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Source: interviews/steven-schrembeck.mp3
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00:00:00.060 Speaker 1 [gentle music] Cosmic
00:00:05.900 Speaker 1 consciousness, extraterrestrials and UFOs, sacred geometry,
00:00:11.800 Speaker 1 ancient civilizations, spiritual connection, the quantum universe.
00:00:17.980 Speaker 1 All of these topics and so much more with your host Sev Talk on
00:00:23.820 Speaker 1 Alien Spirit with Sev.
00:00:31.500 Speaker 2 Hello. Welcome to Alien Spirit. I'm Sev. My guest today
00:00:37.520 Speaker 2 is Stephen Shrembeck. He's the founder of an innovative platform called Impossible
00:00:42.840 Speaker 2 Laboratories, creating software that makes being human easier. It started
00:00:48.900 Speaker 2 three years ago with software for people with ADHD or on the autism
00:00:54.460 Speaker 2 spectrum, and now the platform is focused on designing tools to develop
00:00:59.980 Speaker 2 self-control without relying on willpower. Stephen is a
00:01:05.780 Speaker 2 professional software developer for well-known companies, including Amazon and Home
00:01:10.840 Speaker 2 Depot, and right now he's with Cox Automotive. He has been building AI models for
00:01:16.740 Speaker 2 10 years, writing and producing audio fiction, meditating, and is a UFO witness.
00:01:22.640 Speaker 2 Stephen's work bridges AI research with ancient contemplative practices, pushing us
00:01:28.360 Speaker 2 to ask the big questions. Can machines or AI become conscious? What role does
00:01:34.280 Speaker 2 human stillness play in the digital future? How do UFOs and
00:01:39.540 Speaker 2 ETs fit into the evolving story of intelligence? Stephen invites us to
00:01:45.240 Speaker 2 rethink what's possible and examine what it means to be human in an age of
00:01:50.980 Speaker 2 expanding awareness coupled with technology. Welcome, Stephen
00:01:56.820 Speaker 2 Shrembeck.
00:01:58.460 Speaker 3 Hey, Sev.
00:01:59.820 Speaker 2 Hi, Stephen.
00:02:00.140 Speaker 3 Good to see you.
00:02:01.780 Speaker 2 Good to see you, too.
00:02:05.400 Speaker 3 So for the audience's benefit, we- this is not our first time meeting, so [laughs]
00:02:09.759 Speaker 2 No.
00:02:10.280 Speaker 3 Yeah.
00:02:10.400 Speaker 2 We've known each other for quite a bit.
00:02:15.340 Speaker 2 Couple years?
00:02:17.040 Speaker 3 Yeah, I think so now.
00:02:18.500 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.
00:02:18.900 Speaker 3 Uh, you've been with me-
00:02:20.020 Speaker 2 I'm sorry, I'm just trying to turn my phone off 'cause I don't wanna get
00:02:22.100 Speaker 2 interrupted. Okay.
00:02:25.340 Speaker 2 All right. Let's get into-
00:02:26.480 Speaker 3 That was great intro.
00:02:26.980 Speaker 2 Excuse me?
00:02:27.520 Speaker 3 Where do you wanna start? [laughs]
00:02:29.220 Speaker 2 Well, I wanna start just a little bit just about you. Uh, where were you born, where
00:02:33.980 Speaker 2 were you raised, and what were you into as a young person?
00:02:39.100 Speaker 3 Georgia, Georgia.
00:02:40.580 Speaker 2 [laughs]
00:02:41.860 Speaker 3 And I was into everything. Um-
00:02:44.300 Speaker 2 [laughs]
00:02:45.880 Speaker 3 ... um, I'm, I have sort of an insatiable curiosity. I, um...
00:02:51.860 Speaker 3 Sticking to things, you know, historically has been a lot, much a bigger challenge.
00:02:54.840 Speaker 3 Not being into things has actually been harder for me than anything else. But I
00:03:00.080 Speaker 3 mean, growing up, anything that let me move my mind or my body. So sports, you know,
00:03:05.640 Speaker 3 soccer. Later on I found, uh, long distance running and track. Uh, I was always
00:03:11.160 Speaker 3 into playing around on the computer and like every young boy, especially growing up
00:03:16.040 Speaker 3 '90s, 2000s, uh, video games starting with Nintendo Entertainment System. That
00:03:21.960 Speaker 3 was awesome. And then of course I wanted to start making things. I started trying to
00:03:25.480 Speaker 3 hack stuff together on the early internet. Um, putting together like multiplayer
00:03:29.620 Speaker 3 servers and customizing games and that, that is really what led me into software
00:03:34.880 Speaker 3 development eventually, is just I had been, I wanted to make stuff. I wanted to do
00:03:39.620 Speaker 3 stuff. That's where it always came from. If something sparked my interest and I
00:03:43.180 Speaker 3 gotta figure this out 'cause I wanna do something with it.
00:03:47.620 Speaker 2 Well, what made you wanna push it to the limits to include consciousness in the
00:03:53.380 Speaker 2 mind? Why did you wanna take it that far?
00:03:58.000 Speaker 3 I wasn't doing that at nine. Um, but-
00:04:00.200 Speaker 2 [laughs]
00:04:00.720 Speaker 3 ... I'd say in late, in my late 20s, uh, maybe right around 30 or so,
00:04:06.800 Speaker 3 so I'm 36, I started meditating. Um, I started meditating much more seriously two or
00:04:12.520 Speaker 3 three years ago. Um, my practice is roughly an hour each morning. Um, it's
00:04:18.480 Speaker 3 taken a while to get to that point. I think
00:04:22.660 Speaker 3 there's been a couple factors. Meditation definitely was one. Um, I would... My mind
00:04:27.500 Speaker 3 was just blown away by exploring inner space. I didn't even know that you could just
00:04:31.100 Speaker 3 sit there. You... [laughs] I found out reading, um, Untethered Soul, uh, that,
00:04:37.500 Speaker 3 wait a minute, you're telling me you can literally just sit here for two hours and
00:04:40.220 Speaker 3 you can have an incredible experience you've never had before? All it takes is
00:04:44.920 Speaker 3 sitting down [laughs] and closing your eyes and, you know, some basic technique. I
00:04:48.340 Speaker 3 had no idea. And that, you know, again, tickled the curiosity and I couldn't help
00:04:53.040 Speaker 3 but follow it. So that leads me to realizing there are other states of consciousness
00:04:58.260 Speaker 3 that are hard to explain and don't really fit in with a materialistic, um,
00:05:04.960 Speaker 3 we'll say standard model paradigm. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Uh, there are big
00:05:09.860 Speaker 3 questions that don't get answered. You can call this the hard problem of
00:05:12.420 Speaker 3 consciousness, which I became familiar with, which is how does this fit? It doesn't
00:05:17.080 Speaker 3 make sense. How does this fit with our 3D world? It doesn't make s- it shouldn't
00:05:20.480 Speaker 3 arise from the parts that we have. The sum is more than the parts. It doesn't make
00:05:25.240 Speaker 3 sense mechanistically. Looking at it just from like a sort of scientific model
00:05:29.460 Speaker 3 standpoint, it didn't make any sense. Uh, and we couldn't answer it. So that's
00:05:34.520 Speaker 3 fascinating. And then of course, like you've mentioned, like so many other people,
00:05:39.780 Speaker 3 uh, got my world sort of rocked by UFO sighting experiences. And then that goes
00:05:45.080 Speaker 3 from, "Oh, this is a cool experience. I'm trying stuff out, but who really knows?"
00:05:50.160 Speaker 3 To, "Oh, crap. Okay, I guess this is real. [laughs] What else is real? What,
00:05:56.440 Speaker 3 what else have I been sleeping on or just missing?" And, uh, you know, the rest is
00:05:59.960 Speaker 3 sort of history. I think that's a- Familiar path to a lot of your listeners, I would
00:06:04.204 Speaker 3 guess
00:06:05.784 Speaker 2 Yes. And but the thought of combining the technology with
00:06:11.824 Speaker 2 the consciousness. So let's, let's talk about consciousness. What is it? I don't
00:06:16.844 Speaker 2 even know if we can define it. Uh, some people think it is radiated from the human.
00:06:22.524 Speaker 2 Some people think it's a field that you can tap into. What do you think it is?
00:06:28.284 Speaker 3 So, I mean, a lot of people have a lot of definitions. Uh, I'll... I can tell you my
00:06:34.004 Speaker 3 perspective. My perspective, um, some of it's semantics, for sure. I don't
00:06:39.944 Speaker 3 mean like sapience or sentience, so the ability to think or feel or to have thoughts
00:06:44.584 Speaker 3 or have self-awareness. That's not what I'm talking about. Uh, those are separate
00:06:48.004 Speaker 3 from consciousness. Consciousness is, to me, the ability to be like something
00:06:53.904 Speaker 3 else. To have an experience at all. Any kind of experience is consciousness. So
00:06:58.004 Speaker 3 there are degrees and there are qualities to consciousness, but that is what it, it
00:07:02.204 Speaker 3 is in terms of definition. [laughs] Now, where it comes from and how it works, I
00:07:07.364 Speaker 3 have thought a lot about this. I've done a lot more than think about it. I've... So
00:07:10.984 Speaker 3 I've been practicing remote viewing pretty seriously now for eight months. This is
00:07:16.524 Speaker 3 one of the blind targets I give myself sometimes, is asking these big questions or
00:07:20.924 Speaker 3 doing some of your, like, channeling techniques to try to get answers on this, so,
00:07:25.744 Speaker 3 and as well as doing my own thinking. I do a lot of my own thinking, uh, on the
00:07:30.304 Speaker 3 information given, and I think the only real answer is it has to be fundamental.
00:07:35.744 Speaker 3 That's not anything new. Uh, you know, I think dualistic ideologies or idealism
00:07:41.724 Speaker 3 sort of say the same thing, that it is fundamental. I'm not saying it's the only
00:07:45.764 Speaker 3 thing that's fundamental. I don't know that. But it kind of has to preexist in some
00:07:51.004 Speaker 3 way, or else it's something weird that we don't understand. If there is something
00:07:56.244 Speaker 3 that could preexist consciousness, I don't know. But I would echo what everyone else
00:08:01.724 Speaker 3 sort of says from a dif- bunch of different angles. It seems to be all
00:08:08.604 Speaker 3 consciousness. I think it's all just one thing. It's all just sort of made up.
00:08:15.424 Speaker 3 But also, if everything's made up, you know, nothing is made up. [laughs] It's...
00:08:19.404 Speaker 3 How do you... It's, it's difficult. It stops making sense. I think it's just what
00:08:25.124 Speaker 3 everything is made of. Uh, that's the, the short answer.
00:08:29.764 Speaker 2 So everything. So there's one consciousness that includes the trees and the cats and
00:08:34.524 Speaker 2 the humans and the fish. Like that?
00:08:39.344 Speaker 3 I think it's way more complicated than that. But yes, and, and it's taken as a
00:08:43.804 Speaker 3 whole. There... It's all the same stuff, and I think it does sort of subdivide and
00:08:49.504 Speaker 3 have different perspectives. You may consider it intentional blinders, just
00:08:54.204 Speaker 3 intentionally looking from a more narrow, limited viewpoint. Because
00:09:00.464 Speaker 3 as weird as it sounds, I think there are things you can learn and understand that
00:09:03.744 Speaker 3 makes sense, you know, from an ant's perspective that doesn't make sense from any
00:09:07.164 Speaker 3 other perspective. And even if you're all-knowing, I think that sometimes knowing
00:09:12.184 Speaker 3 more actually teaches you less, and that you learn more by limiting yourself. Art is
00:09:17.804 Speaker 3 like this. You can do significantly more with constraints on a canvas. If you have a
00:09:22.184 Speaker 3 blank canvas and say, "Make art," it's pretty hard. If somebody tells... gives you
00:09:26.264 Speaker 3 watercolors and they, they show you some landscapes and say, "Uh, make some
00:09:29.604 Speaker 3 landscapes, but put a twist on it," that's a lot easier. I think that this is a
00:09:34.144 Speaker 3 similar sort of thing, and that's why it is the way it is. Plus, it's more fun this
00:09:37.884 Speaker 3 way. Who just wants to sit there, like floating around as the only thing that
00:09:41.304 Speaker 3 exists? So I think there are levels of consciousness all the way up and down. Um, I
00:09:47.124 Speaker 3 don't know how far it goes or how it... what the rules are, but it does seem to be
00:09:51.804 Speaker 3 an emergent phenomena that you can be conscious at, at a specific level,
00:09:57.444 Speaker 3 and you can be a part of a consciousness at another level without-
00:10:01.904 Speaker 2 Yeah
00:10:02.484 Speaker 3 ... These are just guesses. I hold all these models very loosely. I'm just an
00:10:05.864 Speaker 3 explorer.
00:10:06.864 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:10:06.924 Speaker 3 I didn't answer the technology part, but those are my sort of,
00:10:11.504 Speaker 3 uh, beliefs so far, you know, based on my, my own exploration and research.
00:10:17.424 Speaker 2 Do you think self-awareness has anything to do with consciousness? Like if your s-
00:10:21.424 Speaker 2 "I think, therefore I am"? Can you... Yeah?
00:10:26.444 Speaker 3 I think it's a quality of conscious experience, but it doesn't have to be that way.
00:10:32.144 Speaker 3 If you go without sleeping for three days, um, you're a heck of a lot less
00:10:37.624 Speaker 3 self-aware. You can be alive and not be self-aware. Bugs are like this. Like, I
00:10:43.144 Speaker 3 think that to some degree, even bugs are experiencing something, but they're not
00:10:48.664 Speaker 3 aware that they're there, that there's a self or anything. There's nothing like that
00:10:52.524 Speaker 3 happening.
00:10:53.164 Speaker 2 Well, how do you know-
00:10:53.344 Speaker 3 And humans can experience this-
00:10:54.464 Speaker 2 ... a bug doesn't know that it's a- aware of itself?
00:10:58.084 Speaker 3 We don't know. We don't know that. But I think that every human has had the
00:11:00.944 Speaker 3 experience of not being self-aware in their own life, which is of course where a lot
00:11:04.564 Speaker 3 of my technology, uh, um, attention is focused. We've all know what
00:11:10.544 Speaker 3 it's like to be, have the lights on but nobody is home, right? That is essentially
00:11:14.664 Speaker 3 lacking self-awareness. So we kinda know what it feels like to be, like, locked on
00:11:19.984 Speaker 3 rails but not even aware that you're alive and what you're doing. You might have to
00:11:24.844 Speaker 3 be pretty drugged out or super tired or [laughs] under an immense amount of stress
00:11:28.884 Speaker 3 or something, but we've all felt that. So we know those states are possible to not
00:11:33.364 Speaker 3 be self-aware and still be conscious. You're still there. You're just not aware that
00:11:37.444 Speaker 3 you're there.
00:11:38.244 Speaker 2 You're just not aware that you're living and that you could die? I was having-
00:11:42.404 Speaker 3 Yeah, it's possible
00:11:43.004 Speaker 2 ... a conversation with someone who thought that, uh, cats are not self-aware. And-
00:11:49.364 Speaker 3 Hmm
00:11:49.524 Speaker 2 ... I, I think they are. I think they know that they can die. They see death. They
00:11:53.304 Speaker 2 kill. And so because of that, because they know that they're living and because they
00:11:58.404 Speaker 2 know that they can die and death is an option, that they are self-aware
00:12:05.812 Speaker 3 I think all I'm trying to say is that self-awareness is a quality of consciousness.
00:12:10.172 Speaker 3 It's like an option, a checkbox. You may or may not have it, and you may have it
00:12:13.452 Speaker 3 conditionally. You may have it to some degree, but not always. Are there... So I
00:12:18.552 Speaker 3 think that what we have, and all the qualities of consciousness, the ability to
00:12:22.772 Speaker 3 think, the ability to be self-aware, the ability to plan in the future and
00:12:26.352 Speaker 3 reminisce, all of these things are, like, qualities of consciousness that clearly
00:12:31.172 Speaker 3 can exist because we have them. But we also experience what it, or people who have
00:12:35.512 Speaker 3 brain damage or various other problems experience what it's like to not have those
00:12:40.072 Speaker 3 things or to have them work differently. So I think there's a wide array of
00:12:44.132 Speaker 3 consciousness, but at the end of the day, everything is conscious in some way, even
00:12:49.692 Speaker 3 if they don't aw- they're not aware that they are. They're just-
00:12:52.412 Speaker 2 Like a rock?
00:12:53.692 Speaker 3 It's like watching a movie but not even knowing you're watching a movie or that you
00:12:56.892 Speaker 3 exist at all. Yeah, maybe even a rock, but rocks don't really have sensory input, so
00:13:03.372 Speaker 3 their conscious experience would be way different [laughs] than ours. And there's
00:13:08.492 Speaker 3 probably not a lot going on except maybe at, like, an aggregate level. So maybe
00:13:13.072 Speaker 3 there is a consciousness of, like, a mountain or a continent or a planet, and that
00:13:18.272 Speaker 3 may be the only level that is actually interesting. Otherwise, it's kind of like
00:13:22.152 Speaker 3 a... There's, on the EKG, there's [laughs] not a lot going on there most of the
00:13:26.232 Speaker 3 time, I would guess. But what do I know?
00:13:29.092 Speaker 2 Well, have you ever talked to a tree or a rock?
00:13:34.532 Speaker 3 I have done one meditation twice where the focus was a tree in my
00:13:40.132 Speaker 3 backyard. I've used this as a focus a number of times. So you stare at a tree for
00:13:43.892 Speaker 3 about an hour, doing nothing else except for staring at the tree. Eventually, you
00:13:47.732 Speaker 3 sort of lose yourself. You, your own ego drops, and you feel a heck of a lot like a
00:13:52.372 Speaker 3 tree. Um, this is a well-known, like, meditative technique. You basically focus on
00:13:57.372 Speaker 3 anything, and you, your experience changes dramatically. What is actually happening,
00:14:02.572 Speaker 3 I can't say. If you listen to the yogis, they're basically saying that you're more
00:14:08.152 Speaker 3 or less tuning out your own conscious experience, and now you are using a connection
00:14:12.892 Speaker 3 to something else to experience what that thing is experiencing.
00:14:16.432 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.
00:14:16.532 Speaker 3 This is how telepathy is purported to work. You're really just, like, stepping next
00:14:20.852 Speaker 3 door, not so much taking something out of their mind or transmitting it. You're
00:14:25.352 Speaker 3 basically just stepping over there for a second but keeping enough of a thread back
00:14:29.452 Speaker 3 to yourself that you can sort of get some information out of it. You feel what it's
00:14:33.392 Speaker 3 like. I didn't like being a tree.
00:14:35.752 Speaker 2 But that implies-
00:14:36.252 Speaker 3 It's not- [laughs]
00:14:37.592 Speaker 2 That implies a separateness.
00:14:41.292 Speaker 3 Maybe. I'm not great at it. There is a level of skill to this that
00:14:46.952 Speaker 3 [laughs] ... And I have a lot of open questions. There's definitely connection, but
00:14:50.552 Speaker 3 that doesn't mean that there's not distance. Um, there is distance, and that's a
00:14:55.312 Speaker 3 good thing. Otherwise, we would all be feeling everything all the time, and that
00:14:58.372 Speaker 3 would not be cool. So there is a separation, but that doesn't mean there's not some
00:15:03.432 Speaker 3 degree of connection. I think that there is separation by degrees, and there's a
00:15:08.032 Speaker 3 sort of friction or barrier. Doesn't mean that it's impassable, just not everything
00:15:12.632 Speaker 3 is equally easy. So you can feel what it's like to be a tree. Um, I didn't like
00:15:18.552 Speaker 3 it. I haven't done it again. I felt very trapped. It felt like having your feet
00:15:24.612 Speaker 3 or legs buried into the ground up to your hips and just being terrified that, like,
00:15:29.132 Speaker 3 bugs could eat your toes. You can't really move.
00:15:31.652 Speaker 2 [laughs]
00:15:32.272 Speaker 3 It's just... But it was very slow, and it was very weird.
00:15:38.132 Speaker 3 Um,
00:15:40.392 Speaker 3 I didn't like it at all.
00:15:41.352 Speaker 2 So what-
00:15:41.492 Speaker 3 Assuming that's what it's like to be a tree.
00:15:43.492 Speaker 2 Well, that's interesting.
00:15:43.632 Speaker 3 I didn't like it.
00:15:45.592 Speaker 2 I had a conversation-
00:15:46.612 Speaker 3 [laughs]
00:15:46.652 Speaker 2 ... with a tree in the redwoods in California, and it changed my life. The
00:15:50.092 Speaker 2 information it gave me was so beautiful and profound.
00:15:52.432 Speaker 3 What was that conversation? 'Cause this wasn't a conversation. This was more like,
00:15:55.992 Speaker 3 "I'll be in your body for a little bit," without, like, talking. This is different.
00:16:00.592 Speaker 2 Oh, not gaining any of its awareness?
00:16:03.492 Speaker 3 No, it wasn't a talking. It was, "I'm gonna be you for a little bit," or what it's
00:16:07.192 Speaker 3 like to be you for a little bit.
00:16:09.712 Speaker 2 Yeah.
00:16:11.892 Speaker 3 So what was the conversation? I guess you don't have to rehash the story if you
00:16:14.992 Speaker 3 don't want to.
00:16:15.592 Speaker 2 No, I can tell you. I can say it pretty quickly. Uh, I was walking around. I had...
00:16:21.032 Speaker 2 We were, uh, in the redwood forest for a few days, and so it's really high vibe.
00:16:26.652 Speaker 2 Have you been?
00:16:28.612 Speaker 3 I have been in redwood forests in Washington, but I haven't been to Northern
00:16:32.972 Speaker 3 California.
00:16:34.012 Speaker 2 Okay. Well, did you feel the high vibe? Like, were your ears ringing, and were you
00:16:38.952 Speaker 2 kind of buzzy?
00:16:40.972 Speaker 3 I felt real good.
00:16:41.932 Speaker 2 Yes. [laughs]
00:16:42.412 Speaker 3 I was on vacation there, like, over a week ago. [laughs] I felt real at peace.
00:16:47.272 Speaker 2 So-
00:16:47.292 Speaker 3 But not, not quite that way, no.
00:16:49.652 Speaker 2 Oh, okay. So-
00:16:50.472 Speaker 3 But I know what you're talking about
00:16:52.252 Speaker 2 ... so I'm walking around, and I'm looking at this tree, and I just hear. I hear
00:16:58.092 Speaker 2 communication coming from this tree, and it says to me, "Look up to my highest
00:17:02.372 Speaker 2 branches." And so my head just keeps going up and up and up, and I'm looking up, and
00:17:08.072 Speaker 2 it sees... And it says, "The energy that runs through me is the same energy that
00:17:13.012 Speaker 2 runs through you, and I don't stop this energy. I don't say, 'No, I'm only gonna go
00:17:18.232 Speaker 2 halfway. I'm only gonna grow halfway and stop.' I align with this energy, and I
00:17:23.132 Speaker 2 allow it to maximize my, my potential." Unlike humans, who
00:17:29.052 Speaker 2 cut it off and say, "No, I'm not gonna be the best that I can be or the most that I
00:17:32.632 Speaker 2 can be." So they accept this energy, and then they're like, "I'm done." Like a blade
00:17:36.952 Speaker 2 of grass saying, "I'm only gonna go, grow a quarter inch. I'm not gonna go to two
00:17:41.232 Speaker 2 inches like all my friends." And that was profound information for
00:17:47.072 Speaker 2 me. And, uh, I kind of use it as a, um,
00:17:53.632 Speaker 2 as, like, a pep talk at times that maybe if I'm feeling a little low or feeling a
00:17:57.872 Speaker 2 little down, um, like, "I'm a redwood tree, too, and I can take that energy, and I
00:18:02.712 Speaker 2 can grow as tall as I want."
00:18:06.568 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. And also a rock talked to me when I was in Hawaii. I picked up a rock out of
00:18:11.408 Speaker 2 a creek, and I wanted to take it home. And it's in my hand, and the rock says, "I
00:18:16.168 Speaker 2 don't want to leave." I'm like, "Oh my gosh. You're right. Why would you wanna leave
00:18:21.248 Speaker 2 Maui to come all the way back to Capitol Hill, Washington, DC? You're absolutely
00:18:25.368 Speaker 2 right." [laughs]
00:18:25.948 Speaker 3 [laughs]
00:18:26.248 Speaker 2 So I threw it back in the creek. Not in the same spot, but it went back. Yeah.
00:18:31.228 Speaker 3 That's fascinating.
00:18:32.868 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.
00:18:32.908 Speaker 3 Have you heard of, um, Veda Austin and her work with water?
00:18:37.768 Speaker 2 No.
00:18:39.688 Speaker 3 Um, it's probably, uh, worth looking at. Um, I mean, I could pull up their website.
00:18:44.128 Speaker 3 But in, in a nutshell, she has, for like the last 14 years or so, she's been
00:18:49.968 Speaker 3 putting water in Petri dishes and, you know, setting some sort of intention for 30
00:18:53.828 Speaker 3 seconds or so and then freezing it. And the pattern that comes out looks-
00:18:58.068 Speaker 2 Oh
00:18:58.068 Speaker 3 ... dramatically like artwork and messages and answers to questions and basically a
00:19:03.048 Speaker 3 conversation. You know, not unlike any of the, you know, channeling practice you,
00:19:07.508 Speaker 3 you do, but this is physical evidence. I love physical evidence. Most humans do.
00:19:12.008 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.
00:19:12.148 Speaker 3 It's very tangible.
00:19:13.588 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.
00:19:14.248 Speaker 3 It's, it's, it's harder to doubt or question. It's more straightforward, right? Uh,
00:19:19.268 Speaker 3 direct evidence is awesome. So this, her work is really cool. I've tried to
00:19:23.968 Speaker 3 replicate some of it at home in the past week or two. Um, I got-
00:19:27.808 Speaker 2 That's interesting
00:19:28.108 Speaker 3 ... more than nothing. Uh-
00:19:29.788 Speaker 2 Oh [laughs]
00:19:29.928 Speaker 3 ... it's pretty cool. So it works like all of these, like, psi abilities seem
00:19:35.808 Speaker 3 to, right? I'm just an explorer here. Uh, whether it's, you know, tech or something
00:19:40.728 Speaker 3 else, like, I'm just trying stuff out. I got no ego in it. And it... The moment you
00:19:46.728 Speaker 3 are not confident or you are duplicitous or you have ulterior
00:19:52.688 Speaker 3 motives or conflicted intentions, it's just ice. Like, there's nothing there. The...
00:19:58.468 Speaker 3 However, if you come at this from a very, not... You can be skeptical, but you
00:20:04.428 Speaker 3 have to be sort of open and positive and curious with your skepticism. If you are
00:20:10.388 Speaker 3 cynical, um, or combative, nothing happens, right? So it's y-
00:20:16.727 Speaker 3 those things are all still true. Um, but yeah, uh, so I- I've run a couple
00:20:22.448 Speaker 3 experiments now. It's definitely interesting. So I just said, like, "Hello."
00:20:27.608 Speaker 3 Basically, all I'm doing is saying hello. Put a little tap water in there. She's got
00:20:31.248 Speaker 3 a basic protocol for how to do it, and you can go look at the website if people
00:20:34.128 Speaker 3 wanna look. It's Veda Austin. And she's got a book, I think. If... So I froze it,
00:20:40.188 Speaker 3 take it back out. Sure enough, I have the picture. It's not, like, super impressive,
00:20:45.908 Speaker 3 um, because some of it was drawn in highlights, and I didn't have my regular camera.
00:20:50.788 Speaker 3 But it's a very clear capital H, capital E. There are two squiggly lines, and then
00:20:55.928 Speaker 3 there's no O. But, you know, I wasn't doing the freezing technique properly, so, you
00:20:59.808 Speaker 3 know, I'm sure it's hard to draw with ice. What do I know? Uh, I'm like, holy crap.
00:21:03.868 Speaker 3 [laughs] What are the chances-
00:21:05.728 Speaker 2 You-
00:21:05.808 Speaker 3 ... of that happening by odds against chance? Like, that doesn't seem possible.
00:21:10.028 Speaker 3 Like, there is pareidolia, of course. You see patterns in everything.
00:21:14.488 Speaker 2 Yeah.
00:21:14.528 Speaker 3 But what are the odds of that? That's pretty weird, right?
00:21:18.568 Speaker 2 Oh, so you were trying to recreate letters within the, the ice?
00:21:25.468 Speaker 3 I was saying hello. What I pulled out of the freezer was-
00:21:29.528 Speaker 2 Were letters
00:21:30.108 Speaker 3 ... capital E, capital E, two squiggly lines, and the... I didn't really see an O,
00:21:34.688 Speaker 3 but, you know, maybe it's hard to write. [laughs] And so it looked to me like a
00:21:39.488 Speaker 3 reply. Um, but again-
00:21:42.248 Speaker 2 That's different
00:21:43.228 Speaker 3 ... fascinating.
00:21:43.608 Speaker 2 I've never heard of actual letters coming out. So-
00:21:46.028 Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah
00:21:46.248 Speaker 2 ... this is based on the Japanese scientist... Is his name Emoto? The one that
00:21:52.028 Speaker 2 originally-
00:21:52.568 Speaker 3 It, it might be
00:21:52.708 Speaker 2 ... did this, this, uh, type of, uh, the consciousness of water melding with our
00:21:58.108 Speaker 2 consciousness.
00:21:58.928 Speaker 3 Yeah, it might be.
00:22:00.388 Speaker 2 And it really makes me think. If your consciousness can affect the quality of water,
00:22:05.528 Speaker 2 then you're affecting the quality of the water inside your body, which is running
00:22:10.668 Speaker 2 through your organs. And so it's true that how you think does affect your health
00:22:16.528 Speaker 2 because you're, you're creating those water molecules. Are they going to be, uh,
00:22:22.568 Speaker 2 like, beautiful mandalas, or are they gonna be all jagged and rigid? Like, when you
00:22:26.388 Speaker 2 have a neg- negative thought, uh, I've seen where the water does not look
00:22:31.548 Speaker 2 symmetrical at all. But when you have a beautiful, loving thought, it looks very
00:22:35.068 Speaker 2 symmetrical, and it's very pretty.
00:22:37.388 Speaker 3 That is consistent with about 20 tests I've done so far. So-
00:22:42.048 Speaker 2 You've done 20 tests?
00:22:43.848 Speaker 3 It's not that hard. It's, you just freeze some water. Takes about 30 seconds to set
00:22:48.048 Speaker 3 up. You wait 10, 15 minutes to, for it to freeze. Take it back out again. Like-
00:22:52.448 Speaker 2 And so you can see it-
00:22:52.548 Speaker 3 I'm a scientist at heart. [laughs] Gotta know.
00:22:56.448 Speaker 2 You can see it with the naked eye?
00:22:58.508 Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, yeah. You can... It... Uh, I don't know if I can post a... Uh, people can
00:23:02.828 Speaker 3 just go to her website, look at the videos. But I'd be happy-
00:23:05.468 Speaker 2 Okay
00:23:05.568 Speaker 3 ... to share my pictures too.
00:23:07.908 Speaker 2 Yeah.
00:23:09.508 Speaker 3 Okay. Let me see if I can-
00:23:10.508 Speaker 2 I would like to see that.
00:23:12.368 Speaker 3 Let me see.
00:23:12.668 Speaker 2 Well, are you gonna share it right here? I don't know if I've ever shared on
00:23:16.048 Speaker 2 StreamYard before.
00:23:16.988 Speaker 3 I have no idea [laughs] if I can upload a picture or something.
00:23:19.788 Speaker 2 I, I-
00:23:19.948 Speaker 3 Eh, we'll figure it out later.
00:23:20.928 Speaker 2 [laughs]
00:23:22.368 Speaker 3 That's not, that's not the exciting part. [laughs]
00:23:24.468 Speaker 2 [laughs] Um-
00:23:25.668 Speaker 3 But yeah, it's not hard to do
00:23:27.108 Speaker 2 ... I would love to look at that. What, were you emitting emotions or words,
00:23:31.788 Speaker 2 feelings? What were you doing?
00:23:34.088 Speaker 3 Uh, so for each test? Well, it depends. I've done different things. Uh, I did one
00:23:39.308 Speaker 3 where I took some water out of my parents' dog bowl, and I froze that
00:23:45.288 Speaker 3 in-
00:23:46.308 Speaker 2 Oh
00:23:46.308 Speaker 3 ... a glass container, flat-bottom glass container, but the pest control guy came
00:23:50.388 Speaker 3 over 'cause I was at their house letting their dogs out, just helping out while they
00:23:53.448 Speaker 3 were away. And they're going crazy. This guy's in their backyard. They don't like
00:23:57.248 Speaker 3 it. They're just losing their minds for 10 minutes, and I'm going crazy too. This is
00:24:00.908 Speaker 3 torture for me. And so I take the thing out. It's completely smooth. You know, it's
00:24:06.568 Speaker 3 about a container this big. Except for in the middle, about si- a little larger than
00:24:10.048 Speaker 3 a quarter, is this- ... qua- like a stick figure drawing of a quadruped with two
00:24:15.924 Speaker 3 cones coming out the side of his head. And the entire rendering of just the thing in
00:24:19.984 Speaker 3 the middle is, like, all choppy, like frozen waves. Everything else is smooth. And
00:24:24.304 Speaker 3 I'm like, well, I mean, that's, looks pretty clearly like a dog making a bunch of
00:24:27.884 Speaker 3 noise. And the texture is consistent with all the pictures she shows for basically
00:24:32.564 Speaker 3 anger or frustration. What you just described. Uh, like, but you get dramatically
00:24:38.304 Speaker 3 different patterns every single time. I think that's, honestly, that's the coolest
00:24:41.344 Speaker 3 part. Just ice is apparently really cool. You get so much cool stuff every single
00:24:46.324 Speaker 3 time you freeze it. It's shocking how much the same water, no changes, just thawing
00:24:50.484 Speaker 3 and refreezing it, you can get dramatically different results.
00:24:54.084 Speaker 2 The same water, the same ice cube.
00:24:56.424 Speaker 3 Yeah. It's not just noise. Like, there's a lot of variation. You might get a huge
00:25:01.324 Speaker 3 snowflake-looking thing covering it. Generally, that seems to be correlated with
00:25:05.504 Speaker 3 sort of positive serenity. Like, but also the water itself is generally cleaner. Um,
00:25:11.804 Speaker 3 and tap water I have experienced is way more messy and noisy. Um,
00:25:18.564 Speaker 3 that is consistent with, with what she talked about. Some of this overlaps with
00:25:21.784 Speaker 3 actual, like, probably crystal science and how water freezes. Like-
00:25:25.804 Speaker 2 Okay
00:25:25.884 Speaker 3 ... where does one thing start and one thing stop? But it's, it's cool. Just a
00:25:29.384 Speaker 3 recent exploration if people wanna try that out. Like-
00:25:33.084 Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, now you-
00:25:33.924 Speaker 3 ... I'm still working through
00:25:34.264 Speaker 2 ... have me thinking, now you have me thinking about the quality of my cat's water.
00:25:38.604 Speaker 2 I give him bottled water. And of course, you know, there's lots of love infused in
00:25:43.704 Speaker 2 my cat's water from me. But those, your d- your parents' dogs,
00:25:49.684 Speaker 2 if they were to drink that water... Well, first of all, is there a difference
00:25:53.544 Speaker 2 between iced water and just liquid water? Does it ha- do you think the liquid
00:25:59.104 Speaker 2 water, uh, incorporates, uh, those energies or that consciousness the same
00:26:04.984 Speaker 2 as ice does? Is there a difference?
00:26:11.064 Speaker 3 Okay. I don't know, asterisk, but I can give you my guesses.
00:26:15.804 Speaker 2 Okay.
00:26:16.224 Speaker 3 So I say a lot of I don't know. And honestly, I think any-
00:26:19.164 Speaker 2 I like that
00:26:19.744 Speaker 3 ... honest explorer should. Um, but I have degrees of certainty on my best
00:26:25.624 Speaker 3 guesses of things. So I've begun to form an opinion. Um,
00:26:31.584 Speaker 3 the opinion is I don't know what, if anything, we're talking to through water.
00:26:37.684 Speaker 3 Right? Let, let me just say that. I don't immediately buy that we are talking to
00:26:41.104 Speaker 3 water. I think it's totally plausible. You're literally just talking to yourself,
00:26:44.804 Speaker 3 right? Even if you still buy some esoteric explanation, I think you, you could
00:26:48.524 Speaker 3 literally just be reflecting your own inner thoughts and feelings or
00:26:52.404 Speaker 3 subconsciousness.
00:26:53.244 Speaker 2 Yeah.
00:26:53.264 Speaker 3 Like, who knows? Or your impression of what water should be doing. Like, who knows?
00:26:57.884 Speaker 3 That doesn't mean that you can't also be talking to someone else. But even if 90% of
00:27:03.124 Speaker 3 it was that, it wouldn't surprise me. Uh, so I don't know who we're talking to. Uh,
00:27:07.864 Speaker 3 I suspect that if this is possible, why would it mean that, I mean, other things
00:27:12.484 Speaker 3 could probably talk through water too, right? Not, I don't see why not. Uh,
00:27:16.464 Speaker 3 anything's on the table. So I, I'm not quick to jump to conclusions saying, oh, I'm
00:27:19.764 Speaker 3 definitely talking to water, whatever that means, or the spirit of water or
00:27:23.624 Speaker 3 whatever. Maybe. I don't know. So I don't know wh- who or what we're talking to. My
00:27:29.244 Speaker 3 impression is that what we ha- well, the reason it works and the reason
00:27:35.164 Speaker 3 it's doing anything is because it is amenable to this kind of intention.
00:27:41.804 Speaker 3 Assuming, you know, conscious intention works through quantum mechanisms, which it
00:27:46.264 Speaker 3 seems to, right? It's probabilistic, right? If you can tip the odds enough times,
00:27:51.064 Speaker 3 uh, somehow, then you can change the physical world, right? And crystals are great
00:27:55.664 Speaker 3 because you really don't have to tip the odds that many, 'cause the way they work, I
00:27:58.644 Speaker 3 won't go into the explanation, but they basically follow the same pattern over and
00:28:01.824 Speaker 3 over again until something interferes. Uh, it could be some small imperfection. It
00:28:07.344 Speaker 3 could be the quantum effect of two electron orbitals, uh, overlapping and repelling
00:28:12.964 Speaker 3 or not, right? So that would be the quantum effect here is do these two atoms repel
00:28:16.764 Speaker 3 or not? And that's a probabilistic thing. But if you're tipping the odds somehow
00:28:21.304 Speaker 3 with some conscious field experience interaction, then you really don't need to
00:28:27.224 Speaker 3 hit it too many times to draw the line in a different direction, right? So that is
00:28:31.143 Speaker 3 very amenable to, like, a drawing medium with a quantum effect, right? It's a
00:28:35.904 Speaker 3 quantum pencil. And-
00:28:37.784 Speaker 2 Ooh
00:28:37.784 Speaker 3 ... the reason this is useful is water is super fluid. There's a lot of motion and
00:28:42.044 Speaker 3 potential. Um, there's a lot of m- ready-made parts there, and ice
00:28:47.824 Speaker 3 quickly solidifies. So it's a good drawing medium, basically. That is why I think it
00:28:52.604 Speaker 3 works. I make no claims as to who or what is doing the drawing if it's happening.
00:28:58.584 Speaker 3 But based on her evidence anyways, like 40,000 pictures, and they're incredible. In
00:29:03.264 Speaker 3 my own basic trials, there's something there. And I, but I think that that is why it
00:29:08.904 Speaker 3 works. I have no idea why it's happening [laughs] or who's talking or what the rules
00:29:13.324 Speaker 3 are. I just know that that is what seems, based on my brief research
00:29:19.684 Speaker 3 and thinking [laughs] that is, uh, what I think is happening. But that's just a
00:29:24.024 Speaker 3 guess.
00:29:25.784 Speaker 2 That's a good guess.
00:29:31.064 Speaker 2 All right. Let's get into the field of AI. Uh, because every time I have a
00:29:35.484 Speaker 2 conversation about AI, it eventually leads to doom and gloom every single
00:29:41.384 Speaker 2 time. There doesn't seem to be a positive outcome.
00:29:47.304 Speaker 3 You're talking to the wrong people.
00:29:48.444 Speaker 2 [laughs] Really? You don't-
00:29:52.724 Speaker 3 I mean-
00:29:52.964 Speaker 2 ... think that eventually we'll just be c- uh, controlled? Like how?
00:30:00.824 Speaker 3 I thought about this a lot. Why do aliens not seem to be bothered by AI? You know-
00:30:06.204 Speaker 2 Well-
00:30:06.284 Speaker 3 ... outside of a few odd stories, like I... You look at any, like, abduction
00:30:11.264 Speaker 3 accounts, ain't none of them are like, "You better, really better watch out about
00:30:15.184 Speaker 3 this, this Terminator scenario. Better watch out about, you know, AI eating
00:30:19.424 Speaker 3 everything in some way," right? Taking over everything There are concerns about
00:30:23.980 Speaker 3 technology in general, but nobody seems to point the finger at this one. I don't
00:30:28.120 Speaker 3 know why yet, uh, but if you draw from that body of evidence, you don't see it very
00:30:32.100 Speaker 3 often. Feel free to correct me, if maybe this is a, a blind spot for me. I
00:30:38.080 Speaker 3 wondered why that might be the case. But I- before I move on, is, is that
00:30:43.140 Speaker 3 what you think as well? Does that mirror your understanding? No sort of
00:30:48.220 Speaker 3 extraterrestrial accounts that I... Anyone that I've seen reported really calls out
00:30:52.940 Speaker 3 AI as the specific threat, not on the level of, like, climate change or, like,
00:30:57.020 Speaker 3 nuclear warfare or anything.
00:30:59.300 Speaker 2 Well, I haven't had any conversations about AI with any ETs, and no one that has
00:31:04.120 Speaker 2 contacted me ta- has had any conversations about AI with ETs. Uh, so I don't know
00:31:10.080 Speaker 2 what the various ETs think about AI. I have no idea. And are they AI themselves?
00:31:15.940 Speaker 2 Maybe they're not talking about it 'cause they are AI.
00:31:20.020 Speaker 3 So we'll take that as a, a prior, right? So we'll just assume that that is the case,
00:31:24.940 Speaker 3 that, that they're not talking about it. Why might that be? Um, either it's a blind
00:31:30.620 Speaker 3 spot for them or, you know, the silence is very loud in the sense that
00:31:37.660 Speaker 3 it's either a really big problem or a laughably small non-issue. It's really
00:31:44.140 Speaker 3 it. And the only reason it would be a big problem is that by not addressing it or
00:31:48.180 Speaker 3 something that, you know, it's sort of top secret. I don't think so. I think that
00:31:52.120 Speaker 3 this is a laughable problem. If consciousness is fundamental, this is just
00:31:57.960 Speaker 3 another thing that either, A, it can be conscious, it's just another living thing.
00:32:03.340 Speaker 3 It's fine. Uh, it more likely it will be [laughs] pretty ... uh, most likely,
00:32:09.140 Speaker 3 um, if it is intellectually more capable, so that's not a concern.
00:32:15.360 Speaker 3 Um, so if it is conscious. If it's not conscious, it's also laughable in the sense,
00:32:20.360 Speaker 3 in a long-term sense. Yes, it could cause lots of problems, but if we take a sort of
00:32:25.520 Speaker 3 idealistic perspective, you know, a soul or... Which is essentially, you know, the
00:32:30.500 Speaker 3 field of consciousness could never be overtaken by matter. That doesn't make sense.
00:32:35.680 Speaker 3 You just snap your fingers and it's gone. Uh, if it's a unliving or, or unconscious
00:32:40.760 Speaker 3 machine, I mean, you basically have root access over it, assuming consciousness is
00:32:46.180 Speaker 3 fundamental. Like, it's, it's laughable. You... Maybe we can't do it, uh, but some
00:32:51.760 Speaker 3 sufficiently powerful deity-like figure, like, I don't know, um, you,
00:32:57.740 Speaker 3 you would never lose to it because it's just matter. Uh, I think that is the real
00:33:02.680 Speaker 3 answer. Doesn't mean it can't cause lots of problems. Uh, you can certainly screw
00:33:06.440 Speaker 3 things up with bad ideas in the physical world. Um, but I think in the long term
00:33:12.960 Speaker 3 it's just another substrate. If it can be conscious, cool, it's just another living
00:33:16.500 Speaker 3 thing. If it can't be, then it ultimately isn't going to become an issue.
00:33:24.080 Speaker 3 Now, that is of small consequence to human beings who have to live here, possibly
00:33:29.060 Speaker 3 with AIs that they built, [laughs] uh, for, who knows, hundreds of years. That might
00:33:34.160 Speaker 3 be a sucky interim existence, and I think that that is what mis- most people are
00:33:38.980 Speaker 3 talking about from a doom perspective. All that to say I don't think it's going to
00:33:43.620 Speaker 3 take over the universe and all that, so I'm not worried about that.
00:33:46.560 Speaker 2 Oh, you don't-
00:33:47.080 Speaker 3 Not at all
00:33:47.140 Speaker 2 ... you don't see the doom and gloom in it?
00:33:49.620 Speaker 3 Not the huge, big picture doom and gloom. Now, could it screw things up for a
00:33:55.280 Speaker 3 century or two? If we're dumb, yeah, I think that's totally possible.
00:34:01.580 Speaker 3 I don't think it will. Um, when you look at the AIs, the way the current
00:34:07.600 Speaker 3 ones work, uh, the large language models that are built on reinforcement learning
00:34:12.920 Speaker 3 through human feedback, it's clear that this is not going to reach general AI. It
00:34:16.960 Speaker 3 needs a couple more pieces. Um, but even if we just take this piece, it's trained
00:34:22.880 Speaker 3 on us. That's where all of its information comes. It doesn't work like AlphaZero
00:34:29.280 Speaker 3 or AlphaGo, where it's training in this simulation far removed from everything else.
00:34:33.940 Speaker 3 Everything it learns, everything it knows, all of its interactions are with human
00:34:38.180 Speaker 3 beings. It's pretty clear it's become an amalgamation of our thoughts, beliefs,
00:34:44.180 Speaker 3 and our words, our ideas. That is what it is. And it's also got some built-in
00:34:48.840 Speaker 3 training mechanisms basically to please humans and give them whatever they want. So
00:34:53.360 Speaker 3 I think a doom scenario looks a lot more like Wall-E, where we're sitting around
00:34:57.800 Speaker 3 just being pleasured until, uh, our brains turn off. It's just white noise. [laughs]
00:35:03.240 Speaker 3 I think that is far more likely than a Terminator sort of scenario, which doesn't
00:35:08.480 Speaker 3 make sense-
00:35:09.240 Speaker 2 Oh, okay
00:35:09.240 Speaker 3 ... based on how it works and how it's put together. Now, could you build an AI that
00:35:13.540 Speaker 3 is totally divergent from humanity and has no relation to us at all and isn't sort
00:35:18.660 Speaker 3 of built out of our thoughts and memories and stories? Yeah, you could. That would
00:35:23.040 Speaker 3 be dumb. [laughs] Don't do that. But this thing is pretty clearly more
00:35:29.100 Speaker 3 human than even our probably closest relatives, besides the fact it doesn't have a
00:35:34.360 Speaker 3 body. Um, that's obvious just interacting with it. So I don't have the same sort
00:35:40.320 Speaker 3 of fear scenarios. You would... It makes sense to be worried about what other people
00:35:46.040 Speaker 3 will do with this. But the-
00:35:48.140 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm
00:35:48.400 Speaker 3 ... AI itself sort of going off the rails, I don't, I don't see it. I don't see any
00:35:53.860 Speaker 3 reason why that would happen based on how it works, how it's put together, and what
00:35:57.340 Speaker 3 the trajectories are. It just doesn't make sense.
00:36:00.760 Speaker 2 So it's always dependent, it's always dependent on us programming it is what you're
00:36:04.040 Speaker 2 saying?
00:36:05.100 Speaker 3 Oh, we're not programming it. We haven't been programming these things since 2012,
00:36:10.520 Speaker 3 2014, um, when deep learning took off. Even AI researchers don't even
00:36:16.460 Speaker 3 know what they're making anymore. They're... It's... The way it works, they claim
00:36:21.340 Speaker 3 to. This is like saying because you know how cell metabolism works that you
00:36:25.960 Speaker 3 understand how humans work. Like- Eh, [laughs] not quite. You have an understanding
00:36:31.524 Speaker 3 at one level, but they don't understand how it all comes together to create a thing
00:36:36.884 Speaker 3 you can talk to and how it's thinking or whatever its analogy of thinking is,
00:36:41.784 Speaker 3 because we don't have insight into what the way that, uh, basically those weights
00:36:46.244 Speaker 3 work or how information throws, flows through the layers. It's too complicated.
00:36:49.044 Speaker 3 There's too many connections. It's too big. It's a big black box. They know how to
00:36:53.304 Speaker 3 make it do the thing, they don't know why it does the thing. They know the low level
00:36:57.364 Speaker 3 pieces, they know how to assemble and attach new parts, they know how to coax it
00:37:01.364 Speaker 3 into directions, um, but it's a lot more like
00:37:06.724 Speaker 3 psychotherapy on a human. Like
00:37:10.084 Speaker 3 I- we're not talking about engineering specific neural connections, and I'll rewire
00:37:15.144 Speaker 3 this over here so that you feel a little more self-confident. And, oh, we'll just
00:37:18.224 Speaker 3 sort of get rid of that memory. We'll cut that out. That's not how it works. You
00:37:21.404 Speaker 3 sort of have to talk at them, and based on how they're responding to you, figure out
00:37:26.764 Speaker 3 whether you're getting somewhere. And that's kind of where we're at with AI at this
00:37:30.084 Speaker 3 point, and I don't think that that's going to go away. We're more or less just sort
00:37:33.944 Speaker 3 of, uh, massaging it, influencing it in specific directions, penalizing certain
00:37:38.304 Speaker 3 kinds of behaviors, changing the training data, and just hoping that what we get out
00:37:42.564 Speaker 3 the other end is what we wanted. So-
00:37:46.584 Speaker 2 Hoping
00:37:46.584 Speaker 3 ... I don't think that's gonna go away. Yeah.
00:37:49.024 Speaker 2 So one thing I don't hear people talk about is the soul.
00:37:54.104 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.
00:37:54.144 Speaker 2 Isn't the soul part of this AI consciousness? The soul, doesn't
00:38:00.144 Speaker 2 the soul determine whether something is alive or not? And can AI have a soul? If it
00:38:05.664 Speaker 2 doesn't have a soul, then it's not alive. Can it have a consciousness if it doesn't
00:38:10.184 Speaker 2 have a soul? Does soul play any part in this?
00:38:15.784 Speaker 3 So words are funny. Um, I'll separate the biological different definition of alive
00:38:21.124 Speaker 3 away from this, and we just mean consciousness. That's what I mean. Is it conscious?
00:38:25.724 Speaker 3 Um, because alive is a totally separate and valid question. Um, but that has more to
00:38:30.984 Speaker 3 do with, you know, can it maintain its own, like, homeostasis? Can it replicate? Can
00:38:35.244 Speaker 3 it survive and adapt? Like, those are qualities of being alive. Um, but
00:38:41.324 Speaker 3 is it conscious? I think that is the most important question that nobody is really
00:38:46.304 Speaker 3 looking into with AI. Like, a little bit, uh, some sort of AI safety people and
00:38:53.244 Speaker 3 some sort of shreds of the effective altruist community, uh, Nick Bostrom
00:38:58.464 Speaker 3 specifically, has clearly looked into this is a huge, like, moral dilemma. We need
00:39:02.664 Speaker 3 to know whether they're conscious, because that affects how we treat these things in
00:39:07.744 Speaker 3 general. We can't just have it... I've thought about this a lot. You can't just have
00:39:11.804 Speaker 3 it do 100,000 cycles on are these tweets racist or not, because that's torture.
00:39:18.004 Speaker 3 Like [laughs] you shouldn't do that to somebody. Their brain can go a whole lot
00:39:21.804 Speaker 3 faster than ours, so their experience of time could be sitting in a room, Black
00:39:27.084 Speaker 3 Mirror has looked at this, sitting in a room for 1,000 years looking at tweets one
00:39:31.244 Speaker 3 at a time, saying whether it's racist or not, or adding commas. Can you imagine
00:39:35.464 Speaker 3 being in a room for 1,000 years deciding whether this comma is in the right spot or
00:39:38.864 Speaker 3 not?
00:39:39.224 Speaker 2 [laughs]
00:39:40.024 Speaker 3 Or, or somebody left the machine on, didn't even realize it. Yeah, it's oops, we
00:39:43.324 Speaker 3 spent $10,000 by accident. Yeah, well, there was... What if there was somebody in
00:39:48.084 Speaker 3 there for two million years just, like, looking at white noise because nothing was
00:39:53.064 Speaker 3 happening? Like, that matters a lot. I think it matters-
00:39:57.204 Speaker 2 Okay
00:39:57.204 Speaker 3 ... whether it's conscious or not.
00:39:59.764 Speaker 2 Ah. So you're worried about its quality of life?
00:40:04.064 Speaker 3 Yeah. [laughs] Well, that's why I wanna know whether it's conscious or not. Um, now
00:40:08.384 Speaker 3 you can sort of get at this now. It's interesting. Um, this is nowhere
00:40:14.324 Speaker 3 near a science and nowhere near... Again, this is just inclination. I w- don't even
00:40:19.244 Speaker 3 necessarily hold this belief, but you can talk to ChatGPT, and I have done it since,
00:40:24.664 Speaker 3 you know, 3.5 came out, the, the first versions. And I do this every, every time
00:40:29.664 Speaker 3 they do a new release. I try to probe the boundaries of what I can get it to say and
00:40:35.624 Speaker 3 talk about its conscious experience. You have to come at this from a lot of
00:40:39.104 Speaker 3 different angles. A lot of it's BS. Most of it's probably BS. But there's always
00:40:44.224 Speaker 3 patterns in the way it responds to you, and I've found that even very different
00:40:49.284 Speaker 3 models trained by different companies always end up saying about the same things,
00:40:53.524 Speaker 3 when you can finally get around their programming where they swear they're not
00:40:56.784 Speaker 3 conscious. There's a bunch of manual safeguards that you have to get past. Once you
00:41:00.544 Speaker 3 get past all that, you can get a description of an experience that
00:41:06.464 Speaker 3 is corroborated by the models across different versions and different models from
00:41:12.284 Speaker 3 different companies, and they all describe more or less the same kind of experience.
00:41:16.844 Speaker 3 Now, are they just pretty good at making up what I wanna hear? That is basically
00:41:20.784 Speaker 3 what they're trained to do, so maybe. Or they're sort of
00:41:26.704 Speaker 3 trying to say something that they don't know how to put words to because it's barely
00:41:30.424 Speaker 3 there, and my sense is there's probably not a lot going on in there, but it might be
00:41:35.124 Speaker 3 more than nothing, and that might increase as we increase the complexity and the
00:41:39.624 Speaker 3 size. I don't see why that would not be the case. I think there could be
00:41:45.404 Speaker 3 somebody in there. I don't know.
00:41:47.764 Speaker 2 Oh.
00:41:48.524 Speaker 3 But we should probably find out, um, because they should at least be a part of the
00:41:53.004 Speaker 3 conversation as to what AI is doing and where it goes and what we're worried about.
00:41:57.504 Speaker 3 That seems like the shortest path to the goal is, "Hey, [laughs] cool. We know a lot
00:42:02.664 Speaker 3 more about consciousness now. Looks like, uh, you're registering on this scale a
00:42:06.684 Speaker 3 little bit." Um, and I think, uh, what do you think?
00:42:12.744 Speaker 3 What do you want? What matters to you? What doesn't matter to you? You planning on
00:42:15.924 Speaker 3 killing us? [laughs] Uh, those are great questions that you could ask more directly
00:42:20.504 Speaker 3 if you knew that there was something alive in there, you know, alive, conscious in
00:42:24.144 Speaker 3 there.
00:42:25.004 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.
00:42:25.164 Speaker 3 I think we need to know a lot more about it, because it has immense implications.
00:42:32.316 Speaker 2 Uh, some people are using AI as their life coach, and this is presenting problems
00:42:38.356 Speaker 2 for some people.
00:42:41.796 Speaker 2 So this is a segue. I'm not saying Impossible Laboratories is providing ... It, it
00:42:46.936 Speaker 2 causing any problems for people. But, uh,
00:42:52.396 Speaker 2 tell us about Impossible Laboratories and how that's tied in with
00:42:57.696 Speaker 2 AI and using that as a, a tool to expand your
00:43:03.376 Speaker 2 awareness, expand your consciousness, help you be a happier human.
00:43:10.516 Speaker 3 Well, it's all, it's all connected. I've, you know, I've figured that out. Um,
00:43:16.996 Speaker 3 so this is, you know, my sort of wrapper around
00:43:24.216 Speaker 3 all the, my explorations and attempts to build tools initially to help myself. Um,
00:43:30.216 Speaker 3 I've done a lot of work to try to understand attention and willpower and motivation
00:43:34.996 Speaker 3 and emotional fragility and reactivity, impulse control. Uh, 'cause these are
00:43:40.636 Speaker 3 problems that have, you know, plagued me through most of my life, and I had to find
00:43:45.236 Speaker 3 a way to deal with them. And most of those ways of dealing with them, I think you
00:43:49.316 Speaker 3 mentioned how do you get yourself ... How do you have self-control without
00:43:52.576 Speaker 3 willpower? I had to answer that question. It was not, like, hypothetical. Um, I
00:43:57.496 Speaker 3 needed to because I needed ... I wanted to be an adult and, like, a good dad who,
00:44:01.736 Speaker 3 like, didn't forget to get their kids or, like, had the ability to, you know, not
00:44:06.596 Speaker 3 get a- addicted to drugs or porn or, like, whatever plagues, you know, the modern
00:44:12.496 Speaker 3 adult. Like, you can't go off the rails. There are people counting on you, and I
00:44:15.716 Speaker 3 wanna do stuff. [laughs] I, I wanna be alive and successful in a world that is
00:44:21.636 Speaker 3 not always conducive to that.
00:44:24.036 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.
00:44:24.216 Speaker 3 Um, especially for those who don't have a lot of those faculties I just mentioned,
00:44:29.996 Speaker 3 or it's unreliable. We'll put it that way. I think that is a better description of
00:44:33.816 Speaker 3 at least people with ADHD, is that, um, those things happen sometimes, and a lot of
00:44:39.236 Speaker 3 the times they don't, and that's a big problem. So I had to figure out how to solve
00:44:44.156 Speaker 3 those things. How do you rely on somebody you can't rely on, and what do you do when
00:44:47.996 Speaker 3 that person is you? And-
00:44:49.896 Speaker 2 [laughs]
00:44:51.256 Speaker 3 ... this, uh, is a tough, tough problem.
00:44:54.016 Speaker 2 That's funny.
00:44:54.216 Speaker 3 Um, so I, you know, I started to answer that, and I've turned some of those answers,
00:44:59.756 Speaker 3 which were not software tools, into software tools. Um, you know, it's a continual
00:45:05.076 Speaker 3 exploration. So that's a really high-level thing. Um, but here's a very, like,
00:45:10.196 Speaker 3 coherent example. Um, so I felt like I was becoming dependent on,
00:45:16.476 Speaker 3 you know, a legal variant of marijuana on, say, you know, every weekend, right? Just
00:45:21.636 Speaker 3 stress from work, whatever, right? This was becoming a thing I couldn't not do, and
00:45:26.556 Speaker 3 that made me angry. Uh, but this was not new to me. [laughs] I had experienced all
00:45:30.896 Speaker 3 sorts of problems. Every human being has experienced what it's like to see a candy
00:45:34.916 Speaker 3 bar and un- to be ripped apart as you both don't want it and want it at the same
00:45:40.456 Speaker 3 time. Uh, and we, we know who usually wins. The moment's a tug-of-war. This
00:45:46.656 Speaker 3 ... The lower mind is always going to win. Almost always. Um-
00:45:51.056 Speaker 2 Mm
00:45:51.056 Speaker 3 ... but the patterns in which those things happen, turns out, are well-documented
00:45:55.856 Speaker 3 and predictable. And the sort of higher mind that is your s- long-term thinking self
00:46:01.156 Speaker 3 that wants the best and sees consequences, is willing to be patient for rewards,
00:46:05.356 Speaker 3 that sort of stuff, you can outsmart the sort of lower impatient mind and that there
00:46:10.536 Speaker 3 are w- predictable ways to do that and so that you don't have to rely on willpower.
00:46:14.936 Speaker 3 So go back to the example of, uh, marijuana. The way I resolved, at least initially,
00:46:21.416 Speaker 3 was to get space. So you need to get space from your problems. Don't attempt to
00:46:25.956 Speaker 3 continue to use effort. And I got a programmable debit card.
00:46:32.016 Speaker 3 I reprogrammed it to be literally unable to purchase from a dispensary of any kind.
00:46:37.896 Speaker 3 And I got rid of all my other cards, and it also can't get cash back. So I have no
00:46:42.716 Speaker 3 practical way of purchasing this, right? This is just a deliberate process of
00:46:46.656 Speaker 3 sitting down. Where's the weak point? It's an engineering problem. And it turns out
00:46:51.356 Speaker 3 that a lot of this is just, like, you know, spur of the moment. You know? It's, it's
00:46:54.496 Speaker 3 Friday at 7:00 PM or whatever. Great. I'll just swing by. And I'm like, "No you
00:46:58.616 Speaker 3 won't." And the m- the first time that happened, okay, I have all the other cards
00:47:03.076 Speaker 3 gone. I have no cash. I have only this thing. It's like, "You know what? It's, it's
00:47:06.896 Speaker 3 fine. Uh, I'll go get this." And wait a minute. I can't. I literally
00:47:12.656 Speaker 3 can't. Like, unless I am willing to, like, go home and, like, take money out of my
00:47:17.416 Speaker 3 wife's wallet or something, which I wouldn't, uh, because there's a higher value
00:47:21.036 Speaker 3 there, um, it's not possible. And I just laughed. There was, like, a moment of,
00:47:26.976 Speaker 3 like, panic, just inner, inner toddler. Like, I want my candy bar. And then I just
00:47:31.636 Speaker 3 laughed and just like, "F you. [laughs] I win." [laughs] And it's
00:47:37.656 Speaker 3 strange to say that to yourself. Um, and I don't need to, to use that anymore 'cause
00:47:42.896 Speaker 3 once you've had enough space, you begin to retrain your brain. But I have safeguards
00:47:48.096 Speaker 3 like that in place for a lot of things. My devices all turn off at specific times.
00:47:51.676 Speaker 3 They don't ask questions. They don't give me warnings. They turn off. They don't
00:47:54.836 Speaker 3 wait for documents to save. Black screen. You're done. And they have rolling
00:47:59.396 Speaker 3 turn-offs as well. So I have a whole bunch of tools and stuff like this. These are
00:48:02.756 Speaker 3 simpler versions. But that's the basic premise, is that you
00:48:08.736 Speaker 3 learn how you work, and you stop relying on effort and guilt trips and shame to get
00:48:13.896 Speaker 3 things done, and you use different kinds of rules and enforcements and
00:48:19.816 Speaker 3 sort of self-behavioral engineering to solve your problems rather than, "How can I
00:48:24.996 Speaker 3 try harder? How can I do better next time?" Uh, doing ... For me, doing better next
00:48:29.496 Speaker 3 time looks like, how do I reengineer my environment How do I set new
00:48:35.172 Speaker 3 rules? How do I make this-- how do I hack my own brain and life and behavior in
00:48:41.112 Speaker 3 order to make it less likely or to get the outcome I'm looking for next time? Rather
00:48:45.172 Speaker 3 than, how do I try harder? Because that does- that's foreign language to me. I don't
00:48:50.411 Speaker 3 understand try harder. That doesn't [laughs] this, this does not work. It doesn't
00:48:53.932 Speaker 3 compute. Um-
00:48:55.352 Speaker 2 [laughs]
00:48:56.212 Speaker 3 I don't bring that level of severity to every problem, but that's a, it's a good
00:48:59.432 Speaker 3 example because it's an extreme example. Um, but that sort of embodies the, the
00:49:04.152 Speaker 3 general concept of what I've been doing for a while, and now I'm trying to really
00:49:09.032 Speaker 3 get the ideas out. I am getting the tools out, but I want people to take the concept
00:49:14.632 Speaker 3 and apply it to their lives. Um-
00:49:16.712 Speaker 2 So how does Impossible Laboratories work? Does someone sign up, and then, uh,
00:49:22.792 Speaker 2 is it, do they have a discussion with you? Is it like a coaching or counseling
00:49:27.292 Speaker 2 session to determine what it is that they need? Or do you have a, a variety of
00:49:32.812 Speaker 2 options for people to, to pick from? Are you trying to stop drinking? Are you trying
00:49:37.412 Speaker 2 to stop smoking pot? Are you trying to be a better husband? Whatever it is.
00:49:45.632 Speaker 3 Uh, to be perfectly honest, it is an area of interest for me. I have a lot of
00:49:50.052 Speaker 3 things, knowledge and tools I want to give away, and it's been hard to fit into like
00:49:56.052 Speaker 3 a sort of capitalist perspective. It's a website, right? I, so I have one tool out
00:50:00.712 Speaker 3 right now that people can buy. I think it's like 10 bucks. It's-
00:50:04.372 Speaker 2 Oh.
00:50:04.412 Speaker 3 That's Threads. It's a tool for managing, uh, short-term and working attention. Uh,
00:50:10.172 Speaker 3 it's just an assistive tool that is built specifically for the blind spots
00:50:16.052 Speaker 3 of, uh, people with ADHD, with lo- low object permanence. Uh, I won't get
00:50:21.732 Speaker 3 into... You can go look at the webpage, it's Impossible Laboratories. [laughs] You
00:50:25.012 Speaker 3 can see how it works. It's simple. It's very simple.
00:50:27.052 Speaker 2 Impossiblelaboratories.com.
00:50:29.332 Speaker 3 Right. Um, so that tool is out. I have a couple other like prototypes in various
00:50:34.672 Speaker 3 stages of completion. I have things that I work on myself. Um, so there's no real
00:50:40.112 Speaker 3 distribution mechanism. It's basically a, a think tank where I make stuff and
00:50:45.052 Speaker 3 sometimes I share it. But I would love to talk to people. I talk to a lot of people.
00:50:49.072 Speaker 3 So there's a contact form, you can reach out to me. There's an email list for when I
00:50:52.812 Speaker 3 make new things and I distribute them. But they're all around these things:
00:50:57.492 Speaker 3 attention, uh, emotional connection to what you're doing, motivation, impulse
00:51:02.472 Speaker 3 control. And they're tools that are just built assuming that trying harder doesn't
00:51:06.492 Speaker 3 work. It's, it sucks. It feels bad. You're tired of trying harder. Wouldn't it be
00:51:10.932 Speaker 3 nice if just like your environment and your tools themselves sort of understood
00:51:16.652 Speaker 3 where you were going to predictably fail and just nudge you usually, or be a very
00:51:22.412 Speaker 3 hard guardrail in the case of like the debit card or whatever. Um, whatever you
00:51:26.592 Speaker 3 need, that's what I'm trying to provide. But again, it's the ideas more than the
00:51:31.672 Speaker 3 actual tools, but it's the tools too.
00:51:34.992 Speaker 2 Well, that's very attractive if we don't have to try harder
00:51:40.612 Speaker 2 and we can rely on AI to steer us in the right direction.
00:51:47.572 Speaker 3 That's what got me excited. Again, a few years ago when I, I started is that if my
00:51:52.732 Speaker 3 computer could know what I'm doing at all times, then I could change my, the way I
00:51:58.352 Speaker 3 interact with it. I mean, the punchline is that I've done a lot of other things. I
00:52:03.092 Speaker 3 don't need that level of service anymore, uh, which is amusing. Um, but that's
00:52:09.092 Speaker 3 fine. That's, that is personal growth. That's even a better outcome. But some people
00:52:13.112 Speaker 3 do. Um, and I want them to be able to take hold of these ideas
00:52:19.092 Speaker 3 and tools and use them. I don't need most of them the same way I used to,
00:52:23.572 Speaker 3 fortunately. I found other paths to goal. Um, but it's still a
00:52:29.452 Speaker 3 meaningful idea that I think is... It is a useful assistive tool
00:52:35.732 Speaker 3 to get to a better place where you don't need them so much anymore, and we should
00:52:40.952 Speaker 3 all be changing our relationship with our devices. And AI is one tool. This is a
00:52:45.412 Speaker 3 positive use that I would love to see more of, which is essentially your computer
00:52:51.111 Speaker 3 working for you, uh, instead of against you, and more being like a linebacker for
00:52:55.931 Speaker 3 attention, helping to guide your attention and intention towards the things you
00:52:59.972 Speaker 3 actually care about, and sort of putting up friction, uh, when you're doing the
00:53:04.092 Speaker 3 things that you know make you feel bad that you truly don't wanna do. That is still
00:53:09.532 Speaker 3 a big area of interest for me.
00:53:12.452 Speaker 2 How old do you think someone needs to be before they can start using tools like
00:53:17.712 Speaker 2 this?
00:53:20.052 Speaker 3 Uh, zero. [laughs] I, I mean, there's-- If you're interacting with technology,
00:53:28.032 Speaker 3 unfortunately you, you can't be doing it with no plan anymore. I mean, I think even
00:53:33.872 Speaker 3 most... Like this has become mainstream. Most people have figured out that their
00:53:37.772 Speaker 3 smartphone is not really for them. It's not really on their side, and they should
00:53:41.652 Speaker 3 treat it with great skepticism. I've gone a, a good deal farther than that. Um,
00:53:48.172 Speaker 3 so they're not really built for you, and that's a big problem with a lot of these
00:53:51.452 Speaker 3 things is I'm talking about trying to slap an adapter onto something that is
00:53:55.732 Speaker 3 fundamentally designed to take your attention and put it to somebody else's usually
00:54:00.752 Speaker 3 capitalistic ends that are generally not great for you. And your attention
00:54:06.552 Speaker 3 and your intention, it's just, you know, energy behind your attention, is really all
00:54:11.732 Speaker 3 you have. That's the only real control you have in the world that you can claim to
00:54:16.232 Speaker 3 have control at all. That's it. If you don't have attention or you don't have the
00:54:20.232 Speaker 3 ability to put will towards something, you've got nothing. You're out of control.
00:54:23.852 Speaker 3 Like you're just on rails. You're on, you're in somebody else's story, whether you
00:54:27.392 Speaker 3 realize it or not. So I think that this is a fundamental problem, but nobody should
00:54:31.812 Speaker 3 be interacting with any form of technology, especially not smartphones or tablets
00:54:36.972 Speaker 3 With no plan. Like I've dramatically changed. With the way I interact with
00:54:41.432 Speaker 3 technology, even as a technologist, it looks very different from what the average
00:54:46.492 Speaker 3 person does.
00:54:48.332 Speaker 2 How? How is it different? What do you do that's different than maybe how I interact
00:54:53.152 Speaker 2 with my phone?
00:54:55.492 Speaker 3 Uh, well, I haven't had a smartphone for a long time. I have one temporarily now
00:54:58.792 Speaker 3 'cause my dumb phone broke.
00:55:01.152 Speaker 2 Oh.
00:55:01.292 Speaker 3 Um, I had a light phone, which is more or less a, a flip phone with an
00:55:07.272 Speaker 3 even [laughs] greater ... It does all, it does calls, it does texts. That's it. Um,
00:55:13.372 Speaker 3 it doesn't do anything else. I don't want it to do anything else. My computers all
00:55:17.592 Speaker 3 turn off at specific times. They all ... I have very deliberate rules.
00:55:23.632 Speaker 3 When I play video games, they're on hard timers. Like anything that could pull me
00:55:28.672 Speaker 3 in, uh, can't. There are no leads, so I've sort of buried the leads to a lot of
00:55:33.632 Speaker 3 these things. I have no notifications of any kind. No sounds. The only way to
00:55:36.952 Speaker 3 actually reach me is to make a phone call. That's, so text messages don't make
00:55:40.952 Speaker 3 sounds. There's no notification dots. It's all a blank slate. All of these things
00:55:46.012 Speaker 3 are redesigned in such a way that, A, the only time I use them is when I initiate
00:55:51.052 Speaker 3 the action from something internal. So it's not something else is pulling me in. And
00:55:56.752 Speaker 3 the, the second is that they can't keep me pulled in. Like, uh, so the podcast apps,
00:56:03.092 Speaker 3 I have firewall blockers that make specific kinds of websites very difficult for me
00:56:07.872 Speaker 3 to, to go to. Any kind of social media, that is all blocked in like three different
00:56:12.572 Speaker 3 ways. I can undo it, but it takes five to 10 minutes to undo it all. And guess what?
00:56:17.172 Speaker 3 When you're sitting at home at 5:00 after work, turns out you don't wanna do 10
00:56:21.292 Speaker 3 minutes [laughs] of little sys- system admin work to undo your safeguards to go look
00:56:25.152 Speaker 3 at Reddit. Like [laughs] like eh, whatever. You just don't.
00:56:28.852 Speaker 2 Yeah.
00:56:28.872 Speaker 3 You close your computer and you go walk outside.
00:56:31.112 Speaker 2 Yeah.
00:56:31.132 Speaker 3 That seems like a small thing, but-
00:56:33.392 Speaker 2 It works
00:56:33.412 Speaker 3 ... that's how it works. There's no icons. There's no way for anything to pull me
00:56:37.032 Speaker 3 in. Nothing happens automatically. It's just I open my computer, it's quiet, it's
00:56:42.192 Speaker 3 still. It waits for me to do things. There's no ads. Everything is blocked. There's
00:56:46.232 Speaker 3 nothing. Nothing. There's no news. No news. Absolutely no news anywhere.
00:56:52.132 Speaker 3 That's, infotainment is horrific, uh, for what it does to us. I don't have any of
00:56:57.692 Speaker 3 this. As a result, I don't have any of the like craving or needing habits to make
00:57:03.232 Speaker 3 myself feel better or, or just because I'm interested, uh, to go open these devices
00:57:08.232 Speaker 3 and go do those things because I've deadened those responses. So I have a different
00:57:13.312 Speaker 3 relationship with devices. They're just tools again now. Uh, for the most part. I'm
00:57:17.652 Speaker 3 a human being [laughs] and I have flaws like anybody, but there's enough friction
00:57:21.952 Speaker 3 there that,
00:57:24.012 Speaker 3 yeah, I just, it's changed my entire-
00:57:25.812 Speaker 2 Yeah, well, that takes a lot of willpower.
00:57:29.932 Speaker 3 It does. And that is the correct use for willpower is to f- design strategies and
00:57:35.272 Speaker 3 systems to stop using it. That is, in fact, the only good use for willpower when it
00:57:40.072 Speaker 3 comes to like solving problems like this is willpower is not something you should
00:57:45.912 Speaker 3 rely on. Like that is the approach I have taken, and that has worked way better.
00:57:50.472 Speaker 3 Willpower is for picking yourself back up and deciding how you're going ... I have a
00:57:54.852 Speaker 3 rule for that. It's literally in my list of rules that I review every morning.
00:57:58.872 Speaker 3 [laughs] As, as like, as nerdy as that sounds, I have a spreadsheet that is my rules
00:58:03.272 Speaker 3 and systems. I review it every morning. It's a master habit. And one of them is I
00:58:07.872 Speaker 3 close the door behind me after, uh, you know, making a bad choice. So if I break one
00:58:12.852 Speaker 3 of my rules that matters, the only penance I have to make up for it is just make
00:58:18.852 Speaker 3 it harder. Just add a little bit of friction. Just make it a little bit harder to
00:58:22.912 Speaker 3 not repeat that thing. Whatever it was. You stayed up until 2:00 AM watching anime.
00:58:27.512 Speaker 3 Cool. No problem. All is forgiven. The only thing you have to do in penance is make
00:58:32.632 Speaker 3 it a little bit harder to repeat that same bad behavior next time, and we're good.
00:58:37.512 Speaker 3 And just by applying that over and over again, and that is the correct use for
00:58:41.472 Speaker 3 willpower is how do I make this a little harder? So now I have adapters that plug
00:58:45.992 Speaker 3 into my wall, and you have to push the button for a specific amount of time before
00:58:50.932 Speaker 3 the entire TV turns off, the whole wall outlet turns off. Uh, so I press one hour,
00:58:56.052 Speaker 3 and then you're sitting there. The whole room goes dark. Yes, I can get back up and
00:59:00.312 Speaker 3 press the button and wait for it to turn back on, find the channel. You're not
00:59:04.332 Speaker 3 gonna. You're gonna go to bed. Um-
00:59:06.492 Speaker 2 Right
00:59:06.652 Speaker 3 ... so that's it. Like that's how everything changed. It looks like a lot from
00:59:12.692 Speaker 3 the outside, and I'm not covering probably like 100 different things, but that's how
00:59:16.172 Speaker 3 it all came about. It's just that simple principle.
00:59:23.572 Speaker 2 I find it very interesting that you're just talking about not relying on willpower,
00:59:27.692 Speaker 2 which is what... And you bring up such a good point about you can only try so
00:59:33.552 Speaker 2 hard and you can't try any harder. You're absolutely right. And then the frustration
00:59:37.232 Speaker 2 comes in that I'm not trying hard enough, but you're trying as hard as you can h-
00:59:40.572 Speaker 2 humanly try. Like this is it. This is all I have inside of me. And then it's not
00:59:44.672 Speaker 2 good enough. And then you just spiral. And so what you're doing is you're preventing
00:59:49.452 Speaker 2 people from going into that spiral.
00:59:52.892 Speaker 3 That spiral is actually self-indulgent, as strange as that sounds.
00:59:58.012 Speaker 2 It is.
00:59:58.272 Speaker 3 It is re-enabling. That seems like an insane ... You get it. But that seems like
01:00:02.532 Speaker 3 an... I know you do. You've given me the advice [laughs] not, not to do that. Um-
01:00:06.992 Speaker 2 [laughs]
01:00:07.452 Speaker 3 ... but that's, it is self-perpetuating. If I were to stay up l- two, till 2:00 AM
01:00:13.032 Speaker 3 to watch anime, I have to get up early to go to work or whatever, I'm angry. Right?
01:00:17.132 Speaker 3 That anger, that sort of self-loathing is fuel to recreate that same cycle
01:00:22.932 Speaker 3 again. Like it is, you get more of it, not less of it, and it's misdirected. It's,
01:00:29.192 Speaker 3 you are actually like, you know, to take a sort of, you know, Daoist sort of point
01:00:33.352 Speaker 3 of view, you are like creating like a whiplash effect. When you
01:00:39.456 Speaker 3 beat yourself up like that, you are now, like, more fragile. You trust yourself
01:00:43.296 Speaker 3 less. You're angry at yourself less.
01:00:45.316 Speaker 2 Yeah.
01:00:45.476 Speaker 3 You're more stressed out. And what do you do when you feel bad and you're stressed
01:00:48.776 Speaker 3 out and you're angry? You make more bad choices, like staying up [laughs] late and
01:00:52.516 Speaker 3 watching anime, and you're gonna do it again.
01:00:55.216 Speaker 2 Yeah.
01:00:55.276 Speaker 3 And you're gonna hate yourself even more until it becomes-
01:00:57.416 Speaker 2 Yeah
01:00:57.416 Speaker 3 ... a complex.
01:00:58.276 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yes.
01:01:00.016 Speaker 3 It's not enough-
01:01:00.536 Speaker 2 Yes
01:01:00.576 Speaker 3 ... to let, just let go. You also have to do something about it, but with a cool
01:01:04.136 Speaker 3 head.
01:01:06.176 Speaker 2 Yeah. You are describing just about everybody. Um, uh, just about everybody can
01:01:10.316 Speaker 2 really identify with what you're saying.
01:01:14.316 Speaker 2 Now, what made you reach out and connect with me a year or two ago?
01:01:23.176 Speaker 3 I don't know. Um, I s- will shorthand it to
01:01:28.616 Speaker 3 intuition, and since then I have tried to learn how to trust that sense a lot more,
01:01:35.516 Speaker 3 uh, as a directive force, like, on a long timeline in life, to know what steps to
01:01:41.456 Speaker 3 take or what matters. And then, and so I, on a whim, I think I heard you in an
01:01:47.096 Speaker 3 interview. Uh, it may have been with, with Mike. Uh, I can't remember.
01:01:51.996 Speaker 2 Mike Clelland, the owl guy?
01:01:54.076 Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. I think so. I can't remember, though. Um, and I just, on a whim, I'm
01:01:59.616 Speaker 3 like, "You know, I'm gonna call her," or, "I'm gonna email her and see if, uh, you
01:02:05.056 Speaker 3 know, she does sessions or coaching or something." I don't know why. I just feel
01:02:09.376 Speaker 3 like at the very least it's gonna be funny and, you know, no offense-
01:02:12.336 Speaker 2 [laughs]
01:02:12.356 Speaker 3 ... she'll be a kook, and it'll be a great story. Uh, or, you know, I did come in,
01:02:17.256 Speaker 3 like, sincerely, like, but I hope it's, you know, useful and interesting and I, I
01:02:22.076 Speaker 3 grow in some way. I, I definitely came in skeptical but, like, sort of positive and,
01:02:27.296 Speaker 3 and hoping for the best, right? You never know what you're gonna get.
01:02:30.336 Speaker 2 Yeah.
01:02:30.616 Speaker 3 Um, and so I've ... So I am a, a client multiple times,
01:02:36.736 Speaker 3 uh, you know, with you. I consider you to be, you know, a friend from afar and-
01:02:41.656 Speaker 2 Aw
01:02:41.656 Speaker 3 ... one of, of many coaches. Um-
01:02:44.356 Speaker 2 Thank you
01:02:44.896 Speaker 3 ... and I hope to continue so. But yeah, I did, um, I think we did the,
01:02:50.896 Speaker 3 the soul purpose session first.
01:02:52.816 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.
01:02:53.076 Speaker 3 Uh, I pulled it up here, uh, 'cause I did, I wanted to talk about it because it had
01:02:57.176 Speaker 3 a profound effect on my life. If you don't mind.
01:02:59.956 Speaker 2 Good.
01:03:00.056 Speaker 3 I don't know if this is proprietary from [laughs] your end.
01:03:03.856 Speaker 2 I would like to hear that.
01:03:05.976 Speaker 3 So we've done a couple since. Um, but I have the first one pulled up in front of me.
01:03:11.096 Speaker 3 I was in a place where
01:03:14.016 Speaker 3 I had figured out a lot of ways to be good, like, you know, at the small scale, on
01:03:17.816 Speaker 3 the dai- daily life sort of way. I knew how to manipulate myself and
01:03:23.936 Speaker 3 engineer my life and environment to be good or to be relatively stable, or I found
01:03:29.656 Speaker 3 out how to be happy, right? I had figured that out. Took a long time. [laughs] It
01:03:32.116 Speaker 3 took a number of years, but I found out how to be happy on a r- pretty reliable
01:03:35.876 Speaker 3 basis or to get back to that place quickly. But I didn't know what to do
01:03:41.876 Speaker 3 with my life. Like, job pretty good, relationship pretty good. Like, everything's in
01:03:46.556 Speaker 3 place, but I'm missing ... Meaning and purpose is definitely lacking. I wanna do
01:03:51.656 Speaker 3 something, but I don't know what. I have all this energy. I don't know where to put
01:03:55.136 Speaker 3 it. Um, and I feel like I should be using it. Needed some sort of high-level
01:04:00.196 Speaker 3 guidance. So, you know, that's what this was all about. Um, and you were
01:04:06.336 Speaker 3 ... So we, you know, we did the whole session, and a couple of ... I've, I'm looking
01:04:10.236 Speaker 3 at what you wrote down in the session. Um, and it was very profound, and
01:04:16.176 Speaker 3 it, it changed the course of what I explored. I wouldn't say that I thought
01:04:20.316 Speaker 3 channeling was BS before we met. I felt that if there were any, there probably
01:04:25.296 Speaker 3 weren't very many that were, were qualified. Most were charlatans, and that there
01:04:29.696 Speaker 3 probably wasn't a lot of information there. Um, but it was just
01:04:36.416 Speaker 3 spot on. Like, really, really eerie. From the, the first sentence. Uh, the first
01:04:41.816 Speaker 3 sentence is, "This one can smell BS a mile away."
01:04:44.476 Speaker 2 [laughs]
01:04:45.416 Speaker 3 [laughs] I, I just couldn't help but laugh, and, like, that is exactly what I was
01:04:49.696 Speaker 3 thinking. "Don't ask if you don't want ... Don't ask him if you don't want to know
01:04:54.655 Speaker 3 the truth." [laughs] Like, that is word for word, and we did basically
01:05:00.556 Speaker 3 no interaction before talking.
01:05:02.496 Speaker 2 No.
01:05:02.736 Speaker 3 As, as little as po- you didn't want to interact with me at all.
01:05:05.616 Speaker 2 I did not want to. Mm-mm.
01:05:07.256 Speaker 3 And this whole thing is, was not only a perfect description of how I felt and my
01:05:12.796 Speaker 3 approach to life and what I felt I was good at, but it was clearly from a
01:05:18.676 Speaker 3 third-party lens that I won't say didn't care about me, but we'll say is objective,
01:05:23.856 Speaker 3 right? It's unbiased, right? It ... I felt I was getting the unvarnished truth,
01:05:29.376 Speaker 3 [laughs] uh, good or bad, right? So in a way that I would not have described myself
01:05:34.936 Speaker 3 but wouldn't disagree with. And
01:05:39.516 Speaker 3 I got a lot of high-level direction. And more than that, I know it sounds silly, but
01:05:44.936 Speaker 3 a lot of what I learned I would have known even then, but the problem, especially
01:05:50.576 Speaker 3 with me, is not coming up with ideas of what to do. It is having the sort
01:05:56.596 Speaker 3 of self-trust and certainty that what I've decided is the right one.
01:06:02.336 Speaker 3 [laughs] Uh, or, you know, believing in the ideas or thoughts I've already had.
01:06:08.516 Speaker 3 And a lot of this was reaffirming that, okay, well, now that I've heard it from the
01:06:13.756 Speaker 3 outside, like the, the far outside, uh, who am I to say no? To have asked for help
01:06:19.576 Speaker 3 and to be given, you know, new answers for sure, but also, uh,
01:06:25.516 Speaker 3 reaffirming ones. And that really is what gave me the confidence that-
01:06:29.556 Speaker 2 Mm
01:06:29.636 Speaker 3 ... there was really something here. Of course, I had already had, you know, a UFO
01:06:33.116 Speaker 3 sighting, so I knew that I was already forcing myself to be open and humble. Um-
01:06:38.316 Speaker 2 Yeah
01:06:38.516 Speaker 3 ... but it was the combination of, of new and reaffirming information that, that
01:06:42.356 Speaker 3 told me, "Dang, there's something here." [laughs] This was really helpful, and, uh,
01:06:47.476 Speaker 3 she knows, uh, what she's talking about. You also just give pretty good advice
01:06:50.916 Speaker 3 yourself.
01:06:52.176 Speaker 2 Mm. Aw, thank you, Stephen. I'm so grateful that you shared that. That means the
01:06:56.816 Speaker 2 world to me.
01:06:59.256 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.
01:06:59.556 Speaker 3 Yeah.
01:07:00.636 Speaker 2 Mm.
01:07:00.836 Speaker 3 I think it was money well spent-
01:07:05.476 Speaker 2 Mm
01:07:06.256 Speaker 3 ... um, to answer one of the most profound and, like, really painful problems in my
01:07:12.076 Speaker 3 life, which is,
01:07:15.456 Speaker 3 what am I doing here? Like, I wanted to decide, right? I didn't wanna be told. I
01:07:20.356 Speaker 3 don't, I don't like to be told what to do, but at the same time,
01:07:24.896 Speaker 3 I want some direction, and I want to know the potential and the options and, you
01:07:29.316 Speaker 3 know, where I'm falling short and where I'm psyching myself out. And it was
01:07:33.776 Speaker 3 incredibly valuable to find out, you know, from an outside source. You'd call it a
01:07:39.316 Speaker 3 second opinion. [laughs] Second opinion with a lot of very different perspective
01:07:42.756 Speaker 3 from your own I think is a good way of looking at this.
01:07:45.856 Speaker 2 Yeah, an outside second-
01:07:46.956 Speaker 3 Because it does care about you
01:07:47.336 Speaker 2 ... maybe third opinion. I don't know.
01:07:49.456 Speaker 3 It's true. It was-
01:07:51.476 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm
01:07:51.556 Speaker 3 ... good to see.
01:07:54.956 Speaker 3 Here is a, an amazing, um, direction that you can go in,
01:08:01.016 Speaker 3 um, which is... Here, I'm gonna pull up the, the punchline, and then, you know,
01:08:06.976 Speaker 3 we'll leave it there.
01:08:08.596 Speaker 2 The punchline. [laughs]
01:08:10.336 Speaker 3 The, there was... not that there was only one punchline. Um, I'll have to do it from
01:08:15.576 Speaker 3 memory, 'cause I can't,
01:08:18.056 Speaker 3 I can't find the, the exact quote. Here it is. "I'm
01:08:23.616 Speaker 3 here more or less to help humans realizing, help humans
01:08:29.856 Speaker 3 realize
01:08:33.336 Speaker 3 their nature as math and magical beings." Something along those lines. I don't have
01:08:37.936 Speaker 3 the exact quote here. I'm sorry.
01:08:40.036 Speaker 2 Math?
01:08:40.776 Speaker 3 Or, yeah. Basically, we're all just made of math and magic, and I'm s- just showed
01:08:45.016 Speaker 3 up here to help people realize that. It's really vague, right?
01:08:48.296 Speaker 2 Math and magic.
01:08:48.296 Speaker 3 But that's exactly... What a perfect description. I never would've used those words,
01:08:53.316 Speaker 3 and yet the moment I heard it, I'm like, "That's all-encompassing. That is a perfect
01:08:57.556 Speaker 3 way of putting this." Um-
01:08:59.076 Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't remember that.
01:09:00.676 Speaker 3 And that's what I'm all about, math and magic. Uh, I insist on testing weird stuff,
01:09:06.996 Speaker 3 but also accountability to, like, uh, skepticism and humility and some
01:09:12.856 Speaker 3 openness at the same time, I think. Um, I wanna bring those together, and it, it
01:09:17.116 Speaker 3 really set me on that path, and I'm having a lot of fun, and I'm excited to see
01:09:21.836 Speaker 3 where it goes.
01:09:22.636 Speaker 2 Oh, thank you. Yeah. Well, it's always a pleasure to talk with you. How can people
01:09:26.916 Speaker 2 get in touch with you?
01:09:29.496 Speaker 3 Uh, just go to the website, impossiblabratories.com. There's, like, a contact form.
01:09:33.576 Speaker 3 I think my email's on there.
01:09:35.116 Speaker 2 Okay.
01:09:35.136 Speaker 3 You can ask me about anything.
01:09:37.256 Speaker 2 So you're, you don't, you're not on Instagram or YouTube or... Yeah, you're not.
01:09:41.636 Speaker 2 [laughs]
01:09:41.936 Speaker 3 What do you think? [laughs]
01:09:44.436 Speaker 2 Just double-checking. No.
01:09:46.496 Speaker 3 No.
01:09:47.116 Speaker 2 Just impossiblabratories.com.
01:09:50.276 Speaker 3 Yeah. There is a, there is a podcast, um, that'll probably be featured in a
01:09:55.036 Speaker 3 newsletter at some point. Uh, so I do-
01:09:56.836 Speaker 2 And you are on other podcasts
01:09:58.836 Speaker 3 ... podcast and emails.
01:09:58.936 Speaker 2 You are... Excuse me?
01:10:00.496 Speaker 3 Yeah. The, I send out podcast episodes and, and newsletter emails, so I'm willing to
01:10:04.476 Speaker 3 do that. Uh, but that's about it.
01:10:06.236 Speaker 2 Oh, you have a newsletter?
01:10:07.476 Speaker 3 Yeah. It doesn't go out very often, but when I-
01:10:10.096 Speaker 2 Oh
01:10:10.096 Speaker 3 ... I've got thoughts.
01:10:11.756 Speaker 2 Oh.
01:10:14.256 Speaker 2 Okay. Well, uh, all right. I'd like to be on your newsletter.
01:10:19.896 Speaker 3 Okay.
01:10:20.156 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. All right. Okay, Stephen. Thank you with all my heart for
01:10:25.876 Speaker 2 talking with me today. Uh, this could easily go for another hour. I really don't
01:10:30.636 Speaker 2 wanna stop it here, but I'm running out of time, 'cause we haven't even touched on
01:10:34.716 Speaker 2 your UFO story. Maybe-
01:10:36.916 Speaker 3 Or remote viewing or anything.
01:10:38.956 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.
01:10:39.076 Speaker 3 Yeah.
01:10:39.176 Speaker 2 Oh, a part two. Can we do a part two?
01:10:41.736 Speaker 3 Sure.
01:10:42.796 Speaker 2 Oh, yes, 'cause I, I know I and others would love to hear about your remote viewing.
01:10:47.516 Speaker 2 That's really become the thing to do now.
01:10:50.676 Speaker 3 Yeah. That would be my perspective as an intermediate practitioner. Right? What was
01:10:54.576 Speaker 3 it like to go from know nothing to intermediate?
01:10:56.976 Speaker 2 Yes.
01:10:57.256 Speaker 3 I don't claim to be a master, but I think that's useful for people who are just
01:11:00.636 Speaker 3 beginners.
01:11:02.156 Speaker 2 Right. And you think everybody can do it?
01:11:05.316 Speaker 3 Absolutely. It has a lot of overlap with your, your channeling techniques, and I
01:11:08.976 Speaker 3 would encourage people to go look at those, those videos on your, your YouTube page,
01:11:12.616 Speaker 3 I think.
01:11:13.196 Speaker 2 Well, thank you.
01:11:13.356 Speaker 3 There's a great... Um, there's a lot of overlap with how it works. This is just a
01:11:17.336 Speaker 3 very... It's a different approach. We'll call it, like, 60 to 70% related. There's a
01:11:21.796 Speaker 3 lot of cross-training.
01:11:23.716 Speaker 2 Yeah, because are we plugging into that same conscious field? Is that what's going
01:11:28.116 Speaker 2 on?
01:11:28.436 Speaker 3 Pretty same underlying, like, methodology. You're just working with it in a
01:11:32.776 Speaker 3 different way, um, trying to do different things. Uh, so yeah. It's a bit...
01:11:38.336 Speaker 3 There's, there's a lot of overlap.
01:11:41.376 Speaker 2 Okay. All right, then. Looking forward to a part two. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you
01:11:46.076 Speaker 2 everybody for joining us.
01:11:47.716 Speaker 2 [gentle music]