Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nol.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer, Paul Mission
Speaker 4: Control Decant. Most importantly, you are you are here, and
Speaker 4: that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: Thank you in advanced fellow conspiracy realists for everyone who
Speaker 4: reached out to us as individuals or as a show.
Speaker 4: Henry Kissinger is dead. We may do an episode on Kissinger.
Speaker 4: I don't know about you, guys, I for one remain
Speaker 4: astonished by how many people don't know a ton about
Speaker 4: war criminals activities, me in.
Speaker 3: One of them. Like we were talking a little bit
Speaker 3: off Mike off Air, I guess, and I think largely
Speaker 3: what I know about him is what was in the
Speaker 3: Oliver Stone Nixon movie and just stuff that I've talked
Speaker 3: about with you. But I I for one, would love
Speaker 3: to do a deep dive into him, because he obviously
Speaker 3: is a very problematic figure, very important figure in terms
Speaker 3: of moving the tide of history for the worse. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I want to know more about these these war crimes
Speaker 3: and his conspiratorial activities and getting us deeper and deeper
Speaker 3: into Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the real politic with that one was strong.
Speaker 4: Yes, agreed. And as you guys know, I I have
Speaker 4: I have seen Kissinger live, which sounds like a weird
Speaker 4: from some dude from Portland or whatever. New offense Robert,
Speaker 4: But speaking of our pal, our good friend, Robert Evans.
Speaker 4: In the meantime, before we get to the Kissinger episode,
Speaker 4: check out the fantastic Behind the Bastard series on Kissinger,
Speaker 4: which is out now. In totality, Kissinger is dead, but
Speaker 4: for how long? That's all right, folks. We're asking about
Speaker 4: mortality today a bit of a nol. You called it
Speaker 4: a sister episode to a recent episode we did, Who
Speaker 4: Wants to Live Forever? Mortality, the ability to stay alive,
Speaker 4: is the one thing you cannot buy, borrow, or steal
Speaker 4: your way out of, no matter how much money you have, sorry,
Speaker 4: mister musk. The history of humanity's most powerful people is also,
Speaker 4: at heart a history of people who tried and failed,
Speaker 4: at every point so far to attain immortality to cheat death.
Speaker 4: Soon that may no longer be the case. These folks
Speaker 4: may die, and if they have their way, they may return.
Speaker 4: If this occurs, civilization is woefully unprepared. Here are the facts.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a sci fi trope that we see
Speaker 3: all the time about like successful versions of this technology,
Speaker 3: and it's the kind of pressure sci fi that we
Speaker 3: might see actually come to fruition, you know, decades removed
Speaker 3: from the fiction. But the facts indeed are around the
Speaker 3: idea of mortality and how we really need to understand
Speaker 3: the concept of life expectancy right in order to kind
Speaker 3: of wrap our heads around what a lot of this
Speaker 3: stuff means.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to understand mortality. And you know, we're talking about
Speaker 4: this a little bit off air. This is a technology episode,
Speaker 4: so we're going to breeze through some stuff that you
Speaker 4: need to know. You may encounter, you may have encountered
Speaker 4: some of this in previous episodes. We'll keep it very brief.
Speaker 4: Life expectancy is just the number of years that scientific
Speaker 4: bodies and institutions expect the average person to live from
Speaker 4: the moment of birth, from cradle to the grave. Shout
Speaker 4: out DMX. According to the United Nations, if you are
Speaker 4: alive in twenty twenty three, as we record this. Globally,
Speaker 4: the life expectancy is a little bit north of seventy
Speaker 4: three calendar years, about seventy three and a half or
Speaker 4: less years. This is a tricky number because it varies
Speaker 4: so widely from country to country, from region to region.
Speaker 4: There's also a divide among biological sex, which is of
Speaker 4: course not the same as gender, and it's.
Speaker 3: Of course up historically, right, Like I mean, life expectancy
Speaker 3: in the olden times was much much shorter due to
Speaker 3: lack of medical technology and understanding and things like diseases
Speaker 3: that were not able to be mitigated. And so you know,
Speaker 3: life is good overall, but there are parts of the
Speaker 3: country where the life expectancy is lower, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: again due to probably less development and less control over
Speaker 3: some of these mitigating circumstances.
Speaker 2: We got all kinds of fun things to thank for that, right,
Speaker 2: Medical advances changing the way we eat and what we eat,
Speaker 2: all kinds of good stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this trend toward longer life, as you guys pointed out,
Speaker 4: is the result of a lot of things that sometimes
Speaker 4: get ignored. Sanitation was a huge, huge improvement, genetics, play
Speaker 4: a role, of course. You know, there's a reason that
Speaker 4: the average height of human beings is a single number.
Speaker 4: But there are countries like the Philippines and countries like
Speaker 4: the Netherlands where people are on the far end of
Speaker 4: either spectrum right with height, and the same thing applies
Speaker 4: to how long you can expect to live. We have
Speaker 4: science to thank for the dramatic improvement in human life expectancy.
Speaker 4: Between twenty twenty sixteen, the average life expectancy increased by
Speaker 4: five point five years globally, in some of the places
Speaker 4: with the lowest life expectancies experienced the highest improvements. Again,
Speaker 4: science science informs good public policy. And just like the
Speaker 4: earlier example of light switches in DNA modification in a
Speaker 4: previous episode, there is a problem with these improvements. They
Speaker 4: sound ostensibly good, yet these same improvements in life expectancy
Speaker 4: create unintended consequences. Many countries, the majority, i would argue,
Speaker 4: simply are not prepared for the amount of people who
Speaker 4: are living longer than their forebearers. These economic social systems
Speaker 4: that were designed with the assumption that people had died
Speaker 4: at a certain age, they're just not ready. I mean,
Speaker 4: many experts predict that the population growth of the world
Speaker 4: overall is slowing down, but a slow down in growth
Speaker 4: doesn't mean growth stops. We're going to check the world clock.
Speaker 4: Shout out to world ometer there are Does anybody want
Speaker 4: to do the honors here?
Speaker 3: And this is your baby. You must have this thing
Speaker 3: like as like a home button on your phone. This
Speaker 3: is a I look forward to this moment.
Speaker 4: But I had I had to replace the Kissinger app.
Speaker 4: Current world population right now is eight billion, seventy six million,
Speaker 4: two hundred and sixty six thousand, seven hundred and nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Three, twenty five. What a weird little number to watch.
Speaker 3: That last one might keep you busy. Now it's at
Speaker 3: thirty five. Holy crap. Yeah, we talked about this a
Speaker 3: good bit in the Life Extension episode. The Forever episode
Speaker 3: is like, sure, in theory, that sounds cool, but we
Speaker 3: we don't have resources to sustain the people that are
Speaker 3: currently living, not to mention mixing in that, you know,
Speaker 3: increased life expectancy. So I think of a lot of
Speaker 3: the stuff we're talking about today. It's kind of an
Speaker 3: interesting alternative in a way. I mean, there is some macabre,
Speaker 3: kind of black mirror asks stuff about it, but the
Speaker 3: idea of maybe not actually letting people become continued eternal
Speaker 3: resource sucks, but in fact be more like virtual versions
Speaker 3: that you can sort of play with like a Teddy ruckspin.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And just to point out here the Social secus
Speaker 2: Security program here in the US, when we're thinking about
Speaker 2: like the pressure that this life expectagancy is putting on
Speaker 2: these systems, it's insane. You can go to SSA dot
Speaker 2: gov and just check out how many people are going
Speaker 2: to get or theoretically will get Social Security benefits over
Speaker 2: time from like nineteen seventy up until the two thousands
Speaker 2: and twenty twenties, and it's just like, it's crazy to
Speaker 2: see the number of human beings that are going to
Speaker 2: have to take that benefit that everybody pays into, and
Speaker 2: how if it continues at this rate, there's no way
Speaker 2: we're going to be able to afford it as a country.
Speaker 3: Does that mean that the Social Security that the three
Speaker 3: of us have been paying into there will come a
Speaker 3: time where that money is just gone and we're no
Speaker 3: longer going to be able to benefit from it.
Speaker 4: That time occurred properly in your late twenties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so cranky about taxes because I mean
Speaker 3: again not to be like O. I went to Europe
Speaker 3: and it was perfect. But it's like people that live
Speaker 3: there in Our citizens pay a lot of taxes, but
Speaker 3: for their taxes they get stuff. I don't know what
Speaker 3: I get for mine, other than the privilege of being
Speaker 3: an American citizen. My roads are. You know, My insurance
Speaker 3: is terrible. The market whatever insurance for the Obamacare stuff
Speaker 3: is terrible. It's expensive and you don't really get much
Speaker 3: for it. It's embarrassing. Man.
Speaker 4: Well, you're supporting wars and coups across the planet. Well,
Speaker 4: that's the reason why I think I mentioned this earlier.
Speaker 4: You know, nobody gets to determine in the United States
Speaker 4: which portion of their tax payment goes to what sort
Speaker 4: of program. And to your point, Matt, social Security has
Speaker 4: been treated as a slush fund by Congress for quite
Speaker 4: some time. Whoops, it doesn't It doesn't always matter to
Speaker 4: those folks in the halls of power because they are
Speaker 4: retired and on the lecture circuit in private industry or
Speaker 4: and so on. Well after, so with this, like to
Speaker 4: your point, Matt, there is clearly a an event horizon, right,
Speaker 4: there is an inflection point at which at which juncture,
Speaker 4: this stuff becomes unsustainable. So what happens when you add
Speaker 4: a twist to the equation? What happens when people don't
Speaker 4: just die but are resurrected in such a way that
Speaker 4: they still participate in some fashion in the system. We
Speaker 4: know that there are a couple of ways in which
Speaker 4: folks can already be brought back from the dead. I think,
Speaker 4: do we ever do an episode on near death experiences?
Speaker 3: I believe we probably had to, or at the very
Speaker 3: least that certainly come up. Well, we you know, we
Speaker 3: did Divine Intervention, which I think had a lot of
Speaker 3: crossover with near death experiences. But yeah, no, you're right.
Speaker 3: Then there's there's kind of two handles to this thing.
Speaker 3: If that's an expression that I didn't just make up.
Speaker 3: There is a lot of interesting science around the idea
Speaker 3: of physically being resurrected or being brought back from the
Speaker 3: dead like Lazarus, which we're going to get in. And
Speaker 3: there's the other handle, which is the tech side, which
Speaker 3: we're going to get to as well. But let's talk
Speaker 3: about the what it means to die and like what
Speaker 3: that looks like physiologically, and how that can actually vary
Speaker 3: more than people might think.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are three. There are three broad categories of death,
Speaker 4: one of which is hilarious. There's clinical death. That's where
Speaker 4: you're breathing and your blood flows stop. And in that case,
Speaker 4: this may be the experience of some of us listening
Speaker 4: this evening, fellow conspiracy realists. Clinical death is something people
Speaker 4: can come back from.
Speaker 3: You hear that they were critically dead, you know, and
Speaker 3: then boom, it's.
Speaker 4: All yeah, and there's a window. There's there's a quick window,
Speaker 4: the heart stops, there's some sort of cardiac arrest. You
Speaker 4: have about four minutes from cardiac arrest to the development
Speaker 4: of serious brain damage. And there are, of course multiple
Speaker 4: exceptions to this, multiple miraculous stories, Lazarus syndrome, Lazarus phenomenon.
Speaker 4: But clinical death is where innervention techniques like CPR or
Speaker 4: the paddles clear, that's where that stuff comes into play.
Speaker 4: It's imperfect, but it does save lives. And then there's
Speaker 4: the funny one. Legally dead. Have you guys ever you
Speaker 4: guys have heard illegally dead?
Speaker 3: Is that like being legally blonde?
Speaker 4: It's like peak bureaucracy. Yeah, you can be legally dead
Speaker 4: and biologically alive. And there's a cool article if you
Speaker 4: want to learn more about that from our old friends
Speaker 4: at the Straight Dope, what happens when someone who is
Speaker 4: legally dead shows up alive awkward, awkward, and so of
Speaker 4: course the big one, the quote unquote real one is
Speaker 4: biological death. That is brain death. That is where brain
Speaker 4: activity ceases and you can't turn the machine back on.
Speaker 3: It's funny your point about the paddles and this like
Speaker 3: you know er like TV doctor kind of moment where
Speaker 3: like we've lost them doctor or you know or whatever,
Speaker 3: or it always just funny to me in other shows
Speaker 3: where some like literal civilian will just check their pulse
Speaker 3: and be like they're dead. It's like no, that's why
Speaker 3: you need someone to call it and have multiple factors
Speaker 3: and it has to be recorded. Like I don't know
Speaker 3: if any of you have experienced being in the room
Speaker 3: with someone who has died. But it's not easy. It's
Speaker 3: not simple when they turn the machine off. It's not
Speaker 3: just click and they're gone. It's very nuanced and you
Speaker 3: wouldn't really know that unless you experienced it er or
Speaker 3: heard from someone who had it.
Speaker 2: Does feel like at this point you should have something
Speaker 2: connected to a person, like some mobile device maybe that
Speaker 2: you bring into a room where someone is being has
Speaker 2: been declared dead, and you check for brain any brain activity.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean, because I do feel like
Speaker 2: there are instances where we know, actually we know that
Speaker 2: there are instances where someone has come back well after
Speaker 2: they should have been able to ooh.
Speaker 4: I will add not to get too into deep water here,
Speaker 4: but just an observation. If you are in that tragic
Speaker 4: situation where you're in the room and you hear the
Speaker 4: beep beep beep, go to the flatline, I think it's
Speaker 4: I think it's very important to still talk to them,
Speaker 4: especially if there's someone who matters to you. Just give
Speaker 4: them some things, some kind of support if you can.
Speaker 4: But again, these are the three main form these three
Speaker 4: main definitions of death. How long will that be the case?
Speaker 4: How long will humanity be able to cling to its
Speaker 4: current understandings and definitions of death? Again, it's the definitions,
Speaker 4: it's the nomenclature that gets you. And as we'll see,
Speaker 4: technology may change the entirety of the equation. Here's where
Speaker 4: it gets crazy this stuff. Civilization's current understanding of how
Speaker 4: death is defined will almost certainly not be sustainable. Just
Speaker 4: like the Social Security program. It's going to need some
Speaker 4: real rethinking. For now, brain death is still the final
Speaker 4: actual death. We can go to folks like Sam Parnia
Speaker 4: who tells us that proves to us that death right
Speaker 4: now is a lot less like a light switch going
Speaker 4: on and off, and a lot more like a spectrum.
Speaker 2: Or a sliding switch, you know, one of those really
Speaker 2: fancy ones.
Speaker 4: Right, a dimmer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yeah, we came across this Lazarus effect that
Speaker 2: I think we've mentioned before, but it's pretty crazy, the
Speaker 2: concept that somebody could spontaneously have their heart begin beating
Speaker 2: again after they are declared clinically dead but not brain
Speaker 2: dead necessarily. It's really There was a study ben that
Speaker 2: you found that was fascinating. They they looked at ten
Speaker 2: thousand articles and inside those they found thirty eight cases
Speaker 2: that appeared to have a person be declared dead. No
Speaker 2: other stuff was like performed on them, and they came back.
Speaker 3: And this of course is a reference to Lazarus, you know,
Speaker 3: the biblical figure. And you know there's there's multiple ways
Speaker 3: of interpreting his story. The idea of like did Jesus
Speaker 3: bring him back with magical Jesus powers or was there
Speaker 3: some just medical phenomenon that caused this to happen, you know.
Speaker 3: And I'm not being flippant. I'm just saying that there
Speaker 3: are multiple ways of interpreting various things that happened in
Speaker 3: the Bible. I think I talk about on a video
Speaker 3: recently the idea of the parting of the Red Sea.
Speaker 3: You know, in the Bible, it's attributed to divine intervention,
Speaker 3: but a lot of you know, scientific research after the
Speaker 3: fact attributes it more to a weather event, you know,
Speaker 3: things like that. So it's just interesting.
Speaker 2: Well, and in that study there's a there's basically an
Speaker 2: attempt to figure out if this is actually some kind
Speaker 2: of special resurrection that has occurred, right, because if that,
Speaker 2: if it was that, then you would have to apply
Speaker 2: absolutely no CPR to that person, no medical interventions whatsoever.
Speaker 2: That person is dead and all of a sudden their
Speaker 2: heart starts starts beating again, like spontaneous human resurrection or whatever.
Speaker 3: But in better than combustion.
Speaker 2: I would say, oh yeah, But in the thirty eight cases,
Speaker 2: they found that, oh no, there was like CPR given
Speaker 2: to these individuals, there was maybe even a defibrillator used
Speaker 2: or something like that. Then everything stopped. They didn't do
Speaker 2: any more interventions, and then after whatever period of time
Speaker 2: they came back. So I like, could it have been
Speaker 2: the CPR earlier that actually got the heart like ready
Speaker 2: to go again? It seems unlikely to me, but maybe
Speaker 2: that's the case.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is all what leads that guy would
Speaker 4: mention Sam Parnia, critical care physician and director of resuscitation
Speaker 4: Research at Stony Brooks University School of Medicine over in
Speaker 4: New York. Is what all led Doc Parnia to say,
Speaker 4: when you are freshly dead, your brain isn't necessarily irreversibly,
Speaker 4: irrefutably damaged. Yet you have to both die and have
Speaker 4: your brain die, have brain death to really be dead.
Speaker 4: It reminded me of our pale Rob's movie Princess Bride.
Speaker 4: You remember that scene, Perhaps guys is only mostly dead dead?
Speaker 3: What a great movie. I'm sorry, I'm still you mentioned that.
Speaker 3: I'm like, what, Oh my god, we are sort of
Speaker 3: acquainted with Rob Reiner at this point, and what a
Speaker 3: varied and spectacular career and a cool dude. Sorry, I'm
Speaker 3: done fanboying, but no, you're absolutely right, Ben, And like,
Speaker 3: can we talk a little bit about what like like
Speaker 3: how can these different parts sort of be not in sync, right,
Speaker 3: like these systems they maybe it's like the idea. I
Speaker 3: don't know, maybe this is like maybe too reductive, but
Speaker 3: like a chicken with his head cut off, you know,
Speaker 3: running around still, that's maybe like a simplistic version of
Speaker 3: what happens to us when we die.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting to bring that up, because you're absolutely right.
Speaker 4: It is tasty and satisfying to think of things happening
Speaker 4: at a hole, but very good and very evil and
Speaker 4: very beautiful and very terrible things tend to happen piece
Speaker 4: by piece, right, So to your point about chickens with
Speaker 4: their heads cut off, there was a study in twenty
Speaker 4: twelve that found that after human brain death, muscle stem
Speaker 4: cells can remain viable for up to seventeen days. So
Speaker 4: they just didn't get the word that the jig was up, right,
Speaker 4: they were still functioning.
Speaker 2: As it sounds like we need to be harvest in
Speaker 2: those babies.
Speaker 3: Agreed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, maybe we chose the wrong business with podcasting.
Speaker 4: Surely there's no ethical problem with that.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if you're if you're an organ donor,
Speaker 2: then perhaps you could be a muscle stem cell donor
Speaker 2: in the same way, because I imagine those could be
Speaker 2: extremely helpful in a lot of cases.
Speaker 4: Yeah, great, that's a great point, I mean. And also
Speaker 4: it brings us to this realization. Just as human beings
Speaker 4: still struggle to understand the nature of the human mind,
Speaker 4: they still have a lot to learn about the nature
Speaker 4: of death. It is not as sudden nor perhaps as
Speaker 4: final as it seemed throughout most of history. So we've
Speaker 4: got the basics. We know that everybody, every human being
Speaker 4: at this point, except arguably Henrietta Lax has died. Research
Speaker 4: ongoing and recent teaches us death is not the matter
Speaker 4: of flipping or flipping off a switch. Innovations in medicine
Speaker 4: again ongoing, mean that doctors and medical providers can snatch
Speaker 4: more and more people back from the brink. But still,
Speaker 4: in each case so far, it is a matter of
Speaker 4: acting quickly and being very, very fortunate. There is a
Speaker 4: best and a worst of every profession right or every
Speaker 4: skill set. Even the world's best CPR expert, who is
Speaker 4: doubtlessly alive now, even the world's best CPR expert is
Speaker 4: not going to be one hundred percent successful at bringing
Speaker 4: people back the time. Windows are tricky, you know, I
Speaker 4: guess I don't want to sound ghoulish, of course, but
Speaker 4: I think we were all aware. You can't dig up
Speaker 4: the grave of someone who died in eighteen seventy six
Speaker 4: and just like pump their chest until they, you know,
Speaker 4: cough and say good looking out, thanks bro.
Speaker 2: No, don't. I don't think it works like that.
Speaker 4: And this is the crux of the questions. It's the
Speaker 4: one we brought up in the past. I think it's
Speaker 4: one that continues to haunt a lot of us this evening.
Speaker 4: We'll we're being cecuitous here, but what is the difference
Speaker 4: between a simulation and the so called real?
Speaker 3: McCoy?
Speaker 4: This is crazy. For thousands of years, the idea of
Speaker 4: the an impression of someone versus an actual someone. It
Speaker 4: was a matter of philosophy, then it was a matter
Speaker 4: of folklore, then it was a matter of science fiction.
Speaker 4: And now we're at what I think we can call
Speaker 4: a metaphysical Turing test. Arguably, the Turing test itself is metaphysical.
Speaker 4: Humanity isn't close to recreating a biological person who previously died,
Speaker 4: but civilization may one day soon be able to recreate,
Speaker 4: recreate pieces of them. And this has some folks very
Speaker 4: excited This has other folks seriously worried. Honestly, this has
Speaker 4: some companies making a lot of money. I don't know,
Speaker 4: how would you do it? Like this is the technology part.
Speaker 4: I guess we should get cloning out of the way.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize this. You guys know, there was that
Speaker 4: big right wing election in Argentina recently. The guy who
Speaker 4: looks like someone said, we have wolverine at home. We
Speaker 4: heard about this, No, I think, so, oh gosh, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's not great. It's not great for the people of Argentina.
Speaker 4: I bring this guy up because this new president of
Speaker 4: Argentina is low key famous for cloning his dogs. He
Speaker 4: thinks he's bringing him back from the dead.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: And yeah. And then we're going to get into the
Speaker 3: idea of like cloning versus simulation versus you know, actually
Speaker 3: living this whole ship of thesis kind of argument. But
Speaker 3: maybe we take a break real quick and then do
Speaker 3: those things perfect. We're back.
Speaker 4: Let's get this part out of the way. It's on
Speaker 4: a lot of people's minds cyclically, cloning. Cloning is real.
Speaker 4: The guy who is currently president of Architita has cloned
Speaker 4: his dogs, uh and gave them the same name. I
Speaker 4: think the one of the most famous mainstream examples of
Speaker 4: cloning is a sheep.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, dolly, Oh yeah, uh, let's get in a dolly.
Speaker 2: But guys, I didn't realize that cloning pets. I think
Speaker 2: we talked about this one time, but cloning your pets
Speaker 2: is a service. That's how I did.
Speaker 3: We talked about it because it was like there was
Speaker 3: a Instagram influencer I believe who is doing it a
Speaker 3: bunch and it was like they commented on how their
Speaker 3: personalities weren't the same, which which is the.
Speaker 5: Part of it that always gives me pause where it's
Speaker 5: like it gives you pause, but no, I mean like
Speaker 5: if you're gonna if you will say, if we were
Speaker 5: to you know, a dog is no shade on dogs,
Speaker 5: but they don't exactly have the same ability.
Speaker 3: We don't have the same ability to interpret whether like
Speaker 3: their memories or their brains are exactly the same. Like
Speaker 3: with with a person, you clone them at a certain age,
Speaker 3: you'd think it would be like a would it be
Speaker 3: a one to one copy of their brain and everything
Speaker 3: that contained within it? Is that even possible? Is that
Speaker 3: silly goofy stuff?
Speaker 2: It's just a genetic copy, right, that's the whole thing.
Speaker 2: The thing they offer, like they make a genetic profile
Speaker 2: of your dog and they clone the DNA essentially and make.
Speaker 3: That different from just really good selective breeding. You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because when cloning was mainstream, there were a lot
Speaker 4: of people who were saying, the first human clone is
Speaker 4: surely just a few ways, just a few years away.
Speaker 3: Excuse me.
Speaker 4: There have been claims unfounded about successful cloning of human beings,
Speaker 4: the most famous being from Bridget Bauslyer, who has not
Speaker 4: been able to prove this, not provide evidence. Also, there
Speaker 4: is there's a Bordheys level library of law against cloning
Speaker 4: human beings. So why do we say that, let's get
Speaker 4: this out of the way, let's get to your question. No,
Speaker 4: without sounding we don't want to sound too dismissive, but
Speaker 4: cloning is very much not the same as bringing back
Speaker 4: that person or that pet you have anthropomorphized and missed.
Speaker 4: It's not resurrecting the dead. It's the best way you
Speaker 4: think about it is computers, right as analogy, right, The
Speaker 4: best way to learn things is also analogy. So it's
Speaker 4: like we're creating a very similar piece of hardware. To
Speaker 4: your point, Matt, it's a genetic copy and it hopefully
Speaker 4: has the same basic hardware kind of operating system. Right,
Speaker 4: you clone a human being and it has identical DNA
Speaker 4: to someone who's passed on, which means that all things
Speaker 4: being equal, the brain will be the same or very similar, hopefully,
Speaker 4: but you will have no chance and no real way
Speaker 4: of recreating the software, which I would posit in this
Speaker 4: example is the human mind. And that's because every single
Speaker 4: human mind is a cavalcade of cumulative yes and no
Speaker 4: stored interactions with the environment and all these neurotic associations
Speaker 4: that build off each other at every single point of existence.
Speaker 4: The math is beyond human beings, right, The math is
Speaker 4: beyond human created computers at this point. And there's also
Speaker 4: a deep ethical problem. Even if you could somehow store
Speaker 4: that software that made the you know, the match or
Speaker 4: the null or the Paul mission control or what have you,
Speaker 4: and you could copy that software into the brain of
Speaker 4: this clone, would it be the same person or would
Speaker 4: we have simply overwritten what could have been its own
Speaker 4: independent human mind. I mean, in that case, we get
Speaker 4: again technology of focal or so related. Are we in
Speaker 4: that case using technology to do what previous generations would
Speaker 4: have called possession like demonic or angelic or ghostly. It's crazy,
Speaker 4: it's crazy. The reason we're, by the way, throwing to
Speaker 4: some ideas of folklo or magic is because there's a
Speaker 4: term that we didn't use in some of our previous episodes.
Speaker 4: I am torn, you, guys. I don't know whether it's
Speaker 4: clickbaity or poetic or super insightful or all three. Have
Speaker 4: you heard the phrase digital necromancy, Matt?
Speaker 3: I know this is a particular area of fascination for you.
Speaker 3: Just there's so many, so much kind of bleeding edge
Speaker 3: tech that you could kind of categorize under this netting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in a weird way, I lump it in with
Speaker 2: funeral services. I think the other term is like grief tech,
Speaker 2: grief tech, and it's you know, it's astonishing, and I
Speaker 2: can't decide if it's something I would want to experience
Speaker 2: or not, though I can see I can understand that
Speaker 2: there are a lot of people who would want to
Speaker 2: partake in the tech that we're about to describe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's a it's an interesting bit of background.
Speaker 4: In twenty sixteen, a guy named James Vlajos did something amazing, tragic,
Speaker 4: frightening all the same time, he learned his father was
Speaker 4: dying from terminal lung cancer. And when he learned this
Speaker 4: he took action. He recorded and collected absolutely everything he
Speaker 4: could about his father's life story. Literally anything he could remember,
Speaker 4: anything he could get his hands on, he transcribed it.
Speaker 4: This resulted in a collection of data that if you
Speaker 4: printed it out, would be about two hundred single space pages,
Speaker 4: which sounds like a lot, but not really if you
Speaker 4: think of what large language models today anyway, use this
Speaker 4: stuff to create what he calls.
Speaker 3: The dad Bot.
Speaker 4: The dad Bot functioned as a memorial, a very old
Speaker 4: human tendency, right, we want to remember, we want to
Speaker 4: have some way to commune with.
Speaker 3: Those who have passed.
Speaker 4: So he got stuff like text, messages, audio images, video.
Speaker 4: He created an interactive experience such that after his father
Speaker 4: tragically passed on, he could interact with dad Bot and
Speaker 4: it would bring to him memories and stories that he
Speaker 4: experienced with his father, or that his father experienced. And
Speaker 4: he is always, to his credit, been very clear he
Speaker 4: does not think he brought his father back from the dead.
Speaker 4: He does not think he recovered or recreated a human mind,
Speaker 4: but instead he says this brought him comfort enclosure. It
Speaker 4: was a way for him him to remember his old man,
Speaker 4: and this inspired him to launch a company which is
Speaker 4: around now called Hereafter AI. You can upload your memories
Speaker 4: that are turned into what I believe they call a
Speaker 4: life story avatar and you can communicate with this, uh
Speaker 4: this avatar. Again, of course, no one is saying that
Speaker 4: this is bringing back the dead.
Speaker 2: This is a.
Speaker 4: This is another way of you know, building a memorial.
Speaker 4: It's a it's a taj mahal, it's a pyramid, it's
Speaker 4: a it's a shrine.
Speaker 2: It is, but but it's it's a shrine you can
Speaker 2: consult with. So if you imagine all of the pieces
Speaker 2: of paper that were put in to create that version
Speaker 2: of his father, right, if you're only a lot of.
Speaker 3: Web scraping too, write like, wouldn't it be just like
Speaker 3: a lot of like social media culling and all this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff and basically creating a profile, Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all that stuff. If you imagine that those
Speaker 2: things right somewhere stored and you can consult with them.
Speaker 2: If you are going through something in your life that's
Speaker 2: pretty difficult, but you wish you could have had your
Speaker 2: father's advice, right, or you could consult with him on
Speaker 2: what would you do in this situation? You can now
Speaker 2: because this thing has been created, you can now pose
Speaker 2: that question and get a response, rather than combing through
Speaker 2: all of those things trying to find the one video
Speaker 2: where your dad mentioned something about that or the one
Speaker 2: letter he sent to you one time when you dealt
Speaker 2: with a slightly similar situation. I think it's tremendously probably
Speaker 2: helpful and enriching to be able to have.
Speaker 4: That, Which is interesting because when we had previously talked
Speaker 4: about this, and do you think we have an episode
Speaker 4: about grief tech entirely on the way. When your previously
Speaker 4: thought about this, one of the things walked away with
Speaker 4: was the idea that it might just be further distancing
Speaker 4: or make some and you know, further aware of the
Speaker 4: death in a visceral way. But I agree with you,
Speaker 4: the implications are fascinating. We have to be very we
Speaker 4: have to take care not to go into a world
Speaker 4: of dystopian catastrophization, and we got to avoid unearned optimism.
Speaker 4: We also have to say, to your point, Matt, the
Speaker 4: fidelity of those programs, the fidelity of that technology is increasing,
Speaker 4: thinks in great part to the rise of large language
Speaker 4: models and generative AI. Don't worry, folks, we get an
Speaker 4: open ai Q star episode on the way soon.
Speaker 3: These like this it.
Speaker 4: Also happens on the heels of deep fake technology, which
Speaker 4: in some ways is very as similar because again, we're
Speaker 4: creating these monuments, We're creating these icons, you know, holographic
Speaker 4: re animations of Michael Jackson or Bruce Lee or Tupac Shakur.
Speaker 3: And there's a Henry Kissinger. Can't wait for that one
Speaker 3: to make its debut at Coachella.
Speaker 4: I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure he's going to be a
Speaker 4: headliner act for Coachella. Actually, if you're listening Coachella, do
Speaker 4: it us so you know. It reminds me too, like
Speaker 4: we have. We have celebrities who made posthumous appearances in film.
Speaker 4: And one of the big debates right now or recently
Speaker 4: in the world of film production came about from the
Speaker 4: idea of AI likenesses being used. We actually talked about
Speaker 4: this off air, even in the world of podcast. It
Speaker 4: was the use of these visual representations that led to
Speaker 4: like the first the first publishing of terms like digital necromancy.
Speaker 4: And at first it was just for famous people, right,
Speaker 4: it was just for famous people, or in the case
Speaker 4: of the earlier AI programs mentioned hereafter, it was like
Speaker 4: the idea of very brilliant early adopters, people who could
Speaker 4: build their own cars right in comparison, But now that
Speaker 4: that technology is democratized, more and more non famous people
Speaker 4: can use this method to create something that somehow evokes
Speaker 4: their memories of a lost loved one. And to your point, Noel,
Speaker 4: this is with the rise of social media, this is
Speaker 4: something that vastly increases the amount of data that can
Speaker 4: be collected.
Speaker 3: For sure. And it makes me think of something that
Speaker 3: I think I brought up on the Live Forever episode,
Speaker 3: a really really striking and eerie episode of Black Mirror
Speaker 3: called Be Right Back starring dom Hall Gleeson that really
Speaker 3: dramatizes a technology exactly like this, but takes it to
Speaker 3: the next level where it starts as a chatbot kind
Speaker 3: of situation where there's this main character loses a loved
Speaker 3: one and the chatbot service scrapes their social media stuff
Speaker 3: and it shows you all the stuff that they're doing
Speaker 3: and pictures and all this stuff, and then you know
Speaker 3: she's able to communicate with her loved ones through an
Speaker 3: app on the phone. But then there comes this beta
Speaker 3: version of this new offering that allows her to basically
Speaker 3: create a living android avatar of her deceased husband, who
Speaker 3: is then imbued with all of this stuff from the chatbot,
Speaker 3: but can also like you know, sleep with her and stuff.
Speaker 3: And then all of these problems start to reveal themselves
Speaker 3: when you're not just chatting with like a faceless thing.
Speaker 3: How oh wait, what happened to all the slight negative
Speaker 3: parts of your personality that, while sure negative, are what
Speaker 3: make us human, getting a little grumpy every now and
Speaker 3: then being affected by normal human failings and foibles and stuff.
Speaker 3: You take that away, it starts to feel really weird
Speaker 3: and uncanny Valley, and I.
Speaker 4: Think that's a good point. Yeah, because there's also so
Speaker 4: you know, there's also the question of how much data
Speaker 4: is collected? Right, the social media being a sort of idealized, right,
Speaker 4: idealized optimistic version or a commercial for a person, that's
Speaker 4: what social media usually is in the dopamine casino. But
Speaker 4: the then do you collect private correspondence that kind of stuff?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's okay, let's talk about how do you
Speaker 2: actually get the data to create something like this? According
Speaker 2: to deep brain AI's re memory that's ore semi colon memory.
Speaker 2: It takes seven hours of interview and filming and like
Speaker 2: audio recording in order to create an AI version of
Speaker 2: a loved one. So in this case, it's a specialized
Speaker 2: You go into an office before you pass away, you
Speaker 2: get filmed and recorded for seven hours. Then that data
Speaker 2: and that's all. That's all the data. That data gets
Speaker 2: used to create this version, this generative version of you.
Speaker 3: But what if you don't know about this until after
Speaker 3: loved one's past, are you like out of luck? At least? Yeah?
Speaker 3: For this service?
Speaker 2: Okay, for that one, it's over because it's basically a
Speaker 2: memorial service. So the thing they offer is like as
Speaker 2: part of a funeral or memorial service, you go to
Speaker 2: this huge it's a small room, but it's got a
Speaker 2: huge screen, I think a four hundred inch screen that
Speaker 2: has a life size version of your loved one that
Speaker 2: previously went in and got captured. Then you hang out
Speaker 2: in that space the way you would at a memorial,
Speaker 2: but the persons sitting there just patiently and you can
Speaker 2: interact with them.
Speaker 3: I don't think I like that.
Speaker 2: I think it's weird too, But again, like.
Speaker 3: Maybe for somebody it's great. No, maybe to Ben's point,
Speaker 3: I think maybe we've gotten this part, but this does
Speaker 3: offer a cer potentially offer an element of closure. Yeah
Speaker 3: that maybe would be otherwise unattainable. But I also think,
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, it feels very like are we
Speaker 3: built for this? Like, I don't know, man, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Think about this way. It offers that moment to speak
Speaker 2: with him for the last time, right, which is often
Speaker 2: one of the things that is that we yearn for
Speaker 2: when we lose somewhat, just just that last moment you
Speaker 2: want with him, to have some closure or what would
Speaker 2: seem like closure.
Speaker 3: Did you guys watch The Righteous Gemstones?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, with the Hologrond, there's a plot point where the
Speaker 6: deceased mother, who was always the most magnanimous and loving
Speaker 6: and just engendered the most kindness for their brand.
Speaker 3: I believe one of the sons, the shitty son, the
Speaker 3: mean one played by dam McBride, comes with the idea
Speaker 3: of let's tupac her and oh no, I think it's
Speaker 3: actually big baby Billy. It's his idea and they do it,
Speaker 3: and the John Goodman character, the father, they present it
Speaker 3: to him and he's like, this is an abomination from hell.
Speaker 3: You know, and he's just absolutely offended and just it's
Speaker 3: not closure at all. It's ripping him apart to see
Speaker 3: this sanitized facsimile of this person.
Speaker 4: It also doesn't help that baby Billy buys a refurbished hologram.
Speaker 3: That's right, it starts to glitch out and stuff.
Speaker 2: You're right, dude, But dude, that's that's really awesome. I
Speaker 2: actually haven't seen that one yet. That's been.
Speaker 3: It's the most recent one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I just need to finish it. But the
Speaker 2: the other thing that they offer you, guys, is exactly
Speaker 2: what that Black Mirror initially offered. It's a video messaging
Speaker 2: service with that past love one where you can text
Speaker 2: them essentially or maybe even FaceTime them and just hang
Speaker 2: out with them in that way. So it does feel
Speaker 2: like we're really close to that thing, and in that case,
Speaker 2: it only takes seven hours to make it happen.
Speaker 4: So think about how much stuff you have recorded and posted, folks, like,
Speaker 4: is this is this generating a new version or an
Speaker 4: echo of you might be more appropriate.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, the other company that's doing it, Somnium Space.
Speaker 2: Rather then taking your social media and all that other stuff,
Speaker 2: they put you in their VR set and they track
Speaker 2: you like it's all about tracking you physically in what
Speaker 2: you're doing and your voice when you're speaking, and that's
Speaker 2: how they make the version of you. I guess they
Speaker 2: do use all the other data too, but they actually, Man,
Speaker 2: there's quotes. We'll do it, I guess when we do
Speaker 2: a deep dive into this grief tech. But there is
Speaker 2: so much data that VR can track on you. The
Speaker 2: creator of that, well, in your physical body, what's happening,
Speaker 2: your movements, your micro things, the way your eyes move.
Speaker 2: And he's saying it's like three hundred times more data
Speaker 2: than they get in a cell phone when you're just
Speaker 2: a cell phone user. And we already know how much
Speaker 2: freaking stuff.
Speaker 3: They mean for that that really granular capturing of of
Speaker 3: like pulses and things like that, the haptics. So it's
Speaker 3: not that it's another name for it. Sorry, Matt, I'll
Speaker 3: think of it, but carried Okay.
Speaker 2: It's just it's so crazy to me that that's the
Speaker 2: concept that this Somnium Space company with their Live Forever
Speaker 2: program is doing because they want you. They want to
Speaker 2: eventually put you in a suit like a full haptic
Speaker 2: feedback suit and then have you pay like fifty bucks
Speaker 2: a year to create your thing, your version right, so
Speaker 2: that your loved ones can have access to you.
Speaker 4: Later, and then you make money on the back end,
Speaker 4: ghoulishly with having the survivors wear a haptic suit so
Speaker 4: they can feel you hug them.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: I think that's the and that's what happens in the show.
Speaker 3: And inevitably it gets too weird for the character and she,
Speaker 3: you know, no spoiler alert, okay, whatever, just tries to
Speaker 3: destroy it, you know, I mean, because it's just like
Speaker 3: too much, man, And it gets to a point where
Speaker 3: she's like feels guilty for having created this thing that
Speaker 3: doesn't understand what it is. You know. It has a
Speaker 3: lot of the Haley Joel Osmond and Ai the film
Speaker 3: kind of vibes. It's very eerie and it's yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and at its core again not just sound repetitive.
Speaker 4: It does sound like another iteration of the typical human
Speaker 4: griefing practice, which is a deep and primal motivating factor
Speaker 4: to make those keepsakes, you know, those memorials, those taj mahals,
Speaker 4: those shrines such that you can remember those who have
Speaker 4: passed on. There is one important twist and this is
Speaker 4: something that is on the way. This is the next
Speaker 4: step occurring, the next step occurring in step concurrently, why
Speaker 4: not speaking of redundancy? It's the human brain mapping technology
Speaker 4: now is going absolutely bonkers. It's nuts. This takes us
Speaker 4: to a hypothetical edge of the map. Here be ghost
Speaker 4: here be spiders, here be monsters.
Speaker 3: What if soon.
Speaker 4: Someone can completely map the activity of a human brain,
Speaker 4: same way you're talking about Matt with mapping the physical activity,
Speaker 4: this removes the middleman of transmitted thoughts. So transmitted thoughts
Speaker 4: would be social media posts, personal correspondence, statement stories, recorded audio.
Speaker 4: What if you could get that straight from the source.
Speaker 4: What if you could add that massive library of snapshots
Speaker 4: of brain activity to this individual's data, fingerprint, to their
Speaker 4: digital soul. And how close does that get us to
Speaker 4: a reproduction of how that individual functioned while alive? I propose,
Speaker 4: if it's all right, we take a pause for a
Speaker 4: word from our sponsor, and let these things simmer in
Speaker 4: our newly crafted cauldron of science.
Speaker 3: And we have returned.
Speaker 4: Okay, if all this is true and a lot of
Speaker 4: this is on the way, some version of this thing
Speaker 4: does exist, Is it overrated? Is it over promising at
Speaker 4: this point. A lot of it is because maybe the
Speaker 4: way that customers perceive it, maybe the way companies are
Speaker 4: attempting to make profit off it. Indeed, maybe it's just
Speaker 4: the financial motivation, right, because this is not a public
Speaker 4: service at this point.
Speaker 3: Well, early iterations of most tech are often over promise
Speaker 3: and under delivering flags Remember the power glove, like the
Speaker 3: Nintendo power glove.
Speaker 4: Do you remember Virtua Boy's exactly promise.
Speaker 3: A million of the power glove was like made that
Speaker 3: movie The Wizard where there's a character who demonstrates the
Speaker 3: power glove and it's just like he's like a magical
Speaker 3: being of video gaming. And then he had a rich
Speaker 3: neighbor who had one. It was garbage. It didn't do anything.
Speaker 3: He couldn't make it hardly function. But I think that's
Speaker 3: very common with you have this technology, they have to
Speaker 3: package it up and figure out how to sell it
Speaker 3: before it's actually any good.
Speaker 4: And to the point about you know, humans not being
Speaker 4: ready for a lot of the technology they create as
Speaker 4: great artificers. Filo Farnsworth, the guy who invented the television,
Speaker 4: came up with the idea when he was fourteen plowing
Speaker 4: a field and humanity is still not ready for television.
Speaker 4: I'm just being honest here.
Speaker 3: Psychologically, yeah, it's it's like, yeah, it is having because
Speaker 3: you could even say that the Internet is almost an
Speaker 3: extension of television. The idea of like having too much information,
Speaker 3: too much access to information, just beamed directly into our noodles.
Speaker 3: I see you scratching for a you got a thought.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm just trying to imagine what's what is
Speaker 2: the Internet's version of interlacing right when like Farnsworth is
Speaker 2: coming up with those things and being inspired, like is
Speaker 2: it virtual reality? That's what everybody wants you to think,
Speaker 2: But I don't know. There's a study in Nature from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty and it talks about how it takes less
Speaker 2: than five minutes of tracking body motions within VR to
Speaker 2: identify someone with ninety five percent accuracy out of a
Speaker 2: group of five hundred people. So I'm just imagining again,
Speaker 2: get using getting all of that data when using virtual reality,
Speaker 2: that you can be identified in virtual reality as the
Speaker 2: human being person. I'm not sure how this relates, but
Speaker 2: it somehow in there goes to identity right when we're
Speaker 2: using this kind of stuff more. I don't know why
Speaker 2: I'm even talking about this, guys. I was trying to
Speaker 2: connect it back to the things I think I failed.
Speaker 4: Now it makes sense because there's I mean, it goes
Speaker 4: to so many different directions, you know, like the first off,
Speaker 4: the idea that privacy is a fad and increasingly a
Speaker 4: rarefied resource of the halves of the world. But then
Speaker 4: further it goes to I think mat to if I'm
Speaker 4: picking up what you're putting down, the point of identity
Speaker 4: is that there is a unique sort of genes aqua
Speaker 4: about an individual mind such that the fidelity right right
Speaker 4: exactly as some says, like the further we can reproduce
Speaker 4: that accurately or the further uh, someone can understand that,
Speaker 4: then the closer and closer the digital version will be
Speaker 4: to the real McCoy.
Speaker 3: But I think that's the thing though we don't understand that,
Speaker 3: and I don't know if we even can, because I
Speaker 3: mean that Jenna sa Kwa you're talking about kind of
Speaker 3: is the soul, is the unique umami of the individual
Speaker 3: that a copy will never perhaps they will be able
Speaker 3: to capture. I don't know. Again, I don't know. This
Speaker 3: is all mind mind boggling stuff, But I just feel
Speaker 3: like at the end of the day, all of this
Speaker 3: stuff really is more simulation than anything, you know, like
Speaker 3: because it's just scraping the stuff that you put out there.
Speaker 3: Even in an interview, man, you're going to be guarded.
Speaker 3: You're not going to be given the full version of yourself.
Speaker 3: You're not gonna be given at warts at all. You know,
Speaker 3: all that is subconscious and buried within us, and we
Speaker 3: don't know how to access that, like outside of just
Speaker 3: the person.
Speaker 4: And you know, thinking at the risk of verging into philosophy,
Speaker 4: I would say, I don't have this in notes, but
Speaker 4: of one of the points I would I would say
Speaker 4: here is that the issue is if you copy something
Speaker 4: in general, you are attempting to copy something that has
Speaker 4: been completed. The human mind, for every living individual, is
Speaker 4: a work in progress, whether that is evolving toward a
Speaker 4: greater thing, or whether that is encountering the ravages of
Speaker 4: time such as dementia, Alzheimer's, et cetera. So then maybe
Speaker 4: the problem is that you're not copying the finished product.
Speaker 4: You're copying the You're copying the iteration. At age you know,
Speaker 4: forty or the age fifteen, when the brain is not
Speaker 4: yet fully developed, it's a problem with cloning again, just
Speaker 4: in a by an order of magnitude more difficult. If
Speaker 4: we got all this stuff together and everything worked, could
Speaker 4: someone then create something that functions shout out to touring
Speaker 4: exactly like the mind of that once living person, even
Speaker 4: well enough to get past all the lonely, uncanny valley
Speaker 4: of it all. If that is true, and it may
Speaker 4: be at some point, at least digitally, that's where things
Speaker 4: are pointing toward it. If that is true, then we
Speaker 4: are now talking about a world wherein ghosts are functionally real,
Speaker 4: but they are being constructed by human beings. And then
Speaker 4: what happens if you build like look, if someone created
Speaker 4: a version of me, I think it would want to
Speaker 4: get off of just software. It want to get off
Speaker 4: of just motherboards and transistors or whatever. It would say,
Speaker 4: Build for me a physical vehicle, get me back to
Speaker 4: the streets, right if the guard rails are off. If
Speaker 4: the guardrails are off, you know, is that a robotic
Speaker 4: body under the command of what I'm just going to
Speaker 4: call a ghost mind, or is it, one day a
Speaker 4: biological vehicle, a clone grown to order with a ghost
Speaker 4: mind that pattern somehow imprinted upon that vehicle. And at
Speaker 4: that point, if you have a biological vehicle, you've got
Speaker 4: the hardware, you've got the software. What is the difference.
Speaker 3: I think I've always maybe mentioned when we talk about
Speaker 3: the afterlife and ghosts and all of that is, to me,
Speaker 3: ghosts are memories.
Speaker 4: You know, like I don't know, like accounting crows.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure knows how to turn of phrase, but no,
Speaker 3: I mean really like, that's I don't know if there
Speaker 3: are traces of it. If anything, it's energy, and that's
Speaker 3: most basic. I think ghosts are memories and the way
Speaker 3: we interact with our environment and what triggers memories and
Speaker 3: us of the people that we love. But I don't
Speaker 3: know that. I don't know that I believe in the
Speaker 3: idea of ghosts per se. But to me, it's just
Speaker 3: a triggering system, a very deep and profound memory that
Speaker 3: can be very emotional. I love that.
Speaker 4: I think that's I think that's beautiful and it reminds
Speaker 4: me of a point I want to share it at
Speaker 4: the very very end, but I oh, gosh, because I
Speaker 4: would love to keep this one kind of optimistic if possible,
Speaker 4: but it can be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know that we've been too Jimmy gloom
Speaker 3: about it. I I think it's just complicated.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about the dangers because I think
Speaker 2: I'm trying. I'm I want to use Henry Kissinger in
Speaker 2: my mind as an example. Let's say fifty years ago
Speaker 2: when he was in office, right when he was what
Speaker 2: Ford and Nixon, when he was working in the White
Speaker 2: House pretty frequently, and he was an advisor, and his
Speaker 2: mind was used to figure out what what strategies need
Speaker 2: to occur. Right, Let's say you've got a clone of
Speaker 2: that guy, right mentally at least physically. Really, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: You've got the mental side of that dude to go
Speaker 2: consult as an advisor.
Speaker 3: Now brand and a jar kind of style.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but you again, we're saying that this tech
Speaker 2: is kind of it's close to here, it's not quite
Speaker 2: here yet, right, But you could analyze many of the
Speaker 2: primary decisions that he made, a lot of the strategies
Speaker 2: that he put forward and the horrible things that came
Speaker 2: about because of those strategies. You could analyze all that
Speaker 2: stuff and then analyze how he thinks about things by
Speaker 2: looking at his you know, social media, press release statements,
Speaker 2: all that stuff. You could theoretically go to someone like
Speaker 2: that as a world.
Speaker 3: Leader, design might get advice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but think about if you get the wrong person,
Speaker 2: maybe like Kissinger, and like then that person is advising
Speaker 2: people over and over and over again.
Speaker 4: Are you I'm glad you point that out.
Speaker 2: I don't know. That seems that seems really scary to me.
Speaker 4: That's one of my big concerns too, because even though
Speaker 4: we see the pattern of technology being democratized, what we
Speaker 4: also see is the following pattern. Like any technology, this
Speaker 4: sort of stuff will go to the top strata of
Speaker 4: human civilization because it will inevitably even though even look,
Speaker 4: even though the Silicon Valley bros love to say something
Speaker 4: is quote unquote disruptive, they mean they're maintaining the same
Speaker 4: hierarchy of a civilization and structure, and they're hoping to
Speaker 4: insert different people at the top of that hierarchy. So
Speaker 4: what this means is that for technology like this, the
Speaker 4: first person consensually brought back from the dead in this
Speaker 4: scenario may well be a titan of in industry, a billionaire,
Speaker 4: a dictator, troublingly, a religious leader, which I believe is
Speaker 4: an absolutely terrible idea.
Speaker 3: The halves of the world.
Speaker 4: If returned in some form from the dead, now we
Speaker 4: know there are a bunch of tricky concepts there. They
Speaker 4: would they not immediately push for control of their material possessions,
Speaker 4: the estate they have possession of when.
Speaker 3: They were alive. Would they?
Speaker 4: I mean, they would have the wherewithal. They would be
Speaker 4: the few people who would have the wherewithal to make
Speaker 4: some pretty dangerous arguments and precedents and jurisprudence in court.
Speaker 4: The first acknowledged AI, it might consider itself the first
Speaker 4: human immortal and then say, you know, I mean, what
Speaker 4: if the ghost Kissinger wants another crack at Southeast Asia right,
Speaker 4: or wants to wants to follow up on what they
Speaker 4: started with Suharto, Things get tricky. A very interesting and.
Speaker 3: It's also interesting how a lot of the tech is
Speaker 3: initially sold as kind of an innocuous seeming, you know,
Speaker 3: like like the gimmicky almost thing. Then the the underground
Speaker 3: version of it, the real version of it is being
Speaker 3: you know, fine tuned as we speak, you know, for
Speaker 3: other reasons, right, like like AI or like you know,
Speaker 3: like the AI stuff, the rather the neural net type
Speaker 3: you know, image generation and all that stuff. It initially
Speaker 3: comes out as like makeuse a fun selfie where you
Speaker 3: look like a space alien or a fantasy figure. But
Speaker 3: all the while, the real version of that tech is
Speaker 3: much more nefarious and being used by much higher echelons,
Speaker 3: And we're almost being in numbed to it because it's
Speaker 3: presented to us as this silly, goofy, fun little parlor trick,
Speaker 3: and then the real dangerous version is happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really surprised that there isn't a fully realized
Speaker 2: virtual Jesus yet. Like, and I know what really, like,
Speaker 2: because you've got so much source material, What does this
Speaker 2: person think about all of all of these things? The
Speaker 2: same thing with the prophet Muhammad or Buddha. You've got
Speaker 2: all that writing. Why hasn't somebody just trained an AI
Speaker 2: on that stuff and created it. Maybe they have, and
Speaker 2: I'm just unaware, but I don't know. Do you guys
Speaker 2: you really think that would be dangerous?
Speaker 4: It's not time for Project Bluebeam yet?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah it is, dude, it's been We're so late
Speaker 2: on Bluebeam it's crazy. You know.
Speaker 4: This is again, I think we all discovered that this
Speaker 4: is something we want to spend more time on. In
Speaker 4: an episode about grief, tech because to your point, Matt,
Speaker 4: there's a lot happening there, So we wanted to be
Speaker 4: kind of poetic, you know, like a lot of these
Speaker 4: people are working in good faith. I think there's some
Speaker 4: great points made about, you know, dual use technology. Like
Speaker 4: you said, no stuff the way it's advertised versus the
Speaker 4: way maybe it's used. Thank you to the scientist, ethicist,
Speaker 4: journalist and philosophers who are wrestling with these increasingly important questions.
Speaker 4: And I wanted to ask you, guys, what do you
Speaker 4: think about this? What's the I'm trying to think, how
Speaker 4: do we characterize a human mind? What if it's like
Speaker 4: a song. The more I think about it, the more
Speaker 4: it has in common with a song. Like you guys
Speaker 4: are musicians. A song exists on multiple instruments because it's
Speaker 4: a pattern. It's not a human mind a pattern.
Speaker 3: It's funny you say that too. Starting to get to
Speaker 3: music nerd on it. But Peter Gabriel today just released
Speaker 3: this album called Io like in Out that he's been
Speaker 3: working on roughly for twenty years, and he released three
Speaker 3: different versions of it that are the kind of differences.
Speaker 3: They're not like remix albums per se. Apparently the differences
Speaker 3: are really subtle and nuanced, and only maybe somebody will really,
Speaker 3: you know, refined set of ears would even notice the difference.
Speaker 3: But to Peter Gabriel, they are very much three distinctly
Speaker 3: different versions.
Speaker 2: The same thing. That's a great way to triple your
Speaker 2: album sales.
Speaker 3: I think. I think they're just out Like you can
Speaker 3: get two of the versions, like a light side and
Speaker 3: the dark side version, and then there's the inside version
Speaker 3: you only get if you buy the deluxe triple disc.
Speaker 4: You know it's a version, really, but they're they're different versions.
Speaker 4: Like when you hear a song you love, youar versions
Speaker 4: of it. You can differentiate those versions, but you're not
Speaker 4: gonna say that's a completely different song.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: Like, if we take this further, this is the weird
Speaker 4: thing you guys, let me know what you think about this.
Speaker 4: What if someone meets one of these quote unquote ghost
Speaker 4: minds or grief tech things in the future and they
Speaker 4: never met the original version, never met Henry Kissinger, now
Speaker 4: you're talking to them. That's like, isn't that like hearing
Speaker 4: a cover song and not knowing it's a cover song?
Speaker 3: Happens all the time, and sometimes the cover version has
Speaker 3: more essence of the song than the original version does
Speaker 3: like You've got like all along the Watchtower, which I
Speaker 3: always heard Jimmy Hendrix's version of it, just assumed it
Speaker 3: was a Jimmy Hendrick song. But it's actually a Bob
Speaker 3: Dylan song. But most people think of the Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 3: version because it just has and and Hendrix. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: and then Dylan will say, no, that is the song,
Speaker 3: like he he, that's his song. Now, I think that's
Speaker 3: really interesting.
Speaker 2: See, I think it's Dave matthews song. Stop it, it's
Speaker 2: Carter Beaufort's song. Uh, but but it's it is interesting
Speaker 2: how the same song if you play it primarily on
Speaker 2: piano sounds and is completely different if you play those
Speaker 2: same notes in that same order on a stringed instrument, right,
Speaker 2: or a mallet instrument. And it's just like it is
Speaker 2: interesting to me to think you could hear and recognize
Speaker 2: that song. That's a really great idea ben.
Speaker 3: Soul almost like that like that's like the essence, but
Speaker 3: you can package it in so many different ways to
Speaker 3: greater or lesser effect. Right, I'm sorry, I didn't mean
Speaker 3: to interrupt that. It just got my mind turning.
Speaker 4: And we will return, speak of turning, We will return
Speaker 4: and who knows by the time we get to this, uh,
Speaker 4: there may be someone from the dead returning in some
Speaker 4: way with us. It's something to think about, at least
Speaker 4: out here in the dark, heartbreaking, frightening, much more to discuss.
Speaker 4: We're going to call it an evening for now. Thank
Speaker 4: you so much for tuning in, folks. We try to
Speaker 4: be easy to find online.
Speaker 3: That's right. You can find the handle conspiracy Stuff on
Speaker 3: x FKA, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook where we have our
Speaker 3: Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 3: You can find this at the handle conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2: Guys, I'm gonna tell you the voicemail, but I'm still
Speaker 2: here just for a second, just thinking about how instrumentation
Speaker 2: changes the meaning of the Oh, of course, not just
Speaker 2: the feel but the meaning, right, No.
Speaker 3: Like like think about too, Like in a song where
Speaker 3: someone might make a reference to a flowing river or
Speaker 3: like the rain or something, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: a string section will come in that like represents the rain.
Speaker 3: Like you can use that stuff as psychological triggers and yeah, no,
Speaker 3: and the meaning but based on like, how do we
Speaker 3: build this like, how do what the pieces matter like
Speaker 3: to the ship of thesis? Whole deal. It's like, if
Speaker 3: you use the exact same pieces, is it the exact
Speaker 3: same ship. There's always going to be little differences, but
Speaker 3: the pieces matter. I don't know. You gotta be reeling
Speaker 3: on this one, Ben.
Speaker 2: It's great because if you if you've got someone who
Speaker 2: if you just imagine their life and the meaning of
Speaker 2: their life and what they did and achieved and how
Speaker 2: they feel about things. Is let's say Spanish guitar, but
Speaker 2: then when you build that version of them, they are
Speaker 2: a highly affected, like grunge electric guitar, right, and then
Speaker 2: all of the stuff that normally would have been played
Speaker 2: on that Spanish guitar comes out as that electric guitar.
Speaker 2: Oh man, it could be really messed up what you
Speaker 2: infer from that person, the.
Speaker 3: Last little nerdy thing. It's a perfect example. There's a
Speaker 3: documentary about Nirvana, or mainly about Kurt Cobain called a
Speaker 3: Montage of Heck, and in it do these kind of
Speaker 3: like almost beach boys sounding bells and strings and little
Speaker 3: toy piano renditions of all these Nirvana songs, and it
Speaker 3: for the first time made me, hone into like the
Speaker 3: melody and realize how amazing the melodies of these Nirvana
Speaker 3: songs are because you don't immediately key in on that
Speaker 3: when you're hearing these bombastic rock getars. But when you
Speaker 3: strip it all away, it does change the meaning because
Speaker 3: you start to really listen to the lyrics and really
Speaker 3: feel the melody, and it changes your whole perception of brilliant.
Speaker 2: Hey, if you've got thoughts on this call one eight
Speaker 2: three three std WYTK. It's a voicemail system. You've got
Speaker 2: three minutes when you make a call, give yourself a
Speaker 2: cool nickname and let us know if we can use
Speaker 2: your message on the air. If you don't want to
Speaker 2: do that because you don't like phones or whatever, why
Speaker 2: not instead send us an email.
Speaker 4: Send us the link, send us your pictures, send us
Speaker 4: the video footage. We love it. Take us to the
Speaker 4: edge of the rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: We'll do the rest.
Speaker 4: Thank you for tuning in, Folks. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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