Hello. So what happened in the previous video is I lost the last 20 minutes
of recording. Uh,
there was some file corruption issue.
I managed to recover the first 40 minutes using the tool. The last 20 minutes got lost.
Also, it's like past midnight here, so I'm actually kind of sleepy, but I also feel
a sense of, you know, if I leave this till tomorrow, I'm not going to be as motivated to
finish it tomorrow. Therefore, I'm just going to do, you know, the rest of the recording
right now, as well.
Uh, it might show that I'm sleepy, but, you know, that's just the choice I'm making being
23.
Yeah, so the last 20 minutes of the recording, the, you know, part one, basically just
had more examples of, you know,
uh,
you know, different power structures, shaping people's values in different ways,
basically.
So I
discussed in detail, I think, about the enlightenment, you know, about how the printing
press, uh,
made it more...
The printing press allowed you to, you know, anonymously spread political ideas.
This in turn made it more morally acceptable to spread, you know, political ideas and
just deviating ideas
and that directly, indirectly led to the enlightenment, led to, you know,
Newtonian physics.
I talked a bit about, you know,
me really enjoying reading The Principia, at least skimming through it and,
and I tried, um,
was trying to understand why Newton, even though he knew calculus, you know, in the
Principia, he does all the proofs using conic geometry.
U- Using, you know, you know, geo- geometry of ellipses and,
uh,
parabolas and stuff.
See, a printing press is an example of
something that changed the moral values of a population, I think.
I talked about, you know,
the British
colonizing the world and how they
got, you know, first of all, engineering strength due to ship building and secondly, you
know, political strength, the ability to do divide and rule, you know, all these economic
and financial tools such as, you know, joint-stock operations, such as, you know,
double-entry bookkeeping, which is the ability to, you know, transfer debts between
people like,
you know, these financial tools of, you know, debt and tithes and so on
have existed in various kingdoms. Uh, you know, trade has always been there, but this
kind of, you know, financialization was something the British got really good at and this
enabled them to
colonize
areas better, I think. Again, this is all guess work from
stuff I've not read a lot in detail at the strike surface level, but this is the general
impression I get.
Uh, I talked about, you know, how the internet is homogenizing morality.
It's forcing different cultures to come into contact and, you know, adapt to each other.
You can't just be in your isolated bubble with your own isolated moral code anymore.
You have to interact with the rest of the world.
Uh, I talked about, you know,
how the birth of television
did a bit of this, too. Like, the internet is going to an ex- insanely extreme degree
what, you know, television and radio already did.
So
radio and television broadcast between US and USSR
was kind of difficult during the Cold War.
There were, you know, these, uh, numbers stations that sent encrypted radio broadcasts
across and there would be, you know, CIA agents to literally kill people in the numbers
stations and so on.
Uh, but yeah, now, we are in a world where...
Or even with television, but even more so now, we're in a world where, you know,
people of say US and USSR do kind of know what's going on in the other country
and they do kind of have some basic understanding of what are the differences in values
here and they do kind of need to accept that.
I talked about, you know,
how the internet, uh,
exposes you to people of so many different values and so many different lifestyles.
You
will,
if you are
being very rational about it, you will eventually come to the conclusion, you know, at
least some of these people have values better than yours. They're happier than you.
N- You, they are more successful than you.
So,
it's not really surprising for, you know,
wh- whoever community you happen to be born into. It's...
(furniture crashing)
Sorry about this. I might edit this out later or not.
Yeah. I'm just going to wait till that
finish.
(furniture crashing) Yeah, I think we're done. Cool.
Uh,
I was talking about the internet, stuff time. Yeah, I have more examples, though.
Uh,
oh, yeah, I was talking about how nuclear weapons centralize power, uh, that we have, you
know, basically at
least nine, you know, nuclear states and countries that don't have nuclear weapons
are basically client states for one of these, you know, nuclear empires.
You know, US, UK, France, Israel on one side.
Uh,
China, Russia, North Korea on the other side.
India is, you know, 75% US, 25%, you know, this side and, you know,
Pakistan is on the other side, you know, 75%, you know, China and 25% y- you know, US
like.
I talked about that.
I talked a bit about, you know, capitalism versus communism.
I mean, there's a lot of examples. I-I should actually just write an
entire post on, you know, examples of,
uh,
these, you know, technology, how it shapes power structures, how that shapes, you know,
people's values. I have a lot of examples on this, but,
yeah, that's going to be a long video.
Actually,
yeah, I want to maybe
accept all of that and come to the more personal thing I wanted to talk about, you know,
about
my life and my personal values, not just, you know, this is how values work in the world
in general.
Um,
no, I'm unsure if I actually mentioned this in the previous video about, you know,
low-trust versus high-trust societies.
Yeah, but the basic idea of low-trust versus high-trust societies, as per me, is
if lots of people all have the ability to exit communities, families,
situations, et cetera that are harmful to them, then it's easier to build a high-trust
society.
Because then, you know, if people are together, they're there by choice because they
want- they actually feel they'll get some value by being there, and they also feel safe
enough to be there. They're not, you know, unsafe and still stuck there.
And, yeah, I think people in, say, the upper middle class in the US
more likely than not live in a high-trust society.
They've maybe even had, you know, parents who grew up in a high-trust society and so on.
Because this is whereas, you know, where I am in India, where even if, let's say, some of
the people I know are- grew up in high-trust circumstances, you know, maybe their
family did not grow up in a high-trust circumstance.
Maybe there's lots of other people in my circle who themselves are in a low-trust kind of
situation even today.
And,
you know, a lot of, you know, my values,
my desires, my wants,
even though I'm trying to be fairly independent of people around me, you know, I'm- I am
probably internalizing at least some of it, just by virtue of being here.
And
it definitely made me think about that.
So there's a practical reality of, you know,
if people around you have power, uh,
they feel safer and then they teach you, you know,
behaviors that are
appropriate,
then you are actually safe and you actually do have the power to defend yourself and you
do actually have a good rule of law and you do actually have enough money that you can,
you know,
change your house, change your employer, you know, even break friendships, make new
friendships if it was absolutely necessary.
Like,
when you have money you can do all these things, like...
and which seems like a lot of the high-trust societies that exist, at least some of them.
Yeah, I won't say a lot, but some of them are high trust because of this ability to exit.
There are other ways to build a high-trust society.
This is not the only way to do it, but yeah, this is one way to do it.
So I think that is something that is affecting me personally.
Uh,
another broad set of things that's affected me personally a lot is I think basically just
my childhood. Uh,
(sighs)
I might end up summarizing it here but all of these have just deeply, deeply hurt
me and
right now I can be somewhat neutral and objective about it. Maybe not.
Maybe I'm still not really objective, but
I can talk about these things without being in actual physical pain because I have
spent a lot of time thinking about it and at least processing, you know, some of that
pain.
But, yeah, I think a lot of institutions I've been part of in my life have...
I have found them fairly oppressive to the point where
there are points in my life I would have genuinely been better off if I had killed myself
instead of, you know, continuing to live.
Like,
if, you know, Samuel at the end of, you know, class well, you know, at the end of school
chose to kill himself to get away from the pain,
I honestly think
that may have been the better choice.
Like,
you know, my life is so much better right now, you know, as a 24-year-old compared to
back when, you know, I was what?
17-year-old? Yeah.
Like in the past seven or so years my life has just completely changed and
I'm a lot happier now as a person. I have purpose in life. I have friends.
I have people I trust. I do not have a lot of these things, you know.
Yeah. I think I'm okay talking with some of this
in public. Yeah. It's okay. Uh,
I straight up did not have a lot of these things, you know.
Maybe 10 years ago I kind of had friends, but I did not trust the friends, you know, I
did not have anyone to talk to about anything personal to me. I did not...
Yeah, I think there are some childhood things that I'm going to have to avoid talking
about for, you know, protecting privacy of other people.
But,
yeah.
I think the summary of, you know,
a lot of my childhood is I can
give is... Yeah, I just found, you know,
school fairly oppressive. I found, you know, religion fairly oppressive.
I found,
yeah, not really anyone I could actually trust or confide in.
Uh,
I think that's the short version.
Might... I don't think I'm going to go into too much of detail there for, you know,
certain reasons.I
think a lot of this,
maybe I can talk about school. I think school is safe to talk about, you know, why the
school damage because of, uh...
So I was recently, I mean, I say recently, I mean, a year ago I...
A year ago, I was teaching English at a school in Vietnam, uh, for one and a half years.
It's, uh, one and a half months
up and sweeping.
Ah.
Yeah, I was
teaching English and I could see that some of the kids, and okay, their age groups were
between
eight
to 16.
And
people, maybe the eight to 12 age group are
more interested
in, you know, group activities and doing things
that are beneficial for the group. Like people between eight...
Children between, you know, ages 6 to 12, I felt are more cooperative and children
12 above are more accepting of, you know, competitive kind of games.
Like, I would play a lot of games with them and
if I, you know, called an eight-year-old kid to the board and say, you know, "Do this,"
and he can't do it and he's feeling kind of bad, you know, the other kids want to go and,
you know,
help him get the answer. Whereas if, you know, I call a 16-year-old kid and say, you
know, "Answer this on the board."
Then, you know, he or she is probably on their own to figure it out.
That's not that interesting.
Yeah, I think if you spend time with kids you learn interesting things about kids and
about
humans more generally. Like,
yeah, I think society trains a lot of valuable human behaviors out of kids and school is
one of the institutions that helps them do that.
So yeah, maybe this is one of them. Like,
if you did school very differently, you know, maybe 8-year-olds kids who are very
cooperative continue to be very cooperative by the time they're 16.
Mm-hmm.
I'm not sure about that, but
it seems possible.
But yeah, I mean, of course ultimately school is, you know, feed the system for college,
which is feed the system for employment and employment is, you know, individualist
capitalist and so on. So
you are going to train people to be very individualist at the end of the day.
So
yeah, I mean, I get all of this. I didn't get, you know, individualist econ- economies
that support individualism make
more wealth.
Yeah.
But
yeah, I found it interesting as,
you know, teacher there noticing these differences between different age group kids.
Uh,
I noticed some kids clearly
don't want to be there
and
ideally if it were up to me, I'm just like, you know, "You don't have to be there.
You can just leave and go do something else."
(laughs) Like, "You don't want to be here. I don't want to teach you.
If you don't want to be here, I don't really want to teach you either.
So, you know, you can just go."
And not in a bad way, like, not like a punishment you have to go, but like, if you want
to go, you can go, you know? But I can't actually do that because, you know,
their parents have hosted me, their parents have paid the school,
the, you know, education center money for them to be
locked in this class and I'm supposed to be the disciplinarian who keeps them locked in
this class.
Like,
and I was very uncomfortable with that kind of role.
Like, "Why am I being forced to lock up these random kids here when they clearly don't
want to be here?" Like, and the reason they don't want to be here probably doesn't have a
lot to even do with me, you know? Either they're not interested in the course or, you
know, they might have issues back at home that cause them to not be interested in routine
of any sort.
Um, they might have actual priorities
that they want to fix in their life
that, that
more importantly, you know, than acquiring new knowledge.
Like,
like,
yeah, I did notice this with a couple of kids.
Mm-hmm.
And I think I was the same. Like, I could look at these kids and I could see, at least
some of them I could see a bit... Not all of them, but some of them I could see a bit of
myself in that where, you know, I, in school was like a very naughty kid.
I would not
fit in. I saw school as a complete waste of time and it was, you know.
Like, most of the best years of my life have been, you know, gone by me,
you know, just
completely fucking wasted. I mean,
like, it's a waste at an individual level and at a societal level.
Like,
you know, my life got wasted and I'm personally
kind of, even now I look back and like, I'm just like, "What?" You know?
Like,
it's a complete waste of my life, but it's also a waste for society, like...
(laughs) I don't know, maybe this is the narrative trust me, but, uh, so there is
this epic rap battle, uh,
Edison versus Tesla. And in the third verse, Tesla has a
line which is pretty hard, uh,
hard and, you know, the rap sense hard.
Uh,
you know, it goes hard kind of. So
it says,
he tells you basically at the end of the second verse, you know, Edison is like, "You
know, I stole all your tech and you know, deal with it." And Tesla is like, "You know,
you did not steal from me, you stole me from mankind."
And...
I don't know, maybe I want to get there.
Mm-hmm.
Like,
I want to reach a point, and I'm not there yet, but I want to reach a point where I can
honestly say, you know, "If you are here to stop me, you know, from my mission, you know,
you are not stealing this from me, you're stealing me for mankind." Like, I want to reach
a point where I can honestly say that with, you know, no doubt in my conscience about it.
And I feel school did a bit of that, like school did a bit of
stealing human potential away from entire generation of people
and I could see that happen.I mean,
it's not just... So there's one aspect of school which is, you know, what you're actually
curious about, they won't teach you, and what you're not curious about, you know, they'll
shove it down your throat for endless years. There's that.
There's the
physically being, you know, stuck
in a place you don't want to be. There's a...
You know, I would play all these board games with friends for many years, even I-
initially it was these mazes I would make and then later it graduated more into board
games like chess. I would, you know, on pa-paper, you know, obsessively play chess with,
you know, a couple of friends. And
the s- school says, you know, that's a bad use of time, you know.
"Go focus on the classes you already know how to do."
That's interesting.
Yeah, it's... Now it
sounds kind of very impersonal when I talk about this, but going through this, actually
living through it, was really painful.
Oh, that's interesting.
Like, I think if I had even one or two people who were genuinely in my circle, who I
genuinely trusted, I think all of this could have been less- pretty much less painful.
But
yeah, the system wasn't designed to cater to people like me.
Okay.
Yeah, maybe there are some people for whom the system actually works.
It just, it very clearly did not work for me, you know.
College did not really work for me either, but at least
I benefited in other ways from college, like the...
Again, you know, the academic, the curriculum, the teaching was still a complete fucking
waste of my time and the best of, you know, the professor's times who were teaching me.
Like,
I think those people are also... They have actual value to contribute to society.
They want to, they don't want to, that's a separate thing, but at least some of them want
to, and
to force them to be stuck with, you know, someone like me who does not want to learn, I
think that's a waste for them and for me, you know?
That's interesting.
It's hard.
Okay.
Yeah, and I think this has shaped part of my values.
Like, I think freedom is very core to my values now and it may be because of, you know,
all these situations. Like, if I had a very different childhood, maybe freedom would not
be so important to me, but right now
I am willing to sa- go to very extreme lengths of sacrifice just to, you know, protect my
freedom. Like,
if I have to, you know, lose one of... an arm or a leg to...
like literally, you know, get one of my arm or arms or my legs cut off
to keep my freedom, I'll do it. If I have to, you know, lose friendships to keep my
freedom, I will do it. Uh,
if I have to lose some of my money, paradoxically.
Yeah, that may or may not actually end up happening.
You know, typically more money means more freedom.
But yeah, if I had to, you know, in the short term lose
money and go through a bunch of... maybe go through a terrible job for some short period
of time
to get a lot of freedom in the end, I'll kind of do it.
Okay.
Yeah, like if someone offered me some really miserable kind of job, but they said,
you know, "I'm going to pay you, you know,
I don't know, $200,000 a year for it," like, I might do it
just because, you know, the money...
Like, I think there are moral boundaries I will not be willing to cross.
But keeping that aside, I think I'm willing to tolerate some amount of personal misery
if,
you know, I get the money. It's just
right now when I look at it, like, making money feels like this huge and painful
endeavor. So I'm not motivated, but...
Like, it feels like it will consume a lot of time.
If it was, I could quickly do it, I would do it.
But yeah, I think if I set out to make a lot of money, it's just going to take a lot of
time. I don't want to waste my time on that because, you know, I...
See, because freedom. Like, I can sacrifice some things in short term, but I don't want
to sacrifice my freedom in the long term for almost anything.
Uh,
I think truth has become very important to me.
Like,
I think a lot of institutions I was part of,
if the people in those institutions were genuinely aware of, you know, how much
suffering they're creating in the world by being part of that institution.
If, let's say, you know, my teachers in school were aware, you know, how much pain I was
in,
maybe they would not force me to be there. Maybe they would themselves...
at- at least some of them. Not all of them, but some of them would
realize maybe there is something deeply fucked up about me being there.
Like, I don't know, it's a hope, but I do wonder if- and again, this is not just a
message to, you know, my teachers. Like I don't know them, so they're probably are not
going see this. If they see, you know, whatever.
Like this is not a message for my teachers, it's a
message to all teachers of the world at some level.
Like,
you know,
you are the source of, you know, industrial mass production of human suffering and
as... I think this and you might not be aware of this and
I just wish more people are honest about their experience and this truth comes out.
Like, "This is how much suffering school creates."
Okay.
Yeah. And I think there's a lot of other institutions in the world which I look at pretty
much the same way.
School is just one example I feel safe to, you know, criticize, but
criticizing school is safe in the way that, you know,
criticizing a political party is not safe.
Criticizing a religious institution is not safe, you know?
Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. I think you're probably
right there. I mean, I'm not sure if I agree with you 100%. Uh, do you have anything...
What about... You were talking about religion and politics.
Do you have anything to add about religion and politics?
Uh, yeah. In general, I think religion and politics are two topics you need to be kind of
careful with.
Okay.
Like talking about your own ideas is fine, but then if you go and criticize someone
else's ideas, then it becomes kind of
Okay.
Yeah.Yeah.
So let's just talk about school right now.
Yeah, I think if the truth came out about, you know, all the suffering that's being
created by schools...
(pause) At the very least, people who are creating will- all that suffering will be aware
that, you know, "I am destroying people's potential.
I'm going to leave people with, you know, suicidal depression.
At least one person in my class is going to be suicidally depressed in five to 10 years
later because,
you know, my effective rules ensured he or she did not have anyone they could trust."
Like,
I don't know if a middle school teacher realizes that this is what they're doing, but,
you know,
this is part of what we are doing.
Um...
Yeah. So what was I talking about? Oh, I talked about, you know, how this is important to
me, freedom is important to me. I talked a lot about balance of power and, you know,
does that mean I want a lot of power? Like...
Yes, I do want a lot of power, but
there are things I want even more than I want power, I think.
That's basically how it comes down to really.
I think freedom through politicism kind of are more important to me.
Like,
I want to acquire power to fit into these things.
I don't want to acquire power just to, you know, keep myself safe.
Like, you know, if I become a billionaire or a politician, you know, I am safe.
Like, I'll be more safe than I am today but
that safety is not that valuable to me, like...
Instead of being, you know, this much safe I'll be, you know, this much more safe as a
billionaire? Like, yeah, that's not valuable to me.
The reason that
being a billionaire is valuable to me is because I can permanently, you know, restructure
society, you know,
and give enough freedom, power, truth to a lot of other people...
(pause) And
I think that is what at some level drives me to acquire power.
Like,
it's kind of a background thing that I know needs to happen.
It's not like I'm 24/7 just focused on how do I acquire power.
Right?
Like, I want to do the thing and acquire power as a side effect.
Like there is, uh... What should I say?
So
again, this comes back to just that article, Meditations on Moloch.
It's just,
what fraction of your attention are you spending on acquiring power versus doing useful
things with the power?
If you spend 100% of your attention just on acquiring power and 0% of your attention on
doing useful things with the power,
maybe you will magically improve the situation. I think that's possible.
Like, you can spend zero time thinking about how to do good and do good anyway.
Like... (pause)
I don't know. Like, the situation at the highest levels of power is in some ways
sufficiently terrible that
simply by you managing to climb your way in there, you can bring good things.
Like, you might damage yourself in many ways on the way there, but...
(pause) in spite of all the damage, you might be still better than the person you're
replacing and therefore it might be good for you to reach.
I honestly believe that's possible.
So,
you know, when I see people around me who are just
nakedly kind of very power hungry and they don't have any great sense of what they'll do
once they have the power and like,
yeah, not great, but also I'm not really going to stop you.
I'm not going to be, you know, against your plan. You know, you can go do it.
It's not the plan I would take. Like, I would rather spend at least some fraction of my
attention thinking about what to do with power, not just how to acquire power but...
I mean, I kind of get that view.
(pause) Yeah.
Yeah, I think the thing that's just really important and
it's become increasingly important is, like, values need to be discussed in
terms of these practical trade-offs, you know?
You can't discuss values in the way a moral philosopher discusses it, you know, with a
thought experiment, you know?
Imagine you had to kill Alice or kill Bob.
Would you rather kill Alice or would you rather kill Bob?
You know, Alice is a pregnant lady, you know, Bob...
I don't know, Bob has, you know, a brain that ex- experiences 2X pleasure or whatever,
like...
Like, you can learn some valuable things from that, but that's not where th- the cha-
wha- maj- majority of the value of studying morality is.
I think the vast majority of it is in studying practical situations like these, like...
(pause) Like, yeah, if you're in a com- tech company with a huge source of power, you
know, how does that destabilize trust in the institute, you know?
If you're a
politician, you know, how do you think about keeping resources in your country versus
giving them to the other country?
Do you enable high pressure society in your country?
Do you enable high press-
between you and the other elite? Like, what trade-offs are you making there?
Uh...
(pause) How far are you willing to go out, you know, destroy,
uh, harmful institutions such as, for me, you know, that's school and that's a bunch of
other institutions. Like, I want to destroy the institutions, but if I just say, you
know, "Look, I want to burn down every school to the ground," like,
how does that work? You know, I mean, wha- Am I going to literally take, you know, a...
What should I say? What do you call that thing?
(pause) Basically just logs and you light them on fire and you burn it, no? A pitchfork?
No.
Whatever. You know. Am I going to physically go and burn them down?
Am I going to, you know,
become a billionaire and then, you know, pay an army to go burn all these schools to the
ground? I don't think that's how any of this works.
I think it's going to work a lot more...One strategy is a lot more just
bring the truth of the matter out to the public and...
I think a lot of str- institutions are going to just spontaneously collapse on their own
once the truth of what's actually going on in there came out.
So,
that's a thing.
Yeah, I think another thing that's important to model is damage to yourself.
Uh,
so Naval Ravikant has this thing about integrity
and
self-respect, like do things that cause you to, to respect yourself more, not
less. And
I think I generally kind of align with that.
Like, I earlier used to think more in terms of, you know,
EA/Utilitarian kind of view of, like, if you have done enough good, the
damage you do is kind of worth it. Like,
if you save a thousand lives, you know, maybe killing one person to do it is worth it.
And,
yeah, the pract- again, sorry, this is again thought experiment.
Let me try very practical about it, very practically this looks like, you know,
if you have to...
Well, okay, maybe let's just... Let me, let me just talk about SBF, you know.
If you have to
gamble, you know, your business partner's billion dollars to, you know, make another
billion dollars, you know,
maybe that's worth it. I don't know if that's true in the ex- SBF's, you know, actual
situation or this is Sam Bankman-Fried by the way.
He was influenced by effective altruistic ideas to
acquire a huge amount of power even if it means, you know, causing some damage along the
way and
then basically
donate it to various artists because that was his thing and
I think that he generally believed in that at some level.
Like,
SBF was kind of, you know, intersection of, you know, two cultures.
Like,
more of the crypto and finance kind of culture colliding with, you know,
the more EA and
Holden Carnovski and Bridgewater kind of culture.
Oh, uh,
you sh- anyone who's interested in effective altruism, you should go read The Principles
by Ray Dalio. Uh, Holden Carnovski is very influenced by that and he runs...
He ran a lot of EA organizations along those principles.
Yeah, I think
maybe that is the third thing I can talk about, just collision of cultures.
So, different cultures have different values and in practice
you are very often either part of one of these cultures or maybe a few mutations away.
Like, your ideas are almost the same, but not exactly the same as one of the cultures
and the interesting trade-offs kind of happen when cultures collide.
So,
if you're, you know, in,
you know, Wall Street kind of financial culture, you know,
making a billion dollars to donate, it is seen as, probably it is seen as bad.
You know, that's a wrong thing to do. Don't do it.
You are not part of a circle if you do it, you don't get to build a long term reputation
if you do it.
Like this, there is to get away with this.
The way to get away with it is you also keep, you know, making more and more money, keep
compounding upwards but you're also donating some fraction, that works.
But if you're like, you know, you know, the Bill Gates strategy of, "You know, I will
make a lot and then I'm going to just give all of it,"
actually, you know, even Bill Gates is making some money.
Uh,
yeah, I think Dustin Moskovitz might be an example of, you know, kind of give up all of
it.
Wait, even Dustin, Dustin Moskovitz is making money.
Is there any billionaire that has actually donated most of their wealth while not
also having a company that is appreciating in value?
That is an interesting question.
The ad is interesting, I lo- I'll have to actually think more about that.
I don't have an answer as of yet but, uh...
I got distracted, what was I actually talking about?
Um,
yeah, I was talking about collision of cultures, so
yeah. You know, it's financial kind of culture versus, you know, the EA kind of nonprofit
kind of culture versus let's say, you know, Silicon Valley,
that kind of culture, you know, the whole...
Yeah, a lot of these things are kind of...
Like, I have seen all this because I am, you know, fairly...
Basically all my ideologies kind of come from the, you know, tech space
but I'm sure for a lot of people this does not make a lot of sense. So there's...
Then there's the more standard Silicon Valley culture, you know, Paul Graham, Peter
Thiel, Marc Andreessen.
Uh,
then there is a more open source kind of culture then there is a more...
Yeah, leftist kind of culture within Silicon Valley, like you do
notice a u-
lot of developers online
influenced by that. Then there is...
Yeah, more recently there's the more AI ideology of, you know,
we should build super intelligent AI and this is good actually and, you know, if it,
you know, causes humanity going, to go extinct, that's kind of fine.
Like,
there is the more, like, transhumanist kind of culture like...
Yeah, and I think right now I took a lot of the Silicon Valley examples because I end
up
paying a lot of attention to that
and noticing when, you know, two cultures are colliding and there's a person trapped at
the center of the
collision.So
more recent examples may be, you know, Dario Amodei who's stuck between the collision
of, you know,
three different cultures. There's the, you know,
super intelligent AI is good culture colliding with the super intelligent AI is bad
culture colliding with the
standard Silicon Valley
make use protect to get 5:10 kind of culture.
Like...
like,
I'm sure he has thought a lot about this.
He has thought about, you know, out of these three cultures, you know, which one does he
want most of his employees to come from.
But,
yeah, filtering cultures is hard. Like
it's
not really straightforward to look at, you know, a software developer and decide, you
know, which culture he's a part of. Uh,
maybe partly because all these cultures are also kind of nascent.
Like they're not, you know, 100 year plus established kind of things the way in, let's
say, you know,
uh, an oil industry can be est- established for 100 years.
You kind of know this is how they think
and their institutions kind of entrenched 'cause none of these ideologies are that way.
They're all kind of a lot more in flux.
So it becomes harder to filter and therefore you can end up with institutions at the
center that are
like the,
what should I say, the,
you know, ground zero collision between two cultures and
either one culture, you know, swallows the other one or the institution is ripped apart
and, you know, both cultures get transformed and they build, you know, separate
institutions as a result. You know,
something is going to happen. Something interesting typically happens when cultures
collide.
I
think Vitalik Buterin is trying to do a bit of this, you know,
forge alliances between cultures. Like
Vitalik was initially part of the more, you know, crypto anarchist kind of culture
and now...
Or maybe Vitalik was, Vitalik himself maybe he was only somewhat, but
he advanced technologies and,
uh,
you know, people, ideologies. Like he brought a lot of attention and capital to
people with very crypto anarchist, crypto libertarian, you know, anarchist, uh,
ideologies. Uh,
but he himself is not, you know, like a very hardcore anarchist or libertarian.
Uh,
and he's actually fairly influenced by at least some of
the AI ideology in Silicon Valley. Uh, you know, he has donated to MIRI for
example. So... He's trying
to play this role of, you know, being in both camps and trying to bridge the gap between
the two and I find that interesting.
I find that interesting because I relate it a lot personally.
I think I'm also a bit in that camp of, you know,
kind of crypto, like at least 10% crypto anarchist but not completely
and then, you know, at least 10%. It's a lot more than 10 but at least you know 10%
super intelligent AI is the most important thing kind of camp. And...
I do see myself as, you know, center of collision between the camps.
Like I'm definitely not in the, you know, Paul Graham kind of camp.
Like,
yeah, not in the, you know, Paul Graham, Witteftel, uh, Marc Andreessen camp that's
for sure. But
it still remains to be seen, you know, which camp I kind of solidify into at the end.
Uh,
you know, maybe I'll create a camp. Like
ideally that's what I want to do. Like
I mean I'm basically in the camp of, you know, what happens in Silicon Valley is going to
determine
future of humanity but also the way Silicon Valley works right now is kind of fucked up.
Like I think that's basically the camp I'm in.
And that is not a definition of a camp.
There are multiple camps who
will...
claim to be part of that and some of them have at least a kernel of truth there but
in some level, you know,
even Paul Graham is trying to get away from Paul Graham.
Like there is a thing going on there. How do I explain it?
It's like, uh,
it's like when Paul Graham writes, you know, on his blog that, you know, here's why you
should be a good person while he himself knows he's funding a bunch of companies who are
going to have people who are going to do all sorts of fucked up shit and
he funds them anyway.
And that he writes on his blog, you know, "Here's why you should be a good person, here's
why it will make you more money later on." Like he argues it in a very consequentialist
kind of way.
Uh...
Yeah, like at some level I see this,
what should I say, cultures colliding.
It's not like, you know,
you know, Hitler is very squarely one camp and Stalin is very squarely in one camp and
they're just going to, you know, fight to the death, you know.
Millions of people die this side, millions of people die that side and, you know,
somebody has, you know, the more brute force and they win.
Look
I see a lot of these cultural collisions in Silicon Valley
less like, you know, Nazism versus Communism and more like
col- collisions at some level taking place in the minds of the people
advancing them. Like...Like,
it is, as of today, still not impossible to change Paul Graham's mind.
It's not impossible to even change Peter Thiel's mind.
It's not impossible to change Vitalik's mind.
It's not impossible to even change Sam Altman's mind.
And I find that interesting that
people are able to wield that much power and build entire institutions around their
thing, and
there is a possibility they can still adapt and change.
And
that doesn't mean they will adapt and change.
Of c- they probably won't, but
the fact that they even can, to a little extent, I find that interesting because,
you know, a lot of political groups throughout history are a lot more rigid than even
that.
Again, let's talk about Stalin, right?
Like,
Stalin is not going to be pragmatic and say, "Okay, you know, look, I'm losing.
Let me dilute my ideology by 75%, but I'll get to keep some of my power." Like,
he's not going to do that. He's going to fight till the very
death of
significant fractions of his population, and then ultimately his own death, you know,
before, you know, he gives up on communist kind of ideology.
And he's not going to dilute it.
There are people who will do things for money, but then,
like, you know, then the money becomes, you know, their ideology. Like, uh...
Who's a good example of this?
(laughing)
(mic echoing)
I mean, to some extent, probably MBS, Mohammed bin
Salman. I mean,
I have not studied MBS, uh,
a lot in detail though, so I'm uncomfortable commenting about him without complete
information.
Oh, I mean, there's, like, there's definitely a bunch of industrialists in India I can
talk about, you know. Uh, Ambanis, for example, Adanis, uh,
who are basically not loyal to any ideology per se.
They just want to acquire a lot of money.
They're pretty flexible of which ideology they have to follow if...
as long as it gets them more money in the end, you know.
If Congress is in power, they'll probably
strike deals with Congress. If BJP is in power, they'll, you know, strike deals with the
BJP. Uh, that's
maybe an example.
I mean, there's a lot of industrialists in a lot of countries that operate this way.
It's not an India-specific phenomenon.
Yeah, and then that is also, like, kind of fairly rigid.
It's very unlikely any of these people
changed their mind
about, you know,
money being the number one priority or, you know, having, "Well, okay, 75% this but 25%
another thing." Like,
a lot of Silicon Val- Valley elites seem a lot more flexible in that way and I find that
interesting.
Like, I can actually even go speak to a bunch of these billionaires and influence them.
Like
I, I have, like...
I, I, I'm not trying to boast. Like, the point is not like, "Oh, I'm a cool person
because I have these billionaires in my social network." That's not the point.
Uh, the point is,
uh, Vitalik can
read your blog post, but, you know, uh, Mukesh Ambani is never going to read your blog
post. Like, that's the point.
And
yeah, I think broadly, a lot of my values are influenced by
a mix of personal background,
uh, plus
Silicon Valley's ideologies going forward,
plus, you know, my own political ideas that seem to be forming at least somewhat
independently.
But yeah, all of it is very practical. It's not, you know...
Like, I, until now, I have not mentioned anywhere, you know, coherent extrapolated
volition. I've not ex-
talked about, you know, what do you call that thing?
Uh,
oh, Rawls' Veil of Ignorance. I've not talked about human rights.
I have not talked about, you know, high-minded ideals like democracy, liberalism, and so
on.
Uh.
Like, I've basically said I'm kind of pretty flexible.
I want to
kind of win and have a somewhat amorphous definition of what winning is, but it's
something closer to, you know, truth and freedom.
Uh,
and I'm flexible about which ideology I need to be an ally with to get there.
I don't know, I'm unsure if being morally flexible is good or bad.
(laughs) Like,
there are some people who would see, you know, being morally fe- flexible as just
basically bad, like.
And I find that also a bit hard to relate with. Like, I'll give you an example.
So, hardcore extreme version of this is, you know,
when China colonized Tibet.
Yeah, that's a political example, but I'm going to take 30 minutes. Forget it.
Uh,
there were a lot of Tibetan monasteries where,
uh, you know, the monks gave messages to their populations that, you know, "You are
going to face a lot of suffering. You know, don't seek revenge, don't form an
army, don't go into the des- the soldiers were approaching."And I don't
get that. Like, maybe I get that a little bit, but I don't want to be like that.
Like,
I am not that non-violent. If my life is in danger, then I will kill you.
Yeah. And
I think, uh, one of the things that I'm curious about is how you...
How you deal with people who are, um, you know, hard to work with.
Or even if they're not hard to work with, but they're just, you know, they're difficult
to sit with. Yeah. I- I think that is a way in which I've kind of
broken apart from
values of at least some people around me.
Well, I know some people around me, they won't say it, but actually when they're in, you
know,
real problem, you know, they will also compromise their ideas.
Uh,
there are some people who might even, you know, keep all their
idealist kind of values until the end.
Like, you know, they will never kill another person.
They might keep that even when their own life is in danger.
But, yeah, I think I am very squarely in the camp of,
at least mostly, not very squarely, but I'm mostly in the camp of, you know, optimal
amount of violence is non-zero. Right.
The optimal number of innocent people who need to be killed for greater...
For a good future at the end is non-zero.
And that does not mean it's large,
but it is non-zero. Right. Yeah, and I think that's the beauty of it, right?
Is that we all have different values and we all have different, uh, different reasons for
why we do the things that we do. And I think, like, even as an adult, like, I still try
to figure out, like, what would my parents do? What would my grandparents do?
Um, and I think, like, even by admitting to myself, "Look, I am willing to damage some
innocent peoples' lives to get to the greater good at the end,"
like, I am accepting damage to myself, and it's again the Noam
Chomsky thing. Yeah.
There is a part of me that respects that move and a part of me that does not respect that
move. There's, you know, again, internal conflict and... Yeah.
I mean, I think it's important, though.
I think it's important to figure out what is the best move for you, uh, in any situation.
Right now, it's, you know, the
optimal violence is non-zero side is winning that conflict, but it has not won, you know,
in, you know, my internal kind of conflict. Yeah.
I mean, I think that's the beauty of it, right?
Is that we all have different values and we all have different reasons for why we do the
things that we do. And I think, like, even as an adult, like, I still try to figure out,
like, what would my parents do? What would my grandparents do?
Um, and I think, like, even by admitting to myself, "Look, I am willing to damage some
innocent peoples' lives to get to the greater good at the end," like, I am accepting
damage to myself, and it's again the Noam Chomsky thing, right?
Like, there is a part of me that respects that move and a part of me that does not
respect that move. There's, you know, again, internal conflict and... Yeah.
I mean, I think that's the beauty of it, right?
Is that we all have different values and we all have different reasons for why we do the
things that I do. My internal conflict, right now, it's, you know, the optimal violence
is non-zero side is winning that conflict, but it has not won, you know, in, you know, my
internal kind of conflict. Right. Right. Yeah.
And I think, like, even by admitting to myself, "Look, I am willing to damage some
innocent peoples' lives to get to the greater good at the end," like, I am accepting
damage to myself. And it's again the Noam Chomsky thing, right?
Like, there is a part of me that respects that move and a part of me that does not
respect that move. There's, you know, again, internal conflict and...
Right now, it's, you know, the optimal violence is non-zero side is winning that
conflict, but it has not won, you know, in, you know, my internal kind of conflict. Yeah.
I mean, I think that's an important thing I need to figure
out. Yeah. I mean,
I think that's the beauty of it, right?
Is that we all have different values and we all have different reasons for why we do the
things that I do. My internal conflict, right now, it's because of, you know, I can get
more things done in the world if I don't have, you know, very uptight kind of rules of,
"I will never d- damage anyone ever." If I'm somewhat flexible, I can get more things
done. I think that's just true. Right.
Right. Yeah. And I think,
like, even by admitting to myself, "Look, I am willing to
damage some innocent peoples'
lives to get to the greater good at
the
end," like, I am accepting damage to myself.
And it's again the Noam Chomsky thing, right?
Like, there is a part of me that respects that move and a part of me that does not
respect that move. There's, you know, again, internal conflict and...
Right now, it's, you know, the optimal violence is non-zero side is winning that
conflict, but it has not won, you know, in, you know, my internal kind of conflict.
Right. Right. Yeah. And I think that's an important thing I need to figure out. Yeah.
I mean, I think that's the beauty of it, right?
Is that we all have different values and we all have different reasons for why we do the
things that we do. My internal conflict, right now, is because of, you know, I can get
more things done in the world if I don't have, you know, very uptight kind of rules of,
"I will never d- damage anyone ever." If I'm somewhat flexible, I can get more things
done. I think that's just true. Right. Right. I don't know.
So there's the thing that is definitely true, which is a lot of my childhood has trained
me to not have empathy for other people.
And
this is something I realized only a lot more recently,
like, literally a year or two back, you know, I was
crying about this for,
at least for a week, well, kind of a month really, I don't know.
That while realizing, you know, the extent to which, you know, I've kind of switched off
my empathy for other people, like...
I don't know, I think I'm kind of my...
You know, my empathy is kind of switched off by default, but then I can kind of sometimes
switch it on,
and I'm... Sometimes I need to make a conscious effort to switch it on otherwise it's
kind of switched off by default, like... Yeah.
My default mode is, you know, very rational, is information processing, you know,
information in, information out.
It's not emotions in or emotions out, you know.
How the other person feeling is, by default, you know, it's been filtered out right at
the gate, you know, that information is not passing in.
Yeah. And vice versa, you know.
Many years of my life have trained me to not talk about my emotions with other people
either, like, it's kind of filtered.
Either it's filtered or it's, you know, kind of overflowed, you know, the dam overflowed
and now I'm just
dumping all my problems on a random person who doesn't want to actually hear it, like...
I still do that sometimes when I
feel not great about it, like,
I have complained to random people about my problems and then regretted it.
That's good advice. Like, yeah, I think I don't have a very healthy relationship with
emotions, basically, like...
Yeah. I mean, I think that's the beauty of it, right?
Is that we all have different values and we all have different reasons for why we do the
things that we do. My internal conflict, right now, is because of, you know, I can get
more things done in the world if I don't have, you know, very uptight kind of rules of,
"I will never d- damage anyone ever." If I'm somewhat flexible, I can get more things
done. I think that's just true. I don't know.
So there's the thing that is definitely true, which is a lot of my childhood has trained
me to not have empathy for
other people. And this is
something I realized only
a lot more recently, like,
literally
a year or two back, you know, I was crying about this for, at least for a week, well,
kind of a month really, I don't know. That while realizing,
you know, the extent to which, you know, I've kind of switched off my empathy for other
people,
like...
I don't
know,
I think I'm kind of my... You know, my empathy is kind of switched off by default, but
then I can kind
of sometimes switch it on. And then sometimes I need to make a
conscious effort
to switch it on otherwise it's kind of switched off by default, like...
My default mode is, you know, very rational, is information processing, you know,
information in, information out. It's not emotions in or
emotions out, you know. How the other person feeling is, by default, you know, it's been
filtered out right at the gate, you know, that information is not passing in.
And vice versa, you know. Many years of my life have trained me to not talk about my
emotions with other people either, like, it's kind of filtered.
Either it's filtered or it's, you...
enlighten, like I want to get enlightened kind of trajectory.
I tend to see things kind of selfish. I don't know.
Like...
I don't know. I do judge them a little and maybe I shouldn't.
Like,
maybe I'm judging them because I don't understand their whole view well enough from their
point of view. Like,
like why do you see this much suffering in the world and decide, okay, the thing I need
to do here is not to go fix any of it. It's, you know,
go meditate or go become more at peace or accepting of all of this.
Like,
why do you think you'll be able to accept all of this?
And
if you manage to ac- in fact accept all of this and do nothing about it, you know,
aren't there parts of yourself you have killed in the process of doing this?
Like,
haven't you damaged and scarred yourself to make this happen? I don't know.
I don't know. I think I need to see more examples of this in real life and talk to more
people, ideally, if I want to get a better sense of this because in my head the whole
non-violence thing does not make a lot of sense to me.
Like,
I mean, it... Non-violence makes sense to me as a tactical strategy in the way, you know,
you know, Mahatma Gandhi was non-violent.
Like, it practically kind of worked.
Or even let's see, you know, Nelson Mandela was fairly non-violent for a long time.
You know, that worked, but,
you know, Nelson Mandela's wife talked about, you know, we should go and kill,
uh, British colonizers.
That is fascinating, by the way. So
you have, you know, the husband is more non-violent, you know, the wife was more violent.
And
eventually Nelson Mandela did support some acts of, you know, terrorism,
war or whatever you want to call it. You know, this is that, you know, Orwellian kind of
double-speak, you know, is it terrorism or is it war? But, you know, whatever.
Uh,
South Africans murdering Britishers, basically, uh, in,
you know, civil disobedience
at that time. And,
yeah, I get that is a practical thing, like if you start off with the...
If you start off waging war, you are going to lose a lot of supporters.
If you start off, you know, in the very non-violent kind of strategy, you will gain a lot
of supporters.
There's a practical consequentialist kind of way of looking at non-violence.
And
then there is the very,
you know, moral rule kind of way of looking at non-violence, like
let's say, you know,
let's say how Buddhism looks at it, let's say maybe how Christianity looks at it of, you
know, here is the commandment from God that says never kill another person, and that's
it. No exceptions.
And
I am not in that camp. I'm too pragmatic about these things, about
where does this lead to actually go out and survive out from San Diego.
There is a perspective that is contradictory to mine, which is that, you know,
Buddhism has not been wiped out of this face of the earth and
therefore Buddhism has not yet lost.
Like,
I cannot confidently declare, you know, Buddhism is a losing strategy because they've not
lost yet.
I think that's fair.
But,
yeah, I'm right now not persuaded to pour my life into a strategy that has not
yet lost and will maybe win. But
yeah, I'm not very optimistic on it winning, so
I want to win. I want to...
Like, it's not I want to win, it's I want to advance a strategy that will win.
Like,
I want society to be in a good kind of structure, you know, centuries after I die.
Like, it's not about, you know, what
I manage to do while I'm alive. It's what happens after I die that's important to me,
honestly. Like,
yeah, I think that is another core thing in my values of, like,
don't be trapped by your place and your time when thinking about morality or place and
time are kind of fucked up.
You can
transport yourself to a place and time that is not fucked up and think from there.
Like, I think that is an important thing for me.
Like,
I am willing
to tolerate, you know,
some amount of
stuff, you know, just because if
at the end, you know, let's say, 100 years from now I can look at society and say, you
know, "This is what a healthy society looks like.
This is a society that will have a good future," you know?
If I can say that with any degree of confidence, which I cannot say right now.
Like,
right now...
Yeah, right now I'm, like, very, like, it can go this way also, it can go that way also,
and I'm not very optimistic or pessimistic about the future of humanity.
Like, like, the optimism kind of feels like faith and the pessimism feels kind of like
faith as well. Like,
neither of those is actually locked in.
But I want
a future with...
Like, I want a good future that's somehow locked in.
Like, I want the certainty of, you know, we are going to have a good future.
I think that this is beneficial for me personally to know that the future will go well
and also for a lot of people around me.
Like,
I mean, there's the expectation of it going well that's valuable and then there's, you
know, the actual reality of it going well, which is obviously valuable.
So,
yeah, I want to lock in some sort of structure that will outlast me
basically.
That
is important. Like,
it's important to me that I don't look at myself through the lens of, you know, the
handful of.... people around me right now, the culture around me right now.
Like, it's important for me to be able to rise above all of that.
And
above doesn't mean...
Like, not every way of, you know, separa- separating from your culture is a good thing,
but yeah, I want to find honestly good ways of doing it.
Like,
you know, bring a superior culture in, basically. Like, morally superior, you know?
A culture that can actually, you know, achieve more happiness for more people,
and more safety, more trust, more love, more friendship,
and so on.
Yeah, I think I maybe
summarized a bunch of my kind of childhood stuff, and maybe that is actually more
important to discuss, you know?
The
breaking of
trust in society, the suffering due to institutions, you
know, suicidal ideation over many years.
Like,
all of that has impacted me a lot, and I'm not talking a lot about it. Maybe that's fine.
Actually, there's a bunch of external reasons I feel uncomfortable talking about all of
that today.
But yeah, I mean, end of the day, like...
yeah, I think there may be some things I still need to learn about, you know, my past and
how I came to be this way. Uh,
but ultimately what I'm most interested is, in is the future.
Like, going forward, you know, what are my values going to be independent of everything
that's happened in the past? Like,
I want... Again, see, I want to be flexible.
I don't want to be stuck
as the, you know, Samuel I was, you know, five years or ten years ago.
Yeah, I think that is important to me. I don't want to be stuck.
I don't want to
carry over patterns of thinking that served me, you know, ten years ago but don't
serve me today.
And I think I have more work to do to figure out, you know, how to
move past all of that, basically.
Yep. Think I'm going to end this video right now.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sleepy. Also it's been another hour, which means, again,
quite a lot
of time has passed.
Yeah, I don't immediately have anything more to say.
Goodbye.