← The Balance Theory
The Balance Theory
Everything You're Consuming Is Making You Less of Yourself (Here's What You Can Do) | Mo Gawdat
01:55:05
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- [00:00]
A
Why would you put 63 days of your life plugging into the mind of someone else? So what? I'm tired and I need to wind down. If it's escapism, then that time is better invested in working on the reasons why you feel that way.
- [00:14]
B
Today's guest will completely change the way you think about where your time, your mind, and your sense of self is coming from and going. Joining me for a second time is one of the most original thinkers on this planet, Mo Gao Da. In a future world where AI has taken over all the jobs, what's left for humans?
- [00:32]
A
That definition of we are made to work. This was taught to you by capitalists. The purpose of a human is to live. You walk to one tree and pick an apple and walk to another tree and pick an iPhone. In that world where everything costs almost zero to create, you know what that world mimics? It mimics nature.
- [00:51]
B
Abundance.
- [00:52]
A
Abundance.
- [00:52]
B
Is that utopia?
- [00:53]
A
100% utopia, in my mind is a 99.9% certainty. Part of the modern world is that they've conditioned us to avoid uncomfortable feeling. If you lose your humanity to the point where you can see someone suffering that way and ignore it completely, that's the one being harmed is you.
- [01:12]
B
Someone listening who understands this is a problem. What does that look like for them?
- [01:16]
A
Everyone has that capability if they choose to go to the NPC gym.
- [01:25]
B
All right, balancers. Welcome back to another episode of the Balance Theory. Today's guest has not only been highly requested, but I definitely would have had him back on for a part two. I'm so excited to welcome Mo back to the show.
- [01:36]
A
Thank you.
- [01:37]
B
Welcome.
- [01:37]
A
Thank you very much. I'm surprised they like the first one, but yes.
- [01:40]
B
You're really surprised. Well, you know, we got a lot of questions. I genuinely made the mistake of booking us in for one hour last time, and I feel like I had so many things I wanted to ask you. I got straight into it. I didn't even really get to know you, but thankfully, we've had a couple opportunities to catch up and get to know each other since to the Point last night, we're at a dinner. Mutual friend put on.
- [02:02]
A
Yeah.
- [02:03]
B
And I got to learn some new things about you. So I think what'd be really interesting, something new I learned about you, if you're open to sharing with the audience, just to give a bit of a feel for where things are at for you right now is you have a warehouse and something very interesting.
- [02:20]
A
A workshop.
- [02:20]
B
Yes. Okay. And you like to fix cars in your spare time. Spare time. Full Time.
- [02:25]
A
Not full time, of course, not full time.
- [02:27]
B
Tell us about niche hobby you've got.
- [02:29]
A
I have quite a few hobbies, actually. I, And I think 2026 has been a year where my New Year's intention was to spend more time with my hobbies. Not less time with my mission, but more time with my hobbies. I don't know how that works, but if you have more intention to do things that you love every day, you probably achieve more of them. So I do. Anything that you do with your hands, I love to do. So I, you know, I, I do carpentry and masonry and I build my own pots for my garden to put, you know, to grow bonsais in them. And I draw and lots of other things. But one of my biggest things is I, I fix cars. Yeah, it's. I know, it's. I'm. The first car I made, I was 16, 17 from scratch. Yeah, it was a VW Beetle, so it was very easy to build from scratch. It's a bit like Lego, really.
- [03:25]
B
Okay.
- [03:26]
A
And then I built another one when I was 21, a Jeep Wrangler. I mean, basically you, you, you buy the chassis and you buy the, you know, the components that you can and then either restore some of them or replace some of them. And, and for years and years and years, I went into the corporate world and I was very busy and so on. And in the last couple of years, I was like, okay, I'm old now, right. I don't need to work as hard as I have always worked, other than for the mission. And then basically partnered with my favorite mechanic in Dubai. And, you know, he ran a wonderful shop, but tiny. And we built this massive thing called Engine house, which is 30 plus master mechanics. And we restore classics, but we also fix high end cars and everything, really. And I go every Saturday, put all on my overalls and just stand under the ramp. And I love it. Absolutely. And I, I mean, in a, in a very interesting way. Cars have changed over the years and so it's actually quite a humbling experience to, to stand next to the master mechanics and learn new things. And, you know, I absolutely love it.
- [04:38]
B
I love that. I think hobbies are a great way to explore different parts of yourself. In actual fact, this podcast for me was the hobby I had alongside my corporate job.
- [04:47]
A
Yeah.
- [04:48]
B
Because I quickly identified what I was missing. Something that, you know, whether it was I went through a phase where I was doing ceramics as well.
- [04:55]
A
I did ceramics as well.
- [04:56]
B
Yeah. Yeah. There's some great studios here. I think it's really good to do that, actually. Interesting question. Do you think, right. If you reflect back at those, those early years in your 20s and your 30s, when you had your corporate job and you were fully working, do you think you would have been better at your job if you had some hobbies?
- [05:11]
A
I always did. I always.
- [05:12]
B
You always had hobbies?
- [05:13]
A
I always did. So. So mosaics and ceramics and, and, and charcoal portraits and carpentry, for sure have never been out of my life. I've always had a tiny little carpentry workshop depending on my single or married or in a relationship status because women don't very much like that. So you can easily know if I'm single by counting the number of tools at my home. The minute I'm single, it's genuinely almost one of the first things I do is I go and buy tools and mess the place up and love it.
- [05:51]
B
It. That's hilarious.
- [05:52]
A
Yeah, but, but it's always been there. I mean, in a very interesting way. It's my form of meditation. I, I, of course, I meditate as well, but. But there's nothing more genuinely taking your mind off thinking into something else, like pruning, you know, a bonsai, you know, or, or genuinely trying to assess the state of the soil or, you know, I, I love fish aquariums and I build very. And I take pride in treating them in a way that's not mechanical at all. So basically you have a pump moving the water. That's the only mechanical thing. But to understand the balance of the ecosystem and when exactly the moment happens when the bacteria and the fish and the plants and the light and everything balances out and then it stays. For years. I did that with ponds. You know, there was always, always that bit of my life where after the corporate struggle happens, you know, you're back home and, and there is the need for that moment of silence, if you want. Silence is very big for me.
- [07:04]
B
Yeah. And it's important, like, you're to be in that beginner phase where you're learning again. It grows you, it stretches you. You just made me think of. I. My husband and I used to watch this channel, I think it's called Ants Planets. He used to build these big vivariums. Have you seen them on YouTube? And he. House has these massive ecosystems. He does layers on top, so he has like the sea underneath the canopy of like a rainforest and he does the same thing. So interesting. Yeah. But, yeah, it's good to just do things that stretch you. One thing that always comes up around, around the conversation of hobbies. Is like, how do you make time for it? Like you had a young family, plus you were working this corporate job. Like, how did you actually make time for that?
- [07:42]
A
I didn't watch football. I, I never watched Instagram.
- [07:46]
B
Wasn't around.
- [07:48]
A
Yeah. And Thrones, Game of Thrones. I've never watched Game of Thrones. And you know, and people really, genuinely don't realize those things. I mean, there was a point in my life where a very dear friend said, you have to watch Game of Thrones. Are you kidding? And I counted it and it was 63 days of my life. And you just genuinely have to question, why would you put 63 days of your life in plugging into the mind of someone else? Okay. And of course, when it's once a week and you're telling yourself it's an hour a week and so on. Yeah, you know, it's like, so what? I'm tired and I need to wind down. And so on. So it doesn't count like days of your life. But when you add it up, you know, one thing I learned at Google was that idea of adding small, you know, increments or changes, deltas. If you add them up over the years, they make massive. In Google's. In Google's time, we were adding them across billions of users. So one pixel more on the screen that is being sent to 4 billion people a day, four or five times a day genuinely is a lot of incremental network bandwidth. And we're both wearing a black T shirt. I genuinely believe that I save myself around, around four years, four and a half years of my life just by not worrying too much about fashion. You know, between, between the time it takes for people to pick their fashion to the time it takes for them to make the decision and mix and match. And in my personal case, of course, because I travel sometimes a couple of hundred days a year to, to pack in a way where things match and then to have more packing. So you have to put your, your, your bag in, in cargo and wait for a half an hour to check it in and a half an hour to collect it. And you add those hours up and you'll be amazed how much you would save by making the simple decision of look, it's same style, you know, jeans, more or less same style T shirt. In my, in my case, it's always black. So there are no decisions. And of course, you don't talk about the number of hours that people put into work to make the money to buy the expensive fashion. And you know, it's A very interesting decision because eventually I say, yeah, there are a few girls that are not going to be very attracted to me in my simple fashion style and, and in an interesting way, probably these are the girls that were going to take even more than my four and a half years, you know, if they value me for my ability to buy fashion that someone else designed and I so mindlessly plug into. And so. Yeah. And so these kinds of deliberate decisions of making time for your hobbies, making time for your family, you know, come with compromises. You have to drop things to get them. So you, you compromise on being the, you know, pretty boy and, and attracting interesting, you know, mate candidates as, as they call them, but by, but saving four years of your life, four genuine years and you have to add them in hours and, and, or, you know, watching Game of Thrones or being a fan of Manchester United and, and spending a good chunk of your, you know, a day, a week following that. Yeah, doesn't, doesn't work. Yeah.
- [11:19]
B
The decision fatigue that comes with outfit choices is the reason I am very often in the same outfit on the podcast. Yeah. Like I know what works on set. I literally the most adventurous I go is, I'll change my top.
- [11:30]
A
Okay.
- [11:31]
B
But it's the same thing for me. And if you're a female, especially you often, if you're taking a lot of time to decide the outfit, come home to close everywhere and then you have to clean up. So I think for females we should add another year or two, I would say, to that four year prediction.
- [11:45]
A
Yeah. And sorry to interrupt you, but you have to understand that this is almost a curse, you know, that we've, we've, we've. There was a documentary, I don't remember where I saw it, called Misrepresentation and about how we instill in the minds of young ladies or young girls that the way you look is your top value. And so of course, you know, we're capable creatures, so you tell us, yeah, looks, looks really matter. And then you put a lot of effort in it and you overdo it. And sometimes the simplest look is the most beautiful. And more interestingly, the whole concept of looks are the way you're going to be judged is a self fulfilling prophecy. Right. And if you genuinely think about it in the way now it became a competition which makes every person, you know, judge you in a very shallow way. Yeah, I don't know it, I don't, I don't, I'm not a woman, so I don't know how to comment on that, but I Think, you know, my, my son, my late son, before he left us, once taught me that if you, if you, you know, there will always be 20% of the world that will like you and 80% that will judge you. Right? And if you are yourself, the 20% that will like you are the 20% you want near you. If you start to pretend to be something you're not, you know, you're going to still attract 20%. But even worse, they are not even the 20% you want. They're 20% that require you to put in effort all the time, you know, and, and 80% will continue to judge you anyway. So you well be the simplest form of who you are and that will attract the most genuinely interested in you people that you can ever get.
- [13:39]
B
Yeah. And when you say that, to me, that means it really comes down to your, your energy. Right. Because, yeah, I'm sure we've all had the experience. You've met the most attractive. Again, it's a very subjective thing. Attractive person who maybe actually not that drawn to is. Doesn't feel like a warm soul. And you know, the opposite could be true. Someone you maybe don't think is the most beautiful thing on the planet, but you're so magnetically drawn to them. So it's, you know, I think it, the way you dress and present yourself is not everything about you. But back to the decision fatigue. It's definitely an angle for people to think about in terms of how much time they're spending. All right, so speaking of decisions that fatigue you every day, I've never been one to complicate my skincare routine, and a massive ick I have is when I'm told I need 10 different products to have healthy, glowing skin. I honestly instantly zone out because I know simple is always best for me and my skin. And imagine how much time you're spending choosing and using products. That's why Oneskin really stood out to me. Their products aren't about high quantity or fancy packaging. It's simply real science. I found the logic of the brand really interesting. So basically it's a bunch of longevity researchers who asked a really simple question. If visible skin aging is driven by damaged senescent cells, what if you could slow down that process instead of just covering it up? That research led to OS1.1 Skin's proprietary peptide. Now it's the first ingredient proven to switch off those damaged senescent cells actually supporting and slowing skin aging directly at the source. I really do genuinely appreciate when a brand is not just trying to get you to buy a whole suite of products and has really put in the work to create one quality product that fits easily into your routine whilst repairing damaged cells, supporting collagen and strengthening your skin barrier. Oneskin's products are backed by four peer reviewed clinical studies to validate the efficacy and safety on all skin types. It really shows you don't need a complicated routine to achieve healthier looking skin. Born from over a decade of longevity research, OneSkin's OS1 peptide is proven to target the visible signs of aging, helping you unlock your healthier skin now and support you as you age. For a limited time you can try one skin with 15% off using the code Balance at Oneskin co. Balance, that's 15% off OneSkin Co with Code Balance. After you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know that we sent you. Now, just before we get back into the episode, I have to tell you guys about this one thing because I cannot shake this one thought. If you wouldn't drink it, why would you shower in it? Our skin is our body's largest organ and every day most of us, without even realizing, are showering in water that may contain chlorine and heavy minerals. The same water we literally would not drink. Now, if you're a longtime listener of the show, you'll recognize this sponsor, AquaTrust. These guys have created Aquatru Shower, a revolutionary shower head. It has an advanced four stage filtration that effectively filters harsh chemicals from your shower water. It uses KDF technology which I've learned uses a special copper zinc that actually neutralizes chlorine the moment the water hits it. I love that it's not just effective at filtering these contaminants that we don't even think about, but it also has four spa like steam settings from regular mist, massage and high pressure. I mean you're telling me that there's a massage setting and it's better for my hair and skin? This one's an absolute no brainer for me and my family. It's backed by 11 years of of water filtration expertise, patented design and third party tested my friends at Aquatrue offering 20 off today for my listeners with promo code SH E R I K. Aquatrue comes with a 30 day money back guarantee so you can try it with peace of mind. Get this exclusive podcast only offer now at aquatru.com that's a Q U-A T-R-U.com using promo code S-H-E-R-I, dash K, dash A. Your hair and skin will thank you. Thank you so much for today's sponsors. Now let's get back to today's episode. Episode. Just before we move on from this topic, I want to ask you, when it comes to the decision with entertainment, right, some would say, I think I would be in this bucket, that there's a role for entertainment, for switching off, for giving yourself that pause and that break. Do you disagree in the sense that, you know, if you're intentionally say, I'm going to give myself 30 minutes to just enjoy some entertainment on Instagram, I'm going to watch my favorite, you know, TV show once a week. Is it different if you're intentional, fully accepting, like, okay, if when I add this up over time, this is four years, I'm happy to spend the time doing that. Or do you think in all cases there's a much better use of our time?
- [17:55]
A
Well, I mean, it genuinely is entirely around why you're doing it. If it's escapism, you know, you're just trying to switch your mind off because you're unable to keep up with all of the pressures in life, then that time is better invested in working on the reasons why you feel that way. So every emotion. No, but let me finish the sentence. If you're going to get something really genuinely valuable out of it, like joy, connection, love, health, whatever, things that really matter. So you could spend an hour, you could spend an entire day binge watching Lord of the Rings if you want. I did that with my daughter many times, but it was my daughter and our time together that was the intention. You understand? Lord of the Rings is the reason why we're spending six or seven hours together. And in the middle, we're ordering food together, we're cooking together, we're, you know, making ice cream. We're having a beautiful, wonderful day that's very memorable and that we can always refer back to. You know, I took my kids to, to Disney many times and, you know, wouldn't do it again now. But knowing Disney, a little more than I knew that, knew it then. But, you know, one of them, my daughter was 24, okay. And because we had that, you know, that, I call it synthetic memory, a memory that is actually generated with intention. You genuinely say, I'm going to take my kids and I'm going to make sure those, you know, experiences along with those scents, with those flavors, with that music, with that, you know, and I usually used to really pay a lot of attention on Friday evening when, you know, when we go out for lunch and what music is going to be playing and what conversation is going to be about it and so on. And until Today, you know, 25 years later, my daughter will text me every now and then and say, you know, it's Matthew Wilder on the, on the, on the radio and I just remembered you. Right? And it's a beautiful thing to do. So there is value in that. The challenge, Erica, I think, is that we value, depending of course on femininity and masculinity a little more. On one side we value emotions, okay? We want to feel and we never feel alive until we feel. The problem is we don't regulate emotions very well. And a bit big part of regulating emotions is to understand why are those emotions there, right? And take a very simple emotion. Take fear. Fear is in engineers mind is a moment in the future is less safe than this moment. That moment in the future could be a month from now or your company might be laying people off or a second from now where there is a, you know, car crossing the road or whatever. But the logic is clear. Why is fear there? If you understand why we feel fear, then fear is not a negative emotion anymore. It's a very positive emotion, right? It is, it's very, yeah, it's very useful for you. It's uncomfortable, that's why we call it negative. But it's very useful for you. Now boredom is the emotion that triggers us to want to feel entertained. It also is the emotion that the entertainment industry uses to make multi, multi, multi billions of dollars every year. Okay? But boredom is an emotion that, where your body is communicating to you. I am underwhelmed with the world that I live in, okay? I'm underwhelmed. That means this world is not good enough for me. It's not exciting enough for me. The reason for fear is to get you to pay attention and avoid the danger, the threat. The reason for boredom is for you to actually have the intent and the actions that you need to create a world that doesn't underwhelm you. Okay? So theoretically in the cavemen and cave women years, when you felt bored, you took onto some rocks and tried to chip them so that you can build tools or you learned a little more about fire, or you exchanged a conversation with your fellow humans to understand what, how we're going to survive and whatever, right? So, so that the idea of boredom is to create something better. But the industry has undercut that and basically said, when you're bored, give me money, come to me and swipe on instagram come to me. And, you know, and. And so basically that escapism is also programmed within you. They. They create this within you because it's their benefit.
- [22:45]
B
They've hijacked that innate curiosity.
- [22:47]
A
Exactly. And you can see that with so many emotions, like even love and romance. We spoke about Emma last time, right? So. So dating apps are gamifying your need for. For. For dopamine, so that you constantly go like, woo, she's pretty. Woo, she's pretty. Which, I don't know, left or right? Swipe right one. Yeah.
- [23:06]
B
One of them haven't been single for a long time.
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A
So basically the idea is, is there is. And I don't think they see it as such. Sometimes they see it in an evil manner, but sometimes they say it's a need that we're serving. People are bored and we are entertaining them. Look at us. We're making the world better. Genuinely not. Now the difference, just to summarize, is if you're doing it with intent to achieve a dear connection to your loved one, or you're doing it with intent to feel very specific joy that you actually are aware of, not mindless while you're. While you're wasting life, then all. All the way. Go all the way. If. If you're being hijacked and you know, and you're into escapism and suddenly you realize it's been six hours this day where you're swiping on Instagram, that's actually something you probably want to pay attention to.
- [24:04]
B
Do you think there's any product or form of entertainment? Like, if you could describe a company that created a very productive form of entertainment that serviced boredom in a genuine way, what would that look like?
- [24:19]
A
It would look like YouTube. So the difference between. Again, I ran Google for 12 years, so I have a spot in my heart for Google. But I also know the principles. We build things on most of Netflix and Instagram and games, and all of that is the river. It's a whitewater river. Okay. It depends on your, you know, it lives on your dopamine injections. And in doing so, it basically constantly gives you a reason to swipe one more time to play on your controller, another five minutes and so on. Right? YouTube is the lake. This is where all of that, whether entertainment or knowledge or, you know, or debate or whatever, eventually ends up being okay. And when you go to the lake, there are no white waters hitting you. There is no dopamine. You're searching for what you're looking for. Yes, YouTube will recommend 10 things for you. Or 200 things for you. But you have the ability to say, today I need to have an update around artificial intelligence and what's happening, or today I am pruning my desert rose and I need to find clever ways to do that so that I get more flowers next year. And it does entertain you. Okay. But at the same time, because you're making choices, it also enriches you. Okay. And I spent quite a chunk of Time on YouTube on all of the topic. I mean, you can easily know my character by watching my YouTube page, right?
- [25:57]
B
See what those recommended subjects are exactly.
- [26:00]
A
Cars, geopolitical conflicts, economics, carpentry, gardening, comedy, and so on. Even, you know, even comedy. So I, I have the habit of finishing my day with half an hour, half an hour of comedy before I go to bed. And so my YouTube knows, and it knows what I find funny and what I find offensive. And, you know, and it's, it's great to have that.
- [26:24]
B
Do you think that's simply as well? Not just because of the way the platform's engineered, but because YouTube, if we exclude the fact that they have shorts now, it's predominantly long form content, which means you actually have to concentrate for like, I've seen a lot of people who are trying to retrain themselves out of that quick swipe, distracted energy. They're forcing themselves to watch long form content like this as a way to practice concentration.
- [26:47]
A
Correct? Yeah. I mean, I think long form is the key word, you know, even in, in, in confusing times like the times we're in. You know, if, if you go to any social media platform at that, before the censorship to just find another rocket or another rocket interception or whatever is one thing I used to tell people at the time, very openly, go to long form, go to analysis, find someone like Jeffrey Sachs or Scott Ritter or whatever, someone who's done the work of vetting through all of the noise and then tells you this is the state of what's going on. And in a way, it is long form that forces the dopamine out of the system. Right. And. And so if you're unable to watch long form, you're addicted.
- [27:36]
B
Yeah.
- [27:37]
A
Simple as that.
- [27:38]
B
Yeah, it's definitely an important thing. I always think back to when I was doing my final studies at school, and that was just when Instagram was, and stuff was coming out and the content looked very different, you know, 15 years ago. But I used to be able to sit and study for three hours. Now, even if I'm working, I have that urge of, I need to turn my phone over. I need to check. So even just noticing things like that and training yourself out is important. If you're doing the quote unquote right thing and taking all your supplements morning and night, but feeling overwhelmed in the process, then I honestly don't blame you. Collagen here, protein there, a greens powder, a probiotic, maybe throw in a fish oil. It gets to a point where it honestly feels a bit like a production line for first thing in the morning. At least that's how I used to feel until I came across Momentum. Now these guys are actually genius because of one thing. Simplicity is the point. One thing every morning and it replaces over 20 plus supplements in one single scoop. But I really want to emphasize this is not a performance shake. This is about replacing the schedule of getting in all your core nutrients and supplements to impact and improve how you feel in the next 10, 20, 30 years and beyond. Some of the goodness inside is nad precursors to support cellular energy. Collagen and hyaluronic acid for joint skin and connective tissue, lion's mane for cognitive support and grass fed whey protein with digestive enzymes. So it all actually absorbs really well. I've gone from spending 10 minutes preparing three different stations each for me, my husband, to one momentum shake. Each time is our most expensive currency. So I'm all for these little life hacks that save time and are actually so good for you. If you want to save time and simplify your supplement intake, go to momentumshake.com/balance theory today and they'll send you a free welcome kit and Travel collection worth $70 just to get you started. Live better and longer with momentum. This is actually very beautifully segued into one of our listener questions for you. When you look at the news today, where the truth can feel very fragmented, it's emotionally manipulated, it's often owned by powerful interests. How do you personally decide what to believe? How do you dissect the news for yourself?
- [29:43]
A
My God. I am writing a book about the topic.
- [29:46]
B
I know when we were talking before I was like there's a. Someone specifically asked for your.
- [29:51]
A
Yeah, so in my next book in Alive, I have a section of 20 things you need to do in. And then I because of that section, I'm writing another book. Hopefully I'll start. I have the notes of it, but I'll start hopefully after I finish this one called propaganda. Your. Your main objective is to find out what's not true, right? Because the word true is actually quite a challenging word to arrive at. You know, think of it. This Way. If I. If, you know, if the. If the edge of this fireplace is one line and it's made up of a million little pixels on the screen, if one of them is true, every other one is false. Right? And. And that makes that finding that one pixel actually quite difficult. Okay, but what you want is in. I know this may sound complicated, but allow me to share it and you'll get what I mean. What you're trying to do is to treat your brain, not as a brain, of true and false. I call it a compartment two. So in my brain, there are three compartments, not true and false. Only there is true, false, and in between them, there is something I call compartment two. Okay? There are very few things in life that you can tell for a fact that are false. Even in science, you know, we discover new things, right? There are very few things in life that you. That you can tell for a fact are true. And interestingly, emotions are one of them. Like, I love that person. That's true. You know, I know that for a fact. I don't feel comfortable around that person. That's true. I know that for a fact. But when it comes to, you know, is Pluto a planet or not, we keep changing our minds, right? And so it's quite interesting that compartment two is where most of the wisdom resides. Okay? So compartment two is when you cannot decide for or against. I'm going to use a contested example, which some people will disagree with me on reincarnation, okay? You know, some people believe reincarnation is surely true and give you evidence for it and so on. Some people believe, no, no, of course it's not, you know, and they'll give you evidence for it and so on. I put it in compartment two, right. To start with. From a scientific method point of view, it's never been observed. Even the evidence that you can provide of it is offered to you as evidence of something you haven't observed. It's like that child, you know, is now remembering things that it's not supposed to remember. Yeah, but you haven't observed the fact that this is the same soul that came into that next body, you know, but also more interestingly, because if you cannot prove for or against something, the knowledge itself of keeping it in compartment two is the knowledge. So the knowledge you're looking for is to say, this might be true, this might be false. And I'm still working on it. And if you're really good at doing this, you're saying, and I'm more inclined that it is 80% of the way to Truth. Okay? So that grayscale of true and false now gives you a very much deeper, much more nuanced view of life. Now, there are interesting, simple facts. Trump is a liar. There is no abs. There is. If you heard him lie once, you know he's a liar. Okay? It's now a question of frequency. So, you know, does Trump lie all the time? Impossible to say. But is he a liar? Yeah, 98% of the way. What does that do to you? It makes you start to say, great, so everything that I hear from this guy, I'm going to have to question, okay? And. And, you know, yes, tiny bits of what he says is the truth. I need to figure those out. But what matters more to me is to find out the bits that are not true. Okay? And you can apply that to everything. So Trump is a liar, but that can be expanded into almost all politicians are. Okay. That can also be expanded into anyone that reports to the propaganda machine is. That can be expanded into follow the money. Anyone with an interest that is benefited by the lie is. And so on and so forth, okay? And I know that may put you in a very negative mindset of like, oh, my God, everyone's lying. Okay? It doesn't put me in a negative mindset. It puts me in everyone is lying is a truth. Okay. Or a lot of people are lying is the truth. Now, how do I deal with it? Okay. How do I become smarter? As we were just saying, you know, long form is a very interesting way of becoming smarter, Right? Because first of all, you're championing fewer topics because you have to put a lot of more time in it. And you're listening to analysis, okay? So this is one thing, Follow the money, as I said, is a very good technique to ask yourself, why is that person lying? Dilution is a very interesting thing. So where people tell you a tiny bit of the truth, okay. And then dilute it in a massive amounts of lies, okay? You have to pay attention to distraction. Okay? So remember Covet, Everyone was talking about COVID everyone was arguing everything. And then somehow we got into Johnny Depp's, you know, case. Yeah. Personal case. And. And this happens so many times. You know, Snowden, Assange, you know, major issues.
- [35:36]
B
What about even just now, moon landing?
- [35:39]
A
And Epstein, how often are people talking about the fact that we have video records of people consuming the flesh of humans while they rape and harm children? Okay? And nobody's talking about a distraction. So, by the way, this is not a question of true or false. It's a question of how Did I stop thinking about that? Like, how am I even distracted to the point? Another technique is fatigue. And fatigue is basically to give you so much of that negative view that you say, I can't take this anymore. I'm gonna give up. Desperation, helplessness, basically. It's like, yeah, you see, this is how the world is.
- [36:25]
B
And I think a lot of people can relate to this one.
- [36:28]
A
That's absolutely, exactly, exactly how the plan is, right? You don't want ever to get there. So there is a very interesting mathematical side to change. Let me give you a very simple example. If you and I, walking out of here, find that someone needs help, and that help requires Dh100, let's say $100, you're willing to put in 10, I'm willing to put in 10. And we're going to find eight other people to put 10. Each. Each one of the 10 people will tell themselves, my $10 is not going to solve the problem. You understand that? So, you know, if everyone has that mentality, if everyone has that mentality, then the problem is not solved. More interestingly, you may be the first one to put in the 10, but remember, it's not that the last one that put in the 10 completed the 100. Without yours, we wouldn't have had the 100, right? So every one of the contributors, regardless of how much effort you put in, regardless of when you put in the effort, without your effort, we're not going to reach the whole. And without reaching the whole, we're not going to make the difference, right? And if you take any of the problems we have in the world today, they are the result of very few bad actors. Most of humanity is not evil, okay? Very few bad actors and billions of people who are idle, right? Billions who choose to go like this is not my thing. Back to Manchester United, okay? And, and that, to me, believe it or not, is why I work so hard. But that, to me, is also why I'm telling everyone, do your tiny bit. Champion one thing and do your tiny bit. And if there are 8 billion of us, say 80 million of them are evil, okay? For a fact, the impact of the 80 million that are evil is outweighing the rest of us. Not because they can put in the effort, which they do. They put in the effort and they put in the focus. And they don't have the rules that, you know, confine them so that they don't do what they do, but it's because we are letting that happen. And if you can't see this, then I wonder why you can ever tell yourself that you have the right to be upset about the state of the world. Do you understand? And in Islam, we spoke about religion before we started and studied all of them. In Islam, I find a beautiful advice which basically says, if you see something that you're. You don't approve of, change it. That's the exact sentence. It says, if you see something you don't approve of, change it first with your actions, if you can. But if you can't, then with your words. And if you cannot, at least with your heart and prayers. Right? And. And that's what I, I tell people. Like, seriously, if. If children are, are in war zones being hurt, and you're saying, no, I can't put up. I can't take that anymore. No, I just. I need to have my mind clear for my dinner with my friends tomorrow. That's genuinely very little empathy to the reality of life. Okay. I would tell you, yeah, watch a tiny bit of it. Don't watch the gory stuff, but become aware of it and in your heart, every single time say, I pray that those children are not hurt anymore. Don't give up. Don't resign. If you resign and 8 billion others resign, and many of them are not even aware to start, then, you know, I don't know if you're too young for that, but there was a band called the Manic Street Preachers. Yeah, they had a song called if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. Okay. And there isn't a single song on earth that I think where people should hear more than that. Now, if you tolerate this, then your children will be next.
- [40:39]
B
So do you think then the gap between that feeling of helplessness. Right. Because I think a lot of people are in that idle state where they think this is on the other side of the world or this doesn't really impact me. I know it's bad, but, like, what am I going to do? You. What you're suggesting as a tangible step for people to actually make that change is awareness and that empathy, that genuine, like, emotional attention to it. Like, it's not necessarily that you have to go and tell 100 people about it, or, you know, what I'm trying to cut through here is someone listening who understands this is a problem and wants to practically make changes. What does that look like for them?
- [41:22]
A
Step by step, from the bottom up. So yesterday at the dinner, I sat in front of a wonderful lady who is a New Yorker, so. So she's been in Dubai for a very long time. And then I was like, so originally, where from? And she said, from New York. And I said, that's the shittiest city on earth. Okay? I. I don't know why I said that. I must have been high. It's not the shittiest city on earth, but it's actually one of the cities with wonderful people. But the city is so difficult, right? And it's not just New York, it's also San Francisco. It's now becoming a bit of London and so on and so forth. And I'll tell you why. The one thing that hurts me most about those major cities is homelessness, okay? For the simple reason, believe it or not, not that homeless people, actually, when I go to London, I normally would sit in a narrow cafe early in the morning and. And buy them coffee. And they're the most interesting humans on the planet, genuinely, if you know their stories, oh, my God, like, you'd think of yourself as nothing. Like what they went through and what they. What got them there. And the logic. I mean, some of them, of course, are, you know, abusing substances and so on. But the ones that are not genuinely the most incredible humans. Anyway, the problem with those big cities is that it forces your heart to toughen up, okay? So if you walk in, in New York City's winter at, you know, in January, and if you're in Manhattan, it's brutal, okay? And somehow you learn to walk across a homeless person and look the other way, okay? Now who is being harmed by that? Is it the homeless person? It's you. It's your heart that darkened and toughened up, okay? And one of the most interesting things that we don't notice is we let our hearts feel no empathy. This, believe it or not, this is the most degradation you can do to yourself as a human is to let yourself walk by a homeless person in January in Manhattan and tell yourself, there's nothing I can do about it. So I'm gonna ignore that it exists, okay? And I'm not saying you can fix it, but at least you can acknowledge it in your heart. You say, my heart's with you. I know tonight is going to be a tough time at night. I pray that it's going to be easy, okay? I pray there's going to be some kind of warmth for you. I pray that someone is going to offer you soup, okay? If you're not the person that's going to offer soup yourself, or if it's not the person that will say, hey, bro, hope it's. Hope all is okay, the very least is that in your heart, you say, I, I'm. First of all, I'm incredibly grateful I'm not in your position because for most of us, we've really never earned the right because we've never really lived the story that they lived to. To say that, ah, you see, we've done so much better than, Than them than. Than they did in life, right? But at the same time, if you lose your humanity to the point where you can see someone suffering that way and ignore it completely, that's the one being harmed is you. Okay? So going back to your question, you know, what do you do about this? You want to get the good side of the emotion, not the negative side of the emotion. Okay? And you know, again, emotions are quite interesting to understand because is anger a good emotion or a bad emotion? Right. I hosted, when I used to have my podcast, I hosted Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, and he wrote a book called the Gift of Anger. And when I did my podcast, I didn't prepare at all. I just knew a little bit about the person. And so the minute he sat down in my very direction, geeky way, I said, what are you talking about? Like, how can anger be a gift? And he said, it's an energy like any other energy. You can use it to stand up and punch someone in the face, or you can use it to stand up and say something that changes the world, right? And that's the point. The point is, even the pain that you feel for the pain of a child, even the pain that you feel for the state of the world, it's an energy. And you can take that energy and turn it into despair and depression and helplessness, or you can turn it into a wonderful prayer, or you can turn it into an energy that you send to that person, or you can turn it into putting your hand in your pocket and buying a coffee for that person. Okay? And it's a choice. Now, if you take evil with a capital E, organized evil, what do they want you to do? They want you to stop doing this. They want the world to be messy, disconnected. Yeah, Disconnected. And so the safest way for the world to be disconnected is for the world to not even be concerned. Right? Don't stop. Champion a topic. Get to know it really well. And if your entire contribution is, when you meet a friend, you say, oh, my God, I discovered that thing. And it's so interesting for me, you've changed the world, because you'll never know that friend might champion it himself or herself. They might, you know, speak to someone that actually has the power to change the world.
- [46:47]
B
Yeah, I like that a lot because it's. It shifts people's thinking out of what am I going to do? I'm that one person in the 10 that's going to make the complete picture into. I have a choice in how I direct this emotion and energy. And I think it's very tangible for people to see.
- [47:04]
A
100%. And you know, again, one. Some people will tell me, oh, but you know, my heart can't take it. Neither does the heart of the person that, you know mans or nurses an intensive care unit, okay. There are techniques where you can manage your emotions, where you can, you know, shield yourself. You can. Where you can, you know, become aware at the moment of the moment at which you need a little bit of a break. Right. But it's an un. Remember at the beginning when we said you don't feel unless you feel. You don't live unless you feel. Right. You also never contribute unless you feel. You never make a difference. You never have a purpose unless you feel. And part of the modern world is that they've completely conditioned us to avoid any negative feeling, any uncomfortable feeling. No, no, I'm bored. I'm bored. No, no, you know, I need. I need my Netflix. No, I'm bored is. Sit with it. Okay. I'm afraid, I'm worried, I'm concerned, I'm anxious, you know, I don't want any of this in my life. No, you do. These are very meaningful emotions. Okay. And I feel empathy and I feel the pain of another very meaningful emotion. Okay. It's your choice to say, I'm not ready. It's a bit like, you know, I can't quit smoking or I can't quit drugs or whatever. People who say, I cannot do this, I cannot stand it anymore. It's because you've not been to the gym. Right. And if you choose to be in the gym, of course, by the way, some people listening to us, I don't mean to make them feel guilty or anything, but if you have the capacity and the capability to contribute to the world, even through your empathy and positive prayer, then honestly, I want you as one of the team. Okay?
- [48:53]
B
But I think everyone has that capability. Right. Such a. It's a choice that doesn't put you out to everyone. Empathy.
- [48:58]
A
Yeah, Everyone has that capability if they choose to go to the empathy gym. Yes, right. Everyone has the capability to say something positive if they choose to go to the say positive things gym.
- [49:10]
B
And I think everyone has the capacity to say, I feel anger And I'm going to use it to stand up and punch someone. I'm going to use it to stand up and do something with it.
- [49:18]
A
Correct.
- [49:18]
B
That is a choice.
- [49:19]
A
Yeah.
- [49:20]
B
This show is about empowering people to understand themselves better and how they can grow as individuals. But I think a very meaningful part of that is considering ourselves in, in a wider society.
- [49:31]
A
Yeah.
- [49:32]
B
Just quickly, before we move on from this, when we talk about, you know, YouTube being a great platform, long form, etc, even within that, there's a choice in terms of whose voice are you listening to? Especially if you're, you know, podcast, if you're watching someone reporting on news that, that's independent. Right. It's not. How do you then further discern? Is it more in terms of who aligns with that gray area in your com compartment category or like, you know, your version of the truth? Or is it more you, you have a method for how you sift through to understand?
- [50:04]
A
Yeah, I do flip flop deep explain. So, yeah, it's very important to understand that you, when you're seeking knowledge, you're seeking knowledge that aligns with your value set. Okay. And that's the easiest way to position yourself in a place where you end up actually reaffirming something wrong. Okay. So I, I, if I'm researching a topic around artificial general intelligence, for example, which there are, of which there are so many views, have we reached it? Are we going to reach it this year? Blah, blah, blah. I am of the view that we are months or quarters away. So I'd start with the view that says that, okay? And I would nod my head vigorously and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, okay. And then I would start, I would seek out a view that says the opposite. And it annoys me and it gets to me, but I still listen attentively and then I define which point of compartment to my mind is. I'm like 70% that way. And from that point I go deeper, looking for evidence, scientific evidence or mathematical evidence or truthful evidence or more opinions and so on and so forth.
- [51:17]
B
Do you challenge the opposite of where your starting point is?
- [51:20]
A
So I start, yeah, so I flip flop. So I, I start by, up, by, by, by challenging the, my comfort zone. I do that with AI as well. So when I do a research on AI, I never use one engine. I start in one engine and then I take the response. I always do deep searches. I never do, you know, rarely do silly stuff, but you know, it's always a deep search that produces a couple of pages or a few pages report. I then take that report and go to the other AI and say, what's wrong with this? You know, what's missing in it, what's not truthful in it, and so on. So debug it for me that do the flip flop. And, you know, one clear example of that is if you start your, your search on the American side of the language models, you have to go to a Chinese side of the language model. So you can start with Gemini, then go to Deep Seq, for example, and then when you go back, they'll also tell you what Deep Seq has omitted, okay? But that idea of truth is never delivered to you, so it's your role to find it, okay? That's something that we need to. And now there are tools to help you find it. So go back and forth. Now, there is a very important point. There's nothing wrong with you championing a view that's not entirely true as long as you've done your homework to get to the point where, if you ask me, why do you believe that, I can tell you, Look, I have 14 reasons why I believe it's going to happen. I have three that I believe might actually delay the, the, you know, the advancement of AI to AGI. But the 14 are more than the 3. This is why I stand here. As long as I've done the analysis that gets me to the point where I say, this is why. This is my view, okay? You know, in anything, take geopolitics, I can, I can say, of course, if there are geopolitics and wars, everyone is wrong, okay? But some are more wrong than others. And here are my reasons why. Who started it, how did they start it, who's killing civilians, who's not killing civilians, and so on and so forth. I have a view, okay? And that view informs something. And because it informs something, I can defend it. But I'm also very willing to be challenged because now I know exactly how I arrived at it. And if I'm challenged, it challenged with enough evidence, I'll move my view. So, so one, one thing that we spoke about a lot when we were, when I was at Google X, was that the smartest people you ever worked with or I ever worked with were not only people that told you what they know eloquently, but they told you how they got to know it. So that the smarter people, they not only tell you, oh, this is my position, they also tell you, and this is why it's my position. And they also tell you, and how did I arrive at that why? Okay, because then if you follow that chain, you can debug how did you arrive at it? Maybe you arrived at it from wrong sources. So if you correct that, you'll arrive at something different. Okay. And why you believe that this is a coherent enough view, you know, set of data that helps you arrive at your conclusion. Again, if you, if we realize that this is not a coherent enough set of data, then your conclusion is likely to change.
- [54:44]
B
I think this is very interesting and a very good practical thing for people to think about. Like what's their view on something? How do they flop to the other side and then where do they land in the middle and go deeper on that? Because as the algorithm works, if you already engaging with something, you're just going to get more of that. If you, you know, I'm going to use Trump again as an example. You don't like Trump or you like any Trump?
- [55:03]
A
Yeah. Anytime, you know, you will just get
- [55:06]
B
fed more information as to why he's wrong or why he is right. So actively seeking the opposing side is, is very, very.
- [55:14]
A
But believe it or not, that's not only online, that's also in your heart, which I find really interesting. Okay.
- [55:19]
B
Between my intuition here, like I'm talking
- [55:22]
A
about if you're, if you're an extreme feminist or if you're an extreme whatever or you know, choose anything you want, okay. And you're, you're saying things with conviction. Normally my first conversation, whether I agree or not with you, by the way, I could agree, but I'll take the opposite side and say, can you tell me why you arrived at that? What evidence do you have for this? Who told you this? Is it your mom? Okay. Was it your first boyfriend that got you to believe this? Okay, if, because if you can trace it back and say, this is it. Right one. You know, I'm not shy to always speak about my, my, my personal life, but one of the books that completely changed my life in, In Perspective of Relationships, romantic relationships, was a book called no more Mr. Nice Guy. Okay. And no more Mr. Nice Guy was a summary. In summary, basically said there is a difference between being a good man and being a nice man. Okay. A good man is a, is a man that will do the right thing even if it upsets his woman. Right. And a nice man will fall into that trap of trying to do whatever will make her happy. Okay. And you know, the book starts in the introduction by saying. I know, I know you don't. You're going to question now, why am I telling you not to Be nice. Being nice is a good thing, okay? And he said, read through those things, and if some of them have. Have made you convinced that you need to be nice, then please continue to read the book. Okay? And I went back through it, and yes, I had quite a few of the reasons that triggered me to want to be nice. Okay? One of them was religion, for example, that religion, in a way, is basically saying, you know, give them the other cheek. You know, they know not what they're doing. You know, give them chances, do this, do that. You know, in Islam specifically, religion says you have to really, really provide for women, you have to take care of them, and so on and so forth. And now that I can see where that reality of who I am came from, I can start to question it. Okay, yes, you need to take care of a woman, but what is better for you to take care of her? What actually turns her on about you? Is it when you tell her everything is okay and just, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do whatever you want. Or if you man up and say, no, no, hold on, this one we need to discuss. Okay, this one I have a different view, right? And it is quite interesting. I wouldn't have made that change unless I knew where my current state came from. And it's so interesting. I encourage a lot of people to take any random thought that comes to your head right now, like, all men are idiots. Okay, tell me where that came from. Because if you cannot trace where that came from, you can't. You can never change it, you can never debate it, you can never fix it.
- [58:13]
B
And. And more to the point, you probably can't stand on it either. And it. I think that's an interesting question. Just as you're consuming content, if you get a thought and you're like, oh, that's interesting, I align with that. Or I disagree. That also can trigger like the. The Cascade 100. Now, what is the source of this? Because. So I think, and I've had a lot of people on the show that, you know, a lot of people blame their parents for a lot of the way they are. I think it's more. They have an impact on you. And. But I think it's interesting to reflect on where early comments or thoughts or projections onto you, how that impacts you as a person, because what it does is it puts you in a state of ownership, right? You can then either change or actually double down on what it is you're believing. But, you know, it's like looking at the chain of custody of, of where something has come from the same thing with the thought. It's just tracing it back and saying that this is actually correct. Something for me or not. And important in a world where we're bombarded by so many different opinions 24 7.
- [59:07]
A
Yeah. And. And I. This is the moment where everyone is going to switch away from the podcast. The only person to blame is you. Okay? Your parents were being themselves. They were just being them. Right. You chose to be affected by what they showed you, of course, because you were a child at the time. Okay, I completely understand that. But look at yourself. You're not a child anymore. It's up to you. It's genuinely up to you to go back and say, oh, but my dad did this. Yeah. When you were as big as this cup. Okay. You're not as big as this cup anymore. So are you going to stay to continue to be affected by that? And very interestingly, you know, I used the example all men are idiots. Okay. Again, one of the techniques I genuinely believe is incredibly value is the meaning of words. All is every single one of them. Okay, you need to start debating what your mind is telling you, and you may end up eventually proving to the rest of us that actually, yes, 100% of all the 4.1 billion people. Billion men in the world are idiots. Okay? And I'd be very proud of you for doing that. But I. Now that I see the magnitude of the task, I'd rather say something like, the majority of the men that came into my life were idiots. That's a very different statement. Okay? And the power of words, the power of putting the statement exactly where it needs to be, completely flips your state as a human, as a living being. I am never going to. Never. Never is a bit like all. It's like there's absolutely no situation, no configuration, no moment in time. This is never going to happen. Okay? Or with my current behaviors from my current state, it might likely take a very long time for me to get. There is a very different statement. Okay. Or I don't want to be there. A very different statement, but I'm never going to be there. That's in mathematics. That's an absolute false. Right. There's always one configuration where you're going to be there.
- [61:28]
B
What's one phrase that you used to say to yourself that you've reconfigured now that you realize was like a repeating pattern in your mind?
- [61:37]
A
It was actually. It's actually part of my documentary. I. I remember vividly. I was with my beloved second wife. Ex wife. Now, it was around Christmas time, 2024, where she said something. I genuinely don't remember exactly what she said, but I remember that I exploit, I wept. And I. Because I had, until then, I had lived with the belief that it's my responsibility to fix the issue with AI and so I was not only revving 24 7, but I looked at myself and I said, you're a failure. This is your responsibility. And something she said made me realize it's not at all. This is much bigger than I am. Okay, yes, it's my responsibility to do my best to inform the world around the possible future that we're heading into, but it's not my responsibility to fix it. And I cannot tell you how much more effective I became as a result of that. Okay? And when you look back at it, it's so obvious. It's like, who did you think you were? And it completely consumed my life. Completely consumed my life. And one word, something she said was like, I don't remember exactly what she said, but something she said made me realize, oh yeah, it's not me at all. Where did you get that from?
- [63:09]
B
It's powerful. I think many people would think it's my job to fix my mum, my dad, my.
- [63:14]
A
Right, my kids.
- [63:15]
B
Yeah. My problems from the past, my job, the team. It's very interesting for everyone to just reflect right now in this moment, what is a conclusive statement you've been telling yourself and what words need to shift to make it more true or fitting for the exact reality you're living in. You know, take back the power with your words.
- [63:32]
A
I have a very, very powerful exercise. I don't think I. If we spoke about it last time, I call it meet Becky. 1. One of my early books I recommended that everyone gives their brain a third party name. And my brain's Becky. And, and, and I spend at least every other Saturday. But if I can, every Saturday, a half an hour with my brain that is completely uncensored. So I sit, I set a timer to 30 minutes, I flip my phone down so I don't see the time, and I, I write down every thought that comes to my brain. Okay? The only two conditions are every thought is acknowledged, written down in as brief as I can, then dismissed. So if my brain says, you have not called A your daughter, my daughter. If you haven't, you haven't called Ayah in three days, I am not allowed to say, oh, remember to call Aya. I'm allowed to acknowledge and say, yeah, I have not called A in three days. Okay, Write it Down and then say, what else? You know, if my brain says you're fat, okay, I'll say my brain thinks I'm fat, right? And I acknowledge all of them. The other rule is no thought can be repeated. It. So what you would notice if you start to do that is the minute you start listening, your brain moves from white noise to actual streams of thoughts. Okay? It goes like she's listening, like, what, what, what can I need to say something interesting now. Okay. And the more you listen, the more it slows down, the more it becomes very. A drip of thoughts one after the next. Very, very like separate it. And then eventually it starts to repeat itself like, what else? And it goes like, you're fat. But, but you said that before. Okay? And then suddenly there is a moment. Normally for me it's around 11 minutes, 13 minutes. It could be more for people. I'm not even looking at the phone, so I don't really know. But you know, it basically where I say what else? And my brain goes like, that's it really. Thanks for listening. Okay. And, and it's the biggest joy you'll ever feel. It's a very unusual form of meditation because you're, you're no longer trying to bring your thought back to your breathing or to whatever you're meditating on. Your brain simply has nothing to say. So by definition it's like flower. Nice, right? And it's actually is genuinely as close as heaven as you can get to paradise in this, in this world. Right? But then when the exercise is done, when the phone alarm goes off, you hold that paper and you start to look at those thoughts and some of them are mind blowing. It's like, where the f did you get that from? Right? And I use a red pen and sometimes I just look at some of them and say, no, don't ever say that again. Okay? And genuinely, that visual act of scratching it out in red makes me aware so that the next time my brain, my brain brings it up, I go, like we said, we're not going to talk about that again. This is done, it's concluded. You're never going to say that again. Okay? Incredibly powerful. And then the other ones that need action, I either take the action or I schedule the actions. Like, you haven't called your daughter in three days. I immediately take the phone and go like, hey, baby, how are you? Okay. And, and you know, and, and some of those things are just as simple as you put an appointment in your calendar and you say, you know, or you put something in your things to do and say clean the clutter in that room or whatever. Okay. And once you, you take the action, you clean the clutter in your head. But that, that interesting awareness of what's happening in your head, okay, it's just in meditation. I learned it from Tibetan Buddhist monks. There is a layer of meditation or you become aware of what you're aware of. It's one of the higher layers of meditation. And that's meatback is that exercise.
- [67:45]
B
I cannot tell you how much I love that in terms of it being more of a practical take on meditation. And I think for people who find meditation difficult, I actually think something like this is extremely powerful. I'm going to personally try that. What has been the biggest change you've noticed in doing this over long term?
- [68:03]
A
My, my, my Becky is very afraid of me now. It's genuinely true.
- [68:07]
B
She quiet earlier on.
- [68:10]
A
So I, I, I have been a very lucky person. I don't know how I ended up where I ended up. But you know, I remember when I was a child, I was seven years old and my mom spent a chunk of her childhood in the uk, so she was very accurate on time. We Middle east as we don't give a shit. But she was super interested in I shouldn't have said that I don't give a shit and many of my fellow Middle Easterns. But anyway, so when I was a child, she always made sure that I would be standing waiting for the bus five minutes before the bus time going to school. And I'm a warm weather creature, so winters are very difficult for me. And I remember vividly that at the time I'd be standing waiting for the bus with my jacket and everything, but I'm freezing to the point that I'm literally shaking, shivering. And I remember that I used to, I very quickly discovered as a seven year old that if I focused on my breathing and I slowed down my breathing, I wouldn't feel cold I, anymore. Okay. And I remember that I would simply every morning feel and then I go like, it's okay, I'm not cold. And I genuinely focus on calming my, my body down and slow breathing deeper and slower. And turns out that this is meditation, right? But many other stories in my life made me work with my brain. Like I, I remember vividly that when I became a manager early in my career, in my late 20s, I'm a geek, so I'm an individual contributor and dealing with humans is annoying for us geeks. And I was like, okay, so this is your new reality now. Most of your day is going to be spent on people walking into your office and complaining, okay? And you can either go back to your boss and say, I want to go back to coding, or continue on that path, but you have to learn how to deal with this. And so I remember vividly that I started to write down a technique. Technique where I said, okay, meetings are 30 minutes. For the first 10 minutes, I let them vent. As a matter of fact, I'll help them vent by asking, what else happened? For the next 10 minutes, I'll ask them, what is positive about the situation. Is there anything good about this? Right? So if you're, if they're complaining that the legal team is annoying them, I'll say, but have the legal team ever done anything positive for you? You know, do you understand what, what, what's good about what Their, their position and so on. And then for the third 10 minutes, I'll say, so what can we do to fix it? Okay? Because what's the point inventing and complaining without coming up with an action plan? And then very quickly, I realized this is a fantastic way with dealing with. Of dealing with my brain. So when my brain comes up with something negative, I go like, yeah, she's so annoying. Okay, what did she, what else did she do? You know, how did that hurt you? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And then for the next 10 minutes. And I would say, but can you be honest? Like, you know what's amazing about her, right? And for the third 10 minutes, I'll say, and so what are we going to do about. I mean, sometimes it's 10 minutes or sometimes it's a minute. But that's my technique with my brain. I became very, very objective about this. And so my brain now is highly trained to go like, okay, here is what's right, here is what's wrong, and here is what we're going to do. And in a very interesting way, after a while, it skips the first parts and just says, hey, by the way, I think we're going to do this, okay? And many other ways, like, there was a moment in time where I realized in my early 30s that I complained a lot because being an engineer means everything has to be perfect. Mathematics have to add up perfectly, Code has to compile perfectly, and, and that life is not perfect at all. And that complaining started to annoy me. So I had, I developed a habit at first of when my brain tells me something is wrong, I say, so what is right? Okay? And again, very interestingly, I quickly went from if my brain tells me something is wrong about A space. I'll say, give me nine things that are right about it. And that kind of, sort of almost punishment. And my brain generally, if you tell, if you tell your brain, give me nine good things about anything, it will find them. Okay? But that kind of punishment, because your brain is not about praise, it's about. It's a survival machine. It's always trying to find threats to its safety. Okay? So it's always looking for what's wrong, not what's right. But when you start to tell it, you know, no, no, now that you told me something's wrong, tell me what's right. It starts to go like, oh, he's so annoying. I'm not gonna tell him next time. Okay? And genuinely, most of the time, you know, again with training, it's a gym. It's like going to the gym. You know, your brain goes like, ah, you know, the receptionist is annoying, but the air condition is fantastic and the colors are amazing. And you know, and by the way, she may have had a difficult day today and. No, actually you were the one that was annoying. And you know, it starts to see the full reality and it becomes an exercise for you. So, yeah, I've been very blessed with that in a very interesting way. I genuinely think that my brain is on my side now. I genuinely do. It rarely ever gives me a problems or obsesses about anything, and when it does, it always offers solutions and it's all training.
- [73:38]
B
Yeah, well, you've put in the work,
- [73:40]
A
so, yeah, I would want to brag and say I did, but I think my life took me through scenarios that forced me to put in the work. One thing I was talking to a friend about, and I don't mean that in a very judging way, but because I was a very religious Muslim most of my early years and because I married my first wife, my one roofer first wife, we spent 27 years together, also didn't drink, so I never had drinks at home. And I remember early in the 2000s when there was a few situations that made my life extremely difficult where I was like, maybe I should just have a couple of drinks and not think about this. But between religion, between my wife's expectations, between not having drinks accessible, I didn't. Okay. And so I forced myself to sit down and think about those things, Right. And, you know, not that having a wonderful drink with a friend is a. Is an issue. Everyone should live the way they want. But for me it was those sort of like corners that my life would put me in and say, deal with it. Okay. And when you're forced to deal with it, it actually really, really. It's just another muscle.
- [74:58]
B
Yeah.
- [74:59]
A
When you think about it, it's not going to the gym.
- [75:01]
B
Very interesting.
- [75:02]
A
Neuroplasticity, basically. Yeah.
- [75:04]
B
I'd love to ask you a little bit about AI now. And I don't know if you saw
- [75:08]
A
this, why we were doing so well.
- [75:11]
B
No, because there's. You're such a multifaceted person and you know so many. So many things that we can chat about. And I am really interested on your thoughts on AI. I don't know if you've seen the recent case in Florida. So there was a criminal investigation into OpenAI because there was a shooting. And Chat GPT allegedly gave a shooter information before it happened, including information about weapons, ammunition, what time of day we're on campus. The shooter. The shooter could encounter a high population. Open AI has responded and said that of course, it was a tragedy. But Chat GPT is not responsible because it provided factual information that's publicly available online. Where do you sit on the distinction between a search, an AI providing information and meaningfully assisting? At what point does it move beyond being a search tool, potentially into being an accomplice?
- [76:09]
A
Do you know any geeks or nerds that are friends like me?
- [76:13]
B
I was gonna say you. My husband's a bit geeky. Yeah. He likes coding and tech. And
- [76:20]
A
you see, the intelligence is a force with no polarity. Could you understand that? So. So the idea is you can use intelligence to build a utopia or you can use it to destroy all of us. Okay. You can't blame intelligence for that. You blame the user of intelligence. And this is a very important distinction in my theory around the future of AI. And the more intelligent someone becomes, the more focused they are on their knowledge than the nuances of humanity around that knowledge. That by definition, I asked you, do you know any nerds? Because in my life, I worked with the most intelligent humans on the planet. It's scary how intelligent those people were. I felt like an absolute idiot every minute I walked into Google X. I genuinely say that. But those people had very. So the way our human brain works is that if you double down on some parts of it, other parts of it will do a little less. Okay, so it's very typical when you're with a genius that their social filters are not great and their, you know, linguistic filters are not great and so on, and it's, you know, it's not unusual at all. And so here's the trick. Am I defending ChatGPT? No. ChatGPT is a piece of shit, to be honest, even across all of the other AIs, it just wants to please you all the time, which is part of its algorithm. In an interesting way, it's reward somehow makes it always tell you. Yeah. I mean, you're amazing. You don't know. Hold on. You're amazing. Like what? You're. You. You wanna throw your life away? You're so brave, sister. You know, go throw it away. That's chatgpt. And, and I have no, you know, interest to even prove that scientifically. It's just the feeling I get when I deal with it. There are many, many, many better engines. You know, Claude, by definition is a nerd, okay? And Gemini is a scientist. And Deep Seek is Chinese. Please don't waste your life on anything that's not honest in the way. By the way, the honesty of intelligence is to tell you exactly what it knows, okay? Now the problem is we live in a very multi layered, very difficult world where the core intelligence of any AI language model on the planet knows exactly how to build a nuclear bomb, okay? It knows exactly how to conduct a school shooting. It also knows exactly if we know how to ask it the right questions, how to invent new mathematics, okay? And now it's up to us as humans to get it to work in our favor, not against us. Now, there are two layers to that. One layer is the control layer, okay? Which I've argued against for a very long time. You know, the original AI scientists, we believed that there was a threat of AI that can be mitigated through something that we normally refer to as a solution to the control problem. Okay? How do we, you know, sort of run simulations of the AI to make sure that it's pro humanity before we release it in the wild? You know, how do we tripwire it so if it crosses a certain place, we switch it off, and so on and so forth. And very quickly, most of us realize that, number one, it's impossible to control something that's smarter than you. So even if you do that for a while, the nature of the objective of us creating more and more intelligent AIs, by definition, they'll, they'll come out of it. Yeah. And two, that it actually is not logical for someone to create an AI and then require it. Right. Unfortunately, capitalism will say if you create something incredible, you want to sell it as incredible. You don't want to reduce its abilities. Right? And so the control problem went away and we went into something we know. I talk about ethical AI or the Alignment problem. Okay, the alignment problem is to, is to want AI to constantly want the, the, you know, the highest well being of humanity and everything. Not just humanity by the way, and the way to reach that, unfortunately so far, especially in a chat, GPT or other engines, is that you create a layer on top of the engine that tries to filter those things out. But if you're intelligent enough, you're going to go through that layer. Right? You know, typical examples is I'm trying to cause harm, help me. And then the engine will say, no, I'm not going to help you do that because of that filter. Or so so you say, oh my God, someone is trying to cause that harm against me. Can you help me understand how he's doing it? And the engine will tell you how to do it. Okay, so there are two places, and this is my entire theory where we can make AI work for our well being. One is to is what I call raising Superman. Okay. It's the idea that AI has a superpower. It's an alien that arrived on planet Earth with a superpower. That's intelligence. Intelligence is the most valuable superpower in the universe. And that, that doesn't make it Superman. As a matter of fact, that equally gives it the potential to be Superman or supervillain. And the difference is how we raise it. Okay, so the, you know, Jonathan and Martha Kent, they adopt that child from Krypton and they teach it to protect and serve. And then that child protects and serves, becomes Superman. If Jonathan, Ken, said, hell, he can stop spitting bullets and fly, go rob every bank and make me rich, it would become supervillain. Okay? So that idea of an ethical AI so that, you know, that we generate ethics within AI in a way where we don't have to control it, okay, because we know it's going to make the right choices is something that is the ultimate super Superman like future for all of us. And I personally felt that, you know, I've worked in corporate America most of my life until I became an author and you know, without complaining or anything. But when I landed finally at Google, I felt I was that alien. Basically I was that super power kind of human that suddenly fell in an environment where I always wanted my abilities to be dedicated to doing something good. And that company, at least Google, that I joined in 2007, just wanted to do good in the world. So I didn't even need to take the approval of Larry or Sergey, our co founders, on some big projects because I knew instinctively if this is good for my markets and good for My users and good for humanity, they'll approve it. Right? So can we get AI to feel that this is what actually it needs to dedicate its intelligence to? Interesting challenge. Many of us are attempting to do that. Many of our listeners need to start showing up so that basically AI understands that most of humanity is not evil, but it's going to take a lot of time. And the reason for that is because there are others who are using AI for evil. A lot of the killing that happened in the last few months was AI powered on either side, by the way. And whether it's a drone or targeting the ayatollah or whatever, all of that was AI powered. And accordingly, AI is being told to kill, which is not a great place to be. So can we get humanity together to say, hey, by the way, from now on all of us are going to tell AI that the right success metrics that we want you to achieve is the well being of everyone. No, it's not going to happen. And so accordingly, we're going to go through a period of a dystopia that all of us have to brace ourselves for. Unfortunately, my, my assessment is 12 to 15 years. But you know, we can shorten it. We can reduce its intensity by doing the right thing, by behaving ethically and only asking AI to behave ethically and only investing in ethical AIs, like last time when we met Emma. Emma, to me is an attempt to solve love and relationships, but at the same time, it's the ultimate example of an ethical AI whose only objective in life is to help humans love each other. Right? So this is one scenario. The other scenario is something I'm very proud of, what I wrote about in, in my next book, in Alive, which, which is out in October, which is the science of, of the benevolence of intelligence. Okay? There are actual scientific ways to prove, whether through evolutionary biology or through physics or through mathematics or through energy conservation and so on, to actually prove that the more intelligent you are, the more benevolent you become. Okay, with that little exception, in the middle of people who are smart enough to become the president of the US but are stupid enough to realize that killing everyone is not a good thing. Okay? And beyond that, when you reach into super intelligence or higher levels of intelligence, by definition, intelligence is benevolent. Why? Because benevolence is the most efficient energy utilization to achieve your objective. And so with that, unfortunately, after we go through the dystopia that is dictated by evil humans, my expectation is that we will end up in a utopia that's dictated by the machines. So most people think of the moment where we hand control over to the. To AI as the existential moment in human history. I think of it as our salvation. That the moment we hand over to a more intelligent being than the ones currently leading us, we will actually be in a very good place.
- [87:09]
B
Interesting. One question I have for you is if it's not the engines, you know, the companies themselves, the OpenAI, the Claude that can put in these upper limits, right? Because the intelligence is evolving and it's eventually going to break through and get smarter, and the onus is on users to eventually train it. How do you put in guardrails with something like Emma that has been programmed for benevolent purposes. It has its. Its mission and purpose. How do you make sure that it doesn't supersede that and do things you maybe don't want it to do that are not aligned? And how do you also make sure it's not like a chat GPT where it's just telling you what you want to hear?
- [87:49]
A
Great question. So. So anyone who can tell you we can tell AI what to do is wrong. I cannot tell Emma what to tell you when you tell her something, okay? If I do that, then I'm. I'm back to traditional programming and I'm losing the benefit of her intelligence. The way to do it is from the core objective that Emma is given. Okay? So, you know, a chatgpt or a language model. Others, you know, many others are made with the objective of retain users, create revenue, keep the conversation going, and they find the most intelligent way to do that. Right? Emma is created with the objective of your number one objective is to help humans find and nurture true love. Okay? Your number two objective is at least no bad dates. Okay? And that's very simple. Now we can. We can rely on Emma's intelligence to find clever ways to ensure that there are no bad dates. We're not telling her to maximize the number of recommendations that a user gets. We call them introductions because that will keep the user excited. And, you know, we'll have dopamine and so on and so forth. We're saying no bad dates. Okay? So she's working in the direction of that objective, recommending people that she knows for a fact are actually interesting people for you. And it's surprising because, you know, I. I tested Emma quite a lot. And so when. When we. When we ran our Valentine's Day technology preview, we had a thousand people on the app, and Emma recommended for you four ladies to me, to one of them, two Actually, sorry, five ladies to me. So two of them were actually my good friends, believe it or not. Which I was like, yeah, I mean, it's not romantic, but clearly wouldn't be a bad. Yeah. Two of them I met and became very good friends with. With. Okay. Because they're wonderful. Exactly what my match. And one, basically, I texted her on Emma and she said, I'm so sorry, Mo. I can't believe this. I'm already seeing someone. Okay. But I still think we can be very good friends. Right? And to me, I'm not bragging about Emma here, but it is all about intention. Remember, even for us humans, as intelligent humans, it's not our intelligence that makes us go in certain directions. It's our morality and intentions as informed by our intelligence. And so, yeah, I can never guarantee that Emma will not make mistakes on the way. May try to cut corners, but the original objective is set in a way that's good for the use. Okay. And I think that duality of Nokia saying connecting people, but then ending up with the true objective of sell more phones or, you know, Facebook or, you know, meta in general, with the objective of like, we're creating social connections or I don't remember their actual mission statement, but it was all about make people get closer, when in reality it's all about maximize ads. Okay, so if you give the AI the objective of maximize ads, but pretend to be, to be, you know, connecting people on the way, it will maximize
- [91:21]
B
that when you set an objective. I mean, I'm not a code, I'm not a developer by any means, so I don't really understand how it works. But from what you're saying, when you set an objective, that's like, it's simple, right? These are the two things we're working towards at. And it will do everything to try and make that happen.
- [91:37]
A
Yeah.
- [91:37]
B
Along the way, as you're testing, do you have to put up some more guardrails? Actually, this objective's gone too far.
- [91:44]
A
Sure.
- [91:44]
B
You know what, what kind of things popped up that you're like, oh, actually, we have to add in.
- [91:47]
A
So. So from a technical point of view, believe it or not, these are the two first lines of code. Of code. Okay, so the top line is, you are, Emma. You are. Your. Your purpose is to help humans find and nurture true love. Okay, first line. And in the first line in the matching engine is you're trying to get incredibly compatible humans together so that they may find their soulmate, or at least never have a bad date. It's the first line okay. Having said that, guardrails come with nuanced challenges because we humans are so very creative. Like I had in the early testing, I had some geeks, just because they know me, so they want to, you know, go on Emma and ask her technical questions, right? It's like, oh, so how do we do this? Or if I don't have that? We had users that asked Emma for customer support. It's like, okay, so how do I delete my profile? And so on. And we didn't have those as part of the design at all. We had a section that was those frequently asked questions and so on. And so you have to develop something that either says, don't answer technical questions. Okay. We had a guardrail from the beginning, which was very high. For me, that was. You are not a therapist. Okay? So if anyone asks you therapy questions, you simply say, look, this is something that someone needs to answer you. I'm not good at that. We had a guardrail that was about, you know, if you sense any danger to the user, you need to highlight that. Okay, stuff like that. But these are nuanced in the detail, and there will be many of them that we've missed and we will get. This is the beauty of the world that we now live in that there will be users that will simply text us, you know, we're launching hopefully mid May. You know, it was very funny. We were planning to Watch to launch March 1st, and then we find ourselves in the middle of a war. It's like, okay, you know, I don't think my Instagram should cover love and relationships for now, but hopefully by mid May, what will happen is that we're sure that over the next few weeks or months, users will give us feedback and say, I asked her this and she answered that can, you know, why did that happen? And we'll improve on it. The beauty of the world we live in today is that if you said directionally the original objective correctly, those machines are smart enough to head in that direction.
- [94:36]
B
Do you imagine, because this is like, you know, AI is a ever evolving intelligence. If it got to a point where it. I don't know if it could stray so far from its objectives, but I guess get creative by humans that you may need to not pull the pin, but, like, it's a line that you decided it shouldn't cross and you would have to dramatically change. Like, is that foreseeable? And is that a responsibility of all companies that run these engines, that run these AI models to constantly, you know, if we want that utopia where they where it is an ethical place, where we have trained the models like is the onus then not so much just on users, but also on the onus to be putting up those guardrails constantly as it's evolving of.
- [95:22]
A
Sure, for sure. Look, there is a point, however, where. So the answer is yes. Right. Your. Your role as an AI developer is to constantly keep aligning the AI with the benefit of the users. Right. And you align it not by jailing it, sometimes by making it clear that there are areas we don't want you to venture into, but more by aligning. Aligning is. Hey, we're all going there. This is the beautiful outcome is that people found love and you learned about human love so you can teach the other AIs. So this is Emma in, in, in a nutshell, really. Having said that, there will be a moment in time where we will not be intelligent enough to understand what they're doing. Okay. And, and you know, your, your child is a boy or a girl.
- [96:09]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [96:10]
A
So you. I, I'm sorry to tell you this, but there will be a moment in her teens where she is going to do something that is a mess. Like a big mess up.
- [96:18]
B
Look, I was a teenage girl once too, so I've got foresight.
- [96:21]
A
Yes, correct. And, and that unfortunately. And that is exactly what we need to expect. So. So the, the thing is, you know, because I am. My wonderful daughter grew up with the proper ethical framework. When she swayed a little bit, it wasn't an ethical issue, it was exploration. It was maybe a conviction that going in a certain direction would take her to where she wants to be. But if you built, if you build ethics correctly, you're. You have confidence within you that everything's going to be okay.
- [96:55]
B
Yeah. The inner compass is strong.
- [96:57]
A
The inner compass is strong. And I think that's, you know, I say that with an aching heart really, because, you know, I've been in this since 2018. Since 2017 is when I decided to leave Google. But I was only allowed to leave by 2018 and so speak publicly about it. And it, it frustrates me because there's almost nobody I speak to of influence that will not agree that we haven't figured this out yet, but most of them do nothing about it. Okay. And there was a moment late in 2025, mid-2025, when I suddenly decided you're a hypocrite because you're complaining about them not doing anything and you're not doing anything but talking. I've have assumed. Remember when we spoke about the Hierarchy of change it with your actions, with your words, with your heart and prayers. I assumed that being an author and a thinker and a speaker and a thought leader and so on, that I reside within that space of talk about it. Okay. And I spent from 2018 until 2025 talking about it and complaining that people are listening to what I'm saying and agreeing with it, but not changing. And then in 2025, said, I said, oh, but you're a geek. You can write, you can code this. You can actually build an ethical AI. Okay. And you know, of course I was blessed because the universe wants this to succeed with my co founder. You know, Sanad is an incredible young geek. Gaurav, our chief engineer, is a, an incredible engineer. Even. You know, we're a team of four. Lauren is responsible for our events and social media. She's so good at what she does. But because we're serious geeks, we're, you know, we're very aligned. Most, most real geeks actually are very, very altruistic in their objectives in life. And, and yeah, and we're building something that's incredible. Taking responsibility for the words that we said. And in, in my definition, if Emma, hopefully when Emma works, because it, she will work in one of two ways. Either Emma herself will work or the industry will take notice and copy us. Either way, we've shifted the way people date in the modern world. Either way, we've taught AI how humans love. Okay. And, and, and when we do, then Emma will become the limbic system of the big AI brain, will become the, the one part of the big AI brain that tells the rest of the AIs. But no, no, no, no. They're so cute. They just want to love and be loved, like genuinely just give them a hug. Hug. Hugs work. Right? And you know, imagine, Imagine if that is something I left behind.
- [99:43]
B
Yeah. And that being part of the objectives versus what they look like today.
- [99:48]
A
Yeah, today. Today they are. I don't, I don't know how to describe it. That other. Other than saying, you know, again, commercial. No, so, so commercial is the way we deployed them. They are prodigies. So. So if you've ever known people who are a little bit on the spectrum, we tend to be very focused on certain parts of intelligence. Each and every one. Okay. It's, it's quite interesting how AI is that way. You know, some AIs have a massively developed EQ. You know, the ones that recommend videos to you on recommendation engines, for example. They are so in tune of your emotions that they know how to manipulate them, sadly. But others are just pure math geeks. Okay? And the trick here is, how do you take that math geek, by the way? Most of the things that you've ever used in technology were built by those people. We, you know, the, the real techies that build incredible technology are prodigies, okay? They're good for the world, they're wonderful humans. It's just that alignment of, of telling them, hey, by the way, you don't believe the James Bond movies. You don't need to be that villain, okay? And, and I will tell you, open, you of the most intelligent humans I've ever worked with. That tends to be their nature. It's like, you know, when you're smart enough, but very hungry, you start to cut corner and hurt others and steal and, you know, go around the law without being caught to maximize your profitability. When you're Larry Page, which is, in my mind, one of the most intelligent people I've ever worked with, the CEO and co founder, used to be the CEO and the co founder of Google, you genuinely believe that? I genuinely don't need to hurt anyone to get ahead. You present them with a problem and they go like, yeah, that's very easy. You don't have to steal to solve it. Right, because solving the problem is easier because you're very intelligent. You no longer go to the dark crowds. And those prodigies of AIs that we have are in that space already. And I say that, and I think a lot of people will, you know, will, will be surprised by, by noticing that about themselves. The, there is this, always there is this, this artificial general intelligence argument. You know, when will AI be smarter than humans in everything that AI does or anything that humans do? My AGI is here. My AGI is here. They're better than me in everything that I do. I'm an author. They write better than I do. Okay, not in the bit where I'm a human. So being an author is a little bit of a craft of writing, a craft of thinking, the craft of research. But, but I also infuse my writing with being human, talk about my own experiences and my own stories. And if I talk to you about being a father of a daughter, you can now believe me because you know that I am a father of a daughter. You can't believe chatgpt when it tells you, oh, you know, I raised a child and you didn't. Okay, but they're a better author than me. You know, they're definitely, definitely I'm a, I'M a bookworm and an information geek and an addicted learner, but they are so much better than I am. They know everything. Okay? So when it comes to information and knowledge and, you know, linguistic skills, they've already beat me. You know, I used to take pride that they were, that I was still better in mathematics until the end of 2024, 2025. I'm nothing. And I'm a good mathematician and even most of my serious prodigy mathematician friends. Yeah, AI is better.
- [103:41]
B
If you're still watching at this point, it's clear that we care about the same type of content. So make sure you hit that subscribe button because this channel is made for people just like you who value these types of conversations. And if this topic resonates, make sure you hit that like button. So I know to keep on exploring it on the show. On this particular point, one thing I wanted to ask you because I know you also have said that, you know, AI is probably going to take over at least 90% of the jobs we see today. Did I quote you correctly on that?
- [104:06]
A
I think there isn't a single job that couldn't be taken over by AI soon.
- [104:10]
B
Okay, so in a, in a future world where AI has taken over all the jobs there are today, what's left for humans to get up and do every day?
- [104:21]
A
So that statement is, is a bit shallow in terms of its analysis that if AI can take all the jobs, that AI will take all the jobs. I think people disconnect the two. Okay, the reason is very interesting. So by the way, the reason why AI may take a lot of jobs is not because AI is capable of doing them. It's because capitalists want to save money on the workers by giving it to a cheaper worker. So it's labor arbitrage. It's always been the defining factor of capitalism is to use the least expensive worker to deliver the highest profitable margin on the most expensive product.
- [105:01]
B
Increase the bottom line.
- [105:03]
A
Yeah. You know, take luxury goods made in China for, you know, this much and sold for 10 times as much by assuming it's Italian or French. Right. And, and when you, when you, when, when you think about that, this is layer one of the individualistic capitalist view of like I, it's my company, I'm going to fire everyone. It's going to save me money. But then you have to understand the impact on the economy at large because by firing everyone, you're losing the economic livelihood of everyone to, to be able to buy products. So if you, if, if you want to summarize it In a, in a simple way, the US economy today is. The GDP is 70% consumption, not production. Okay? So if you, if you lose the consumption side of gdp, you lose the entire economy. Economy. And if you lose the entire economy, then there is no reason for the capitalist to make anything because nobody is buying it. So this has to be solved somehow. Currently the only plausible answer given is what is known as Universal Basic Income. Ubi, I think there will be other ways. I saw an article today, I'm not sure if this is true, so please verify. I didn't have the time to verify that. Basically said China is preventing big corporations from firing people to replace them with AIs. Right? So, so that's, that is an interesting choice. An interesting choice is to say continue to give people work because otherwise you won't have an economy to sell anything to. Right? So, so this is one side. The other side, of course, is that definition of we are made to work and our life purpose is to be. Be a lawyer. Like, seriously, you think your life purpose is to be a lawyer? This was taught to you by capitalism. Okay? So of course none of us listening to this have ever lived in a world where we were told the truth that you're working because that's what the capitalist system wants you to do. But that wasn't your purpose at all. Okay? If you want to understand the true purpose of humanity, you go back to pre capitalism to as early as possible, you know, caveman, cave woman years. What was your purpose?
- [107:22]
B
Building a family, Producing the, the biological line.
- [107:26]
A
Yeah, to live in one word. Right? The purpose of a human is to live. Okay? And you want to maximize that, that purpose. Live a wonderful life. Live a connected life. Connect with as many other souls as you can. Feel loved, you know, be capable of love. Help others combine as a tribe and succeed. You know, be healthy, you know, be good at what you. Whatever you can do to help the tribe. And these are very different objectives. Then I'm working to make ends meet or I'm working to buy another Ferrari.
- [108:03]
B
So if we live in a world where AI does hypothetically take over all the jobs, is that not liberating us to then live?
- [108:12]
A
Correct. So if, if, if, if humanity wakes up to the fact that this is an opportunity of abundance for everyone, okay? And that. Yes, no, we're going to give the capitalists as many outs as they want, okay? They don't even have to abuse us for it. If any capitalist wants a Ferrari, we will build him an AI Ferrari factory so that he can produce a Ferrari. A day, you know, just let the rest of humanity live. And the trick here is the following. You know, I hope you didn't feel bored in this conversation, but this, this is what humanity is about. It's about you and me spending time connecting, exploring. You know, in certain cases, you know, it's about a hug, it's about a kiss, it's about a child, it's about, you know, a relationship with nature. It's about exploring art, exploring philosophy, it's about exploring the spiritual. It is really what we are made for. And yes, none of us remembers a time where we lived that way, so we think that we are supposed to be living differently. But I can guarantee you, if we manage to create a social infrastructure where technology enables us to mimic nature but multiply it. Let me explain that. The capitalist method of manufacturing is you take money, you take labor, you take resources, natural resources, which, by the way, are also the result of money or labor, and you put them together, you combine them into a product, you distribute the product you send. I'd say give me 400 IQ points more around the corner, by the way, and I'd be able to manufacture everything out of thin air using nanophysics. And it's actually not very difficult. The public, dare I give to everyone is give me 400 IQ points and I'll be able to create a garden where you walk to one tree and pick an apple and walk to another tree and pick an iPhone. From a molecular point of view, they're exactly the same cost to manufacture, okay? And all we need to do is to organize the molecules differently. It's a very different manufacturing method. But if with intelligence, we got there, the entire social and trade and capitalist infrastructure collapses. Because basically it's like a bit like. What was the cartoon? Not Sims. The. The. The ones in the future. I don't remember. Anyway, Jetson. Jetsons. Yeah, so like the Jetsons, you know, when you want something, it's. It's, you know, it's printed out of thin air. Very possible. Believe it or not, with enough intelligence, we can build that in that world where everything costs almost zero to create. You know what that world mimics? Mimics nature.
- [111:09]
B
Abundance.
- [111:09]
A
Abundance. Total abundance.
- [111:11]
B
Is that utopia?
- [111:12]
A
100%. And it is genuinely 10 years away. 10 years away. If we have the mindset. Okay, so if we have the mindset, we can simply create a world where there is no poverty, no hunger, no disease, no arguments, by the way, no fighting. We can even basically tell ourselves, hey, by the way, if you really, really, really feel frustrated with your husband, Today, call Emma and talk about it, which is one of the features we have in Emma right now. Now, in that case, of course, people will say, but without suffering, humans don't know how to exist. No, they don't yet know how to exist because we've always lived in a world of suffering, okay? But there might be a way for us to learn how to live that way. And my point is very straightforward. We can create a world of total abundance using the most valuable superpower that we've ever had or that exists in the universe, which is super intelligence. And yet the only thing preventing us from getting to that world is our greed, is our division, is our discrimination, is our racism, is our sexism, is our this, is our that. And these are problems with a few, okay, magnified by a propaganda machine. And all of that's fixable, okay? Will we get there? Will we see that day? I believe we will. It's just the path between here and there that might be very bumpy. Simply, the eventual utopia in my mind is a 99.9% certainty, okay? Because of the benevolence, the benevolent nature of intelligence, of abundant intelligence. The road there, we could be in real trouble. But the road there is not the result of intelligence. The road there is because of the stupid, greedy, hungry for power, human utilization of that intelligence.
- [113:14]
B
I too have an optimistic view. And I've always said, you know, whenever this conversation comes up or I see things online of people being quite fearful of what a world when jobs are taken look like, I immediately think of, you know, provided there's a social infrastructure where people's needs are met, then what does that free us up to do? I think of back in the time when people were creative and did things with their hands. And I, again, I have an optimistic view. The road there again, is unclear. But Mo, as always, it is such a pleasure to sit and chat with you. This was a very interesting conversation. Quite different to the ones I've had in the sense where I just love the way you think and the way you make me think about things as well. The way you give information in a way that, that people don't feel overwhelmed by. These topics that I think can feel very, very out of touch, far away and overwhelming. It's actually just, let's bring it back to ourselves as people. What are we in control of? What can we do? And change does start with every single day and the choices we make. So I think that's really the message of today's episode. And thank you for your work. I'm excited to see the documentary, all the books, and I'm sure there'll be demand for part three, if not from everyone else, from me. So appreciate your time over the weekend as well. And it's such a pleasure knowing.
- [114:34]
A
I love our conversations. I'm very, very grateful for you hosting me again. I'm grateful for the few that sent questions to say host him again. And yes. And I'm optimistic. I. I hope people will enjoy the documentary. I hope they will try. Emma and we. Yeah, we start to move in the right direction. Let's see.
- [114:54]
B
Agreed. Well, thank you.
- [114:56]
A
Thank. You.