiar with noesis experience machine full of philosophical experiment? No,
Speaker 1: you know, he has this thought experiment. You know. Imagine
Speaker 1: if we could hook you up to a machine and
Speaker 1: it gives you whatever is desirable or pleasurable anytime you want.
Speaker 1: It turns out most people would not want that because
Speaker 1: they want to. The will is something about the human will,
Speaker 1: about suffering and overcoming suffering that makes us human, that
Speaker 1: makes us want to, that gives us a sense of
Speaker 1: meaning in life. Ultimately, the kind of vision you have
Speaker 1: for this world, which I share, and I think is
Speaker 1: really quite admirable. Will have to go beyond neotropics, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's only part of a whole system of
Speaker 1: cultural changes, of personal changes as well, that is willed. Right.
Speaker 1: So let's just roughly break down four categories that we
Speaker 1: can look at this in terms of that are not
Speaker 1: reducible to each other, but are all inder affecting sounds good.
Speaker 1: Let's think about human physiology, which includes our EEG pattern,
Speaker 1: computational neuroscience, stuff, chemistry, or intochronology that are microbiome, genetic expression,
Speaker 1: just all of the things that affect what you can
Speaker 1: think of as to human hardware. So there are human
Speaker 1: hardware predispositions for I mean, if you just think about
Speaker 1: consciousness running on that hardware, then then empathy runs on
Speaker 1: certain neural networks, utilize utilizing certain neurochemistry, et cetera. That
Speaker 1: can be up or down regular It can be down
Speaker 1: regulated by head trauma, by microbiome imbalances, by toxicity. It
Speaker 1: can also be upgraded by a number of things. So
Speaker 1: let's think about the human hardware predispositions and capacities. Let's
Speaker 1: think about human software being our value systems, our worldview,
Speaker 1: our understanding of self or understanding of other. Right now,
Speaker 1: they're not hardware software as totally distinct categories like they
Speaker 1: are in computers, because of course they are dynamically interaffecting
Speaker 1: each other continuously in real time. That's I mean the
Speaker 1: neuroplasticity where your thoughts are affecting physiology and your physiologists
Speaker 1: predisposing thoughts. It is a completely intimate link between them.
Speaker 1: But we can still roughly think of those categories. So
Speaker 1: on the software side, we have education, we have media,
Speaker 1: we have psychology, we have personal development, psychotherapy, etc. On
Speaker 1: the hardware side, we have not just medicine but the
Speaker 1: future of well being optimization, and those are both at
Speaker 1: the level of the individual. Then at the level of
Speaker 1: beyond the individual, level of the collective kind of the
Speaker 1: hardware of the collective is infrastructure, how we meet our
Speaker 1: physical needs and relationship with the planet water, energy, agriculture, transportation, manufacturing,
Speaker 1: base management. And then the software of the collective is
Speaker 1: the agreement fields that run over that is social structures, economics, governance, language. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the hardware and the software of the individual and the
Speaker 1: collective all have to be upgraded in this for this
Speaker 1: kind of phase shift that humanity is entering into and
Speaker 1: upgraded towards omnipositivity, meaning that each of those fours or
Speaker 1: have things that affect human experience in human behavior. The
Speaker 1: environment right, the lower right infrastructure that the built world
Speaker 1: and natural world environment affect human experience and affect human behavior.
Speaker 1: So do the social agreement fields, culture, economics, etc. Economics,
Speaker 1: what we incentivize very directly affects human behavior, what we
Speaker 1: have status apploicated to, etc. Our definition of success in
Speaker 1: the individual, kind of human software, and our physiology. So
Speaker 1: we would say no, tropics are just the first part
Speaker 1: we're getting into of human physiology, which is just one
Speaker 1: of these areas, and all of them are necessary, but
Speaker 1: only all of them together make sufficient. Yeah, I appreciate
Speaker 1: you outlining those for that topology. There are hard there
Speaker 1: are things we can do software wise that can show
Speaker 1: the same effects on phiology and physiology as the neotropics
Speaker 1: in some case, like meditation can get you in a
Speaker 1: state of mind. So there's different roots perhaps to this upgrade.
Speaker 1: There's not just a single route, and there are multiple
Speaker 1: roots that can get you the same place, perhaps sometimes
Speaker 1: the same place, and sometimes different but related but highly
Speaker 1: synergistic places when they come together. Oh sure, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And that's the beauty of self organizing systems. And I
Speaker 1: mean that's the whole point of systems, right, is that
Speaker 1: you want to get to a point where they're all
Speaker 1: integrated and that the entropy is minimized. Well, you were
Speaker 1: just talking about whole systems and self organization and why
Speaker 1: the whole understanding how whole systems works leads to a
Speaker 1: perspective that emphasizes synthesis of all of the meaningful modalities.
Speaker 1: One of the concepts that we have to get over
Speaker 1: that is kind of reductionism in the negative sense rather
Speaker 1: than positive elements of the word is kind of looking
Speaker 1: for single bullet silver bullet solutions. You know, a single
Speaker 1: molecule that's going to fix this whole thing. Well, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a single molecule. It was off, right, It was
Speaker 1: a whole cascade of systemic effects that were off. And
Speaker 1: so is it human hardware or is it human software
Speaker 1: or is it the environment? Well, it's usually all of
Speaker 1: it in some kind of complex. So the question becomes
Speaker 1: if someone's physiology is off, out of balance, it can
Speaker 1: lead to their psychology being out of balance, which can
Speaker 1: lead to their physiotic being more out of balance, and
Speaker 1: you get a vicious cycle. You can also get virtuous
Speaker 1: cycles of creating lift in any of the areas, making
Speaker 1: it easier for better behavior and function in those areas,
Speaker 1: creating more lift. So our interest is how do we
Speaker 1: stop negative feedback cycles and how do we promote virtuous
Speaker 1: cycles positive feedback cycles between body mind relationship environment right
Speaker 1: between all of those interfecting complexes, and how do we
Speaker 1: meaningfully synthesize and support all of the modalities that are
Speaker 1: actually effective. No, that sounds like a great goal. I
Speaker 1: mean you have our thoughts, you know, like cognitive behavioral
Speaker 1: therapy effects either way we frame things. The way we
Speaker 1: make meaning out our experiences effects our coresal production, It
Speaker 1: effects you know, our negative reactions. So we in all
Speaker 1: these different they're bidirectional, you know, all these different ways. Daniel,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for your generosity and chiding with
Speaker 1: me today, and I do wish you all the best
Speaker 1: in your endeavors. Likewise, it was a blast. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: barrk Kauffman. I hope you found this episode just as
Speaker 1: thought per booking and interesting as I did. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to read the show notes for this episode or
Speaker 1: hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot
Speaker 1: com