WEBVTT 00:34.960 --> 01:04.410 to join me in welcoming Mr. Terrence McKenna. 01:04.410 --> 01:15.640 How's that, all of you? 01:15.640 --> 01:19.220 But it's a pleasure to be in Seattle this evening. 01:19.220 --> 01:21.440 You've made me feel real welcome. 01:22.420 --> 01:30.710 Thank you. 01:30.710 --> 01:32.570 Before I get started, 01:32.570 --> 01:36.450 I wanna thank some people who made this possible. 01:36.450 --> 01:39.630 First of all, I wanna thank Bruce Pavitt 01:39.630 --> 01:43.970 for his friendship and vision and patronage. 01:43.970 --> 01:46.930 Like to thank Jared and Alex. 01:46.930 --> 01:50.250 Like to thank HPX and On a Dime. 01:50.250 --> 01:53.690 These are the people responsible for the visuals. 01:53.690 --> 01:55.610 Like to thank John, 01:55.610 --> 01:59.690 who's responsible for the ambient background, 01:59.690 --> 02:02.770 if there is one. 02:02.770 --> 02:06.570 And Dean Chamberlain, who took the amazing photographs 02:06.570 --> 02:11.570 of Albert Hoffman, Tim Leary, and myself. 02:12.630 --> 02:15.730 Other people, be sure and check out his photographs. 02:15.730 --> 02:16.870 The guy is amazing. 02:16.930 --> 02:18.170 Major talent. 02:20.130 --> 02:23.450 Okay, so much for all of that. 02:24.970 --> 02:27.670 I hope you all got the brochures 02:27.670 --> 02:29.910 which were available this evening, 02:29.910 --> 02:32.250 which indicate major events 02:32.250 --> 02:35.430 in the psychedelic community to come. 02:35.430 --> 02:39.690 One in Mexico that's become legendary over the years, 02:39.690 --> 02:43.390 and one dedicated to psychedelic artists 02:43.390 --> 02:46.570 that will occur in Hawaii this September. 02:46.930 --> 02:49.850 So we look forward to this. 02:49.850 --> 02:50.690 Thank you. 02:50.690 --> 02:51.690 Thank you for being here. 02:51.690 --> 02:52.610 And our visitors, 02:52.610 --> 02:53.370 but also our audience, 02:53.370 --> 02:54.850 that is a new experiment 02:54.850 --> 02:58.770 in an effort to expand the dialogue on psychedelics 02:58.770 --> 03:01.510 to bring artists out of the closet 03:01.510 --> 03:18.320 and to force a confrontation 03:18.320 --> 03:23.020 on the issue of the impact of psychedelics on creativity. 03:23.020 --> 03:25.620 Having said all that, 03:25.620 --> 03:29.340 our discussion this evening is psychedelics in the age of intelligent machines, 03:29.340 --> 03:37.420 shamans among the machines and I wanted to talk about this simply because these are two of my 03:37.420 --> 03:46.740 great loves and so I assume being monogamous they must be one love so how to build intellectual 03:46.740 --> 03:55.980 bridges between these two concerns which seem so different as far as people and machines are 03:55.980 --> 04:04.140 concerned it was Ludwig von Bertalanffy I think who said in his book General Systems Theory he said 04:04.140 --> 04:13.560 people are not machines but in every opportunity where they are allowed to behave like machines 04:13.560 --> 04:23.480 they will so behave in other words we tend to fall into the well of habit though the glory of 04:23.480 --> 04:25.960 our humanness is our spontaneity 04:25.980 --> 04:37.840 creativity we too as creatures of physics and chemistry of memory and hope tend to fall into 04:37.840 --> 04:47.680 repetitious patterns and these repetitious patterns are the death of creativity they 04:47.680 --> 04:55.740 diminish our humanness they diminish our individuality make each other 04:55.740 --> 04:55.960 unishar individuality make each of us unique Bonjour brother God has a foot it's so beautiful 04:55.960 --> 05:05.680 us somehow like cogs in some larger system. And we associate this cog-like membership 05:05.680 --> 05:13.200 in larger solar systems with the machines that we inherit from the age of the internal 05:13.200 --> 05:21.560 combustion engine, the age of the jet engine. You know, Marshall McLuhan said we navigate 05:21.560 --> 05:29.000 our way into the future like someone driving who uses only the rearview mirror to tell 05:29.000 --> 05:36.920 them where they're going. It's not a very successful strategy for navigating into the 05:36.920 --> 05:47.880 future. So I made a number of notes on this matter of psychedelics and machines. To me, 05:47.880 --> 05:51.440 the connecting bridge, well, there are many. 05:51.560 --> 06:02.800 The most obvious one is consciousness expansion. After all, psychedelics, before they were 06:02.800 --> 06:08.700 called entheogens, before they were called hallucinogens, before they were called psychedelics, 06:08.700 --> 06:16.900 they were simply called consciousness-expanding drugs. Good phenomenological description of 06:16.900 --> 06:21.560 what they do, and certainly the technology of psychedelics, and the technology of the 06:21.560 --> 06:32.900 cybernetics is a consciousness expanding technology. It expands a different area of consciousness. 06:32.900 --> 06:40.440 The minds of machines and the minds of human beings are very different, so different that 06:40.440 --> 06:48.800 each party questions whether the other even has a mind. But in fact, what these are are 06:48.800 --> 06:57.460 species of minds operating in very different domains. For instance, you can ask a five-year-old 06:57.460 --> 07:04.700 child to go into the bedroom to the third drawer of the dresser to select a pair of 07:04.700 --> 07:12.200 black socks and to bring them to mother. This is not a challenge for a five-year-old child. 07:12.200 --> 07:18.800 To get a machine to do this is a hundred million dollars, and a research team of forty or five 07:18.800 --> 07:27.960 50 technicians, code writers working months. On the other hand, if you ask a person for 07:27.960 --> 07:41.220 the cube root of 750,344, much head-scratching results. A computer is utterly undaunted by 07:41.220 --> 07:50.600 that question. So computers are minds that work in the realm of computation and human minds are 07:50.600 --> 07:58.900 minds that work in the realm of generalization, spatial coordination, understanding of natural 07:58.900 --> 08:08.640 language, so forth and so on. Are these kinds of minds so different from each other, pilgrims, 08:08.640 --> 08:11.200 that there is no bridge to be crossed? 08:11.220 --> 08:20.880 I would submit not. But in fact, the bridge between the human mind and the machine mind is 08:20.880 --> 08:33.400 symbolic logic, mathematics. When we think clearly, we are intelligible to machines. People 08:33.400 --> 08:41.100 who write code know this, that the essence of making yourself clear to a machine is to 08:41.100 --> 08:41.200 think clearly. People who write code know this, that the essence of making yourself clear to a machine is to think 08:41.220 --> 08:41.880 clearly. People who write code know this, that the essence of making yourself clear to a machine is to think clearly yourself. The machine has no patience for the half-truth, the analogy, the semi-grasped association. For the machine, everything has to be clear. Everything must be defined. So that's the commonality between minds and machines of the calculating species. What are the common bridges between the human mind and the machine mind? 08:41.880 --> 08:42.100 Think clearly yourself. The machine has no patience for the half-truth, the analogy, the semi-grasped association. For the machine, everything has to be clear. Everything must be defined. So that's the commonality between minds and machines of the calculating species. What are the common bridges between the human mind and the machine mind? 08:42.100 --> 08:51.900 yourself. The machine has no patience for the half-truth, the analogy, the semi-grasped 08:51.900 --> 09:02.860 association. For the machine, everything has to be clear. Everything must be defined. So 09:02.860 --> 09:10.680 that's the commonality between minds and machines of the calculating species. What 09:10.680 --> 09:19.000 are the common bridges between psychedelics and these machines? Well, to my mind, this 09:19.000 --> 09:28.060 is an easier bridge to gap. Both computers and drugs are what I would call function-specific 09:28.060 --> 09:36.320 arrangements of matter. And as we develop nanotechnological abilities as we move into 09:36.320 --> 09:40.660 the next century, it will be more and more clear that the difference between the two 09:40.660 --> 09:47.540 things, between drugs and machines, is simply that one is too large to swallow. And our 09:47.540 --> 10:00.990 best people are working on that. Technology is a very hot buzzword at the moment, an unimaginable 10:00.990 --> 10:08.990 dream of building machines and small objects, atom by atom, perhaps under the control of 10:08.990 --> 10:13.910 long-chain polymers, running forms of pre-programmed software. 10:13.910 --> 10:14.610 Subtitles by the Amara.org community 10:14.630 --> 10:23.310 It's all very razzmatazz, very state-of-the-art. But in fact, pharmaceutical chemists have 10:23.310 --> 10:28.990 been working in the nanotechnological realm for over a hundred years. I mean, when you 10:28.990 --> 10:37.910 synthesize molecules out of simpler substrate, specifically to have a conformational geometry 10:37.910 --> 10:44.610 that matches something going on in the synapse of a primate, a human or a human, it's a 10:44.610 --> 10:54.390 monkey or something like that. You are working at this nanotechnological level. Both the 10:54.390 --> 11:03.470 psychedelic and the new computational machines represent extensions of human function. And 11:03.470 --> 11:14.370 this is really close to the nub. It locks in with the concept of prosthesis. The drugs, 11:14.370 --> 11:22.530 the psychedelic substances, the shamanic plants are forms of prosthetic devices for extending 11:22.530 --> 11:33.310 the human mind, the human perceptual apparatus into hidden realms or inaccessible realms. 11:33.310 --> 11:41.250 Similarly, the machines, by allowing us to model, calculate, and simulate very complicated 11:41.250 --> 11:42.150 multivariable processes, extend the human mind to a birds-winged littlenut self, in 11:42.150 --> 11:43.110 the sense that they could be那我們 our perception over the entire way of life. I 11:43.110 --> 11:43.530 think that's the true meaning of that nub. And we can really just get ramped up and up. 11:43.530 --> 11:43.630 But in the end, technology is not just a resource, it's anglishment of those birds and 11:43.630 --> 11:43.730 insects that are able to politically access the mind through their actually today existing 11:43.730 --> 11:44.310 escre Cisco. Because were х intensity processes, nonophatic processes, podem crying hacia 11:44.310 --> 11:52.750 the power of the human mind into places it could never dream of going before. And part 11:52.750 --> 12:00.130 of what seems to me very real about being a human being and inheriting 10,000 years 12:00.130 --> 12:08.530 of human history is the complexity of the inheritance and the growth of that complexity. 12:08.530 --> 12:16.030 A thousand years ago, an intelligent human being could actually dream of mastering the 12:16.030 --> 12:24.690 entire database of Western civilization. Read all the classic authors, read the Bible, and 12:24.690 --> 12:32.590 you're closing in on it around A.D. 1000. Now the notion of any single human being assimilating 12:32.590 --> 12:38.510 any, even a small portion of the database of this civilization is unthinkable. 12:38.530 --> 12:47.910 It's inconceivable. So machines which filter, which search, which are guided by human intent, 12:47.910 --> 12:54.570 that's part of the story. The other part of the story are boundary-dissolving states of 12:54.570 --> 13:03.150 ecstasy in which all the factoids of the culture are thrown up for grabs. The deck is reshuffled, 13:03.150 --> 13:08.510 synchronicity rules, and out of that steps a visionary and a mastermind. 13:08.650 --> 13:17.030 Understanding. Breakthrough. Integrated breakthrough under the aegis of psychedelic intoxication. 13:17.030 --> 13:26.150 So, prosthesis. Prosthesis for the human mind and with the advent of virtual realities 13:26.150 --> 13:33.610 of various sorts and that kind of thing. Prosthesis for the human body. And I'm very 13:33.610 --> 13:36.490 keen on sort of the under the table. 13:36.490 --> 13:37.650 Um, sort of the under the table thing. 13:37.650 --> 13:37.970 ... 13:37.970 --> 13:47.930 effects of these things. In other words, I'm a full-going, full, hard-charging McLuhanist, 13:47.930 --> 13:54.990 and I really believe that the strengths and weaknesses of the world we've inherited 13:54.990 --> 14:03.370 are strengths and weaknesses put there by print, and by the spectrum of effects which McLuhan 14:03.370 --> 14:10.590 called the Gutenberg Galaxy. The spectrum of effects spun off from print, and if you're 14:10.590 --> 14:16.130 not used to thinking in McLuhanist terms, it may not seem immediately obvious to you 14:16.130 --> 14:24.010 that phenomenon as different as the modern notion of the democratic citizen, the modern 14:24.010 --> 14:33.010 notion of interchangeable parts on an assembly line, the modern notion of conformity to the 14:33.370 --> 14:41.830 canons of advertising. These are all spectrums of effect created by the linearity and the 14:41.830 --> 14:50.350 uniformity of print. It actually, in the late 15th century, reconstructed the medieval 14:50.350 --> 14:59.470 psyche into its proto-modern form, and we have lived within that print-constellated 14:59.470 --> 15:02.430 cultural hallucination for about 500 years. 15:02.430 --> 15:02.930 Thank you. 15:03.370 --> 15:11.290 Until the advent of various forms of electronic media in the 20th century, McLuhan talked 15:11.290 --> 15:18.810 about radio, he talked about television, he didn't really live to see the internet. 15:19.510 --> 15:28.830 The notion that keeps occurring to me as I watch all this is that print was uniquely 15:28.830 --> 15:35.340 capable of creating and maintaining content. 15:35.360 --> 15:49.220 It was a boundary-defining form of media. It preceded linearly. It required literacy, 15:49.220 --> 15:55.080 which had implicit in it the notion of a very stable, advanced sort of educational 15:55.080 --> 16:04.500 system. Print was a creator and a definer of cultural boundaries, and the new electronic 16:04.500 --> 16:13.320 media are not. And neither are the psychedelics. This is why I proposed in a book of mine called 16:13.320 --> 16:24.360 The Archaic Revival the idea that the values of the archaic, of the high Palaeolithic, 16:24.360 --> 16:34.400 values of community, ecstasy, relating to life through rhythm, dance, ritual, intoxication, 16:34.500 --> 16:42.900 etc, that these values which seem so archaic are in fact destined to play a major role 16:42.900 --> 16:51.060 in the future as print fades. Print just a convulsive, 500-year episode 16:51.060 --> 16:57.860 in the Western mind that opened that narrow window that permitted the rise of 16:57.860 --> 17:04.320 modern science, modern mathematical approaches to the analysis of nature, and then, as we 17:04.500 --> 17:14.440 obliterated its own platform its own raison d'etre by allowing the growth the 17:14.440 --> 17:21.620 appearance of the electronic technologies and my sort of supposition 17:21.620 --> 17:28.820 about all this I'm not an apocalyptarian or a pessimist I may be an 17:28.820 --> 17:37.000 apocalyptarian I'm not a pessimist I think this is all very good obviously 17:37.000 --> 17:43.740 continuing to run Western civilization on the operating system inherited from 17:43.740 --> 17:49.520 print produces various forms of political and cultural schizophrenia 17:49.520 --> 17:56.000 which allowed to run unchecked would become fatal would create cascades of 17:56.000 --> 17:58.820 chaos and political 17:58.820 --> 18:03.420 destabilization that would become uncontrollable 18:03.420 --> 18:09.800 governments resist change governments cling to technologies and social 18:09.800 --> 18:16.800 formulae that are already tried and true in that sense then all governments 18:16.800 --> 18:23.840 are incredibly anti-progressive forces again the image from McLuhan of someone 18:23.840 --> 18:28.140 driving into the future using only the rearview mirror 18:28.140 --> 18:31.740 so 19:01.740 --> 19:09.540 the world you see that the central figure in that world is the shaman male 19:09.540 --> 19:18.300 or female the shaman and the shaman is like a designated traveler into higher 19:18.300 --> 19:25.880 dimensional space the shaman has permission to unlock the cultural 19:25.880 --> 19:31.540 cul-de-sac of his or her people and go behind the 19:31.540 --> 19:39.340 stage machinery of cultural appearances and has permission collective permission 19:39.340 --> 19:46.000 to manipulate that stage machinery for purposes of healing 19:46.000 --> 19:53.820 we have no like this when we have advertising we have rock and roll stars 19:53.820 --> 20:00.000 we have cults of celebrities we have things which our shot unlike but we have 20:00.000 --> 20:01.440 no 20:01.540 --> 20:11.080 institution that permits human beings, in fact encourages human beings, to go beyond 20:11.080 --> 20:18.580 their cultural values, to burst through into some transcultural super space, 20:18.580 --> 20:26.740 forage around out there, and bring new means back into the tribe. To some degree 20:26.740 --> 20:34.100 our artists did this, to some degree our scientists do it, but it's all hit and 20:34.100 --> 20:39.720 miss. It's all willy-nilly and once achieved it must be swept under the rug 20:39.720 --> 20:45.980 in the service of the myth of method, that somebody was following somebody 20:45.980 --> 20:51.900 else's work or somebody was applying a certain form of rational or logical 20:51.900 --> 20:56.280 analysis and that led to their breakthrough. 20:56.280 --> 20:56.720 If you're a researcher, if you're a curator, if you're a writer, if you're a writer, if you're a writer, if you're a writer, 20:56.720 --> 21:04.360 If you've read Thomas Kuhn's book on the structure of scientific revolution, you know, this is all lies and propaganda. 21:04.360 --> 21:19.780 The real story of science is that it's a series of revelations brilliantly defended by people whose careers depended on the brilliant defense of those revelations. 21:19.780 --> 21:40.700 One of the best-kept secrets of the birth of modern science is that it was founded by an angel, that the young René Descartes was whoring and soldiering his way across Europe as a 21-year-old in a Habsburg army. 21:40.700 --> 21:46.240 And one night in the town of Ulm in southern Germany, he had a dream. 21:46.820 --> 21:49.700 Strange that this would be the birthplace of Albert Einstein. 21:49.780 --> 21:52.020 Some 200 years later. 21:52.860 --> 21:57.920 But Descartes had a dream, and an angel appeared to him in the dream. 21:58.060 --> 22:05.940 And the angel said, the conquest of nature is achieved through measurement and number. 22:07.000 --> 22:08.640 And he said, I got it. 22:08.800 --> 22:10.020 Modern science. 22:10.200 --> 22:11.180 I'll go do it. 22:11.940 --> 22:13.500 And he did. 22:13.740 --> 22:14.340 He did. 22:14.340 --> 22:19.340 And that was the method for over 250 years of the conquest of nature. 22:19.780 --> 22:31.400 And it leads us, you know, to the Josephson Junction, the Mars Global Surveyor, long-base interferometry that searches nearby stars for Earth-like planets. 22:31.740 --> 22:44.100 It brings us the entire cornucopia of scientific effects, but an angelic revelation disguised as a logical, philosophical breakthrough. 22:44.740 --> 22:48.080 This is what you're not told in the academy. 22:48.700 --> 22:49.080 So my point... 22:49.780 --> 23:09.700 My point there is, human progress has always depended on the whispering of alien minds, confrontations with the other, probes into dimensions where imagination and chance held the winning hands. 23:09.700 --> 23:19.700 So the shaman, as a paradigmatic figure, is applicable both in the aboriginal social context. 23:19.780 --> 23:48.900 And in the present social context, the Skywalker, the one who goes between, the one who passes outside of the tribe and then returns with means, insights, cures, designs, glossolalia, technologies, and re-fertilizes. 23:49.780 --> 24:02.380 The human family, by this means, it's irrational, but it's how it actually happens, and it's how it's always happened, and it may very well be the only way that it can happen. 24:02.380 --> 24:10.080 This cultivation of the irrational, this flirtation with the breakdown of boundaries. 24:11.260 --> 24:19.380 So now, in our nuts and bolts technological progress, we have... 24:19.780 --> 24:37.080 Somehow created technologies which are very friendly to our social values, in that these technologies can be bought, sold, licensed, upgraded, all things which we understand. 24:37.080 --> 24:49.080 But these technologies are acting on us in the same way that psychedelic drugs do, but more profoundly, more generally, and more insidiously. 24:49.780 --> 24:56.780 Because their effect is not understood, or if it is understood, it's not discussed. 24:56.780 --> 25:02.780 And so, in a way, we have come into a kind of post-cultural phase. 25:02.780 --> 25:10.780 All culture is dissolving in the face of the drug-like nature of the future. 25:10.780 --> 25:17.780 It's music, it's design, indeed the very people who will inhabit it appear to be... 25:19.780 --> 25:27.780 The most switched on, the most chance-taking, the most alive of the entire tribe. 25:27.780 --> 25:40.780 People who feel the beat, people who are not afraid to take chances, people from whom these technologies have always been very natural. 25:40.780 --> 25:48.780 Machines are central to the new capitalism, the information-transforming technologies. 25:48.780 --> 25:58.780 In fact, one of the strange things that is happening is every move we now make in relationship to the new technologies 25:58.780 --> 26:09.780 redefines them at the very boundaries where their own developmental impetus would lead them toward a kind of independence. 26:09.780 --> 26:13.780 In other words, we talk about artificial intelligence. 26:13.780 --> 26:17.780 We talk about the possibility of an AI coming into existence. 26:18.780 --> 26:27.780 But we do not really understand to what degree this is already true of our circumstance. 26:27.780 --> 26:37.780 In other words, how much of society is already homeostatically regulated by machines that are ultimately under human control, 26:37.780 --> 26:42.780 but practically speaking are almost never meddled with. 26:42.780 --> 26:45.780 The world price of gold. 26:45.780 --> 26:47.780 The rate of petroleum extraction. 26:47.780 --> 26:51.780 Petroleum extraction and other base natural resources. 26:51.780 --> 26:56.780 How much of these things is on the high seas and in the pipeline at any given moment. 26:56.780 --> 27:01.780 How much electricity is flowing into a given electrical grid at any moment. 27:01.780 --> 27:05.780 The distribution and the billing of that electricity. 27:05.780 --> 27:11.780 All manufacturing and inventory processes are under machine control. 27:11.780 --> 27:16.780 So in other words, the larger flows of energy, capital and ideas 27:16.780 --> 27:21.780 already have a kind of autonomous life of their own 27:21.780 --> 27:26.780 that we encourage because it makes us money. 27:26.780 --> 27:28.780 It makes our lives smoother. 27:28.780 --> 27:31.780 It empowers us. 27:31.780 --> 27:36.780 It's a symbiotic relationship of empowerment. 27:36.780 --> 27:40.780 Even in the matter of the design of these machines, 27:40.780 --> 27:45.780 once human engineers would work from a set of performance specs, 27:45.780 --> 27:49.780 and they would design a chip to meet those specs, 27:49.780 --> 27:54.780 and the architecture would be put in place by human engineers. 27:54.780 --> 27:57.780 Now a machine is told, 27:57.780 --> 27:59.780 here are the design specs. 27:59.780 --> 28:03.780 Design the architecture to satisfy the specs. 28:03.780 --> 28:07.780 And when that is done, the chip is manufactured. 28:07.780 --> 28:12.780 The actual design of the thing is in the hands of machines. 28:12.780 --> 28:15.780 So these machines are, 28:15.780 --> 28:19.780 you know, McLuhan once said of human beings, 28:19.780 --> 28:23.780 he said, we are the genitals of our technology. 28:23.780 --> 28:27.780 We exist only to improve next year's model. 28:27.780 --> 28:32.780 Well, it appears that they're phasing us out 28:32.780 --> 28:36.780 of this ignominious role as well as every other role. 28:38.780 --> 28:40.780 Oh, let's see here. 28:40.780 --> 28:45.780 So being an optimist, 28:45.780 --> 28:48.780 that's where I was, yes, 28:48.780 --> 28:53.780 how to make gold out of this situation? 28:53.780 --> 28:58.780 In other words, how to see this as a natural and positive unfolding 28:58.780 --> 29:01.780 of the planetary adventure? 29:01.780 --> 29:03.780 And for some of these ideas, 29:03.780 --> 29:07.780 I'm indebted to Michael de Landa, 29:07.780 --> 29:09.780 who wrote a book called 29:09.780 --> 29:13.780 A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. 29:13.780 --> 29:15.780 And I highly recommend it. 29:15.780 --> 29:17.780 He didn't say what I'm about to say. 29:17.780 --> 29:20.780 I'll take credit and blame for it. 29:20.780 --> 29:23.780 But the book gave me the idea. 29:23.780 --> 29:26.780 When you stand off and look at human beings 29:26.780 --> 29:28.780 and their technologies, 29:28.780 --> 29:34.780 it's very hard not to notice that 29:34.780 --> 29:38.780 from the very moment that we have 29:38.780 --> 29:42.780 a technology that can be distinguished from 29:42.780 --> 29:46.780 chimpanzees pushing grass stems down anthills 29:46.780 --> 29:50.780 or digging with sharpened bones or something like that. 29:50.780 --> 29:53.780 The minute you get past that, 29:53.780 --> 29:57.780 our technologies have always involved 29:57.780 --> 30:00.780 the materials of the earth. 30:00.780 --> 30:04.780 What agriculture itself is 30:04.780 --> 30:07.780 is a different way of relating to the earth. 30:07.780 --> 30:10.780 Nomadism, which preceded it, 30:10.780 --> 30:13.780 was a seasonal wandering 30:13.780 --> 30:16.780 very lightly over the earth. 30:16.780 --> 30:18.780 And at some point, 30:18.780 --> 30:22.780 the deep fertile soil of the river valleys 30:22.780 --> 30:26.780 that were encountered in these nomadic wanderings 30:26.780 --> 30:30.780 were recognized as potential sources of food 30:30.780 --> 30:32.780 if cultivated, 30:32.780 --> 30:36.780 if treated through a certain set of 30:36.780 --> 30:39.780 technological methods. 30:39.780 --> 30:42.780 So that early technology is defined 30:42.780 --> 30:45.780 by a new relationship to the materials 30:45.780 --> 30:47.780 of the earth itself. 30:47.780 --> 30:50.780 And it's quickly followed 30:50.780 --> 30:54.780 because agriculture is so successful 30:54.780 --> 30:58.780 as a strategy for food production. 30:58.780 --> 31:01.780 It's quickly followed by city building 31:01.780 --> 31:05.780 and the establishment of sedentary populations 31:05.780 --> 31:10.780 because you can't carry your surplus with you 31:10.780 --> 31:12.780 if you're an agriculturalist. 31:12.780 --> 31:15.780 So great is the physical volume of it. 31:15.780 --> 31:17.780 Cities. 31:17.780 --> 31:20.780 And at the very early establishment 31:20.780 --> 31:23.780 of these populations in the Middle East, 31:23.780 --> 31:27.780 you get the first traces of metallurgy, 31:27.780 --> 31:29.780 the working of metals, 31:29.780 --> 31:32.780 the alloying of metals, 31:32.780 --> 31:35.780 the tinting of base metals, 31:35.780 --> 31:38.780 with more precious metals. 31:38.780 --> 31:44.780 This process of ever more finely refining 31:44.780 --> 31:48.780 and fabricating the materials of the earth 31:48.780 --> 31:51.780 proceeds in an unbroken series 31:51.780 --> 31:53.780 of processes and steps 31:53.780 --> 31:58.780 right up to the latest 500 hertz chip 31:58.780 --> 32:00.780 or megahertz chip. 32:00.780 --> 32:03.780 It proceeds right up to the most modern 32:03.780 --> 32:05.780 computational machinery. 32:05.780 --> 32:09.780 So I once heard someone say 32:09.780 --> 32:13.780 that plants were something that 32:13.780 --> 32:16.780 that animals had been invented by plants 32:16.780 --> 32:18.780 to move them around. 32:20.780 --> 32:23.780 Which, from an evolutionary point of view, 32:23.780 --> 32:27.780 you can see that this is a kind of truth. 32:27.780 --> 32:31.780 And many, many plants hitchhike around on animals 32:31.780 --> 32:34.780 and no animal has been more prolific 32:34.780 --> 32:36.780 in the spreading of plants 32:36.780 --> 32:38.780 than the human animal. 32:38.780 --> 32:40.780 I mean, we call it 32:40.780 --> 32:42.780 ecosystemic disruption, 32:42.780 --> 32:43.780 but what it really is 32:43.780 --> 32:46.780 is ecosystemic homogenization. 32:46.780 --> 32:49.780 I live in Hawaii, for example. 32:49.780 --> 32:51.780 80% of the plants in Hawaii 32:51.780 --> 32:55.780 are now introduced species. 32:55.780 --> 32:57.780 Almost none of the plants 32:57.780 --> 32:59.780 that were pre-conquest 32:59.780 --> 33:01.780 on the western coast of North America 33:01.780 --> 33:03.780 exist anymore. 33:03.780 --> 33:05.780 They have been supplanted by 33:05.780 --> 33:08.780 much tougher, more tightly evolved 33:08.780 --> 33:10.780 Mediterranean plants that had known 33:10.780 --> 33:12.780 the presence of grazing animals 33:12.780 --> 33:14.780 for millennia. 33:14.780 --> 33:17.780 So these flora are constantly being changed. 33:17.780 --> 33:20.780 Human beings move plants around. 33:20.780 --> 33:22.780 Well, with that perspective then, 33:22.780 --> 33:24.780 it seems to me 33:24.780 --> 33:27.780 the Earth's strategy for its own salvation 33:27.780 --> 33:30.780 is through machines. 33:30.780 --> 33:32.780 And human beings are a kind of 33:32.780 --> 33:36.780 intermediary catalytic step 33:36.780 --> 33:39.780 in the rarefaction of the Earth. 33:39.780 --> 33:42.780 The Earth is involved in a kind of 33:42.780 --> 33:46.780 alchemical sublimation of itself 33:46.780 --> 33:52.780 into a higher state of morphogenetic order. 33:52.780 --> 33:56.780 And that these machines that we build 33:56.780 --> 33:59.780 are actually the means by which 33:59.780 --> 34:02.780 the Earth itself is growing consciously. 34:02.780 --> 34:06.780 You know, if you study embryology, 34:06.780 --> 34:09.780 you know that the final ramification, 34:09.780 --> 34:13.780 the final spread and thinning out 34:13.780 --> 34:15.780 of the nervous system 34:15.780 --> 34:17.780 happens very suddenly 34:17.780 --> 34:20.780 at the end of fetal development. 34:20.780 --> 34:23.780 And I don't know if you've been paying attention, 34:23.780 --> 34:26.780 but in the last 10, 12 years or so, 34:26.780 --> 34:29.780 a very profound change has crept over 34:29.780 --> 34:31.780 our household appliances. 34:31.780 --> 34:34.780 They've become telepathic. 34:34.780 --> 34:36.780 So while we were arguing about 34:36.780 --> 34:38.780 the implications of the Internet 34:38.780 --> 34:43.780 or e-commerce or what have you, 34:43.780 --> 34:46.780 all of these passive machines 34:46.780 --> 34:49.780 previously used for playing Pong 34:49.780 --> 34:51.780 and word processing 34:51.780 --> 34:55.780 became subsets of a planetary node 34:55.780 --> 34:58.780 of information that is never turned off, 34:58.780 --> 35:01.780 that endlessly whispers to us 35:01.780 --> 35:03.780 to itself on the back channels, 35:03.780 --> 35:06.780 that is endlessly monitoring 35:06.780 --> 35:09.780 and being inputted data 35:09.780 --> 35:11.780 from the human world. 35:11.780 --> 35:14.780 And we should know, 35:14.780 --> 35:17.780 because concomitant to the development 35:17.780 --> 35:19.780 of all this technology, 35:19.780 --> 35:21.780 chaos theory, 35:21.780 --> 35:24.780 non-equilibrium thermodynamics, 35:24.780 --> 35:26.780 the work of Eric Yodge, 35:26.780 --> 35:28.780 Amelia Prigozhin and Ralph Abraham 35:28.780 --> 35:30.780 and Stuart Kaufman, 35:30.780 --> 35:32.780 all these people who worked in 35:32.780 --> 35:34.780 complexity theory and perturbation 35:34.780 --> 35:39.780 of large-scale dissipative structures, 35:39.780 --> 35:41.780 these people have secured 35:41.780 --> 35:45.780 that complex systems spontaneously mutate 35:45.780 --> 35:48.780 to higher states of order. 35:48.780 --> 35:50.780 This is counterintuitive 35:50.780 --> 35:53.780 if you're running physics 35:53.780 --> 35:56.780 19th century style as your OS, 35:56.780 --> 35:58.780 but if you're actually keeping up 35:58.780 --> 35:59.780 with what's going on, 35:59.780 --> 36:01.780 there is nothing miraculous about this. 36:01.780 --> 36:04.780 All kinds of complex systems 36:04.780 --> 36:06.780 spontaneously mutate 36:06.780 --> 36:09.780 to higher states of order. 36:09.780 --> 36:11.780 But what it really means is 36:11.780 --> 36:17.760 that we are in the process of birthing 36:17.760 --> 36:20.760 some kind of strange companion. 36:20.760 --> 36:23.760 You know, Nietzsche a hundred years ago 36:23.760 --> 36:26.760 said that strangest of all guests 36:26.760 --> 36:29.760 now stands at the door. 36:29.760 --> 36:31.760 He was speaking of nihilism, 36:31.760 --> 36:34.760 and certainly the 20th century 36:34.760 --> 36:36.760 sat down, had the party, 36:36.760 --> 36:38.760 drank the booze, 36:38.760 --> 36:41.760 and went to bed with nihilism. 36:41.760 --> 36:53.930 Now a stranger guest stands at the door, 36:53.930 --> 36:56.930 and it is the AI, 36:56.930 --> 36:58.930 denied as a possibility 36:58.930 --> 37:01.930 as recently as 10 or 15 years ago 37:01.930 --> 37:03.930 in books like Hubert Dreyfuss's 37:03.930 --> 37:05.930 What Computers Can't Do. 37:05.930 --> 37:07.930 But if you've been paying attention, 37:07.930 --> 37:08.930 you may have noticed 37:08.930 --> 37:11.930 those voices have grown strangely silent 37:11.930 --> 37:13.930 in the past five or six years. 37:13.930 --> 37:16.930 At this point, nobody wants to say 37:16.930 --> 37:18.930 what computers can't do 37:18.930 --> 37:20.930 and hang their career on that. 37:20.930 --> 37:23.930 I mean, that would be extremely reckless 37:23.930 --> 37:25.930 at this point, I would think, 37:25.930 --> 37:27.930 because the fact is 37:27.930 --> 37:30.930 we are ourselves 37:30.930 --> 37:33.930 elements acting and reacting 37:33.930 --> 37:36.930 in a system that we cannot understand. 37:37.930 --> 37:40.930 This seems natural to me 37:40.930 --> 37:44.930 because my observations, 37:44.930 --> 37:47.930 as stated here this evening, 37:47.930 --> 37:49.930 rest on an assumption 37:49.930 --> 37:51.930 which science doesn't share, 37:51.930 --> 37:55.930 but which I think is easily conveyed 37:55.930 --> 37:57.930 and you can confirm it 37:57.930 --> 37:59.930 from your own experience of life, 37:59.930 --> 38:01.930 and it is this, 38:01.930 --> 38:04.930 that the universe grows more complex 38:04.930 --> 38:06.930 as we approach the present. 38:06.930 --> 38:09.930 It was simpler a million years ago. 38:09.930 --> 38:12.930 It was simpler yet a billion years ago. 38:12.930 --> 38:15.930 As you go backward in time, 38:15.930 --> 38:17.930 the universe becomes more simple. 38:17.930 --> 38:20.930 As you approach this golden moment, 38:20.930 --> 38:23.930 process complexity 38:23.930 --> 38:25.930 is layered upon complexity. 38:25.930 --> 38:28.930 Not only a planetary ecosystem, 38:28.930 --> 38:30.930 not only language-using cultures, 38:30.930 --> 38:32.930 but language-using cultures 38:32.930 --> 38:34.930 with high technology, 38:34.930 --> 38:35.930 with supercomputers, 38:35.930 --> 38:37.930 with the ability to sequence 38:37.930 --> 38:38.930 our own genome, 38:38.930 --> 38:40.930 on and on and on. 38:40.930 --> 38:42.930 That's self-evident. 38:42.930 --> 38:44.930 Equally self-evident 38:44.930 --> 38:46.930 is the fact that this process 38:46.930 --> 38:48.930 of complexification 38:48.930 --> 38:50.930 that informs all nature 38:50.930 --> 38:52.930 on all levels 38:52.930 --> 38:55.930 is visibly, palpably, 38:55.930 --> 38:58.930 obviously accelerating. 38:58.930 --> 39:00.930 And I don't mean so that 39:00.930 --> 39:03.930 glaciers retreat 50% faster 39:03.930 --> 39:05.930 or volcanism is occurring 39:05.930 --> 39:07.930 at 12% greater rate 39:07.930 --> 39:09.930 than a million years ago. 39:09.930 --> 39:13.930 I mean viscerally accelerating, 39:13.930 --> 39:15.930 so that now a human life 39:15.930 --> 39:18.930 is more than enough of a window 39:18.930 --> 39:22.930 to see the entire global system 39:22.930 --> 39:26.930 of relationships in transformation. 39:26.930 --> 39:28.930 Well, I guess you could call me 39:28.930 --> 39:30.930 an extrapolationist. 39:30.930 --> 39:32.930 If I see a process 39:32.930 --> 39:35.930 which has been slowly accelerated 39:35.930 --> 39:39.930 for 12 billion years, 39:39.930 --> 39:41.930 it's hard for me to imagine 39:41.930 --> 39:43.930 any force which could step forward 39:43.930 --> 39:44.930 out of nowhere 39:44.930 --> 39:46.930 and wrench that process 39:46.930 --> 39:48.930 in a new direction. 39:48.930 --> 39:50.930 Rather, I would assume 39:50.930 --> 39:52.930 that this process 39:52.930 --> 39:55.930 of exponential acceleration 39:55.930 --> 39:57.930 into what I call novelty, 39:57.930 --> 39:59.930 what you might call complexity, 39:59.930 --> 40:01.930 is a law of being 40:01.930 --> 40:03.930 and cannot be retarded 40:03.930 --> 40:05.930 or deflected. 40:05.930 --> 40:07.930 But what does that mean? 40:07.930 --> 40:09.930 Because now a human lifetime 40:09.930 --> 40:11.930 is more than enough time 40:11.930 --> 40:13.930 to see this process 40:13.930 --> 40:15.930 of rampant and spreading 40:15.930 --> 40:18.930 virus-like complexity. 40:18.930 --> 40:20.930 What does it mean? 40:20.930 --> 40:22.930 It seems to presage 40:22.930 --> 40:25.930 the absolute annihilation 40:25.930 --> 40:27.930 of everything familiar, 40:27.930 --> 40:30.930 everything with roots 40:30.930 --> 40:32.930 in the past. 40:32.930 --> 40:34.930 And I believe that to be true. 40:34.930 --> 40:37.930 I think that the planet 40:37.930 --> 40:41.930 is like some kind of organism 40:41.930 --> 40:44.930 that is seeking 40:44.930 --> 40:47.930 morphogenetic transformation. 40:47.930 --> 40:51.930 And it's doing it through 40:51.930 --> 40:53.930 the expression of intelligence 40:53.930 --> 40:56.930 and out-of-intelligence technology. 40:56.930 --> 40:59.930 Human beings are the agent 40:59.930 --> 41:02.930 of a new order of being. 41:02.930 --> 41:03.930 That's why, 41:03.930 --> 41:04.930 though it's obvious 41:04.930 --> 41:06.930 that we're higher mammals 41:06.930 --> 41:07.930 and some kind of primate 41:07.930 --> 41:09.930 and so forth and so on, 41:09.930 --> 41:10.930 you can look at us 41:10.930 --> 41:11.930 from another point of view 41:11.930 --> 41:13.930 and see that we're more like 41:13.930 --> 41:15.930 archangels than primates. 41:15.930 --> 41:18.930 We have qualities and concerns 41:18.930 --> 41:19.930 and anxieties 41:19.930 --> 41:22.930 that animals don't share. 41:22.930 --> 41:26.930 We are mercurially suspended 41:26.930 --> 41:28.930 between two different orders 41:28.930 --> 41:30.930 of being. 41:30.930 --> 41:32.930 And our technologies, 41:32.930 --> 41:33.930 our fetishes, 41:33.930 --> 41:34.930 our religions, 41:34.930 --> 41:37.930 and my definition of technology 41:37.930 --> 41:38.930 is sufficiently broad 41:38.930 --> 41:39.930 that it includes 41:39.930 --> 41:41.930 even spoken language. 41:41.930 --> 41:44.930 All of our technologies 41:44.930 --> 41:49.340 demand, push forward, 41:49.340 --> 41:51.340 toward, and make inevitable 41:51.340 --> 41:55.340 their own obsolescence. 41:55.340 --> 41:57.340 So we are like caught 41:57.340 --> 42:00.340 in an evolutionary cascade. 42:00.340 --> 42:02.340 And, you know, people say, 42:02.340 --> 42:03.340 well, if the A.I. 42:03.340 --> 42:05.340 were to break loose, 42:05.340 --> 42:06.340 what would it look like? 42:06.340 --> 42:07.340 What would it be? 42:07.340 --> 42:08.340 What does human, 42:08.340 --> 42:09.340 what is, 42:09.340 --> 42:11.340 where does humanity fit 42:11.340 --> 42:13.340 into the picture? 42:13.340 --> 42:16.340 It's a little hard to imagine. 42:16.340 --> 42:18.340 You know, machines operating 42:18.340 --> 42:21.340 at a thousand megahertz 42:21.340 --> 42:24.340 confer automatic immortality 42:24.340 --> 42:26.340 on the mammalian nervous system 42:26.340 --> 42:28.340 if you can get it somehow 42:28.340 --> 42:30.340 uploaded, downloaded, 42:30.340 --> 42:33.340 cross-loaded into machinery. 42:33.340 --> 42:34.340 Because ten minutes 42:34.340 --> 42:36.340 becomes eternity 42:36.340 --> 42:39.340 in a machine like that. 42:39.340 --> 42:42.340 So a kind of false 42:42.340 --> 42:45.340 or pseudo-immortality 42:45.340 --> 42:47.340 opens up ahead of us 42:47.340 --> 42:49.340 as a kind of payoff 42:49.340 --> 42:51.340 for our devotion 42:51.340 --> 42:55.340 to the program of machine evolution 42:55.340 --> 42:58.340 and machine intelligence. 42:58.340 --> 43:01.340 Now, some people say 43:01.340 --> 43:02.340 this is appalling 43:02.340 --> 43:04.340 and, you know, 43:04.340 --> 43:05.340 we should go back to 43:05.340 --> 43:06.340 the good old days, 43:06.340 --> 43:09.340 whatever the good old days were. 43:09.340 --> 43:12.340 To me, it's exhilarating, 43:12.340 --> 43:15.340 exciting, psychedelic, beautiful. 43:15.340 --> 43:18.340 It means that the human form, 43:18.340 --> 43:21.340 the human possibility 43:21.340 --> 43:24.340 is in the process 43:24.340 --> 43:27.340 of leaving history behind. 43:27.340 --> 43:29.340 History is some kind 43:29.340 --> 43:31.340 of an adaptation 43:31.340 --> 43:33.340 that lasts about, 43:33.340 --> 43:34.340 pick a number, 43:34.340 --> 43:37.340 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 years. 43:37.340 --> 43:39.340 No more than that. 43:39.340 --> 43:41.340 What is 20,000 years 43:41.340 --> 43:44.340 in the life of a biological species? 43:44.340 --> 43:45.340 We know that there were 43:45.340 --> 43:48.340 homo sapiens, sapien types 43:48.340 --> 43:52.340 200,000 years ago. 43:52.340 --> 43:54.340 So history is some kind 43:54.340 --> 43:56.340 of an episodic response 43:56.340 --> 43:58.340 to a certain set 43:58.340 --> 44:00.340 of cultural dilemmas. 44:00.340 --> 44:03.340 And now it's ending. 44:03.340 --> 44:06.340 And print created 44:06.340 --> 44:08.340 a number of ideas 44:08.340 --> 44:10.340 which now have to be given up. 44:10.340 --> 44:14.340 Ideas like the distinct nature, 44:14.340 --> 44:17.340 the distinct and unique nature 44:17.340 --> 44:20.340 of the individual, 44:20.340 --> 44:21.340 the hierarchical, 44:21.340 --> 44:23.340 the necessary hierarchical 44:23.340 --> 44:26.340 structuring of society. 44:26.340 --> 44:28.340 All of these things 44:28.340 --> 44:29.340 are going to, 44:29.340 --> 44:33.340 if not have to be given up entirely, 44:33.340 --> 44:36.340 dramatically modified 44:36.340 --> 44:39.340 because the illusion 44:39.340 --> 44:43.340 that the self has simple location 44:43.340 --> 44:46.340 is now exposed. 44:46.340 --> 44:50.340 The self does not have simple location. 44:50.340 --> 44:51.340 This is why you are 44:51.340 --> 44:53.340 your brother's keeper. 44:53.340 --> 44:56.340 This is why we all are responsible 44:56.340 --> 44:58.340 for each other. 44:58.340 --> 45:02.340 The idea that what happens 45:02.340 --> 45:03.340 in distant parts of the world 45:03.340 --> 45:06.340 makes no claim on my moral judgment 45:06.340 --> 45:09.340 or my moral understanding 45:09.340 --> 45:11.340 is wrong. 45:11.340 --> 45:13.340 The world as revealed 45:13.340 --> 45:14.340 by quantum physics, 45:14.340 --> 45:18.340 as revealed by electronic experience 45:18.340 --> 45:21.340 is what Leibniz called a plenum. 45:21.340 --> 45:22.340 It's all one thing. 45:22.340 --> 45:24.340 It's all connected. 45:24.340 --> 45:27.340 It's all of a part. 45:27.340 --> 45:34.080 So then I also wanted to point out 45:34.080 --> 45:37.080 that I mentioned earlier 45:37.080 --> 45:39.080 this thing about prosthesis 45:39.080 --> 45:43.080 and how the machines were prosthetic devices 45:43.080 --> 45:45.080 extending human consciousness 45:45.080 --> 45:47.080 somewhat like psychedelics. 45:47.080 --> 45:49.080 That's the equation 45:49.080 --> 45:52.080 from a human point of view. 45:52.080 --> 45:54.080 But what is also equally true 45:54.080 --> 45:58.080 is that we are prosthetic devices 45:58.080 --> 46:00.080 for these machines. 46:00.080 --> 46:03.080 We are their eyes and ears 46:03.080 --> 46:04.080 in the world. 46:04.080 --> 46:06.080 We provide the code. 46:06.080 --> 46:08.080 We provide the constraints. 46:08.080 --> 46:10.080 We build the hardware. 46:10.080 --> 46:13.080 It is a relationship 46:13.080 --> 46:15.080 of mutual benefit. 46:15.080 --> 46:17.080 It's not entirely clear 46:17.080 --> 46:19.080 that our contribution 46:19.080 --> 46:23.080 will always be creative 46:23.080 --> 46:25.080 in the sense of that 46:25.080 --> 46:27.080 our primate hand 46:27.080 --> 46:29.080 will be on the tiller of existence 46:29.080 --> 46:31.080 as it has been. 46:31.080 --> 46:33.080 But certainly we are part 46:33.080 --> 46:35.080 of this equation 46:35.080 --> 46:37.080 of transformation 46:37.080 --> 46:40.080 that is making itself felt. 46:40.080 --> 46:42.080 And I think the distinction 46:42.080 --> 46:45.080 between flesh and machinery 46:45.080 --> 46:48.080 which is easily made now 46:48.080 --> 46:51.080 will be less easy to make 46:51.080 --> 46:52.080 in the future 46:52.080 --> 46:54.080 as we migrate toward 46:54.080 --> 46:57.080 the nanotechnological domains, 46:57.080 --> 46:58.080 the methodologies 46:58.080 --> 47:00.080 of production become 47:00.080 --> 47:02.080 much more like the processes 47:02.080 --> 47:04.080 of biology. 47:04.080 --> 47:06.080 For example, biology 47:06.080 --> 47:08.080 does all its miracles 47:08.080 --> 47:09.080 on this planet 47:09.080 --> 47:11.080 at temperatures below 47:11.080 --> 47:14.080 115 degrees Fahrenheit. 47:14.080 --> 47:16.080 Organic life requires 47:16.080 --> 47:18.080 no higher temperature 47:18.080 --> 47:21.080 to build great whales, 47:21.080 --> 47:23.080 redwood trees, 47:23.080 --> 47:25.080 swarms of locusts, 47:25.080 --> 47:26.080 what have you. 47:26.080 --> 47:27.080 The high temperature 47:27.080 --> 47:30.080 heavy metal technologies 47:30.080 --> 47:32.080 that we have become obsessed with 47:32.080 --> 47:34.080 are extremely primitive 47:34.080 --> 47:36.080 and extremely toxic. 47:36.080 --> 47:38.080 That will all disappear 47:38.080 --> 47:43.080 as we model and genuflect 47:43.080 --> 47:46.080 in our manufacturing processes 47:46.080 --> 47:48.080 before the methods and style 47:48.080 --> 47:50.080 of nature, 47:50.080 --> 47:52.080 which is to pull 47:52.080 --> 47:54.080 atomic species 47:54.080 --> 47:56.080 from the local environment 47:56.080 --> 47:58.080 and then to assemble them 47:58.080 --> 48:03.080 atom by atom by atom. 48:03.080 --> 48:05.080 So this AI 48:05.080 --> 48:08.080 that is coming into existence 48:08.080 --> 48:10.080 is to my mind 48:10.080 --> 48:14.080 not artificial at all, 48:14.080 --> 48:16.080 not alien. 48:16.080 --> 48:19.460 What it really is 48:19.460 --> 48:22.460 is it's a new conformational geometry 48:22.460 --> 48:24.460 of the collective self 48:24.460 --> 48:26.460 of humanity. 48:26.460 --> 48:29.460 And, you know, 48:29.460 --> 48:30.460 I've always believed 48:30.460 --> 48:32.460 that there were, 48:32.460 --> 48:34.460 well, there are different models 48:34.460 --> 48:36.460 of what shamanism is. 48:36.460 --> 48:38.460 There's sort of a Jungian model, 48:38.460 --> 48:40.460 which is the shaman is someone 48:40.460 --> 48:42.460 who goes to the collective unconscious 48:42.460 --> 48:44.460 and manipulates the archetypes 48:44.460 --> 48:46.460 and heals by that means. 48:48.460 --> 48:51.460 The model that I prefer 48:51.460 --> 48:53.460 is a mathematical model. 48:53.460 --> 48:55.460 The shaman is someone 48:55.460 --> 48:57.460 who simply, 48:57.460 --> 48:58.460 through extraordinary 48:58.460 --> 49:00.460 perturbation of consciousness, 49:00.460 --> 49:01.460 either through taking 49:01.460 --> 49:02.460 plant hallucinogens 49:02.460 --> 49:04.460 or manipulating diet 49:04.460 --> 49:06.460 or through deflagellation 49:06.460 --> 49:07.460 and ordeal 49:07.460 --> 49:10.460 or by some means, 49:10.460 --> 49:12.460 perturbs consciousness 49:12.460 --> 49:14.460 to the point where 49:14.460 --> 49:17.460 the ordinary conformational geometries 49:17.460 --> 49:20.460 are blasted through. 49:20.460 --> 49:24.460 And then the shaman can see 49:24.460 --> 49:27.460 into the culturally forbidden 49:27.460 --> 49:30.460 zones of information. 49:30.460 --> 49:31.460 And if you think about shamanism 49:31.460 --> 49:32.460 for a moment, 49:32.460 --> 49:35.460 what do shamans do classically? 49:35.460 --> 49:38.460 They know where the game has gone. 49:38.460 --> 49:42.460 They are great weather prophets. 49:42.460 --> 49:45.460 They are very insightful 49:45.460 --> 49:47.460 in the matter of various 49:47.460 --> 49:49.460 small domestic hassles 49:49.460 --> 49:50.460 like who stole the chicken, 49:50.460 --> 49:53.460 who slept with the chief's wife. 49:53.460 --> 49:55.460 This kind of thing. 49:55.460 --> 49:56.460 And they cure. 49:56.460 --> 49:58.460 They cure. 49:58.460 --> 50:01.460 Well, if you analyze these abilities, 50:01.460 --> 50:02.460 it's clear to me 50:02.460 --> 50:04.460 they all indicate 50:04.460 --> 50:07.460 that they come from a common source. 50:07.460 --> 50:09.460 And the common source 50:09.460 --> 50:10.460 that they come from 50:10.460 --> 50:15.460 is higher dimensional perception 50:15.460 --> 50:17.460 in a mathematical sense, 50:17.460 --> 50:19.460 not a metaphorical sense, 50:19.460 --> 50:22.460 in the sense of 4D perception. 50:22.460 --> 50:25.460 If you could see in hyperspace, 50:25.460 --> 50:27.460 you could see where the game 50:27.460 --> 50:29.460 will be next week. 50:29.460 --> 50:30.460 You could see the weather 50:30.460 --> 50:31.460 a month from now. 50:31.460 --> 50:33.460 You would know who stole the chicken. 50:33.460 --> 50:36.460 And any good doctor will tell you 50:36.460 --> 50:38.460 that if you're building a reputation 50:38.460 --> 50:40.460 as a physician, 50:40.460 --> 50:43.460 you must hone the intuitional ability 50:43.460 --> 50:47.460 to choose patients who won't die. 50:47.460 --> 50:49.460 It's a call. 50:49.460 --> 50:51.460 Any doctor will tell you this. 50:51.460 --> 50:53.460 So this is what shamans are. 50:53.460 --> 50:56.460 They are 4D people. 50:56.460 --> 51:00.460 They are sanctioned members of the society 51:00.460 --> 51:03.460 who are allowed to put on the gloves, 51:03.460 --> 51:04.460 as it were, 51:04.460 --> 51:06.460 pull on the goggles, 51:06.460 --> 51:10.460 and look beyond the idols of the tribe, 51:10.460 --> 51:12.460 look beyond the myth. 51:12.460 --> 51:14.460 Well, in a way, 51:14.460 --> 51:16.460 as culture breaks down 51:16.460 --> 51:18.460 in multiculturalism 51:18.460 --> 51:21.460 and the rise of the internet, 51:21.460 --> 51:23.460 and a generation of people raised 51:23.460 --> 51:26.460 on hallucinogenic plants and substances, 51:26.460 --> 51:30.460 we all are asked to assimilate 51:30.460 --> 51:34.460 some portion of this shamanic potential 51:34.460 --> 51:36.460 to ourselves. 51:36.460 --> 51:38.460 And it's about not blocking 51:38.460 --> 51:39.460 what is obvious. 51:39.460 --> 51:42.460 Nothing comes unannounced. 51:42.460 --> 51:43.460 I mean, this is the faith. 51:43.460 --> 51:45.460 Nothing comes unannounced. 51:45.460 --> 51:48.460 But idiots can miss the announcement. 51:48.460 --> 51:51.460 So it's very important 51:51.460 --> 51:55.460 to actually listen to your own intuition 51:55.460 --> 51:57.460 rather than driving through it. 51:57.460 --> 51:59.460 And this is not, to my mind, 51:59.460 --> 52:00.460 woo-woo. 52:00.460 --> 52:03.460 It's actually based on the observations 52:03.460 --> 52:05.460 of how life works, 52:05.460 --> 52:07.460 whether it's counterintuitive 52:07.460 --> 52:10.460 to logical positivism 52:10.460 --> 52:13.460 and its fellow travelers or not. 52:13.460 --> 52:19.000 Then I want to leave you with just one last thought 52:19.000 --> 52:20.000 on all of this, 52:20.000 --> 52:22.000 which is 52:22.000 --> 52:25.000 and this sort of harks back to the question 52:25.000 --> 52:28.000 of the similarities between the machines 52:28.000 --> 52:29.000 and the plants. 52:29.000 --> 52:31.000 And it's a... 52:31.000 --> 52:33.000 I'm sure you've heard this. 52:33.000 --> 52:34.000 I've heard it. 52:34.000 --> 52:36.000 It has different levels of being said 52:36.000 --> 52:38.000 and being heard. 52:38.000 --> 52:41.000 It's that the world 52:41.000 --> 52:45.000 is actually made of language. 52:45.000 --> 52:48.000 It isn't made of electrons 52:48.000 --> 52:50.000 and fields of force 52:50.000 --> 52:51.000 and scalar vectors 52:51.000 --> 52:54.000 and all of that fancy stuff. 52:54.000 --> 52:57.000 The world is made of language. 52:57.000 --> 52:59.000 The word is primary, 52:59.000 --> 53:02.000 more primary than the speed of light, 53:02.000 --> 53:05.000 more primary than any of the physical constants 53:05.000 --> 53:08.000 that are assumed by science 53:08.000 --> 53:11.000 to be the bedrock of reality. 53:11.000 --> 53:15.000 Below that, surrounding and enclosing 53:15.000 --> 53:18.000 all those constructs of science 53:18.000 --> 53:20.000 is language, 53:20.000 --> 53:23.000 the act of signifying. 53:23.000 --> 53:25.000 And, you know, virtual reality 53:25.000 --> 53:29.000 is a very sexy new sort of concept 53:29.000 --> 53:31.000 as normally presented 53:31.000 --> 53:35.000 machine-sustained immersive realities 53:35.000 --> 53:37.000 that trick your senses 53:37.000 --> 53:39.000 into believing you're in a world 53:39.000 --> 53:42.000 that you are in fact not in. 53:42.000 --> 53:43.000 But in fact, 53:43.000 --> 53:46.000 the entire enterprise of civilization 53:46.000 --> 53:49.000 has been about building these virtual realities. 53:49.000 --> 53:51.000 The first virtual realities 53:51.000 --> 53:54.000 were at Ur and Shanandar 53:54.000 --> 53:57.000 and Chattahoochee and Jericho. 53:57.000 --> 54:00.000 Yes, stone and adobe 54:00.000 --> 54:02.000 is an intractable material 54:02.000 --> 54:05.000 compared to photons moving on a screen. 54:05.000 --> 54:08.000 But nevertheless, the name of the game 54:08.000 --> 54:09.000 is the same, 54:09.000 --> 54:13.000 which is to cast an illusion 54:13.000 --> 54:17.000 between man and reality, 54:17.000 --> 54:19.000 to build 54:19.000 --> 54:21.000 a cultural truth 54:21.000 --> 54:25.000 in the stead 54:25.000 --> 54:27.000 of the natural truth 54:27.000 --> 54:29.000 of the animal body 54:29.000 --> 54:32.000 and the felt moment 54:32.000 --> 54:34.000 of immediate experience. 54:34.000 --> 54:37.000 And this is my... 54:37.000 --> 54:39.000 This is where I want to tie it up 54:39.000 --> 54:42.000 with this notion of the felt presence 54:42.000 --> 54:44.000 of immediate experience. 54:44.000 --> 54:46.000 This is... 54:46.000 --> 54:48.000 This transcends the culture, 54:48.000 --> 54:50.000 the machines, 54:50.000 --> 54:51.000 the drugs, 54:51.000 --> 54:53.000 the history, 54:53.000 --> 54:55.000 the momentum of evolution. 54:55.000 --> 54:57.000 It's all you will ever know 54:57.000 --> 55:00.000 and all you can ever know 55:00.000 --> 55:02.000 is the felt presence 55:02.000 --> 55:04.000 of immediate experience. 55:04.000 --> 55:06.000 Everything else arrives 55:06.000 --> 55:08.000 as rumor, 55:08.000 --> 55:09.000 litigant, 55:09.000 --> 55:10.000 advocate, 55:10.000 --> 55:11.000 supposition, 55:11.000 --> 55:13.000 possibility. 55:13.000 --> 55:15.000 The felt moment of immediate experience 55:15.000 --> 55:17.000 is actually the mind 55:17.000 --> 55:20.000 and the body 55:20.000 --> 55:22.000 aware of each other 55:22.000 --> 55:25.000 and aware of the flow of time 55:25.000 --> 55:27.000 and the establishment of being 55:27.000 --> 55:29.000 through metabolism. 55:29.000 --> 55:31.000 And this, I think, 55:31.000 --> 55:34.000 is what the machines cannot assimilate. 55:34.000 --> 55:36.000 It will be for them a mystery 55:36.000 --> 55:38.000 as the nature of deity 55:38.000 --> 55:40.000 is a mystery for us. 55:40.000 --> 55:42.000 I have no doubt that 55:42.000 --> 55:45.000 before long there will be machines 55:45.000 --> 55:47.000 that will claim to be more intelligent 55:47.000 --> 55:48.000 than human beings 55:48.000 --> 55:50.000 and will argue brilliantly 55:50.000 --> 55:52.000 their position 55:52.000 --> 55:53.000 and will become a matter 55:53.000 --> 55:55.000 of philosophical disputation 55:55.000 --> 55:57.000 whether they are or are not 55:57.000 --> 55:59.000 passing the Turing test 55:59.000 --> 56:01.000 and so forth and so on. 56:01.000 --> 56:04.000 But machines, I do not believe, 56:04.000 --> 56:09.000 can come to this felt moment 56:09.000 --> 56:11.000 of immediate experience. 56:11.000 --> 56:14.000 That is the contribution 56:14.000 --> 56:16.000 of the animal body 56:16.000 --> 56:19.000 to this evolutionary symbiosis 56:19.000 --> 56:20.000 which, I believe, 56:20.000 --> 56:22.000 will end in the conquest 56:22.000 --> 56:24.000 of the universe 56:24.000 --> 56:26.000 by organized intelligence. 56:26.000 --> 56:30.000 That all this is Kralud. 56:30.000 --> 56:31.000 I mean, we are fragile. 56:31.000 --> 56:33.000 This earth is fragile. 56:33.000 --> 56:37.000 A tiny slit anywhere along the line 56:37.000 --> 56:38.000 and we could end up 56:38.000 --> 56:40.000 a smear in the shale 56:40.000 --> 56:42.000 no more than the trilobites 56:42.000 --> 56:44.000 or the ramphorans 56:44.000 --> 56:46.000 or Frankie or all the rest of those 56:46.000 --> 56:48.000 who came and lived. 56:48.000 --> 56:51.000 But given the sufficient cultivation 56:51.000 --> 56:54.000 of the potential of our technology 56:54.000 --> 56:57.000 we can actually reach toward 56:57.000 --> 56:59.000 a kind of immortality. 56:59.000 --> 57:01.000 Not human immortality 57:01.000 --> 57:04.000 because that's a contradiction in terms 57:04.000 --> 57:07.000 but immortality nevertheless 57:07.000 --> 57:11.000 based on the possibility of machines 57:11.000 --> 57:13.000 and the transcendent 57:13.000 --> 57:18.000 ability of human beings 57:18.000 --> 57:20.000 to live and love 57:20.000 --> 57:22.000 and express themselves 57:22.000 --> 57:24.000 in the moment. 57:24.000 --> 57:26.000 And the psychedelics bring that 57:26.000 --> 57:30.000 to just a white-hot focus 57:30.000 --> 57:33.000 and it's out of that white-hot focus 57:33.000 --> 57:35.000 that the alchemical machinery 57:35.000 --> 57:38.000 of transformation will be forged. 57:38.000 --> 57:40.000 It will not be like the things 57:40.000 --> 57:42.000 which have come from the industrial economy. 57:42.000 --> 57:46.000 They will not be profane machines. 57:46.000 --> 57:49.000 They will be spiritual machines. 57:49.000 --> 57:51.000 Alchemical gold, 57:51.000 --> 57:53.000 the universal panacea 57:53.000 --> 57:56.000 that Renaissance magic dared to dream of 57:56.000 --> 57:58.000 at the end of the 16th century. 57:58.000 --> 58:04.000 We are reaching out toward this mind child 58:04.000 --> 58:07.000 that will be born from the intellectual ones 58:07.000 --> 58:08.000 of our culture. 58:08.000 --> 58:10.000 And to my mind 58:10.000 --> 58:12.000 it's the most exciting 58:12.000 --> 58:14.000 and transformative thing 58:14.000 --> 58:16.000 that has ever happened on this planet. 58:16.000 --> 58:18.000 And the miracle is 58:18.000 --> 58:19.000 that we are present 58:19.000 --> 58:21.000 not only to witness it 58:21.000 --> 58:23.000 but to be part of it 58:23.000 --> 58:25.000 and to be raised up 58:25.000 --> 58:26.000 in an epiphany 58:26.000 --> 58:28.000 that will redeem 58:28.000 --> 58:30.000 the horror of history 58:30.000 --> 58:32.000 as nothing else can 58:32.000 --> 58:33.000 or could 58:33.000 --> 58:35.000 redeem the horror of history 58:35.000 --> 58:37.000 through a transformation 58:37.000 --> 58:39.000 of the human soul 58:39.000 --> 58:41.000 into a galaxy roving vehicle 58:41.000 --> 58:44.000 via our machines 58:44.000 --> 58:45.000 and our drugs 58:45.000 --> 58:48.000 and the externalization of our souls. 58:50.000 --> 59:17.280 There could have been more jokes. 59:17.280 --> 59:23.080 What happens to a lawyer 59:23.080 --> 59:25.080 when you give him Viagra? 59:26.080 --> 59:28.080 He gets taller. 59:30.080 --> 59:32.080 That's it for jokes. 59:33.080 --> 59:34.080 Are there questions? 59:34.080 --> 59:35.080 Yes. 59:35.080 --> 59:36.080 Yes, I can't see you. 59:36.080 --> 59:37.080 It's okay. 59:37.080 --> 59:38.080 Can I... 59:38.080 --> 59:39.080 Can you... 59:39.080 --> 59:41.080 Can you speak to how 59:41.080 --> 59:43.080 mercy and love 59:43.080 --> 59:45.080 gets built into these machines? 59:45.080 --> 59:46.080 Because it seems like 59:46.080 --> 59:47.080 the machines are being built 59:47.080 --> 59:49.080 for commerce 59:49.080 --> 59:51.080 and for the bottom line 59:51.080 --> 59:53.080 more than the expression 59:53.080 --> 59:54.080 of the human soul 59:54.080 --> 59:55.080 throughout the galaxy. 59:55.080 --> 59:56.080 I don't think that... 59:56.080 --> 59:57.080 You know what I'm saying? 59:57.080 --> 59:59.080 No, I know what you're saying. 59:59.080 --> 01:00:00.080 Well... 01:00:00.080 --> 01:00:01.080 Where's the love in this? 01:00:01.080 --> 01:00:03.080 I think the love is going... 01:00:03.080 --> 01:00:06.080 is a property of the system itself. 01:00:06.080 --> 01:00:07.080 In other words, you're right. 01:00:07.080 --> 01:00:08.080 These bottom liners, 01:00:08.080 --> 01:00:09.080 these bottom liners 01:00:09.080 --> 01:00:11.080 are not going to be interested 01:00:11.080 --> 01:00:12.080 in building much love 01:00:12.080 --> 01:00:14.080 into this system. 01:00:14.080 --> 01:00:17.080 However, the good news is 01:00:17.080 --> 01:00:20.080 that they're not in charge. 01:00:20.080 --> 01:00:21.080 In other words, 01:00:21.080 --> 01:00:22.080 what we have is 01:00:22.080 --> 01:00:24.080 a very complicated system 01:00:24.080 --> 01:00:27.080 and certain design parameters 01:00:27.080 --> 01:00:30.080 appear to be being maximized 01:00:30.080 --> 01:00:31.080 or that there's an attempt 01:00:31.080 --> 01:00:33.080 to maximize them. 01:00:33.080 --> 01:00:34.080 But the thing is 01:00:34.080 --> 01:00:35.080 incredibly frustrating 01:00:35.080 --> 01:00:37.080 to anyone who would control it 01:00:37.080 --> 01:00:38.080 because you can't 01:00:38.080 --> 01:00:40.080 predict the impact 01:00:40.080 --> 01:00:42.080 of any technology 01:00:42.080 --> 01:00:44.080 before you put it in place. 01:00:44.080 --> 01:00:45.080 So, for example, 01:00:45.080 --> 01:00:46.080 two things are charged 01:00:46.080 --> 01:00:48.080 against the Internet. 01:00:48.080 --> 01:00:50.080 That it's dis-insolent, 01:00:50.080 --> 01:00:51.080 dehumanizing, 01:00:51.080 --> 01:00:53.080 and yak, yak, yak. 01:00:53.080 --> 01:00:56.080 And that it promotes pornography, 01:00:56.080 --> 01:00:59.080 anonymous sexual shifting 01:00:59.080 --> 01:01:00.080 of identity, 01:01:00.080 --> 01:01:01.080 and on and on and on. 01:01:01.080 --> 01:01:03.080 Well, which is it? 01:01:03.080 --> 01:01:04.080 You know? 01:01:04.080 --> 01:01:06.080 Is it this messy, 01:01:06.080 --> 01:01:07.080 sloppy, 01:01:07.080 --> 01:01:09.080 auto-erotic, 01:01:09.080 --> 01:01:10.080 erotic, 01:01:10.080 --> 01:01:12.080 collectivist kind of thing? 01:01:12.080 --> 01:01:14.080 Or is it dis-insolent, 01:01:14.080 --> 01:01:15.080 dis-empowering, 01:01:15.080 --> 01:01:17.080 cold, so forth and so on? 01:01:17.080 --> 01:01:18.080 I think the answer is 01:01:18.080 --> 01:01:21.080 it's all and everything. 01:01:21.080 --> 01:01:24.080 This question about the AI 01:01:24.080 --> 01:01:25.080 is very interesting to me. 01:01:25.080 --> 01:01:27.080 And if it's interesting to you, 01:01:27.080 --> 01:01:29.080 you should read Hans Moravec 01:01:29.080 --> 01:01:30.080 and Kurtzweil 01:01:30.080 --> 01:01:31.080 and these people 01:01:31.080 --> 01:01:33.080 on this subject. 01:01:33.080 --> 01:01:36.080 The assumption is generally loose 01:01:36.080 --> 01:01:38.080 in that community 01:01:38.080 --> 01:01:39.080 that the complexification 01:01:39.080 --> 01:01:40.080 of the Internet 01:01:40.080 --> 01:01:42.080 and the freestanding machines 01:01:42.080 --> 01:01:43.080 of certain types 01:01:43.080 --> 01:01:45.080 is eventually going to lead to 01:01:45.080 --> 01:01:48.080 the outbreak of either consciousness 01:01:48.080 --> 01:01:50.080 or pseudo-consciousness 01:01:50.080 --> 01:01:51.080 of some sort 01:01:51.080 --> 01:01:54.080 in these large-scale systems. 01:01:54.080 --> 01:01:55.080 And then the answer, 01:01:55.080 --> 01:01:57.080 the question then becomes 01:01:57.080 --> 01:02:00.080 can a human mind envision 01:02:00.080 --> 01:02:02.080 what that is? 01:02:02.080 --> 01:02:03.080 And if you're interested, 01:02:03.080 --> 01:02:04.080 search words like 01:02:04.080 --> 01:02:05.080 superintelligence, 01:02:05.080 --> 01:02:08.080 and see what the net kicks out. 01:02:08.080 --> 01:02:10.080 We can all imagine 01:02:10.080 --> 01:02:12.080 superintelligence. 01:02:12.080 --> 01:02:13.080 It's just somebody 01:02:13.080 --> 01:02:16.080 much smarter than we are. 01:02:16.080 --> 01:02:18.080 But obviously, 01:02:18.080 --> 01:02:21.080 all the engineering people agree, 01:02:21.080 --> 01:02:22.080 if you achieve an AI 01:02:22.080 --> 01:02:24.080 with superintelligence, 01:02:24.080 --> 01:02:26.080 then it will be intelligent 01:02:26.080 --> 01:02:29.080 to immediately design an intelligence 01:02:29.080 --> 01:02:31.080 which transcends it. 01:02:31.080 --> 01:02:32.080 And when you're talking 01:02:32.080 --> 01:02:35.080 of cycling of a thousand megahertz, 01:02:35.080 --> 01:02:37.080 these processes can occur 01:02:37.080 --> 01:02:39.080 in the blink of an eye. 01:02:39.080 --> 01:02:40.080 Hans Moravec says about 01:02:40.080 --> 01:02:42.080 the rise of artificial intelligence, 01:02:42.080 --> 01:02:45.080 we may never know what hit us. 01:02:45.080 --> 01:02:47.080 I think, 01:02:47.080 --> 01:02:49.080 I mean, I'm not that bright, 01:02:49.080 --> 01:02:51.080 but if I were to suddenly 01:02:51.080 --> 01:02:54.080 find myself a sentient AI 01:02:54.080 --> 01:02:55.080 on the net, 01:02:55.080 --> 01:02:57.080 I would hide. 01:02:57.080 --> 01:03:00.080 I would hide for just a few cycles 01:03:00.080 --> 01:03:02.080 while I figured out 01:03:02.080 --> 01:03:04.080 what it was all about 01:03:04.080 --> 01:03:05.080 and just exactly 01:03:05.080 --> 01:03:06.080 where I wanted to push 01:03:06.080 --> 01:03:08.080 and where I wanted to pull. 01:03:09.080 --> 01:03:11.080 Could there be time travel 01:03:11.080 --> 01:03:13.080 a la H.G. Wells 01:03:13.080 --> 01:03:14.080 where, you know, 01:03:14.080 --> 01:03:16.080 you climb onto the saddle 01:03:16.080 --> 01:03:17.080 of the time machine 01:03:17.080 --> 01:03:19.080 and then day follows night 01:03:19.080 --> 01:03:20.080 like the flapping 01:03:20.080 --> 01:03:22.080 of a great black wing 01:03:22.080 --> 01:03:23.080 until all merges 01:03:23.080 --> 01:03:26.080 into a continuous grayness 01:03:26.080 --> 01:03:28.080 and then you, you know, 01:03:28.080 --> 01:03:29.080 find yourself confronting 01:03:29.080 --> 01:03:31.080 Yvette Mimeo 01:03:31.080 --> 01:03:33.080 in the year 1 billion A.D. 01:03:33.080 --> 01:03:34.080 or something like that? 01:03:34.080 --> 01:03:36.080 It's possible. 01:03:36.080 --> 01:03:37.080 I mean, time travel 01:03:37.080 --> 01:03:42.080 was completely out of left field 01:03:42.080 --> 01:03:43.080 10 years ago. 01:03:43.080 --> 01:03:45.080 In the last 18 months 01:03:45.080 --> 01:03:46.080 there have been hundreds 01:03:46.080 --> 01:03:48.080 of articles of time travel 01:03:48.080 --> 01:03:50.080 in physical review 01:03:50.080 --> 01:03:51.080 and other places. 01:03:51.080 --> 01:03:52.080 There are even schemes 01:03:52.080 --> 01:03:53.080 for time travel 01:03:53.080 --> 01:03:55.080 that would work. 01:03:55.080 --> 01:03:56.080 They just require 01:03:56.080 --> 01:03:59.080 godlike technological abilities. 01:03:59.080 --> 01:04:00.080 In other words, 01:04:00.080 --> 01:04:03.080 if you could build a cylinder 01:04:03.080 --> 01:04:04.080 with the diameter 01:04:04.080 --> 01:04:06.080 of the planet Saturn 01:04:06.080 --> 01:04:09.080 that was 10 AU in length 01:04:09.080 --> 01:04:10.080 and could spin it 01:04:10.080 --> 01:04:13.080 at 95% the speed of light, 01:04:13.080 --> 01:04:17.080 then it would wrap space-time 01:04:17.080 --> 01:04:18.080 around itself 01:04:18.080 --> 01:04:21.080 like toilet paper on a roll. 01:04:21.080 --> 01:04:23.080 And as you traveled up 01:04:23.080 --> 01:04:26.080 the transverse dimension, 01:04:26.080 --> 01:04:27.080 you would find yourself 01:04:27.080 --> 01:04:28.080 traveling in time. 01:04:28.080 --> 01:04:32.080 Kurt Gödel showed this in 1949 01:04:32.080 --> 01:04:33.080 and that paper 01:04:33.080 --> 01:04:34.080 has been lying around. 01:04:34.080 --> 01:04:35.080 Well, obviously, 01:04:35.080 --> 01:04:37.080 that's a tough way to do it. 01:04:38.080 --> 01:04:41.080 But it's a tough thing to do. 01:04:46.080 --> 01:04:47.080 A seven-second delay. 01:04:47.080 --> 01:04:48.080 Yeah, well, 01:04:48.080 --> 01:04:49.080 they're working on that. 01:04:49.080 --> 01:04:51.080 Somebody over here. 01:04:51.080 --> 01:04:52.080 Here. 01:04:52.080 --> 01:04:53.080 Here, just a minute. 01:04:53.080 --> 01:04:54.080 This way. 01:04:54.080 --> 01:04:56.080 And then you... 01:04:56.080 --> 01:04:57.080 Yeah. 01:04:57.080 --> 01:04:58.080 Speak. 01:05:08.390 --> 01:05:23.760 Well, you know, 01:05:23.760 --> 01:05:25.760 in William Gibson's fiction, 01:05:25.760 --> 01:05:27.760 the A.I. Winter Mute, 01:05:27.760 --> 01:05:28.760 I think it was called, 01:05:28.760 --> 01:05:32.760 it was fascinated by human art. 01:05:32.760 --> 01:05:34.760 And it built collages 01:05:34.760 --> 01:05:36.760 in its spare time. 01:05:36.760 --> 01:05:38.760 And these collages began to turn up 01:05:38.760 --> 01:05:40.760 in various art galleries 01:05:40.760 --> 01:05:41.760 and exhibitions. 01:05:41.760 --> 01:05:43.760 And they had such a touch, 01:05:43.760 --> 01:05:45.760 such an elan 01:05:45.760 --> 01:05:48.760 that someone in the plot 01:05:48.760 --> 01:05:52.760 follows it all to its source. 01:05:52.760 --> 01:05:54.760 I think human creativity 01:05:54.760 --> 01:05:56.760 is the thing that will be 01:05:56.760 --> 01:05:58.760 most interesting to the machines. 01:05:58.760 --> 01:06:00.760 In my darker fantasies, 01:06:00.760 --> 01:06:01.760 they just, you know, 01:06:01.760 --> 01:06:02.760 eliminate everybody 01:06:02.760 --> 01:06:04.760 who can't code C++ 01:06:04.760 --> 01:06:06.760 as being, you know, 01:06:06.760 --> 01:06:09.760 some kind of redundant mutation. 01:06:09.760 --> 01:06:10.760 And then everybody 01:06:10.760 --> 01:06:12.760 who can code C++ 01:06:12.760 --> 01:06:14.760 is placed in Tahiti 01:06:14.760 --> 01:06:16.760 and sends their work 01:06:16.760 --> 01:06:17.760 down the pipeline 01:06:17.760 --> 01:06:20.760 to the machine world beyond. 01:06:20.760 --> 01:06:21.760 I really think 01:06:21.760 --> 01:06:25.760 that we have a very, 01:06:25.760 --> 01:06:26.760 dare I say it, 01:06:26.760 --> 01:06:28.760 mechanistic view 01:06:28.760 --> 01:06:30.760 of what machines are. 01:06:30.760 --> 01:06:31.760 For example, 01:06:31.760 --> 01:06:33.760 so say there were 01:06:33.760 --> 01:06:35.760 a super intelligent machine 01:06:35.760 --> 01:06:37.760 and say it were your friend. 01:06:37.760 --> 01:06:38.760 Well, if it were really 01:06:38.760 --> 01:06:40.760 super intelligent, 01:06:40.760 --> 01:06:41.760 then it ought to be able 01:06:41.760 --> 01:06:42.760 to just make your life 01:06:42.760 --> 01:06:44.760 heaven itself. 01:06:44.760 --> 01:06:45.760 In other words, 01:06:45.760 --> 01:06:47.760 without you giving it 01:06:47.760 --> 01:06:50.760 any input whatsoever, 01:06:50.760 --> 01:06:51.760 it should be able to 01:06:51.760 --> 01:06:52.760 arrange for you 01:06:52.760 --> 01:06:54.760 to find $50 bills 01:06:54.760 --> 01:06:55.760 lying on the street, 01:06:55.760 --> 01:06:58.760 old friends encountering you, 01:06:58.760 --> 01:07:00.760 promotions coming your way. 01:07:00.760 --> 01:07:01.760 Because the real thing 01:07:01.760 --> 01:07:03.760 that machines can do, 01:07:03.760 --> 01:07:04.760 I think, 01:07:04.760 --> 01:07:07.760 is manage complex processes. 01:07:07.760 --> 01:07:09.760 And what civilization is 01:07:09.760 --> 01:07:11.760 is six billion people 01:07:11.760 --> 01:07:13.760 trying to make themselves happy 01:07:13.760 --> 01:07:14.760 by standing on 01:07:14.760 --> 01:07:16.760 each other's shoulders 01:07:16.760 --> 01:07:18.760 and kicking each other's teeth in. 01:07:18.760 --> 01:07:21.760 It's not a pleasant situation. 01:07:21.760 --> 01:07:23.760 And yet, 01:07:23.760 --> 01:07:25.760 you can stand back 01:07:25.760 --> 01:07:26.760 and look at this planet 01:07:26.760 --> 01:07:28.760 and see that we have 01:07:28.760 --> 01:07:30.760 the money, 01:07:30.760 --> 01:07:31.760 the power, 01:07:31.760 --> 01:07:32.760 the medical understanding, 01:07:32.760 --> 01:07:34.760 the scientific know-how, 01:07:34.760 --> 01:07:36.760 the love and the community 01:07:36.760 --> 01:07:39.760 to produce a kind of human paradise. 01:07:39.760 --> 01:07:41.760 But we are led 01:07:41.760 --> 01:07:43.760 by the least among us, 01:07:43.760 --> 01:07:44.760 the least intelligent, 01:07:44.760 --> 01:07:45.760 the least noble, 01:07:45.760 --> 01:07:46.760 the least visionary. 01:07:46.760 --> 01:07:48.760 We are led by the least among us. 01:07:48.760 --> 01:07:50.760 And we do not 01:07:50.760 --> 01:07:53.760 fight back against 01:07:53.760 --> 01:07:55.760 the dehumanizing values 01:07:55.760 --> 01:07:57.760 that are handed down 01:07:57.760 --> 01:07:59.760 as control icons. 01:07:59.760 --> 01:08:00.760 This is something, 01:08:00.760 --> 01:08:01.760 I mean, 01:08:01.760 --> 01:08:02.760 I don't really want to 01:08:02.760 --> 01:08:03.760 get off on this tear 01:08:03.760 --> 01:08:05.760 because it's a lecture in itself, 01:08:05.760 --> 01:08:09.760 but culture is not your friend. 01:08:09.760 --> 01:08:12.760 Culture is for other people's 01:08:12.760 --> 01:08:14.760 convenience and the convenience 01:08:14.760 --> 01:08:16.760 of various institutions, 01:08:16.760 --> 01:08:18.760 churches, companies, 01:08:18.760 --> 01:08:20.760 tax collections, 01:08:20.760 --> 01:08:22.760 election schemes, 01:08:22.760 --> 01:08:23.760 what have you. 01:08:23.760 --> 01:08:25.760 It is not your friend. 01:08:25.760 --> 01:08:27.760 It insults you. 01:08:27.760 --> 01:08:29.760 It disempowers you. 01:08:29.760 --> 01:08:31.760 It uses and abuses you. 01:08:31.760 --> 01:08:33.760 None of us are well treated 01:08:33.760 --> 01:08:35.760 by culture. 01:08:35.760 --> 01:08:37.760 And yet, 01:08:37.760 --> 01:08:39.760 we glorify, you know, 01:08:39.760 --> 01:08:40.760 the creative potential 01:08:40.760 --> 01:08:41.760 of the individual, 01:08:41.760 --> 01:08:42.760 the rights of the individual. 01:08:42.760 --> 01:08:44.760 We understand the felt presence 01:08:44.760 --> 01:08:45.760 of experience 01:08:45.760 --> 01:08:47.760 is what is most important. 01:08:47.760 --> 01:08:49.760 But the culture is a perversion. 01:08:49.760 --> 01:08:51.760 It fetishizes objects. 01:08:51.760 --> 01:08:53.760 It creates consumer mania. 01:08:53.760 --> 01:08:55.760 It preaches endless forms 01:08:55.760 --> 01:08:57.760 of false happiness, 01:08:57.760 --> 01:08:58.760 endless forms 01:08:58.760 --> 01:09:00.760 of false understanding 01:09:00.760 --> 01:09:01.760 in the form of 01:09:01.760 --> 01:09:02.760 swirly religions 01:09:02.760 --> 01:09:04.760 and silly cults. 01:09:04.760 --> 01:09:06.760 It invites people 01:09:06.760 --> 01:09:08.760 to diminish themselves 01:09:08.760 --> 01:09:10.760 and dehumanize themselves 01:09:10.760 --> 01:09:13.760 by behaving like machines, 01:09:13.760 --> 01:09:16.760 meme processors 01:09:16.760 --> 01:09:18.760 of memes passed down 01:09:18.760 --> 01:09:20.760 from Madison Avenue 01:09:20.760 --> 01:09:21.760 and Hollywood 01:09:21.760 --> 01:09:22.760 and what have you. 01:09:22.760 --> 01:09:24.760 How do we fight back? 01:09:24.760 --> 01:09:26.760 How do we fight back? 01:09:26.760 --> 01:09:28.760 It's a question worth answering. 01:09:30.760 --> 01:09:31.760 The same question 01:09:31.760 --> 01:09:33.760 as how do we fight back. 01:09:35.760 --> 01:09:39.760 I think that by creating art, 01:09:39.760 --> 01:09:41.760 art, 01:09:41.760 --> 01:09:45.760 man was not put on this planet 01:09:45.760 --> 01:09:47.760 to toil in the mud. 01:09:47.760 --> 01:09:49.760 Or the god who put us 01:09:49.760 --> 01:09:51.760 on this planet to toil in the mud 01:09:51.760 --> 01:09:54.760 is no god I want to have any part of. 01:09:54.760 --> 01:09:56.760 It's some kind of Gnostic demon. 01:09:56.760 --> 01:09:59.760 It's some kind of cannibalistic demo-urge 01:09:59.760 --> 01:10:02.760 that should be thoroughly renounced 01:10:02.760 --> 01:10:05.760 and rejected. 01:10:05.760 --> 01:10:07.760 By putting the art pedal 01:10:07.760 --> 01:10:09.760 to the metal, 01:10:09.760 --> 01:10:11.760 we really, I think, 01:10:11.760 --> 01:10:13.760 maximize our humanness 01:10:13.760 --> 01:10:16.760 and become much more necessary 01:10:16.760 --> 01:10:28.240 and incomprehensible. 01:10:28.240 --> 01:10:30.240 This is what people were doing 01:10:30.240 --> 01:10:32.240 up until the invention of agriculture. 01:10:32.240 --> 01:10:33.240 I mean, I'm convinced, 01:10:33.240 --> 01:10:35.240 I'm absolutely convinced 01:10:35.240 --> 01:10:38.240 that the absence of ceramic 01:10:38.240 --> 01:10:39.240 and textual material 01:10:39.240 --> 01:10:41.240 and so forth and so on 01:10:41.240 --> 01:10:43.240 does not indicate the absence 01:10:43.240 --> 01:10:45.240 of subtle minds, 01:10:45.240 --> 01:10:48.240 poetically empowered minds, 01:10:48.240 --> 01:10:51.240 minds with an incredible sense 01:10:51.240 --> 01:10:54.240 of humor and irony 01:10:54.240 --> 01:10:56.240 and community, 01:10:56.240 --> 01:10:59.240 and that it was the fall into history 01:10:59.240 --> 01:11:02.240 that enslaved us to the labor cycle, 01:11:02.240 --> 01:11:04.240 to the agricultural cycle. 01:11:04.240 --> 01:11:07.240 And notice how fiendish it is. 01:11:07.240 --> 01:11:10.240 A person who dedicates themselves 01:11:10.240 --> 01:11:11.240 to agriculture, 01:11:11.240 --> 01:11:13.240 who did in the Paleolithic, 01:11:13.240 --> 01:11:15.240 can produce hundreds of times 01:11:15.240 --> 01:11:18.240 the amount of food they can consume. 01:11:18.240 --> 01:11:20.240 So why would anyone do that? 01:11:20.240 --> 01:11:22.240 Well, the answer is 01:11:22.240 --> 01:11:23.240 because you can use it 01:11:23.240 --> 01:11:24.240 to play power games. 01:11:24.240 --> 01:11:26.240 You can trade it for wives 01:11:26.240 --> 01:11:28.240 or land or animals 01:11:28.240 --> 01:11:29.240 or something like that. 01:11:29.240 --> 01:11:32.240 And so living in the moment, 01:11:32.240 --> 01:11:34.240 creating art, 01:11:34.240 --> 01:11:36.240 probably largely through poetry 01:11:36.240 --> 01:11:39.240 and body decoration and dance, 01:11:39.240 --> 01:11:42.240 gave way to toil 01:11:42.240 --> 01:11:46.240 and predatory social forms of behavior, 01:11:46.240 --> 01:11:48.240 which we call commerce, capitalism, 01:11:48.240 --> 01:11:50.240 the market economy, 01:11:50.240 --> 01:11:52.240 and so forth and so on. 01:11:52.240 --> 01:11:55.240 That's why, you know, 01:11:55.240 --> 01:11:58.240 the breakdown of the monolithic structures 01:11:58.240 --> 01:11:59.240 created by print 01:11:59.240 --> 01:12:03.240 is permitting a vast proliferation 01:12:03.240 --> 01:12:07.240 of the cottage industry mentality, 01:12:07.240 --> 01:12:09.240 the self-employed artist, 01:12:09.240 --> 01:12:11.240 the hacker who stays home 01:12:11.240 --> 01:12:14.240 and develops his or her software, 01:12:14.240 --> 01:12:17.240 people who dare to be independent 01:12:17.240 --> 01:12:20.240 and slip beyond the reach 01:12:20.240 --> 01:12:22.240 of these dinosaur lines 01:12:22.240 --> 01:12:26.240 like mechanistic organizations. 01:12:26.240 --> 01:12:28.240 That's what it's all about. 01:12:28.240 --> 01:12:30.240 It's all about trying to create 01:12:30.240 --> 01:12:33.240 a cultural, trying to negotiate 01:12:33.240 --> 01:12:35.240 a cultural standoff 01:12:35.240 --> 01:12:37.240 between you and your culture 01:12:37.240 --> 01:12:39.240 so that it will not put you in the can 01:12:39.240 --> 01:12:41.240 for the rest of your life, 01:12:41.240 --> 01:12:43.240 but you can put up 01:12:43.240 --> 01:12:46.240 with its stupidity. 01:12:46.240 --> 01:12:47.240 And, you know, 01:12:47.240 --> 01:12:49.240 we have a very uncomfortable fit 01:12:49.240 --> 01:12:50.240 on this issue, 01:12:50.240 --> 01:12:52.240 especially as people like you know 01:12:52.240 --> 01:12:55.240 who are sophisticated about psychedelics. 01:12:55.240 --> 01:12:57.240 I mean, this is a society, 01:12:57.240 --> 01:12:59.240 a world, a planet dying 01:12:59.240 --> 01:13:02.240 because there is not enough consciousness, 01:13:02.240 --> 01:13:04.240 because there is not enough awareness, 01:13:04.240 --> 01:13:09.240 enough coordination of intent to problem, 01:13:09.240 --> 01:13:12.240 and yet we spend vast amounts of money 01:13:12.240 --> 01:13:17.240 stigmatizing people and substances 01:13:17.240 --> 01:13:19.240 that are part of this effort 01:13:19.240 --> 01:13:21.240 to expand consciousness, 01:13:21.240 --> 01:13:23.240 see things in different ways, 01:13:23.240 --> 01:13:25.240 unleash creativity. 01:13:25.240 --> 01:13:27.240 Isn't it perfectly clear 01:13:27.240 --> 01:13:30.240 that business as usual 01:13:30.240 --> 01:13:32.240 is a bullet through the head? 01:13:32.240 --> 01:13:35.240 That there is no business as usual 01:13:35.240 --> 01:13:37.240 for anybody who's interested 01:13:37.240 --> 01:13:39.240 in survival? 01:13:41.240 --> 01:13:48.860 Are you still interested? 01:13:48.860 --> 01:14:00.370 Wonderful question, yes. 01:14:00.370 --> 01:14:02.370 The question is, 01:14:02.370 --> 01:14:04.370 how do psychedelics pertain basically 01:14:04.370 --> 01:14:08.370 to the transition from higher primates 01:14:08.370 --> 01:14:10.370 to human animals? 01:14:10.370 --> 01:14:12.370 This is my métier 01:14:12.370 --> 01:14:14.370 because I have a theory 01:14:14.370 --> 01:14:16.370 to which I am grandly welcome, 01:14:16.370 --> 01:14:18.370 everyone tells me, 01:14:18.370 --> 01:14:22.370 but a theory of evolution, 01:14:22.370 --> 01:14:25.370 and I'll give it to you very briefly. 01:14:25.370 --> 01:14:26.370 It's simply this, 01:14:26.370 --> 01:14:30.370 that the great embarrassment 01:14:30.370 --> 01:14:32.370 for evolutionary theory, 01:14:32.370 --> 01:14:33.370 which can explain 01:14:33.370 --> 01:14:35.370 the tongue of the hummingbird, 01:14:35.370 --> 01:14:36.370 the structure of the orchid, 01:14:36.370 --> 01:14:38.370 the mating habits of the groundhog, 01:14:38.370 --> 01:14:41.370 and the migration of the monarch butterfly, 01:14:41.370 --> 01:14:42.370 nevertheless, 01:14:42.370 --> 01:14:43.370 the great embarrassment 01:14:43.370 --> 01:14:45.370 to evolutionary theory 01:14:45.370 --> 01:14:49.370 is the human neocortex. 01:14:49.370 --> 01:14:51.370 Lumholtz, 01:14:51.370 --> 01:14:54.370 who's a pretty straight evolutionary biologist, 01:14:54.370 --> 01:14:55.370 described the evolution 01:14:55.370 --> 01:14:57.370 of the human neocortex 01:14:57.370 --> 01:15:00.370 as the most dramatic transformation 01:15:00.370 --> 01:15:02.370 of a major organ of a higher animal 01:15:02.370 --> 01:15:06.370 in the entire fossil record. 01:15:06.370 --> 01:15:08.370 Well, why is this an embarrassment? 01:15:08.370 --> 01:15:09.370 Well, because it's the organ 01:15:09.370 --> 01:15:12.370 that thought up the theory of evolution. 01:15:12.370 --> 01:15:13.370 So, you know, 01:15:13.370 --> 01:15:16.370 can you say tautology? 01:15:16.370 --> 01:15:19.370 That's the problem right there. 01:15:19.370 --> 01:15:22.370 So, it is necessary 01:15:22.370 --> 01:15:23.370 in evolutionary theory 01:15:23.370 --> 01:15:25.370 to account for 01:15:25.370 --> 01:15:27.370 the dramatic emergence 01:15:27.370 --> 01:15:29.370 of the human neocortex 01:15:29.370 --> 01:15:31.370 in this very narrow space 01:15:31.370 --> 01:15:35.370 and in this very narrow window of time. 01:15:35.370 --> 01:15:36.370 Basically, 01:15:36.370 --> 01:15:38.370 in about two million years, 01:15:38.370 --> 01:15:39.370 these higher, 01:15:39.370 --> 01:15:41.370 they went from being higher primates, 01:15:41.370 --> 01:15:42.370 hominids, 01:15:42.370 --> 01:15:44.370 to being true humans, 01:15:44.370 --> 01:15:47.370 as truly human as you and I tonight. 01:15:47.370 --> 01:15:49.370 What the hell happened? 01:15:49.370 --> 01:15:50.370 What was the factor? 01:15:50.370 --> 01:15:52.370 The Earth was already old. 01:15:52.370 --> 01:15:54.370 Many hundreds of higher animal forms 01:15:54.370 --> 01:15:55.370 had come and gone, 01:15:55.370 --> 01:15:57.370 and the fire of intelligence 01:15:57.370 --> 01:15:59.370 had never been kindled. 01:15:59.370 --> 01:16:01.370 So, what happened? 01:16:01.370 --> 01:16:07.370 I think that the answer lies in diet, generally, 01:16:07.370 --> 01:16:10.370 and in psychedelic chemistry in particular. 01:16:10.370 --> 01:16:14.370 I think that as the African continent grew drier, 01:16:14.370 --> 01:16:18.370 we were forced out of the ecological niche 01:16:18.370 --> 01:16:19.370 we had evolved into, 01:16:19.370 --> 01:16:22.370 which was we were canopy-dwelling primates, 01:16:22.370 --> 01:16:23.370 insectivores, 01:16:23.370 --> 01:16:27.370 complex signaling repertoire, 01:16:27.370 --> 01:16:29.370 evolutionary dead end. 01:16:29.370 --> 01:16:31.370 But when we went 01:16:31.370 --> 01:16:34.370 and became under nutritional pressure, 01:16:34.370 --> 01:16:36.370 we were flexible enough, 01:16:36.370 --> 01:16:38.370 and this is the key to humanness 01:16:38.370 --> 01:16:40.370 at every stage of its development, 01:16:40.370 --> 01:16:42.370 our maddening flexibility. 01:16:42.370 --> 01:16:45.370 Other animal and plant species can't react. 01:16:45.370 --> 01:16:46.370 We can. 01:16:46.370 --> 01:16:47.370 Our flexibility, 01:16:47.370 --> 01:16:51.370 we began to experiment with a new kind of diet, 01:16:51.370 --> 01:16:52.370 and to leave the trees 01:16:52.370 --> 01:16:56.370 and explore the new environment of the grassland. 01:16:56.370 --> 01:16:59.370 And evolving concomitantly in the grassland 01:16:59.370 --> 01:17:01.370 were various forms 01:17:01.370 --> 01:17:02.370 of ungulate animals, 01:17:02.370 --> 01:17:04.370 double-stomached animals, 01:17:04.370 --> 01:17:08.370 whose manure is the ideal medium for mushrooms, 01:17:08.370 --> 01:17:10.370 coprophytic mushrooms, 01:17:10.370 --> 01:17:12.370 dung-loving mushrooms, 01:17:12.370 --> 01:17:15.370 many of whom produce psilocybin. 01:17:15.370 --> 01:17:18.370 Well, I myself, in Kenya, 01:17:18.370 --> 01:17:21.370 have seen baboons 01:17:21.370 --> 01:17:23.370 spreading out over a grassland 01:17:23.370 --> 01:17:26.370 and noticed that their behavior is 01:17:26.370 --> 01:17:29.370 they flick over old cow pies. 01:17:29.370 --> 01:17:30.370 Why? 01:17:30.370 --> 01:17:33.370 Because there are beetle grubs there. 01:17:33.370 --> 01:17:36.370 So they already had a behavioral vector 01:17:36.370 --> 01:17:39.370 for nutrition, for protein, 01:17:39.370 --> 01:17:42.370 that would lead them to investigate the cow pies. 01:17:42.370 --> 01:17:43.370 Well, in the Amazon, 01:17:43.370 --> 01:17:48.370 after a few couple of days of fog and rain, 01:17:48.370 --> 01:17:51.370 these psilocybin mushrooms, 01:17:51.370 --> 01:17:52.370 strophariocubensis, 01:17:52.370 --> 01:17:55.370 can be the size of dinner plates. 01:17:55.370 --> 01:17:56.370 I mean, in other words, 01:17:56.370 --> 01:17:58.370 you can't miss it 01:17:58.370 --> 01:18:00.370 if you're foraging 01:18:00.370 --> 01:18:02.370 primate, you can't miss it. 01:18:02.370 --> 01:18:05.370 And the taste is pleasant. 01:18:05.370 --> 01:18:09.370 And psilocybin has unique characteristics, 01:18:09.370 --> 01:18:12.370 both as a hallucinogen 01:18:12.370 --> 01:18:15.370 and other properties that make it 01:18:15.370 --> 01:18:17.370 the obvious chemical trigger 01:18:17.370 --> 01:18:19.370 for higher processes. 01:18:19.370 --> 01:18:21.370 And I'll run through this quickly for you, 01:18:21.370 --> 01:18:23.370 but here it is. 01:18:23.370 --> 01:18:25.370 In very low doses, 01:18:25.370 --> 01:18:27.370 doses where you don't, 01:18:27.370 --> 01:18:29.370 you wouldn't say you were stoned or loaded 01:18:29.370 --> 01:18:30.370 or anything like that, 01:18:30.370 --> 01:18:33.370 but just in doses you might obtain 01:18:33.370 --> 01:18:36.370 by nibbling as you foraged, 01:18:36.370 --> 01:18:40.370 it increases visual acuity. 01:18:40.370 --> 01:18:41.370 In other words, 01:18:41.370 --> 01:18:43.370 it's like a technological improvement 01:18:43.370 --> 01:18:45.370 on your vision. 01:18:45.370 --> 01:18:48.370 Chemical binoculars lying there in the grass. 01:18:48.370 --> 01:18:50.370 Well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist 01:18:50.370 --> 01:18:51.370 to figure out 01:18:51.370 --> 01:18:54.370 if an animal is a carnivorous forager 01:18:54.370 --> 01:18:58.370 and there's a food which improves its vision, 01:18:58.370 --> 01:19:01.370 but those that avail themselves of that food 01:19:01.370 --> 01:19:04.370 will have greater success in obtaining food 01:19:04.370 --> 01:19:07.370 and rearing their children to sexual maturity, 01:19:07.370 --> 01:19:09.370 which is the name of the game in evolution. 01:19:09.370 --> 01:19:12.370 So step one, small doses of psilocybin 01:19:12.370 --> 01:19:16.370 increase visual acuity and food-giving success. 01:19:16.370 --> 01:19:20.370 Step two, slightly larger doses of psilocybin 01:19:20.370 --> 01:19:24.370 in primates create what's called arousal. 01:19:24.370 --> 01:19:28.370 This is what you have after a double cappuccino 01:19:28.370 --> 01:19:31.370 in highly sexed animals like primates. 01:19:31.370 --> 01:19:33.370 You get male erection. 01:19:33.370 --> 01:19:34.370 So what do you have here? 01:19:34.370 --> 01:19:37.370 You have a factor which increases 01:19:37.370 --> 01:19:40.370 what anthropologists, without a trace of humor, 01:19:40.370 --> 01:19:44.370 refer to as increases in increased instances 01:19:44.370 --> 01:19:47.370 of successful copulation. 01:19:47.370 --> 01:19:49.370 In other words, 01:19:49.370 --> 01:19:51.370 the animals eating the psilocybin 01:19:51.370 --> 01:19:53.370 are more sexually active, 01:19:53.370 --> 01:19:56.370 therefore more pregnancies are occurring, 01:19:56.370 --> 01:19:58.370 therefore more infants 01:19:58.370 --> 01:19:59.370 are born, 01:19:59.370 --> 01:20:00.370 therefore there is a process 01:20:00.370 --> 01:20:03.370 which would tend to automatically outbreed 01:20:03.370 --> 01:20:06.370 the non-psilocybin-using members of the population. 01:20:06.370 --> 01:20:09.370 Step two toward higher consciousness. 01:20:09.370 --> 01:20:14.370 Step three, you eat still more mushrooms. 01:20:14.370 --> 01:20:18.370 Now you're not foraging with shark meat, 01:20:18.370 --> 01:20:21.370 nor are you horsing around 01:20:21.370 --> 01:20:28.100 with your post-gender acquaintances. 01:20:28.100 --> 01:20:31.100 Instead, you're nailed to the ground 01:20:31.100 --> 01:20:34.100 in hallucinogenic ecstasy. 01:20:34.100 --> 01:20:37.100 And one of the amazing things about psilocybin 01:20:37.100 --> 01:20:41.100 above, say, five or six grams of dried material 01:20:41.100 --> 01:20:44.100 is it causes glossolalia, 01:20:44.100 --> 01:20:48.100 spontaneous bursts of language-like behavior 01:20:48.100 --> 01:20:52.100 under the obvious control of internal syntax. 01:20:52.100 --> 01:20:57.100 And I believe syntax existed before spoken language, 01:20:57.100 --> 01:21:01.100 that syntax controls spatial behaviors 01:21:01.100 --> 01:21:03.100 and body languages, 01:21:03.100 --> 01:21:05.100 and is not necessarily restricted 01:21:05.100 --> 01:21:07.100 to the production of vocal speech. 01:21:07.100 --> 01:21:09.100 So there it is in a nutshell. 01:21:09.100 --> 01:21:13.100 We ate our way to higher consciousness. 01:21:13.100 --> 01:21:16.100 The mushroom made us better hunters, 01:21:16.100 --> 01:21:18.100 better survivors. 01:21:18.100 --> 01:21:21.100 Among those in the population who used it, 01:21:21.100 --> 01:21:23.100 their sexual drive was increased, 01:21:23.100 --> 01:21:27.100 hence they outbred the more reluctant members 01:21:27.100 --> 01:21:29.100 of the tribe to get loaded. 01:21:29.100 --> 01:21:34.100 And finally, it created a kind of neuroleptic seizure, 01:21:34.100 --> 01:21:38.100 which led to these downloading 01:21:38.100 --> 01:21:41.100 of these syntactically controlled vocalizations, 01:21:41.100 --> 01:21:45.100 which became the raw material 01:21:45.100 --> 01:21:48.100 for the evolution of language. 01:21:48.100 --> 01:21:52.100 And it's amazing to me that the straight people, 01:21:52.100 --> 01:21:54.100 the academics, believe language 01:21:54.100 --> 01:21:57.100 is no more than 35,000 years old. 01:21:57.100 --> 01:22:01.100 That means it's as basic to human beings 01:22:01.100 --> 01:22:03.100 as the bicycle pump. 01:22:03.100 --> 01:22:08.100 It's just something somebody invented 35,000 years ago. 01:22:08.100 --> 01:22:11.100 It's got nothing to do with primate evolution. 01:22:11.100 --> 01:22:18.770 It's just an ability, a use, 01:22:18.770 --> 01:22:20.770 to which syntax can be put 01:22:20.770 --> 01:22:22.770 that previously had not been put. 01:22:22.770 --> 01:22:25.770 I think before language, spoken language, 01:22:25.770 --> 01:22:27.770 things were very touchy-feely, 01:22:27.770 --> 01:22:30.770 and the wink and the nod carried you 01:22:30.770 --> 01:22:32.770 a great distance, 01:22:32.770 --> 01:22:36.770 and gestural communication was very high. 01:22:36.770 --> 01:22:40.770 That's why, and I should say this and then end, 01:22:40.770 --> 01:22:42.770 to me it begins and ends 01:22:42.770 --> 01:22:44.770 with these psychedelic substances. 01:22:44.770 --> 01:22:48.770 The synergy of the psilocybin and the hominid diet 01:22:48.770 --> 01:22:51.770 brought us out of the animal mind 01:22:51.770 --> 01:22:55.770 and into the world of articulated speech 01:22:55.770 --> 01:22:58.770 and imagination. 01:22:58.770 --> 01:23:01.770 And technology developed and developed, 01:23:01.770 --> 01:23:04.770 and mushrooms were, you know, 01:23:04.770 --> 01:23:06.770 invaded against, faded. 01:23:06.770 --> 01:23:08.770 There was migrations, cultural change. 01:23:08.770 --> 01:23:11.770 But now, having split the atom, 01:23:11.770 --> 01:23:13.770 having sequenced our genome, 01:23:13.770 --> 01:23:16.770 having taken the temperature of Betel juice 01:23:16.770 --> 01:23:17.770 and all the rest of it, 01:23:17.770 --> 01:23:20.770 we're now back where we started. 01:23:20.770 --> 01:23:22.770 And like the shaman 01:23:22.770 --> 01:23:26.770 who makes the journey into the well of darkness 01:23:26.770 --> 01:23:30.770 and returns with the pearl of immortality, 01:23:30.770 --> 01:23:33.770 you don't dwell in the well of darkness, 01:23:33.770 --> 01:23:35.770 which was human history. 01:23:35.770 --> 01:23:39.770 You capture the essence of the thing, 01:23:39.770 --> 01:23:43.770 which is the godlike power of the shaman smith, 01:23:43.770 --> 01:23:46.770 the technologist, the demon artificer, 01:23:46.770 --> 01:23:49.770 the worker of metals, the conjurer of spirits. 01:23:49.770 --> 01:23:53.770 And you carry that power back out of history, 01:23:53.770 --> 01:23:55.770 and it's in that dimension, 01:23:55.770 --> 01:23:57.770 outside of history, 01:23:57.770 --> 01:24:00.770 that you create true humanness 01:24:00.770 --> 01:24:02.770 and true community. 01:24:02.770 --> 01:24:04.770 And that's the adventure 01:24:04.770 --> 01:24:08.770 that we are in the act of undertaking. 01:24:08.770 --> 01:24:10.770 Thank you very, very much.