#181 - Tom Bilyeu - AI, Bitcoin & the Rigged Economy

Summary

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The Peter McCormack Show

Episode #181 - Tom Bilyeu: AI, Bitcoin & the Rigged Economy
Release Date: June 3, 2026
Host: Peter McCormack
Guest: Tom Bilyeu

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Episode Overview

Peter McCormack sits down with entrepreneur and thinker Tom Bilyeu for a high-octane, big-picture exploration of Western decline, AI’s transformative potential, the rigged nature of the economy, Bitcoin’s role as an escape hatch, and the deep structural issues plaguing both the UK and US. They wrestle with the cyclical chaos of empires, the evolutionary psychology underlying political division, AI’s breakneck disruption, and whether optimism in the face of institutional breakdown is naive or necessary.

McCormack and Bilyeu bring a mix of street-smart skepticism and philosophical depth, pulling from history, economics, and personal experience. Their conversation is passionate and urgent, laced with memorable quotables and moments of real candor about today’s daunting challenges.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Economic Death Spiral and the Rigged Game

• Debt Cycles & Money Printing
  • Tom Bilyeu frames the West’s malaise as a symptom of inevitable cycles: every great power succumbs to “printing their way to oblivion” as reserve currency holders, eroding the prosperity and agency of ordinary citizens ([00:00]).
  • Quote:

    "The pain and suffering that you feel right now is because the economy has been knowingly rigged against you. It's done through debt and money printing and unless you solve that, nothing else matters."
    — Tom Bilyeu [00:37, 84:41]

• Middle-Class Decline
  • Both agree: daily life—including the collapse of small business, public service failures, and costs of living—is the direct but poorly recognized result of economic and political decisions ([00:25], [45:06]).

2. Why People Don’t ‘Get’ Economics

• Disconnected Public Perceptions
  • Bilyeu laments that ordinary people “don’t map this to debt and money printing”—instead, they see inflation as “just things going up in price” ([00:34–04:54]).
  • He terms the “final boss of economics”:

    “The average person is so busy being impacted by it that they don’t have time to really wrap their head around it. And that is the devastating reason that the loop continues.”
    — Tom Bilyeu [04:56]

• Human Nature and the Repeating Cycle
  • Economic tragedy repeats in loops due to human psychological traits: “In the moment it all feels great. And then in the fullness of time, as you begin to abuse it, then it becomes a catastrophe… people just keep the pedal to the metal until it’s too late.”
    — Tom Bilyeu [05:13]

3. The Constitution & How Institutions Decay

• The American Founders tried to “protect themselves from the tyranny that everyone is prone to” ([06:05]), but Bilyeu suggests even the Founders would be surprised the Republic has lasted this long.
• Institutions’ decay is both a symptom and accelerator for decline.
  • Quote:

    “Anything written on paper is only as good as the belief of the people that have to enforce it.”
    — Tom Bilyeu [15:58]

4. Societal Weakness via Fake Empathy & the Cycle of Tyranny

• When consequences are insulated (by governments or prosperity), society becomes “soft” and vulnerable to tyranny ([15:10–15:45]).
• “If you’re making life too easy for people, that isn’t empathy. You’re actually insulating people from consequences.”
  — Peter McCormack [15:10]

5. Populism, Political Breakdown, Sectarian Drift

• The “doom loop” of politics: politicians prioritize power via perpetual promises and vote-buying, but as McCormack puts it, “the only thing that politicians have in common is they all want to accumulate and defend power” ([24:26]).
• The UK’s and US politics are mired in populist moments, with both left and right driven by fear and a shrinking economic “pie.” This catalyzes “teams” and aggression, ensuring policy is driven by moral righteousness rather than rigorous cause and effect ([26:07–28:37]).

6. The Left–Right Split & Evolutionary Psychology

• Bilyeu argues the left–right political axis is an evolved feature—part of humanity’s balancing act between compassion and personal responsibility.
  • Quote:

    “Evolution has given you people that lean left and people that lean right. That is true. That is baked into the human mind.”
    — Tom Bilyeu [30:26]

• When stress rises, as in economic hardship, this split becomes pathological, with both sides unable to compromise ([30:26–32:46]).
• He recommends “The Righteous Mind” and evolutionary biology for listeners interested in these roots ([32:15–32:46]).

7. Populism, Resentment, and the Mirage of Compassion

• Socialism and similar ideologies, Bilyeu claims, are less about compassion for the poor and more about resentment of the rich—a cause now well supported by cross-cultural studies ([38:36–40:46]).
  • Quote:

    “Once you understand that, it’s like, boom, dime drops. They’re punishing the rich. They’re not trying to help the poor.”
    — Tom Bilyeu [38:36]

8. Sweden, “Socialism”, and Real-World Outcomes

• Response to myths about Scandinavian socialism: Sweden’s success is grounded in a broad tax base, free markets, privatization, and only modestly higher social spending than the US — not classic socialism ([41:27–43:32]).
  • Quote:

    “They privatized not everything, but most things, including education and healthcare… They literally, there are quotes on the record of them saying, guys, stop using our name saying that we’re socialist. We are not socialist.”
    — Tom Bilyeu [43:30]

9. Bitcoin: Asset or Escape Hatch?

• Bilyeu is deeply invested in Bitcoin, seeing it as “an inevitability” in a digital future and a vital store of value. Yet he’s skeptical it will soon become a global transactional currency ([50:20–53:08]).
  • Quote:

    “I just hold. People panic, it drops, and then it just goes back up. So for me, I've made so much money off of it that I'm just like, yeah, I'm just going to hold.”
    — Tom Bilyeu [51:29]

• As a macro fix, it’s “a lifeboat in as much as assets are a lifeboat”—not a systemic solution yet ([51:52]).

10. AI: The Leap from Scarcity to Abundance (But at What Cost?)

• Both men provide firsthand accounts of how AI is transforming entrepreneurship and creative work ([53:08–62:03]).
  • McCormack describes a one-man, week-long build (with Claude AI) of a software system that previously would have cost millions and required tens of staff.
  • Bilyeu recounts how his video game studio Impact Theory shrank from a hundred people to a handful, yet produces more.
  • Quote:

    “At one point we had a hundred people working on the game… Now there’s five or six of us and we're getting more done a lot faster… Humans still beat AI, but oh, buddy, like we are close enough that the game that I'm able to build, I simply wouldn’t have been able to build [before].”
    — Tom Bilyeu [57:50]

• AI will lead to a period of great tumult, destroying jobs before new ones emerge:
  • Quote:

    "Every time there's a major technological revolution like this, it ultimately ends up creating more jobs. So I'll just blindly have faith that that will happen here as well… But we've got a pretty big chasm to cross."
    — Tom Bilyeu [57:49, 62:03]

• The industrial, agricultural, and internet revolutions are signaled as precedents for both optimism and caution.

11. Four AI-Future Paths

• Bilyeu outlines four predicted societal responses to advanced AI ([62:54]):
  1. “New Amish” — reject advanced tech, stick to late 20th-century ways
  2. Full Integration — cyborgs, body-computer fusion
  3. Hard Mode — colonize Mars, pursue physical challenges
  4. Virtual Worlds — live mostly within simulated worlds (the real “metaverse”)
  • Quote:

    “The most meaningful parts of your life would be in the virtual world for sure.”
    — Tom Bilyeu [67:11]

12. Simulation Theory & the Nature of Reality

• Both explore the mind-bending implications of simulation theory and recent quantum physics experiments suggesting the universe isn't “locally real” ([72:49–78:10]).
  • Bilyeu:

    “The universe functions in the same way that a video game functions. You interface with things as if distance is real, but the way they act is as if they are being processed in the same place.” ([73:40])

• Both express awe and humility before life’s ultimate questions:
  • “There’s only one question that really matters… why is there something instead of nothing?”
    — Tom Bilyeu [78:32]

13. Resilience, Agency, and the Individual

• Despite macro-level gloom, Bilyeu urges not to get lost in despair:
  • Quote:

    "You have to remember you have agency… you can do things at a minimum to make sure that those that you love are going to be okay."
    — Tom Bilyeu [47:52]

  • Short-term: society will be turbulent. But as a family or individual, it’s possible to thrive by adapting, learning, and investing wisely.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On modern malaise:

“We have just absolutely decimated the working and middle class.”
— Tom Bilyeu [00:00, 28:38, 84:43]

On why the cycle persists:

“The brutality — the final boss of economics is the average person is so busy being impacted by it that they don’t have time to really wrap their head around it.”
— Tom Bilyeu [04:56]

On constitutional limits:

“Anything written on paper is only as good as the belief of the people that have to enforce it.”
— Tom Bilyeu [15:58]

On the path forward:

“My crusade is to get people to understand cause and effect. So you can say, hey, I want to end up here and then actually take steps that are going to get you to the end state that you want to be at. But they don’t do that. They don’t hold their politicians accountable.”
— Tom Bilyeu [26:07]

On AI’s transformation:

“Now there's what, five or six of us and we're getting more done by a lot faster. And at only, I'd say 80 to 85% of the quality. It's not all the way there. Like humans still beat AI, but oh, buddy, like we are close enough...”
— Tom Bilyeu [57:50]

On simulation theory:

“The universe functions in the same way that a video game functions. You interface with things as if distance is real, but they are… being processed in the same place.”
— Tom Bilyeu [73:40]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Topic | Timestamp | |----------------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Opening diagnosis — Western decline & the “rigged game” | 00:00–01:32 | | Ray Dalio, debt cycles, why empires fail | 01:46–03:23 | | The tragedy of public economic misunderstanding | 04:01–04:56 | | Human cycles & constitutional failure | 05:10–06:12 | | Value of American history & loss of leadership | 07:21–08:17 | | Empathy vs. cruelty; societal softness | 15:10–15:45 | | Constitutional limits and corrosion | 15:50–16:26 | | Populism and sectarian drift in UK, US | 24:17–28:37 | | The left-right evolutionary split | 30:26–33:31 | | Populism as resentment, not compassion | 38:36–40:46 | | The myth of Swedish socialism | 41:27–43:32 | | Middle class decline in UK and US | 44:38–45:06 | | Bitcoin as asset class, digital inevitability | 50:20–51:29 | | Limitations to Bitcoin as a currency | 51:42–53:08 | | McCormack’s mind-blown AI entrepreneur story | 53:08–57:35 | | Bilyeu on AI & the job market | 57:47–62:03 | | Four possible futures with AI | 62:54–64:58 | | Virtual worlds, simulation theory explanations | 72:49–78:10 | | The profound question: Why is there something, not nothing| 78:32–79:00 | | Individual resilience and hope | 47:52–49:26 | | Final appeal: “The game is knowingly rigged” | 84:41–85:24 |

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Overall Tone and Final Thoughts

The conversation is candid, reflective, and deeply concerned—yet shot through with Tom’s optimistic realism and McCormack’s drive to wake people up, one person at a time. They don’t sugarcoat the collapse of Western finances, the dysfunction of political systems, or the radical uncertainty that AI and new technology portend. But beneath the skepticism is a genuine hope that individuals can prepare, adapt, and even flourish in the turbulence ahead—if they confront cause and effect, hold the powerful to account, and cultivate real agency.

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Closing

Tom Bilyeu’s parting appeal:

"The pain and suffering that you feel right now is because the economy has been knowingly rigged against you. …Unless you solve that, nothing else matters."
[84:41]

-- End of Summary --

Transcript

[Tom]

Every empire in human history has failed the test of can you hold the one ring of being the reserve currency and not print your way to oblivion? We will literally be in a race against AI to see if AI can bring in the age of abundance before we drive off a fiscal cliff. The average person does not map this to debt and money printing. We have just absolutely decimated the working and middle class.

[Peter]

We're getting poorer and people are starting to feel it. The middle class is getting squeezed. Small businesses are closing, high streets are dead, there's potholes in the streets, there's rubbish everywhere. Nothing works in this country anymore.

[Tom]

That the game is rigged. This is exactly how it's rigged and how you fix it while it's the way that it is. Invest like this, you have to remember you have agency that you can do things. The pain and suffering that you feel right now is because the economy has been knowingly rigged against you, knowingly rigged against you. It's done through debt and money printing and unless you solve that, nothing else matters.

[Peter]

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[Tom]

Hello.

[Peter]

Great to meet you.

[Tom]

Same man.

[Peter]

We get like the edge of civilization figuring out what's going on and then have to kind of try and process it. And so I'm really intrigued, like broadly to ask you where you think we are as a civilization and where we're going.

[Tom]

Okay, I'll speed run it and then you can sort of press on it. The world moves in incredible cycles that are basically tied to economics. Um, if you, once you understand how much is controlled by the debt cycle, then it really starts to get scary in the West. We're in a really bad place from the big debt cycle. So I'm a big I map to what Ray Dalio talks about in terms of the debt cycle and how it impacts things. Every empire in human history has failed the test of can you hold the one ring of being the reserve currency and not print your way to oblivion? And, and everybody prints their way to oblivion. So I think we're at that point and so if we could back off, like if we could get some discipline and actually get to the point where we have balanced budgets, we're not punishing the Working and middle class, by devaluing the dollar, we'd be in great shape. But alas, I think that we will literally be in a race against AI to see if AI can bring in the age of abundance before we drive off a fiscal cliff. And so I think these are highly consequential times that matter tremendously what people do. And so that's ultimately what drug me into talking about economics, politics. Never in a million years did I think that this would be something that I would spend the amount of time researching that I do now. But it just became the most consequential thing, not only in my life, but when I look out at trying to actually help people, I was like, oh yeah, it's people. It's basically all about economics right now.

[Peter]

Yeah, amazing. I mean, the last ten years of making this show, nine and a half years of it, was just on bitcoin and bitcoin gave me the lens for this. I met some incredible people who introduced me to the ideas of Austrian economics and how money works in the debt cycle, as you have done. And I have done everything I can, Tom, just to try and help people understand the political game of promises lead to votes, votes lead to power, power leads to control of the money printer. Money printer leads to money printing and you get them poorer through inflation. And I cannot get people to connect those dots.

[Tom]

Oh, I mean, some empathizing with you so hard I'm going to get a cramp. That the fact that you can't get people to really spend the time to think about just the cause and effect in the economy is so brutal. If you care and like you want to see things go well for them. And if you're thinking about your kids, which I imagine you are, and you're just like, people have to get this at scale or we're toast. And it is just complicated enough that they won't. That is the great tragedy of the human condition. It's wild.

[Peter]

Well, they're living the consequences.

[Tom]

Yeah, but they don't know that that's the problem. Like, the average person does not map this to debt and money printing. And so if you go to explain it to them, their eyes are going to glaze over at some point when you start trying to say, no, no, inflation, it's man made, it's like an invisible tax, like poof, they're gone.

[Peter]

No, inflation is just things going up in price.

[Tom]

Correct?

[Peter]

Yeah. It just happens.

[Tom]

That's the, that is the brutality. The final boss of economics is the average person is so busy being impacted by it that they don't have time to really wrap their head around it. And that is the devastating reason that the loop continues.

[Peter]

Did the federalists fail with the anti federalist? Right?

[Tom]

It's a good question. I mean, in the grandness of time, it just, it all moves in a loop. And it's. I, I think the reason it moves in a loop is not because any one person failed. I think it is the human mind is constructed in a certain way that makes us react very predictably to stimulus. And the stimulus of debt is in the moment it all feels great. And then in the fullness of time, as you begin to abuse it, then it becomes a catastrophe. And so it's hard for people to understand that, okay, this thing that actually is the engine of prosperity, debt is so incredible, ends up becoming the thing that destroys your civilization. You have to reset the empire, typically through violence. And so they just. That moment of where does it break exactly becomes so hard to pin down that people just keep the pedal to the metal until it's too late.

[Peter]

But wasn't the goal of the Constitution to protect voters from the weakness of man in power?

[Tom]

Yes. That's a really interesting way to look at it. I think they were trying to protect themselves from the tyranny that everyone is prone to, to create some sort of balance of power. But there's a reason that Franklin said that it's a republic if you can keep it. So I think he very. I think, I think the Founding Fathers would be legitimately surprised we've made it this far. Yeah, I think they would be holding their breath in this moment. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that we lose it. But I do think that we're in one of those moments where we're going to have to get very clear eyed about what it is. Like what is the American value system or what's the value system of the West. Why is it worth fighting for? And if I can really push people, why is it better? And so if it is better and it is worth fighting for and you can articulate what and why, okay, we've, we've got a shot. But I think that the Founding Fathers were distressingly clear eyed that the average person does not understand this, either because they don't have the intellectual horsepower or they just don't have the time to wrap their head around it.

[Peter]

So you can probably tell I'm a fan of American history.

[Tom]

Man. Being a fan of history is wise. Yeah. American or otherwise.

[Peter]

I'm a huge fan of American History. And I've been diving deep down the foundation of the Republic and why you kicked our asses, just trying to understand what's going on in our country. And. And I look at America now and I look at your Congress and I look at your Senate and then I read about the great people who founded America.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Peter]

What they went through, the phases it went through the wars, I went through the. Was it the articles in confederation was first, wasn't it? And then they moved. And I like I've tried to understand it all and I think it's such a shame that your Congress and Senate isn't filled with more people like you had during the founding of America. I think there are some good people there. But now it seems all about tyranny through wealth extraction.

[Tom]

Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those. As you read about American history and you think that for by today's standards, a relatively small tax caused us to risk literally everything. I mean these were men that put their lives on the line that you say what you want about Washington, but he was there on the front line with somebody. People were actively trying to kill this guy. And he was at the front on the horse, like doing the thing. And so wasn't like today where you know, they're protected in bunkers and sending other young men to die. Like these guys were out on the field. And so they had a very concrete vision of what was and wasn't acceptable, what they were and weren't willing to fight and die for. And we have lost that man. Like it is. This is one of those where the prosperity itself comes to bite you in the ass when you look at a large enough swath of people. And so the thing that the earliest. So for people that don't know me, my background is actually entrepreneurship. So one of the first realizations I have in business is some people need to be chased by a lion. And what I mean by that is some people are in a position where things are being handed to them. They're coming easily enough that they. They get outright weak and stupid. Not that they are by nature weak and stupid, but that life has not primed them to look at cause and effect. That's what it boils down to. And if I do this, I'm going to get this outcome. It's very reliable. And the thing that's protecting me, this is what I think people are blind to. The thing that's protecting me is society. Society was incredibly hard to build. Thomas Sowell has this tremendous quote. This is a paraphrase, but poverty Needs no explanation. It happens automatically. Wealth is the thing that demands an explanation. And so when you look at civilization and all of the stability and safety and wealth that it brings, when it happens for long enough, like Post World War II, and you've got 70, 80 years of just like, hey, things are working and they're going well, you think it's a law of nature. And you don't realize that strong men have to be willing to stand up and sacrifice. And by the way, say, this is our value system, this is what we fight for. And if it's not this, then it can right off.

[Peter]

Well, and so will also said Western society will be remembered for replacing what works with what sounds good.

[Tom]

Yeah. God, that, that one is devastating in accurate.

[Peter]

Yeah, yeah. So do you think America can be saved? Do you think it needs saving?

[Tom]

I think it does need saving by the people. I think we all have to. It really is, to me, very simple. You've got to balance the budget, you've got to figure out what our value system is. You've got to get people on both sides of the aisle behind that. It's a really interesting quote from Lincoln as he's going through the Civil War. And he said, on the other side of this, we're all going to be pointed one way or the other. Like, he knew that we can't keep living this divided game. And I would say America's in that same position on the other side of whatever this is. We'll all be pointed in the same direction. It's just going to take typically a devastating amount of pain to get everybody on the same path. So I think, do we need to be saved Is very different than will we be saved? I'm optimistic by nature, so I'm going to say, yes, we can and will. And somehow, some way, and Lord knows, I'm trying to do whatever tiny, tiny part in this that I can do by just banging the drum about fiscal discipline and that economics have physics and that all of the division, all of the problems that we see are born out of economics. And when things are going well, everybody's chill, it's easy to get along. And it's only when things start to break down and people can actually feel the pie is getting smaller that they go populist.

[Peter]

Tell people what you mean by economics has physics.

[Tom]

So we live in a deterministic universe, which means things work in a knowable way. It's not random. Every day gravity is going to work the same and economics is exactly the same way. So economics is basically scarcity. Meets human psychology. And so how do we watch that play out at scale? And it will play out in knowable ways. In terms of, for instance, the reason the free market works is that people want different things. They, they can only be incentivized through selfishness. It's hard to know what is going to be the right selfish thing for anybody, both from a what I want to create and what I want to buy perspective and that we have a longing for a better future. Which means innovation is the engine that drives everything forward. That's really the small handful of things you have to understand. And so once you let people be selfish both on what they want to make, so they want to get rich, but they, they're going to make something in order to do that. And what they want to make is going to be them trying to figure out what people selfishly want. And so they make that thing that people selfishly want. The person either goes, yes, that is what I selfishly want. So here's my money, give me the thing. And then pricing happens automatically through that process. The allocation of time gets done automatically through that process. Innovation happens through that process. You find that small, small, small group of people that have the ability and the inclination to, to work themselves near to death, to innovate, to be successful, to pass it on to their kids or just be the coolest kid on the block or the richest, whatever it is that motivates them. But all of that stuff happens automatically. The second you try to break that by forcing it from the top down, your only path is tyranny. Because that's not how the human mind works. They want to be selfish, they want to do the thing they're interested in, they want to try to get ahead. And so if you tell them no, no, no, everybody's going to plant wheat, we're all going to plant it at the same time in the same place like Mao did in China. All of a sudden 45 million people are starving to death.

[Peter]

I mean, I think that was perfectly said. On the 250th year anniversary of Adam Smith's the Wealth of Nations. I reckon you and I have a very similar bookcase man.

[Tom]

A, I would not be surprised by that. And B, if you're interfacing with the world the way that it is. Now look, you and I may I have a right leaning temperament. I would say that I'm very like have an easy time understanding compassion and being on the left. But in terms of just going down the path of building something, you very quickly realize, oh, I'VE got to take responsibility. And so from an evolutionary standpoint, I'm clearly the person evolution was counting on to be like, hey, you can't freeload. Like, you gotta do your thing. I love you, wanna see be successful, but at the same time, I'm gonna need you to do your part. I don't go very far. Right. But I definitely lean right as a personality type. And so if you're interfacing with reality and your temperament tends to lean in the same direction, Yes, I think we would recognize each other very quickly.

[Peter]

But I think if you're making life too easy for people, that isn't empathy. You're actually insulating people from consequences of life. You're stunting their development. And so I think it's actually cruelty. It's a bit like. Was it Adam Smith also said sympathy, empathy for the guilty is cruelty to the innocent?

[Tom]

That's certainly true whether you said it or not.

[Peter]

Yeah. And I think when you insulate people from the consequences, and when the government tries to insulate people from the consequences, you build a soft society which ultimately, as you said, leads to tyranny.

[Tom]

Yeah. And they do it every time. And I don't think we can stop ourselves. And hence the loop continues.

[Peter]

Unless we had a constitution which would not allow the government to centralize the control of money and had a free market money.

[Tom]

Yeah, I mean, the US really did try, man. And it's. Is there a way to do it better? Probably, but they've done a pretty good job. But anything written on paper is only as good as the belief of the people that have to enforce it. And so anybody paying attention, whether you love the direction of your country or not, I think most people now are getting to understand activist judges and what that looks like. Same rules on paper, but the way that it's enforced becomes very different.

[Peter]

Well, everything can be corrupted. The media's become corrupted. I listened to this great interview with. I think his name's Owen Benjamin. He was a comedian who was cancelled with Tucker Carlson. And he said the. The great thing about being canceled is that it was actually liberating because most people aren't free because they're enslaved by the debt they have. So if you are a, I don't know, a rock star or a actor and you get your first gigs, you go and buy this big mansion that you can't really afford, and then you can't speak out against the common agreed set of rules or language for that part of culture you're in. And so you become enslaved. And he was Implying that by him having no gigs, not being able to get on any payment systems, he had to build his own life and became free. And now he can say essentially what the fuck he likes. And that was freedom for him.

[Tom]

Yeah, I think that it's a. If you feel that to survive you have to say a certain thing that is going to have a tremendous impact on what you think and feel. But honestly, man, for me, the bigger problem is people just not taking the time to think through this stuff or the ideas being complicated enough that you get sort of the broad strokes, but then the devil's in the details. And so you can find yourself on the wrong side of cause and effect. And the government has certainly in the US no incentive to track cause and effect because of what you were saying earlier. It's just about getting elected. So once you understand politicians will do and say whatever it takes to get reelected, then the game becomes very different. And I don't see a way out of that. That's the catch.

[Peter]

Well, we only tend to get out of it through revolution.

[Tom]

Yeah, the pain gets enough that it builds up an up static in the system that it has to be discharged in some way. But man, some ways are way better than others, but we tend to take the path of most pain.

[Peter]

Yeah, I mean, I look at the only two remotely appearing as success stories appear to be what Kayle's done in El Salvador. And he has his critics. And I see what they're saying, and I've been there a few times. And in Argentina, what Malay is doing, it seems to be that those two countries had hit the point where they'd had enough pain in El Salvador. They'd had enough of the corruption, the corrupt presidents and the violence from the gangs, and managed to elect a leader who decided that he wasn't going to be corrupt. He was going to put the safety of the country first. And he broke a few eggs to make that omelette. And then Milei just refused to allow the state to continue to print money endlessly. And. And so that's, to me, the. The less violent option. But it feels like other parts of the world are heading to. Even in this country, we feel like we're heading towards sectarian violence. In the US certainly had political violence. I think these are concerning times.

[Tom]

Yeah, no doubt. And yeah, history shows us, especially if you take into consideration Thucydides Trap, which is crazy to hear Xi Jinping actually bring it up when he was meeting with Trump. So Thucydides Trap, written by a guy named Thucydides Ancient Greek. He saw Athens and Sparta on this collision course where Athens was rising, Sparta was declining. And he was like, these guys are going to collide, and their ego is basically going to make it impossible for them to not. And so people have just seen this play out over and over and over. 12 out of 16 times, when a rising superpower collides with a declining superpower, they end up in war. And so obviously, I'm hoping that the US and China can be number, what, five on the don't end up going to war and not number 13 on the do end up going to war. But the percentage is north of 70%. So the odds are not in our favor that we won't end up in kinetic warfare with China. Because when you're the declining power, and by the way, as an American on the declining side, my message is you can't decline. And so that's the very thing that ends up creating. The trouble is the rising one doesn't go well, we can do this together. They're actively trying to displace you. The declining superpower does not need to accept irrelevance. And so they can and should economically do what they can to stay powerful. It's just that they tend to not stop at the economic side and spill all the way into violence. But we'll see how it plays out. They were saying nice things at the summit, but that's all pr. It's propaganda. You're being spun at all turns. But, you know, fingers crossed. I do want to see. I. I think China is in enough economic trouble right now that they would, at least in the short term, be willing to work with the U.S. i think both the U.S. and China are trying to use cooperation to get into a better position. They both know that of each other. And so, you know, it is what it is. But we'll see how that one plays out. But I remain optimistic, at least for the foreseeable future.

[Peter]

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[Tom]

I want it for everybody. It was a cool time.

[Peter]

The. My son talks about it. The fact that, you know, we'll watch. I'll show, like old videos. I show him often show him when Korn played at the Woodstock and just watch the crowd go, like a wave, and he'll notice, dad, there's no phones. I was like, yeah, yeah, there were no phones. If you did have one, it was for texting and that. We used to go skateboarding. And I was just sort of like, it was a brilliant time. And obviously technology took over, which has given us some amazing things. And everything's been disrupted. The media industry, we. We get to do this to people today and put something out that might be seen, depending on how it does, by hundreds of thousands of people. But the only thing that doesn't seem to have been disrupted yet, which should be disrupted, which needs to be disrupted, is politics itself. And we're in at a time we're going to talk about AI. I mean, it's blowing my mind that is disrupting everything again in ways that I can't even picture a defined outcome. But yet we have not disrupted politics. And here in the uk, I often phrase it as this. Every five years we run a personality contest and then we vote the most unimpressive people that we have to make the most consequential decisions for the country, corrupted by special interest groups. I mean, it's very easy to see. Michael, do you know Michael Malice?

[Tom]

I do. I know Michael Malice very well.

[Peter]

Yeah. So Michael Malice said it to me. He said, once you see politics as two rival gangs competing for the resources of the land becomes very easy to see what they're doing. And. And so I think we're at this time where everything's being disruptive and it's the politics which is holding everyone back. And I.

[Tom]

When you say it's holding them Back.

[Peter]

What do you mean it's holding people back?

[Tom]

I think the nature of politics or politicians are doing something that messes the rest of us up.

[Peter]

Both. The system itself is a system of. I mean the only thing that politicians have in common is they all want to accumulate and defend power. So they will lie and promise things to special interest groups for voting blocks. Yeah, but they also, I mean we've got a problem in this country. We have a Labour Party at the moment and usually a Labour Party comes in after a Conservative party who tend to be have some kind of fiscal restraint. And you know, the country's booming and there's some fat in the system and then the Labour Party comes in and they do some redistribution and you know, I don't agree with the Labour Party, but there is some corruption in the system. So fine. But the Labour Party came in after a left wing Conservative government which were high tax, high surveillance, essentially welfare state. They weren't a Conservative party. And this Labour Party have tried to redistribute when there's nothing left. So we've gone for even more tax and our economy is collapsing. There's massive wage compression from the minimum wages. We're in a really poor position. It's almost like you put Drew in a race, you give him a sack of rocks, he doesn't win, you say, well, what you needed is more rocks. This is where we, this is our experience as a country. So the political system is broken and the politicians themselves aren't of the caliber required to lead a country. And so we are in a doom loop here. And I want this disrupted. I would vote for A.I. the A.I. president right now. We can agree a set of principles, let the president run it and not have what we have now. Because I am watching people's lives be decimated. It's awful.

[Tom]

It is awful. Yeah. This is why my crusade is to get people to understand cause and effect. So you can say, hey, I want to end up here and then actually take steps that are going to get you to the end state that you want to be at. But they don't do that. They don't hold their politicians accountable. And once you get into. Well, so right now it's because we're in a populist moment. Now if I can get people to understand. A populist moment simply means people are watching the pie shrink. The pie is actually getting smaller now. They're scared. Once they're scared, they're not going to sit in fear. So they're going to transmute that to aggression. Everyone goes on to a team, they're feeling super aggressive. My team needs to win. Your team is an existential threat. I will do whatever it takes to get the goods to my side because we're right, we're moral, we're just. And you guys are bad, evil, you'll, you know, cause death, mayhem, all that. But both sides are saying the same thing. Both sides think they have God on their side. Like, it's wild. And so they are fighting dirty because they believe that they're doing the right, moral and just thing. And so that level of corruption met with aggression, met with a sense of righteousness is exactly how you race to hell. Because you're no longer looking at, what am I blind to? What do I not see? You're not saying, like, wait, there's cause and effect. So if I'm trying to get here and the things that I do are moving me away from there, we've got a problem. Now, when I teach entrepreneurs, I'm. I'll talk to them about invisible goals. And a, a visible goal is, hey, I want to grow my company as big as I can. An invisible goal would be, I want to be at my kid's recital. And maybe you're not saying that. And so you keep telling people, I'm really trying to do the same with my company, but in reality, you're skipping out and you're going to be with your kids. I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm saying you're stating one goal and then doing something else. And so the government needs to say, this is the outcome that we're driving towards, so that we, the people can either say we agree with that outcome or we do not. And we're either getting there or. Or we're not. And that's where I think this all breaks down. Because when you're in an emotional place, which populism will put you in, it's just, is my team winning or losing? And that's all you care about? It isn't like, oh, that's right. Like, we were actually trying to make life better for people. What metric were we going to use to say life is better or is not better? And it's so clear. Like, we. We have just absolutely decimated the working and middle class.

[Peter]

Yep.

[Tom]

And so now I just want to hear people say, did you want to decimate the working middle class? No. Cool. Then if we didn't want to do it, what were the things that led us to doing that? They're very easy to explain. And if they can't do that. Then it's like, cool, you just knocked yourself out because you don't understand how we got here, which means you're not going to be able to help us get out. So I need somebody to go, like a Thomas Massie or say what you want, but it's like he's wearing the debt pin clock, and so he's at least aware of the right thing that you can map from cause and effect to say, oh, when you print money, you devalue the dollar, which is just like taxing people that hold dollars, and you create this. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer through a knowable mechanism, which is as you print money and do everything on debt, you take what the dollar used to buy, and now it buys less and less and less, and you force people that understand the economy to buy assets. And so now you put yourself in a position where the reason, cause and effect, the reason the rich are getting richer is because you're doing deficit spending and money printing, which is causing the value of assets to go up, certainly compared to the declining dollar. And it's like, I already know I've lost people, but it's like, that is mappable. That's cause and effect. I can walk you through it over and over and over and over and over, because it is just A plus B equals C. Tom, I've told people

[Peter]

this is how I benefit from. I said the system as it is. I benefit. I'm an asset holder. Obviously, the show was a bitcoin show. And I say this is, I make more money now through asset inflation than I do making a podcast. And they're like, no, you don't. I'm like, no, no, I do. They're like, well, why? Why are you admitting it? It's like, because it's vile. I'm going to play the system in front of me, but it's vile. And so the question really is then, is there really two teams?

[Tom]

Ooh, are there really two teams? There are. And I think people really, really have to understand, maybe at the elite level, they're playing a similar game, but they actually will kill each other on a long enough timeline. So don't confuse being equally corrupt at the level of. That's what politics brings out in a person. With evolution has given you people that lean left and people that lean right. That is true. That is baked into the human mind. There was no escaping it. And when you get into a populist moment, you're forcing those two people into camps. So rather than Those two people going, oh, like men and women are meant to balance each other and that's why we work so well as pairs. Now we're just splitting. And so imagine if all men went to one side, all women went to the other. It would be completely deranging. That is not what evolution had in mind. And so I look at that and I go, men stroke the right, go pathological in certain ways, women stroke the left, go pathological in other ways. And the whole idea is a dynamic tension between the two of them pulling each other back to the middle to find a, a way of compromise. That when you think of evolution and the job that it had to pull off, it had to go, okay, I've got this super vulnerable species. From a physical standpoint, I've somehow got to get these guys through to the finish line. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to have you guys be able to cooperate flexibly in very large groups. And I'm going to give you a male, female split. I'm going to give you a left, right split as like, think of it as personal responsibility and compassion. Both are incredibly high utility.

[Peter]

Hold on just for a second. So you're saying the left, right split is an evolutionary development to help us cooperate?

[Tom]

That's correct.

[Peter]

Is that, can I read anything on that? Is it? Yes, yeah, I want to read on that.

[Tom]

I mean I've read evolutionary biology is basically about that.

[Peter]

So I read the Righteous Mind to understand how like the difference between left and right, I am obviously more right leaning. But the evolutionary side I've never read.

[Tom]

Yeah, yeah, I'm almost certain he talks about it from an evolutionary lens. I could be misremembering that. But yes, read evolutionary biology. Which by the way, if you start talking about evolutionary biology, people are going to get very angry with you, which is wild.

[Peter]

People get angry about a lot of facts.

[Tom]

But that one, I don't know if it touches on God and that's the problem. But like, okay, think of it this way. God gave us evolutionary biology and so the question becomes why? Why is it a winning strategy? So yeah, that one to me is to try and understand the world without understanding biology is a fool's errand. You'll be at the very end of a very long chain of cause and effect, guessing based on the outputs rather than just going back upstre saying, okay, how are we wired? What is this? Why did this species choose sexual reproduction? What is that? Why is there a dichotomy between the sexes? Why is there a left Leaning personality and a right leaning personality. Like, what's the point? What, what? It serves some, you know, thing. What is that thing?

[Peter]

An equilibrium, I would say.

[Tom]

Because what ends up happening is from an evolutionary standpoint, life is extraordinarily hard and dangerous. And if anybody's ever watched in America, we have a show called Alone. And they basically send these guys that think that they're tough nuts out into the wilderness and go survive. And you get to take like whatever, nine things or something, and it is extremely difficult. And most of them tap out. And even if they don't tap out, they get medically extracted because they start starving to death. And they suddenly realize, whoa, like, getting calories is hard. Everything is trying not to die and be eaten. So everything is going against you, and you're just. They put you out like a couple months before winter. So it's like, oh, it might be easy enough in like the first eight weeks, but when that clicks over and now, like, lakes are freezing over and stuff, it starts to get very hard. So humans are coming up in that kind of environment, you realize, very fast, whoa, we've got to get people a. To specialize. So like, bro, you go do the fishing, you go do the hunting, you guys collect, you guys raise the kids, whatever, whatever. But like, we've got to divide this labor up and then what ends up happening is when things are going good, then you're going to get people that take advantage of the system. And so you have the people to avoid this just freeloader problem that will ultimately completely destroy the tribe. You've got to say, you've got to have some people that go, bro, you got to pull your weight or we are literally going to isolate you and you are going to die, or we'll just outright kill you. But we're sure as hell not gonna let you take advantage of the people that are out here making sure that we all have enough to eat, because it is quite literally life and death. So that's the personal responsibility side. But then on the other side, we've gotta cooperate, otherwise we're all gonna die. So you need people that are like, hey, I get it, you caught the elk, that's you. But if you don't share with the group that there's no refrigeration, bro, the only way to, like, store that meat, you won't be able to eat all of it before it rots. The only way to store that meat. They wouldn't say it like this, but this is the truth. The only way to store that meat is on somebody else's body as fat. So you've got to let them eat now when you're the one that caught it. And then they will, if they're doing the right thing, let you eat when they're the one that catch it and you have a bum time or you hurt your leg or whatever and can't go out on the hunt and it's like, yeah, cool. Like, when we're together and you can't just be an asshole and be like, bro, you didn't, like, catch it. You go hungry. And you're also not just like, everybody gets everything no matter how hard they work. Like, both of those are moronic. And it's only when we come together, and I'll complicate it a little bit and you sprinkle a little religion on it so that it really scales that we do well over time. And this is why I say some people need to be chased by a lion. Because when you're at risk of starving to death, you get very clear very fast about, I'm not giving this thing to you because I'm supposed to. I'm giving it to you because I need to make sure that when I'm the one that's injured or I don't get the hunt, that you're going to help me out.

[Peter]

So entitlement is the. Is the enemy of corporation.

[Tom]

Entitlement is the hallmark of the freeloader, which can get to the point where it would break down the overall cooperation. But more than likely, in. In a situation where truly it's life and death, they will get isolated out of the group or they will get so much peer pressure that they stop being like that.

[Peter]

Okay, so I was asking if there's really one team, really, Because I actually think there are two teams, but we've forgot what those two teams are, which is us and them. And that we as a voting public should be holding the politicians accountable collectively. And by going to teams, we've stopped doing that. By offering special privileges to certain groups, we've essentially bribed people. And this is what I think is the downfall we're seeing now, which is what you're saying, which is we've got a populist left and a populist right movement at the moment. I mean, historically, I don't know how much you know about UK politics, but it's a bit like Scottish football with Rangers and Celtic. The Conservatives and Labor have run the show. They've dominated politics for. It may even be more than a century now. Yet in the last Five years. We've got these insurgent movements on the right with the reform and restoring an insurgent movement on the left with green. It looks existential for conservatives of labor. And I think we've had seven prime ministers in nine years. Like, it's breaking down. Like it is just collapsing because nobody can get it right. We have too much debt, we have too much entitlement. We have. We just have a system that's breaking down. And I keep coming back to the point, I don't know if we can stop this. Like, I'm trying, like you, I'm not as eloquent as you, but I'm trying to educate people. I'm trying to introduce them to people who understand this. I want, I don't want the people who already love the show to listen to you, Tom, and go, yeah, Tom's saying everything you've been telling me, Pete, and everyone else has been telling me. I want the people who don't understand this to watch this and go, maybe we're doing something wrong here.

[Tom]

There are some independents that are persuadable. But in a populist moment, it really is about emotion. And so that there, there is a reason that history rhymes. And the reason history rhymes is the human mind works in a knowable way. And when you put the human mind under certain stressors, then you're going to get something that looks exactly like history. And that's why, like, man, if you really are ignorant to history, it's just so much easier to repeat it. It's hard not to repeat it when you're aware of it. So just because that is how the human mind works and people do, you ultimately get to a point where it's like, all right, that bit of bread either goes to my family or your family. And at some point, everybody gets to the point where it's like, yeah, it's going to my family. Like, no matter what that means, no matter what that means, that's going to my family. And so given that that's how humans are, like, you want to do everything you can to take an off RA before you get there, but when you don't have. If you're not accurately mapping the human mind, and I'll explain what I mean about that in a second, if you're not accurately mapping the human mind or you're not accurately mapping the cause and effect of economics, just to simplify it, you're going to go off the rails. So if you don't understand, for instance, that socialism and communism, you, you cannot make them make Sense. Unless you go, oh, this is mostly about resentment. Got it. Once you understand that, it's like, boom, dime drops. Okay, cool. They're punishing the rich. They're not trying to help the poor. The cross cultural studies have been done on this. Like people will vote for something that is worse for themselves as long as it punishes the other person. It is wild. So that's, that's humans. That's us, baby. And so given that reality, if the socialists, Marxists, communists, however you want to label them, they're going to talk about compassion, but they are not going to admit to the fact that this is an ideology of resentment. And they are either just so blind to history or they don't care.

[Peter]

Yeah, oh, we didn't try communism properly last time.

[Tom]

I want to have a debate with somebody on that. So it's like, okay, rad heard. Love it. I, I don't need my position to be right. I have a very clear end goal, which is a thriving middle class. Give people the metrics. But just think, hey, they've got strong negotiating power, they're doing well in life. They expect their kids will be doing better than they are. They expect 10 years from now they'll be doing better than they are. Like, love, cool. That's where we're aiming at now, dear Communist, socialist, walk me through exactly how we do it right, Such that it leads to that and they will inevitably go, well, Norway.

[Peter]

Norway. They always say Norway.

[Tom]

Sweden, my favorite. Yeah, Sweden's easy because I just wrote a deep dive about it. So I've actually got like some of the stats and stuff in my head. Sweden is my favorite. And so Sweden has a broad tax base, so they just tax Everybody. In the US, the bottom 50% of people pay 3.4% of the tax. So it's like comically low. And so if you want to tax. At one point, they taxed the author of Pippi longstocking 102%, caused her to write this fairy tale, thinly disguised autobiography that ended up causing that government to get voted out in like 1973. They end up, the Conservative Party comes in, doesn't run Conservative very much like the UK Conservative. So the banking system ends up collapsing like 15 years later because economies have physics and you can pretend that all the money's there, but if it's not, it's not. So collapses. They get real. Conservatism is in the like 90 through 93. Ends up, they actually start doing fiscal discipline, scaling things back. The corporate tax policy in Sweden is lower than in the US. The US pays 22% of GDP against social programs and Sweden does 24%. So we're basically the same. And so they, of their own admission, are like, we are free market capitalists. It was the only way for us to get out of the hellhole. The finance minister himself said, all of our dreams of socialism when we were young, they just aren't real. It doesn't work. And we had to use free markets. It was the only way that we were going to get out of this. They privatized not everything, but most things, including education, including health care. And so when you look at the very country that people hold up and say, well, this is how you do socialism. Right. They literally, there are quotes on the record of them saying, guys, stop using our name saying that we're socialist. We are not socialist. We are free market, but people.

[Peter]

Strong property rights.

[Tom]

Yup.

[Peter]

With strong property rights. Yeah, yeah. Look, it's, it's a, it's a circular argument. It keeps coming back over and over again. It drives me mad. But Tom, you said earlier to me, you said, I'm an optimist. So where is the hope in all of this? Because I look at like, I look, I look across, I go to America. I love it there. I think it's an amazing country. And traveling around state to state, you just meet amazing people, amazing culture. There's lots I don't like. I mean, but mostly I love the country and I could happily live there. And I look at us here. When I first went to America, I went, I think it was around early 2000s, I went to Las Vegas, watch Ricky Hat and fight Floyd Mayweather. It was 2.5 to the pound. Whoa. I remember it clearly. It's now about 1.30. I think you'd have to double check. Also quite interestingly, recently there was a survey done in the uk. I don't know if you saw this, where they asked people to rank themselves. If we were a US state, where would we rank in terms of wealth? Do you know? Do you hear about this?

[Tom]

Not with the uk, no.

[Peter]

So what do you think? We ranked ourselves as a nation, as a ranked yourselves.

[Tom]

Pay our best guess, first or second.

[Peter]

Okay. We put ourselves seventh.

[Tom]

Okay. A little more realistic than I thought.

[Peter]

Where do you think we are?

[Tom]

You've got to be either dead last or in the bottom 10%.

[Peter]

Dead last with poor the Mississippi.

[Tom]

Yeah, yeah. Poor Mississippi they call out all the time. Canada is the same. They're getting trounced by Mississippi. Yeah, it's wild.

[Peter]

And we're getting poorer and people are starting to feel it. The middle class is getting squeezed, small businesses are closing, high streets are dead, there's potholes in the streets, there's rubbish everywhere. Nothing, nothing works in this country anymore. Nhs, the sacred turd of the country which, everyone, which is a political hot potato. You can't even suggest privatizing sections of it because you'd be out of power. We have a welfare bill that's higher than our income tax at the moment. I mean, we are in a desperate situation to the point where my family has a plan B. Yeah, what's our Plan B? Where would we go? And so I sit there with all of this and I go, you say you're an optimist. I want to be an optimist, but I'm also trying to be a realist and thinking we're going to have to go through some real pain. We don't, you know, we don't have an entire. We're not entitled to be a wealthy country forever. We could go the path of Argentina. We could have decades of inflation, high inflation or hyperinflation. And so if, if I can't have him made a show for 10 years, kind of economics and politics, and I still can't translate this to people. Yeah, maybe we have to go through this. So I want to know, where is your optimism? What do you think?

[Tom]

Well, so the, the optimism is that the world will keep going no matter what happens, no matter how sort of terrible and violent this may be on A, in the fullness of time, it's going to be fine. But really my optimism is that you're going to go wherever you look. And if you're looking towards how things are going to go bad and wrong, you're just going to head in that direction. Because all of your thinking and planning and all of that's going to be assuming that if you're like, no, no, like I'm going to be realistic because I'm a cause and effect guy. So I'm like, okay, I'm optimistic because I know that that's far higher utility than being pessimistic. But I also know only the paranoid survive. So I am optimistic, but paranoid. So I'm looking at, you know, whether it's Plan B or C or D, it's like, okay, how do we map all that out? What are the things that we can do to give us the highest likelihood of getting through this with the least amount of pain? Put as much of that out there as I can. The way that I explain it to people is in the short term, meaning in a decade or two. It's very hard to think that society won't have a hard time of it, but it's very easy to know as a family, we're going to be fine. And so I want to do everything I can to be as broadly impactful as I can. I'm wired for that. I find it very interesting to engage at like, you know, sort of the national level, if you were. The international level, if I can swing it. But my, you know, finger on the, the eject button is always that my family's gonna be okay.

[Peter]

Yes.

[Tom]

And I scream into a mic all day, every day about the fact that the game is rigged. This is exactly how it's rigged and how you fix it while it's the way that it is. Invest like this. And so anybody can do it. Literally anybody can do it. And most people won't. I've had to accept that. But at the individual level, people don't need to be afraid. It really is like the, the heartbreaking part is when you look around at your fellow man, you think, wow, if you fail to quote, unquote, get it, it's going to be a bad time for you. That's heartbreaking. But you cannot succumb to that. You have to remember you have agency that you can do things at a minimum to make sure that those that you love are going to be okay. Now, nobody has a good time when the world is sputtering. And certainly it's possible that this really does end up in a kinetic war between the US and China, and that's sort of the worst of all outcomes. And that would be a horrible tragedy. And let's really, really hope that we avoid that. But again, sliding back to do what you can, stay focused on investing love is the greatest saying that life has offer you anyway. So even if I can't promise you good economics on the other side of this, I can say that if you keep your wits about you in terms of who you love, what you're willing to stand up for, like, you can still, you know, go through this with head held high and feel like I lived a life that was worth living. That's like the worst case scenario is that if you slide back to I control me, everything else is only mildly influenceable.

[Peter]

Are we missing wisdom?

[Tom]

Are we missing wisdom?

[Peter]

Not enough wisdom?

[Tom]

No, I think there's plenty of wisdom.

[Peter]

People not reading history.

[Tom]

They never are. So here's the thing. I don't think we're having some unique moment where People, the masses aren't availing themselves of wisdom, though there's an argument to be made that education is trending down. Yes. But I think our bigger problem is that it's been too prosperous for too long. People think that prosperity is natural, it's an entitlement. And so they're very confused. That scares me a lot more than a lack of wisdom.

[Peter]

Good times create weak men. Yeah, we've interviewed a few similar people. Lyn Alden, I mentioned earlier. Michael Saylor. Yeah, yeah. As somebody who studied economics, where did you come to with Bitcoin?

[Tom]

Well, it's my largest single position. I. For me, it's very simple. Do I think that tomorrow will be more or less digital than today? For me, more. Do I think that kids will grow up just knowing that bitcoin's a thing? Yes. And so we were the generation that had to cross the chasm of this is a joke, it's a scam, it's a fraud to. No, no, this is real. It's a real asset class. And, you know, traditional investors are in it now. And so if we were able to cross that chasm, like a kid that just grows up. Bitcoin is just a thing. It's an asset class. It's tracked. You see it at the bottom of the screen, you see it on your phone. So for me it's. That one is an inevitability. I don't see any major hurdles with updating encryption for dealing with quantum. So that's sort of a non entity for me. And also it is liquid enough that if for some reason my thesis were to ever change, then I would just migrate my position. But today, as I look out into the future, every time I've just held, which has been my default position. Yeah, people panic, it drops and then it just goes back up. So for me, I've made so much money off of it that I'm just like, yeah, I'm just going to hold.

[Peter]

Yeah, I'm on my full cycle now. So I'm like, well, I understand it, but do you think it can be a solution at a macro level to currency the basement or do you think it's really just a. Yeah, in the

[Tom]

same way that gold is sort of. That it's like.

[Peter]

But that has to be for the individuals. Do you think it can replace currency? Do you think it can become the standard, that safety.

[Tom]

It can. I don't think that's the path that we're on. I think right now Bitcoin is a store of wealth. That's Treated like a tech stock. I think you're seeing two parallel tracks running. You've got people like me that have no interest in like day trading it or anything like that. I'm just like, I'm hold this for 10, 20 years unless something disrupts my thesis. And you've got other people that are treating it like this is really going to be either a currency or at a minimum, something that they can like with what Saylor's doing, treat it as a new era of stock. What I call gambling. I know that's going to really rub people the wrong way, but it is to me, it's a digitization of very familiar things. I don't think it is the. It is only a lifeboat in as much as assets are a lifeboat. So it is one of many asset classes that will help people get out of the fiat system. But I it right now it's not being treated as like, oh, I just moved my money over into Bitcoin and now I spend just like I would spend. It is a very different interaction point than Fiat Cash for sure.

[Peter]

Right. Okay. I want to talk to you about AI now. I am. Let me tell you about the week I've had. It's blow my mind. I'm an entrepreneur. I built this podcast. I run a football club, I own a coffee shop. I used to have an advertising agency. And I had a kind of eureka moment with Claude, which was about a month ago. Somebody I was using Chat GPD and somebody said they've used Clawjet. And so I was using Claude and going through something and rather than just give me an answer, it gave me a multiple choice. You know, Claude does that. And I was like, oh, that's interesting, but you're not asking the right questions. Can you create the multiple choice like this? Which it did. I was like, that's interesting. Can you build me a to do list? And it built the HTML to do list. And I was like, can you help me deploy it? So I deployed it onto a live server, connected Google OAuth as it. And I mean I'm not technical in the slightest. My coding skills go as far as I learned html4 20 years ago or whatever it was. I was like, this is really interesting. And then about a week ago, I started a project for one of my companies. I was like, I want you to build me the system. I'll show you afterwards that runs my company. I want to have my budget in there, I want to have my bank feeds in there. I want to track all against the budgets where we're at where we're at risk. I want my invoicing in there. I want my staff in there, I want my HR in there. I want contracts in there. I want you to scan the contract, see if there's mistakes. By the way, I want an AI CEO who every day is looking through the system, finding things. I want an AI exec team who all work together. I want specific AI agents who do jobs. I want you to connect my merch, which I sell in three places online through Shopify Zettel. Well, I'm going to give it away for the football club now at the football club and in the coffee shop. We sell because it's part of the, it's part of the football club. I mean I'm trying to think of everything. I mean the scale, the scope of this is huge. Yeah. When I used to have my agency in London, we built systems like this and if you, if a client had come to me with the brief and said this is what I want to build, I imagine it's a team of at least 10 people, maybe 12 people. You know, you need somebody to write down the business requirements. You need a planner to structure everything. You need someone to look after the client. You needed a UX designer, you needed a front end designer, you probably needed two backend designers, you needed a front end developer, sorry, a back end developers. You need to detect it. It's a huge team to build this. I probably would have said this is a year to build and we're going to do it in phases. It'd probably be three to six months for the first phase to do this. Minimal minimum requirements that we get out for that we'd have to go through testing. It is probably, I don't know, half a million to a million pound project. I built the whole thing in seven days on my own. I can't code. Claude has written all the code and has tested the code. It's helped me deploy it. I've been using GitHub for my first time Vercel for deployments. I think I don't really know what it is. Supabase. Supabase for the SQL. For the SQL queries. Again it just gives me everything. I've built a security agent that goes out and understands all the security requirements of systems like this, comes back and rebuilds all the security and patches everything and like I'm so blown away. I can't stop building. I'm. I've been doing 16 hour days for the last week because all I want to do is build. This system has blown my mind that I as one individual can do that. And I think I've had a few eureka moments with AI, but this was really the eureka moment because I did that in a week and the exponential nature of AI is probably in a year. I can do it in three days or maybe in two years. I just do it in a day. And I know what this is going to mean for so many different jobs and careers. I really truly get it from this one moment. And I don't know what this actually means long term. I think it's going to be volatile. I think the jobs market is going to be volatile. I think there's going to be jobs created, but I think there's going to be jobs lost. But I recognize where abundance is now going to come from in that so much. So much is going to be created because humans aren't required and could be done at speed. I mean I've got. I've got AI exact team that works 247 for like a hundred dollars a month. It cost me record. I mean my mind is blown. I can't wait to show you it's. And I'm assuming you've had some similar moments.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Peter]

And I've done the doom version of AI where it's going to kill us all and I've done the abundance version I gen. I don't know how this is going to play out, but I. I think it's going to be wild.

[Tom]

It's going to be wild.

[Peter]

Yes.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Tom]

You were. You were definitely not overstating anything. It's already transformed our business. So if people don't know me, this may come as a surprise, but the my before I got into entrepreneurship, in fact the only reason I got into entrepreneurship was to get rich so I could build my own studio because my background's filmmaking prior to entrepreneurship. So I finally Impact Theory is my studio. And we've been. For the last four years we've been working on developing our first video game coming out December of 2027. Get ready. Everybody called Kaizen. And seeing in our first year the catastrophic amount of money that we wasted. Partly because I just didn't understand game development yet, but partly because AI hadn't come on the scene yet. And so we had to handcraft everything. And just creating art assets in a video game in days of old was ridiculously expensive. And to give you an idea, at one point, these are not. This isn't full time, but at one point we had a hundred people that were working on the game. So touching some part of Some asset. Again, not full time, just a bunch of artisans touching different things. Now there's what, five or six of us and we're getting more done by a lot faster. And at only, I'd say 80 to 85% of the quality. It's not all the way there. Like humans still beat AI, but oh, buddy, like we are close enough that the game that I'm able to build, I simply wouldn't have been able to build. I would have had to either scale way back or just said, I can't make this. Now with AI between it writes C, it can interpret what are called blueprints, can't code them very well, but it can certainly understand like, okay, you've connected this to this and here's where I think the mistake is. Go check that out. Just sped us up in ways that are hard to quantify. And so that is only one of the areas we've also like, I, for me, if you're a small to medium company, I don't even think the structure of a company is the same anymore. So now my insistence is everybody's a doer, nobody is a middle manager. You may have some management requirements, but that's not going to be the majority of your day. Everybody's going to do a thing. Everybody's expected to be empowered by AI and using it in some way. And it has allowed us to shrink our top line expenses. So sorry, shrink our cost structure while increasing our top line, obviously increasing our profitability. But that I think people would understand. But the fact that we've reduced our headcount so dramatically and been able to at the same time make more just top line revenue is wild. So I, I look at the history of this kind of thing. Every time there's a major technological revolution like this, it ultimately ends up creating more jobs. So I'll just blindly have faith that that will happen here as well. But every time we go through something like this, it is a period of such tumult. Like it is going to first destroy jobs before all the new ones come on board. And even if they happen simultaneously, the people that are, say north of 35, that have been trained to do something that now lose their job, it's like the whole thing, learn to code back whatever, 10 years ago when that was like a real hot button thing, it was like considered a slur to tell somebody to learn to code. You're going to run into the same thing now where it's like, yeah, the career you thought you were going to have just got replaced by AI. You can do something new, but the question is, will you? Most people will not once they're past a certain age. And so what I'm finding is young people hate AI and old people hate AI. And there's really. Yeah, there's really only this, like, very narrow band of people who are like, oh, I'm still early enough in my career. I'm just going to get gangster at this. And so they're going to steamroll ahead of everybody else. There's all the people that are like, whoa, I never thought I could be an entrepreneur, but now I don't need employees. And so I'm going to start a business. So there's. It is really a tale of two people. And there are going to be people that just like, happened in the Industrial Revolution, the great electrification, the Internetification. They will fall off. It will be brutal. And then there'll be all the new stuff. Extraordinary age of abundance, all that. But we've got a pretty big chasm to cross.

[Peter]

Did you hear what Jeff Basil said about this?

[Tom]

He was.

[Peter]

I. I heard an interview he said the other day, and I think he said it was during the kind of agricultural revolution where jobs were being lost. And he said, if you said to those people at that time, don't worry, because in the future there's going to be massage therapists who are going to look after you, and there's going to be dog psychologists. They would have said, what do you mean? What is a dog? Psycho? You're crazy. Yet these jobs now exist. And he was trying to make the point that people should not be worried, that. But. But I can't help but think how many jobs are there for actual humans to do? And so if there aren't enough jobs for humans to do, what does abundance mean? And what does that mean for the human experience? And I just can't. I can't figure out if we're going to get my son. It's a shame he's in here. He has this question. He would have asked you what he said. Are we getting Ready Player One? Are we getting the Matrix?

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Or we get in Terminator.

[Tom]

Yeah, yeah. Well, so I think there are actually four paths.

[Peter]

Okay.

[Tom]

So they won't map exactly to those, because I think there's some overlap between Ready Player One and the Matrix. Those feel like they're on a continuum to me, but it looks like I think this. So you have what I call the new Amish. So you have people that are like, I do not interface with AI technology at all. They will revert to something approximating 90s technology. So the stuff you were talking about before, where it's like, it was a great time, like, you know, maybe we were texting on a phone, but it wasn't like it is now. And the first lane, do you not

[Peter]

feel drawn to that a bit yourself?

[Tom]

No, that's not my lane. Oh, no, no, you'll. I've got a lane. It just isn't that one. And my lane is very distressing for people. My lane may be the most hated, the most controversial.

[Peter]

Let's get to it.

[Tom]

So that's lane number one. New Amish. Then you've got the people that are going to completely embrace technology. They're going to go down the path of cyborg integration, like, give me all the technology everywhere, all the time. Then you're going to get people that want to play life on hard mode, and so they're going to go to Mars and they're going to, you know, try to, I think, in video game terms. So it's like a survival crafting game, and they want to go there and it's going to be very difficult and high risk of death. But they're the people that got on ships, you know, and discovered the new world and all that. You'll get that. And then the fourth one is they'll live in virtual worlds. And so that, I think, is going to be a profound. Call it 30 years from now, there'll be a profound intersection of the ability to augment the human body with the ability to create these worlds that. Where you want something to be difficult, but you want it to be maximally engaging. And so if you think of a video game where you can create any world, you can literally travel the cosmos or fight orcs or whatever your thing is, but you don't have to worry about your physical body being damaged. And so the level of experience that you can have will be extraordinary.

[Peter]

If that is the Matrix. Ready, player one. Ish.

[Tom]

Yeah. The Matrix has, like, some dark overtones in terms of you've been enslaved. I don't think it'll be like that. I think that we're a very poor producer of energy. So I don't think anybody. Any robot that uses us to generate energy is a fool. Even in the movie, it's so simple to say, well, you launch something up with, like, satellites with tethers that send the electricity back, and you get above the scorched earth and you grab the rays of sunlight, which would be pretty simple. We're going to be able to do that in the not too distant future.

[Peter]

So I don't think it's 30 years away.

[Tom]

You think that's too far?

[Peter]

No, too far away.

[Tom]

Yeah. Yeah. I go 30 years just to get rid of all the like people that, you know, throw shade. But yeah, it'll probably happen a lot faster.

[Peter]

And that's your lane?

[Tom]

That's my lane. I am a builder of worlds.

[Peter]

But do you want to go into

[Tom]

the world very aggressively?

[Peter]

Do you know the world you. The first world you want to build for you?

[Tom]

Well, I'm. That's what I'm building now. So Kaizen is the, the sort of 20, 26 basic bitch version of like that kind of world where it's a Minecraft world that is basically. So it's built procedurally so there's effectively no end. But when the game launches, it'll be a one to one size, same size as the Earth, which is so wild to me that that's possible. And so yeah, it'll be a world that has a set of rules that are deeply engaging, where it's all about progression and leveling up and, and the better you get, the farther you go and that'll be the core loop.

[Peter]

But what does that world map to as a lived experience?

[Tom]

Like what does it look like?

[Peter]

Does it feel like this world?

[Tom]

It does. I mean it would be reminiscent, but if you're going to make a virtual world to me, you don't want it to just look and feel like this. But certainly some of our biomes look and feel more like a normal world. So our strangest biome is what we call the surreal biome, where you're now in a place where plants can move, plants can track you, can attack you. You are fighting balloon animals. I mean it's pretty wild.

[Peter]

Is it one you go into for a few hours, or can you be in there permanently?

[Tom]

Right now it's like a normal video,

[Peter]

but the vision is it, oh, you

[Tom]

live your whole life, you would still have to do something to take care of the body. So I don't imagine people living it permanently, but it would be the kind of thing where you. The most meaningful parts of your life would be in the virtual world for sure.

[Peter]

So you're pro. You're essentially proving simulation theory.

[Tom]

Well, that's very different if you want me to go. Because we can actually talk about simulation theory from some real physics.

[Peter]

Had Roman Yao Panski, I get his name wrong surname, Polski. Yeah, Polsky. We just had him on and then we followed it up with a, a professor, a physicist from the UK who thinks he can prove that we are in a simulation theory. And so we've been kind of like going down that. And I'm more interested in the nature of what is reality. If that is true.

[Tom]

Really well. So we're about to like go down it. This is like my favorite thing to talk about.

[Peter]

So I've got a couple of favorite things about simulation theory is if the simulation is true. I always love the idea that the simulation could have started an hour ago. Yeah, started when you walked in.

[Tom]

You're the only other person I've ever heard say that.

[Peter]

It always fucks my head up. So yeah, but I've got these memories.

[Tom]

It's like yeah, they're just pre programmed, just context.

[Peter]

But the conversation we had, the physicist showed us this project Eon, do you know it? With the fly where they mapped.

[Tom]

Oh yeah, I know it's called that, but yeah, the fruit fly.

[Peter]

The fruit fly. And then they didn't train the fruit fly, they just put into a digital environment and it just lived. It just did. And so to that fruit fly, that's the digital one. What is the difference between that fruit flies, digital lived experience on a real fruit fly. And if that is true, right, this is, this is where I've gotten. It's kind of like I probably look like I've done a bong. But if that is true, then, well, how far are we away from being able to do that for a human? And if we can do that for a human at the point of death, if you can replicate the, the entire structure of my brain and upload me digitally like Black Mirror, is that still me?

[Tom]

No, definitely not. It's a clone. It's fascinating and it may give you some sort of anti death lower your death anxiety.

[Peter]

But does the digital me know anything different from the real me?

[Tom]

The let's live in a world where it doesn't. It's one to one. Yeah, it is you as of that moment. But going forward, barring some emotional way to tether yourself to it, you would still die. And unless you biologically live forever, there's no way for that to become you. It will think of itself as having become you, but you will still get left behind.

[Peter]

So but is it the same thing then?

[Tom]

To me it's not. Because the thing, the thing I'm interested in is I want to live forever. I don't want some replica of me who will be stoked like that version of me be like, oh, I'm the one that gets to move on. This is great. But I'm still the one that's like, well, honestly, it's better than not. So if somebody said, hey, listen, you're about to die. Do you want to do this? I'd be like, a thousand percent, like, knowing that at least a variant of how I process information will move into the future. That's cool. It's exciting. I love it. But that doesn't help me not die.

[Peter]

Well, hold on. So is your. Are you really building a game or are you pursuing eternal life?

[Tom]

I mean, that would.

[Peter]

So I'm asking you personally, the.

[Tom]

The honest answer is I'm doing absolutely nothing to pursue eternal life other than live healthily. Yeah. So that hopefully science will come along and do that for me. Brian Johnson, I'm looking at you like, keep going, baby. Make it possible. David Sinclair, you too, you know, and I hope those guys carry the torch forward and that biologically we don't die. That would be incredible. I'm not a person who's like, people need to die. I don't think so. So I think that would be amazing. As of today, I'm just building a video game. And if you went and played the video game, you would not be like, oh, yeah, this is going to become a world that people will live in. You'd be like, it's a video game, bro. And I would agree with you now, on a long enough timeline in success, if things actually mature to that place, if we get artificial general intelligence that becomes artificial superintelligence and it creates the technology that we can play with, then I would actually build a world that people can live in that's so far outside of what is possible today. I do not want to paint a false picture. This is a video game, just like other video games you've played.

[Peter]

For now.

[Tom]

For now. For now.

[Peter]

Maybe one day, then we get the VR glasses.

[Tom]

Well, so it'll be different than that. That won't be interesting until you literally interface at the level of your biology.

[Peter]

And so, okay, so you do need Elon Musk.

[Tom]

You need something like neuralink.

[Peter]

Yeah. Yes. And so. So that's part of the roadmap.

[Tom]

That is part of the roadmap. We're already on that. So when people are like, wait, that'll never be a thing. It's already happening. So that one you just like, maybe our generation's never going to see it. Maybe 10, 20, 30 generations aren't going to see it. But if you assume any rate of progress whatsoever, given that we can already do brain implants that augment people, there's no way that it doesn't happen.

[Peter]

Okay, so this is the real metaverse.

[Tom]

That is the real metaverse. So metaverse, I think, means something slightly different.

[Peter]

People.

[Tom]

So the question is, will people, when AI is indistinguishable from other humans, will people hunger for a shared experience with other humans? Or will they simply hunger for entities that are indistinguishable from consciousness? I would say that one.

[Peter]

Wouldn't you say there's a market for both?

[Tom]

Probably. That's the safer bet. But I think over time, people will pretty quickly realize that it doesn't matter. If it's indistinguishable, then it doesn't matter. And so I have a feeling it'll be. This is where I go when I'm inside, and then when I'm outside, I want to engage with humans.

[Peter]

Okay, so where are you on simulation, then?

[Tom]

Because simulation theory.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Tom]

So at a minimum, I will say it is the best metaphor that we have today. So if you think of a metaphor as being like, you've got to account for all this crazy shit. What metaphor accounts for it? It used to be a ticking clock, then it was a computer, now it's a simulation. It accounts for way more variables, and variables that I think are the most perplexing. The one being, three years ago, a Nobel Prize was given out for proving. For proving experimentally that the universe is not locally real. Now, when the dime drops for people, what that means. And I'll.

[Peter]

Hold on, hold on. I need to process that. Yes, hold on. A noble. Okay, so I understand that bit that proves that the universe is not locally real.

[Tom]

Yep. So let's break those two words down.

[Peter]

Yeah, please.

[Tom]

So real would be that it's there permanently. And so the moon is there whether I see it or not. And whether you and I are talking, you exist. Whether you and I are talking, I exist no matter what, just independently of each other. That would be real. Then you've got locally, meaning it's actually out there in space. Physically, you can go to it. It's only influenced by things that are contiguous with it. So it's not influenced by something a hundred light years away instantaneously. They have to be connected physically in some way to influence each other. Both of those things have been experimentally proven to be false. So I'll give it to you by way of what is that? Like the universe, Whether it's a simulation or not, maybe it's not. Maybe this is just metaphor. But the universe functions in the same way that a video game functions. Meaning you interface with Things as if distance is real, but they are. The way that they act is as if they are being processed in the same place. So a video game can make it feel like there's great distance between things, but they're being processed on the same chip. And so you could have one thing affect something else from anywhere. It doesn't matter. It all is processed in the same place. And then it's made to seem like they are distant. So the universe is the same. So you can get causal links, causal links between two entangled particles that are on opposite ends of the universe. Now, that violates what Einstein said is true, but we've proven it actually is true.

[Peter]

Spooky, right?

[Tom]

Spooky action at a distance. So we know that the universe says that you can't travel faster than light. So these. The information isn't traveling faster than light, but it is instantaneously causing the other to do something. And so anyway, that's. That was the universe being proven to render, like a video game. So when. If nothing were looking at or interacting with the moon in any way, the Moon would not be there. It would be basically a probability cloud, as everything would have to be when it's pure mathematics. And so what people are realizing is the universe, first of all, is mathematics. Why does it need to be mathematics? Because it needs to run. So. Because the simulation has to run and move and all of that stuff. And when I started developing a video game, that's when this all clicked for me because I found myself, like, I'm recreating the laws of the universe. Like, this is so wild. And then you start going, why are these so the same? Like, why. Why does a computer game have to mimic the way that the universe actually works so closely? It's just. It's too weird. So, again, I'm perfectly willing to accept we don't know what's really happening. Okay? Nobody knows what the actual physics of the universe are. Sad but true. Maybe one day we will, but as of right now, we don't. So for me to stand here and say, okay, these things mean. This is me groping in the dark, trying to figure out, like, what might it mean? So I'm perfectly happy to say that the simulation metaphor is just a metaphor.

[Peter]

But.

[Tom]

Whoa, is it close? Man, it explains so much.

[Peter]

But what do you think? Like, is the speed of light? The processing power of this, the speed

[Tom]

of light is the limitation to make sure that we humans can't cause the computer that this simulation is running on to melt by trying to get somewhere so fast. The whatever's processing this wouldn't be able to process it fast enough. So it's basically, this is metaphor. But if you think of a game running on a server, if you were able to move too fast again, I see this in my own game. If you let a player travel too fast, you start getting glitches, it slows down. Yeah. Because it just cannot process that data fast enough.

[Peter]

Is that time dilation in a computer?

[Tom]

Ooh, that one. I don't understand well enough how it would map back to the simulation. So I'll just say for now I've not thought about that.

[Peter]

That like almost, I don't know, say a multi online player game. If somebody had more processing power, could they move faster?

[Tom]

And therefore that's the time dilation. I don't know. It's interesting. This one feels bong hiddy. That one feels a little less grounded in like what I understand about what's been proven experimentally. So I don't know is the only honest answer.

[Peter]

Okay, so, so what, what does this all mean for you? Like where your whole headspace. What do you think about this?

[Tom]

Like to me this is far more interesting. So for me it's a sense of joy and wonder and awe. That if. So there's only one question that really matters and nobody, not simulation theory, not anybody can answer this question. And that is why is there something instead of nothing?

[Peter]

Yes.

[Tom]

Why does anything exist? And that one messes. When people talk about like oh, the hard problem of consciousness, I'm like, consciousness is what trips you up. Why is there anything at all? Like why? Why? Why is there anything? So all anybody can do is push, push, push, push, push the miracle back until you get to what's known as the unmoved mover, where it's just like God or the universe or whatever just always existed.

[Peter]

Well, so I, I reverse it the other way around as well. And I have this one that fucks my head up. I don't know if what you think about this. So I think about the long history of time. 13 point was it 8 billion years? The universe. Okay, so for some reason a universe came to exist. And in that there was a magical set of laws which allowed gravity to exist and particles to, you know, bond and collapse. And we created stars and galaxies and universes and eventually over here in one place there was this galaxy and within this galaxy there was a sun, and then there was a moon that went around our planet. But all this stuff that happened and at some point this primordial soup created some, something that could replicate and had rna, then DNA, and then eventually became whatever early life within the sea and then escaped the oceans, and eventually we evolved all the way to humans, and then they procreated in pairs all the way to the point that I got to exist. So the odds of me existing are so infinitely small that I should not exist, but I do. And not only if it's so infinitely small. I'm existing right now, so I shouldn't exist, but I do, and I exist right now. And so I have this kind of weird belief that if it is a game, we all exist all at the same time as one entity. That's it. That's the reason I get to exist, is because I am not me. I'm not individual. I'm just the entity which you are, which Drew is, which Curtis. We're all the same.

[Tom]

Is the entity the simulation, or are you like a pan simulationist kind of thing?

[Peter]

Yeah, I'm like. I am. I am computed to believe. I'm me. I'm Peter. I got to live this life, but really I am nothing and nobody's anything. And therefore I'm meaningless because I have to exist for this game, simulation, whatever, to exist. But actually.

[Tom]

And to you, that signals meaninglessness.

[Peter]

I have two choices, and I try and wrap my head around both, that I am completely meaningless because this is just some simulation. I get to exist, or I'm. I'm the opposite, and therefore I'm drawn to God and I just can't choose. I feel this draw to God and this draw to science and this draw to all these different entities. It's like competing.

[Tom]

When you say a draw to God, do you. Is that a pull to something that looks like a man in the sky with, like, a flowing beard?

[Peter]

No, it's a draw to some higher purpose, a spiritual purpose that. This is a test.

[Tom]

Interesting.

[Peter]

Yes.

[Tom]

Okay, so you and I bump into something very different. Okay, so for me, I have a very similar call to. There's something greater than myself. There's something I don't understand, and I don't understand it, so I don't know what it is. I am pretty confident it is not a God like anybody on earth would have me believe. But there is something instead of nothing. So there is something I don't understand man. And it is so much bigger than me I can't even comprehend.

[Peter]

Or we just need a version of Tom's game.

[Tom]

Yeah, all possible. But even then, like, you're creating a set of rules designed to do something, right?

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Tom]

And so there's a Lot of what they call emergent gameplay or emergent storytelling, where you're like, I never would have guessed that, like, the fact that rainbows can happen, they're happening there, and that the NPCs can make meaning from things. That guy thought the rainbows were sent because of his mom. Oh, that's cool. Like, you just would never have predicted that kind of thing. Right. So.

[Peter]

So what's outside of the simulation?

[Tom]

I mean, that's. That no matter what you say, you just push the miracle one step forward. And so you have. You literally. I'll just save everybody a lot of time. You just eventually end at the unmoved mover and go, explain to me the unmoved mover. How do they exist?

[Peter]

Does that change?

[Tom]

It does. My brain hits a wall. But it is a. It's simultaneously, like, very disconcerting. I can't spend a lot of time thinking about it. And at the same time, like, that is so cool. That's so wild. How do we exist? It's just. I. Yeah, I'm.

[Peter]

I'm yet to. And I don't know if I will go down the DMT rabbit hole.

[Tom]

I have the same.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Tom]

Tempted, but I haven't.

[Peter]

I just. I have a past with drugs and it's not great. And I know I don't mix well with them.

[Tom]

Yeah, then I would.

[Peter]

But I, I was. Someone was telling me you may even have spoken. Danny Golmer. It's the guy who's been doing dmt. And while he's on this dmt, they're firing a laser at a wall and he sees code.

[Tom]

Oh, yeah. I don't know him, but I've heard of this.

[Peter]

Yeah. And everybody who. Who does the DMT who sees a laser sees the code. And I'm like, that is wild.

[Tom]

Yeah. Here's. Here's the way that I look at it. Once you start building a game, you realize, oh, this is all cause and effect. So you're building a thing that says, react to this in this way. And so if everybody's coded the same and you give them the same stimulus DMT and then a laser, you would expect them all to see something that's similar. Unless the coding is, take their, you know, childhood experience and now apply some sort of hallucination that will be cognitively relevant to them in this moment, then you would expect it to be very different. But the, like, same. Same to me is just. Well, obviously, it's like we are a chemical processing plant, and so when we process these chemicals, we're gonna have A similar output. That. That to me, isn't weird, man.

[Peter]

It's a weird world. Is. Tom, is there anything I haven't asked you about that you wished we'd gone down any rabbit hole?

[Tom]

I mean, we went down some of my favorites. I love that we got to talk about simulation theory. Is there any big thing missing? No, it's just to make one final appeal to people. The pain and suffering that you feel right now is because the economy has been knowingly rigged against you. Knowingly?

[Peter]

Knowingly.

[Tom]

It's done through debt and money printing. And unless you solve that, nothing else matters. And so if you've got a patient that is bleeding to death, and while you're trying to give them a new organ, or you're trying to remove their tonsils, but they're bleeding to death, the tonsillectomy just isn't going to help them. They're still going to bleed to death and die. And so that is the unbalanced budget.

[Peter]

Got to do it. You're speaking my language, brother. And I'm going to clip that up. I'm going to send it out and watch people ignore it.

[Tom]

There it is. Well said.

[Peter]

My head against the fucking wall. You get the odd person. I mean, it's almost like person by person recruitment.

[Tom]

It is literally person by person.

[Peter]

Yeah, person by person recruitment. I'm so glad I got to meet you. I didn't realize how much we'd be on the same page. And like I said, I love what you do. Keep doing it and hopefully we'll get to hang out again sometime.

[Tom]

I would love that.

[Peter]

And thank you to everyone for listening. We'll see you soon. Later.