Kind: captions
Language: en
we are becoming cyborgs like
our brains are fundamentally changed
everyone who grew up with electronics we
are fundamentally different from
previous from homo sapiens i call us
homo techno i i think we have evolved
into homo techno which is like
essentially a new species previous
technologies i mean may have even been
more profound and moved us to a certain
degree but i think the computers are
what make us homotech know i think this
is what it's a brain augmentation so it
like allows for actual evolution like
the computers accelerate the degree to
which all the other technologies can
also be accelerated would you classify
yourself as a homo sapien or a homo tech
no definitely home attack no so i think
we're all you're you're one of the
earliest of the species i think most of
us are
the following is a conversation with
grimes an artist musician songwriter
producer director and a fascinating
human being who thinks a lot about both
the history and the future of human
civilization studying the dark periods
of our past to help form an optimistic
vision of our future
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's grimes
oh yeah the cloud lifter there you go
there you go you know your stuff
have you ever used the cloud lifter yeah
i actually this microphone cloud lifter
is what michael jackson used so no
really yeah this is like thriller and
stuff this mic this mic
and that yeah it's it's a incredible
microphone yes it's very flattering on
vocals i've used this a lot it it's
great for demo vocals it's great in a
room like sometimes it's easier to
record vocals if you're just in a room
and like the music's playing and you
just want to like feel it and it's not
so it's not in the headphones and this
mic is pretty directional so i think
it's like a good mic for like
just vibing out and just getting a real
good vocal take just vibing just in a
room anyway this is the
system this is the michael jackson
quincy jones
microphone
i feel way more badass now all right
let's get it you want to just get into
it i guess so
all right one of your names at least in
the space and time is c like the letter
c and and you told me that
c means a lot of things it's the speed
of light it's the render rate of the
universe it's yes in spanish it's the
crescent moon
and it happens to be my favorite
programming language because it's uh it
basically runs the world but it's also
powerful fast
and it's dangerous because you can mess
things up really bad with it because of
all the pointers but anyway which of
these associations uh with the name c is
the coolest to you
i mean to me the coolest is the speed of
light obviously or the speed of light
when i say render rate of the universe i
think i mean the speed of light
because essentially that's
what we're rendering it see i think
we'll know
if we're in a simulation if the speed of
light changes because if they can
improve their render speed then
it's already pretty good it's already
pretty good but if it improves
then
we'll know you know we can probably be
like okay they've updated or upgraded
it's fast enough for us humans because
it seems
like um it seems immediate there's no
delay there's no latency in terms of
like us humans on earth interacting with
things but if you're like uh like
intergalactic species operating on a
much larger scale then you're gonna
start noticing some weird stuff or if
you can operate
in like around a black hole then you're
gonna start to see some render issues
you can't go faster than the speed of
light correct
so it really limits our ability or and
it's one's ability to travel space
theoretically you can you have wormholes
so i there's nothing in general
relativity
that uh precludes faster than
um
speed of light travel but it just seems
you're gonna have to do some really
funky stuff with uh
very heavy things that have like
weirdnesses that have basically tears in
space-time we don't know how to do that
dune navigators know how to do it
dude navigators yeah yeah folding space
basically making wormholes
so
the name c
yes
who are you are you do you think of
yourself as multiple people are you one
person do you know
like in this morning were you different
person than you are tonight we are i
should say recording this
basically at midnight which is awesome
yes thank you so much i think i'm about
eight hours late no you're right on time
good morning this is the beginning of a
new day soon anyway uh are you the same
person you were in the morning in the
evening
do you you're you're is there multiple
people in there do you think of yourself
as one person or maybe you have no clue
are you just a giant mystery to yourself
okay these are really intense questions
but uh
that's cool because i asked this myself
like look in the mirror who are you
people tell you to just be yourself but
what does that even mean uh i mean i
think my personality changes with
everyone i talk to
so i have a very inconsistent
personality
yeah person to person so the interaction
your personality
materializes
like i'll go from being like a
megalomaniac to being like
you know just like a total
hermit who is very shy so some
combinatorial com combination of your
mood and the person you're interacting
with yeah moon people are interacting
with but i think everyone's like that
maybe not
well not everybody acknowledges it and
able to introspect it who brings up what
kind of person what kind of mood brings
out the best in you as an artist and as
a human
can you introspect this like my best
friends
like people i can
when i'm like
super confident and i know that they're
gonna understand
understand everything i'm saying so like
my best friends then
when i can start being really funny
that's always my like peak mode but it's
like yeah takes a lot to get there let's
talk about constraints
you've talked about constraints and
limits
uh do those help you out as an artist or
as a human being or do they get in the
way do you like the constraints so in
creating music and creating art and
living life
do you like the constraints that this
world puts on you
or
do you hate them
if constraints are
moving
then you're good
right like it's like it's like as we are
progressing with technology we're
changing the constraints of like
artistic creation you know um making
video and music and stuff is getting a
lot cheaper there's constantly new
technology and new software that's
making it faster and easier we have so
much more freedom than we had in the 70s
like when michael jackson you know when
they recorded thriller with this
microphone
like they had to use a mixing desk and
all this stuff and like probably even
get in the studio it's probably really
expensive and you have to be a really
good singer and you have to know how to
use like the mixing desk and everything
and now i can just you know
make i've made a whole album on this
computer
i have a lot more freedom but then i'm
also constrained in different ways
because there's like
literally millions more artists it's
like a much bigger playing field it's
just like
i also i didn't learn music i'm not a
natural musician so i i don't know
anything about actual music i just know
about like the computer so
i'm really kind of just like
messing around
and like
trying things out well yes i mean but
the nature of music is changing so
you're saying you don't know actual
music well music is changing
music is becoming you've talked about
this is becoming
it's like merging with technology
yes
it's becoming something
more than just like the notes on a piano
it's becoming some weird composition
that requires engineering skills
programming skills
some kind of human robot interaction
skills and still some of the same things
that michael jackson had which is like a
good ear for a good sense of taste of
what's good and not the final thing what
is put together like you're allowed
you're
enabled empowered with a laptop to layer
stuff
to start like layering insane amounts of
stuff and it's super easy to do that
i do think music production is a really
underrated art form i feel like people
really don't appreciate it when i look
at publishing splits the way that people
um like pay producers and stuff
uh it's it's
super like producers are just deeply
underrated like so many of the songs
that are popular
right now or for the last 20 years like
part of the reason they're popular is
because the production is really
interesting or really sick or really
cool and it's like i don't think
listeners
um
like people just don't really understand
what music production is
it's not it's sort of like this weird
discombobulated art form it's not like a
formal because it's so new there isn't
like a formal training
path for it it's
um mostly driven by like autodidacs like
it's like almost everyone i know who's
good at production like they didn't go
to musical school or anything they just
taught themselves they're mostly
different like the music producers you
know
is there some commonalities the time
together or are they all just different
kinds of weirdos because i just i just
hung out with rick rubin i don't know if
you've yeah la la i mean rick rubin is
like literally
one of the gods of music production like
he's one of the people who
first
you know who like made music production
you know
made the production as important as the
actual lyrics or the notes but the thing
he does which is interesting i don't
know if you can speak to that but just
hanging out with him he seems to just
sit there in silence close his eyes and
listen it's like he almost does nothing
and that nothing somehow gives you
freedom to be the best version of
yourself so that's music production
somehow too which is like encouraging
you to do less to simplify to like
push towards minimalism
i mean i guess i mean
i
work differently from recruitment
because rick rubin produces for other
artists whereas like i mostly produce
for myself
so it's a very different situation um i
also think rick rubin he's he's in that
i would say advanced category of
producer where like you've like
earned your you you can have an engineer
and stuff and people like do the stuff
for you yeah but um i usually just like
do stuff myself you're the engineer
the producer
and the
the artist
yeah i guess i would say i i'm in the
era like the post rick rubin era like i
come from the kind of like um
skrillex school of thought which is like
uh where you're you are yeah the
engineer producer artist like right um
i mean lately
sometimes i'll work with a producer now
i'm
gently sort of
delicately starting to collaborate a bit
more but like uh
i think i'm kind of from the like the
whatever 2010s
explosion of things where um
you know everything became available on
the computer and you kind of got this
like lone wizard energy thing going so
the you embrace being the loneliness
is the loneliness somehow an engine of
creativity like uh see most of your
stuff most of your creative
quote-unquote genius in in quotes is
in the privacy of your mind
yes
well it was
um
but
here's the thing
i was talking to daniel eck and he said
he's like most artists they have about
10 years
like 10 10 good years um and then they
usually stop making their like vital
shit
um and i feel like
i'm sort of like nearing the end of my
10 years on my own
and um so you have to become somebody
else now i'm like i'm in the process of
becoming somebody else and reinventing
when i work with other people because
i've never worked with other people i
find that i make
like that i'm like exceptionally
rejuvenated and making like some of the
most vital work i've ever made
so
because i think another human brain is
like one of the best um tools you can
possibly find
um like
it's a funny way to put it i love it
it's like if a tool is like you know
whatever hp plus one or like adds some
like
stats to your
character like another human brain will
like square it instead of just like
adding something
double up the experience points i love
this we should also mention we're
playing tavr music before this and which
i love which i first i think you have to
stop the tavern music yeah because it
doesn't the the audio okay okay but it
makes yeah it'll make the podcast
edit and post no one will want to listen
to the podcast they probably would but
it makes me it reminds me like a video
game like a role playing video game
where you have experience points there's
something really
joyful
about wandering places like elder
scrolls
like skyrim
just exploring
uh these landscapes in another world and
then you get experience points and you
can work on different skills and somehow
you progress in life
and i don't know it's simple it doesn't
have some of the messy complexities of
life and there's usually a bad guy you
can fight in in um in skyrim it's
dragons and so on i'm sure in elder ring
there's a bunch of monsters you can
fight i love that i feel like elden ring
i i feel like this is a good analogy to
music protection though because it's
like i feel like the engineers and the
people creating these open worlds are
it's sort of like similar to people to
music producers whereas it's like this
this hidden archetype that like no one
really understands what they do and no
one really knows who they are but
they're like
it's like the artist engineer because
it's like
it it's both art and uh fairly complex
engineering well you're saying they
don't get enough credit aren't you kind
of changing that by becoming the person
doing everything
isn't the engineer
well i mean others have gone before me
i'm not you know there's like timbaland
and skrillex and there's all these
people people that are like you know
very famous for this but but i just
think the general i think people get
confused about what it is and just don't
really know what
what it is per se and it's just when i
see a song like when there's like a hit
song like um
like
i'm just trying to think of like just
going for like even just a basic pop hit
like um
like was it like rules by dua lipa or
something the production on that is
actually like really crazy
i mean the song is also great but it's
like the production is exceptionally
memorable like
you know
and it's just like no one i ca i don't
even know who produced that song it just
like isn't part of like the rhetoric of
how we just discuss the creation of art
we just sort of like
don't consider the music producer
because i think the music producer used
to be more
just simply recording things
um yeah that's interesting because when
you think about movies we talk about the
actor and the actresses but we also talk
about the director directors yeah we
don't talk about like that with the
music as often
um the beatles music producer was one of
the first kind of
guy one of the first people sort of
introducing crazy sound design into pop
music i forget his name
he has the same i forget his name but um
you know
like that he was doing all the weird
stuff like dropping pianos and like yeah
oh to get the aaa to get to get the
sound to get the authentic sound what
about lyrics
you think those
where did they fit into how important
they are i was heartbroken to to learn
that elvis didn't write his songs i was
very mad a lot of people don't write
their songs i understand this but but
here's here's the thing i feel like that
there's this desire for authenticity i
used to be like really mad when like
people wouldn't write or produce their
music and i'd be like that's fake and
then i realized
um
there's all this like weird bitterness
and like aggro-ness and art about
authenticity yeah but i had this kind of
like weird realization recently uh
where i started thinking that like
art is
sort of a decentralized collective
thing
like
um
like art is kind of a conversation
with all the artists that have ever
lived before you you know like it's like
you're really just sort of it's not like
anyone's reinventing the wheel here like
you're kind of just taking
you know
thousands of years of art and um like
running it through your own little
algorithm and then like
making you're like your interpretation
of it you're just joining the
conversation with all the other artists
that came before it's such a beautiful
way to look at it like and it's like
it's like i feel like everyone's always
like there's all this copyright and ip
and this and that and or authenticity
and it's just like
like
i think we need to stop seeing this as
this like egotistical thing of like oh
the creative genius the lone creative
genius or this or that because it's like
i think art isn't
shouldn't be about that i think art is
something that sort of
brings humanity together and it's also
art it's also kind of the collective
memory of humans it's like
we don't
like we don't give a fuck about
whatever ancient egypt like how much
grain got sent that day and sending the
records and like you know like
who went where and you know how many
shields needed to be produced for this
like the we just remember their their
art and it's like you know it's like in
our day-to-day life there's all this
stuff that seems more important than art
um because it helps us function and
survive but when all this is gone
like the only thing that's really gonna
be left
is the art the technology will be
obsolete that's so fascinating like the
humans will be dead that is true a good
compression of human history is the art
we've generated across the different
uh centuries of diff different millennia
so with the aliens come
when the aliens come they're going to
find the hieroglyphics on the pyramids i
mean art could be broadly defined they
might find like the engineering marvels
the bridges
uh the rockets the i guess i sort of
classify though architecture is art too
yes
i consider engineering um
in those formats to be art for sure it
sucks that like digital art is easier to
delete
so if there's an apocalypse a nuclear
war
that can disappear yes and the physical
there's something still valuable about
the physical manifestation of art
that's that sucks that
like music for example has to be played
by somebody
yeah i mean
i do think we should do have a
foundation type situation where we like
you know how we have like seed banks up
in the north and stuff yeah like we
should probably have like like a like a
solar powered or geothermal little
bunker that like has all the all human
knowledge uh you mentioned danielle egg
in spotify um
what do you think about that as an
artist what's spotify is that empowering
i get to me spotify sort of as a
consumer is super exciting it makes it
easy for me to access music from all
kinds of artists
get to explore all kinds of music make
it
super easy to sort of uh curate my own
playlist and
have fun with all that it was so
liberating to let go you know i used to
collect you know albums and cds and so
on like like like horde albums yeah like
they matter but the reality you could
you know that was really liberating i
could let go of that and
letting go of the albums you're kind of
collecting allows you to find new music
exploring new artists and all that kind
of stuff but i know from a perspective
of an artist that could be like you
mentioned competition could be a kind of
constraint
because there's more and more and more
artists
on the platform i think it's better that
there's more artists i mean again this
might be propaganda because this is all
for conversation with daniel x so this
could easily be propaganda dude like
we're all a victim of somebody's
propaganda so let's just accept this
but daniel eck was telling me that uh
you know at the because i you know when
when i met him i like i was i came in
all furious about spotify and like i
grilled him super hard so i've got his
his um answers here
but um
uh he was saying like at the sort of
peak of the cd industry
there was like 20 000 artists making
millions and millions of dollars like
there was just like a very tiny kind of
one percent um and spotify has kind of
democratized uh the industry um because
now i think he said there's about a
million artists making a good living
from spotify and when i heard that i was
like honestly
i would rather make less money and have
just like a decent living
um
then
and have more
artists be able to have that
even though i like i wish it could
include everyone but yeah that's really
hard to argue with youtube is the same
is
youtube's mission they want to
basically
have as many creators as possible make a
living some kind of living yeah and that
that's so hard to argue with
but i think there's better ways to do it
my manager i actually wish he was here i
like i would have brought him up my
manager is um building an app that um
can manage
you
so it'll like help you organize your
percentages and um get your publishing
and da da da da so you can take out all
the middlemen so you can have a much
bigger it'll just like automate it um so
you can get automate the manager
automate automate managing management
publishing um
like and and lee and and legal it can
read the app he's building can read your
contract and like tell you about it
because one of the issues with music
right now
it's not that we're not getting paid
enough but it's it's that
the art art industry is filled with
middlemen because
artists are not good at business and
you know from the beginning like frank
sinatra it's all mob stuff like it's the
music industry um you know is run by
business people not the artists and the
artists really get very small cuts of
like what they make and so
um i think
part of the reason i'm a technocrat
which i mean your fans are gonna be
technocrats so no one's they're not
gonna be mad at me about this but like
my fans hate it when i say this kind of
thing or the general public they don't
like technocrats they don't like
technocrats
like when i mean when i watched um
battle angel elita and they were like
the martian technocracy and i was like
yeah martian technocracy and then they
were like and they're evil and i was
like oh okay yeah i was like is martian
technocracy sounds sick to me
yeah so your intuition
as technocrats would create a some kind
of beautiful world for example what my
manager's working on if you can create
an app that um
removes the need for a lawyer and then
you could you could have a smart
contract on the blockchain um removes
the need uh
for like management and organizing all
the stuff like can um read your stuff
and explain it to you can collect your
royalties
you know like then
the small amounts the amount of money
that you're getting from spotify
actually means a lot more
um and goes a lot farther it can remove
some of the bureaucracy some of the
inefficiencies that
uh make life not as great as it could be
yeah i think the issue isn't that
there's not enough
like the issue is that there's
inefficiency and i'm really into this um
positive some
mindset
um you know the win-win mindset of like
instead of you know fighting over the
scraps how do we make the
or worrying about scarcity like instead
of a scarcity mindset why don't we just
increase the efficiency
um and you know in that way expand the
size of the pie
let me ask about experimentation
so you said which is beautiful
uh
being a musician is like having a
conversation with all those that came
before you
um how much of uh creating music is like
kind of having that conversation trying
to fit into the cultural
uh trends and how much of it is like
trying to as much as possible being
outside and come up with something
totally new it's like when you're
thinking when you're experimenting are
you trying to be totally different
totally weird are you trying to
um fit in
man this is so hard because i feel like
i'm
kind of in the process of semi retiring
from music so i'm this is like my old
brain yeah bring it back
bring it from like the shelf put it on
the table for for a couple minutes we'll
just we'll just poke it i think it's a
bit of both because i think uh
forcing yourself to engage with new
music um it's really great for neural
plasticity like i think uh
you know as people
part of the reason music is marketed at
young people is because young people are
very neuroplastic so um like if you're
16 to like 23 or whatever you're it's
gonna be really easy for you to love new
music and if you're older than that it
gets harder and harder and harder and i
think one of the beautiful things about
being a musician is i just constantly
force myself to listen to new music and
i think it keeps my brain really plastic
and i think this is a really good
exercise i just think everyone should do
this you listen to new music and you
hate it i think you should just keep
force yourself to like okay well why do
people like it and like
you know make your brain form new neural
pathways and
uh be more open to change that's really
brilliant actually sorry to interrupt
but like get that exercise
is is really
amazing
to sort of
embrace change embrace sort of practice
on your plasticity because like that's
one of the things you you fall in love
with a certain band you just kind of
stay with that for the rest of your life
and you never understand the modern
music that's a really good experience
most of the streaming on spotify is like
classic rock and stuff like new music
makes up a very small chunk of what is
played on spotify and i think this is
like
not a good sign for us as a species i i
think uh
yeah so it's a it's a good measure of
the the species open-mindedness to
change is how often you listen to new
music yeah the brain the brain let's put
the the the music brain on the back on
the shelf i gotta pull out the
futurist brain for a second
uh
in what wild ways do you think the
future saying like 30 years
maybe 50 years maybe 100 years will be
different
from like from our current way of life
on earth we can talk about augmented
reality virtual reality
maybe robots
maybe space travel maybe video games
maybe genetic engineering i can keep
going cyborgs aliens
world wars maybe destructive nuclear
wars good and bad
when you think about the future what are
you imagining
what's the weirdest and the wildest it
could be
have you read surface detail by ian
banks
uh surface detail is my favorite
depiction of a su oh wow you have to
read this book it's literally the
greatest science fiction book possibly
everything
is the man yeah for sure
what have you read
uh just the player of games i i read
that um titles can't be copyrighted so
you can just steal them and i was like
player of games sick nice yeah so you
could name your album like i always
romeo and juliet
i always wanted to name an album war and
peace nice like that would be like that
is a good that's a good uh what have i
heard that before you can do that like
you could do that
um also things that are in the public
domain for people who have no clue you
do have a song called player games yes
oh yeah so ian banks surface detail is
in my opinion the best future that i've
ever read about or heard about in
science fiction um
basically there's uh
the relationship with super intelligence
um like artificial super intelligence is
just it's like great
um
i want to credit the person who coined
this term because i love this term
and i feel like young women don't get
enough credit in
um
yeah so if you go to protopia futures on
instagram what is her name personalized
donor experience at scale already power
don't experience monica
bielskite i'm saying that wrong
um and i'm probably gonna i'm probably
butchering this a bit but protopia is
sort of
if utopia is unattainable protopia is
sort of like
um you know it's an awesome instagram
features
a a great a future that is
you know as good as we can get the
future positive future ai is this a
centralized ai in the surface in surface
detail or is it distributed what kind of
ai is it um they mostly exist as giant
super ships like sort of like the um
guild ships and dune like they're these
giant ships that kind of kind of move
people around and the ships are sentient
and um they can talk to all the
passengers and uh i mean there's a lot
of different types of
ai in the banksian future but um in the
opening scene of surface detail there's
this place called the culture and the
culture is basically a protopian future
and a proto a protopian future i think
is like a future that is like
obviously it's not it's not utopia it's
not perfect and like because like
striving for utopia i think feels
hopeless and and it's sort of like
maybe not the best terminology to be
using um
so
it's like it's a pretty good place like
mostly
like
you know
super intelligence and biological beings
exist fairly in harmony there's not too
much war there's like as as close to
equality as you can get you know it's
like it's like approximately a good
future like there's really awesome stuff
it's
um
and uh the
uh
in the opening scene um this girl she's
born as a sex slave outside of the
culture so she's in a society that
doesn't adhere to the cultural values
she tries to kill the guy who is her
like master um but he kills her but
unbeknownst to her when she was um
traveling on a ship through the culture
with him one day um
a ship put a neural lace in her head and
um
neural lace is sort of like it's
basically a neural link uh
because life imitates art it does indeed
it doesn't need so she wakes up and the
opening scene is her memory has been
uploaded by this nero lace when she's
been killed and now she gets to choose a
new body and this ai um is interfacing
with her recorded memory in her neural
lace um and helping her and being like
hello you're dead but because you had a
neurologist your memory is uploaded do
you want to choose a new body and you're
going to be born here in the culture and
like start a new life
which is just that's like the opening
it's like so sick
and the ship is the super intelligence
all the ships are kind of super
intelligence but they still want to
preserve a kind of rich fulfilling
experience for the humans yeah like
they're like friends with the humans and
then there's a bunch of ships that
don't want to exist biological beings
but they just have their own place like
way over there but they don't they just
do their own thing they're not
necessarily so it's a pretty
this portopian existence is pretty
peaceful yeah i mean and then and then
for example one of the main fights in
the book is um
uh they're fighting there's these
artificial hells
um
that uh and people
are don't think it's ethical to have
artificial hell like basically when
people do crime they get sent like when
they die their memory gets sent to an
artificial hell and they're eternally
tortured and so um
though and then the way that society is
deciding whether or not to have the
artificial hell is that they're having
these simulated they're having like a
simulated war so instead of
actual blood you know people are
basically essentially fighting in a
video game to choose the outcome of this
but they're still experiencing the
suffering
or wait in this artificial hell or no
can you experience stuff or so the
artificial health sucks and a lot of
people in the culture want to get rid of
the artificial hell there's a simulated
wars are they happening in the
artificial light so no the simulated
wars are happening outside of the
artificial health between the political
factions who are the so this political
faction says we should have simulated
hell to um deter crime and and this
political faction is saying no
stimulated hell is unethical and so
instead of like having
you know blowing each other up with
nukes they're having like a giant
fortnight battle yes uh to just to
decide this which
you know to me that's protopia that's
like okay we can have war without death
um you know i don't think there should
be simulated hells i think that is
definitely one of the ways in which
technology could go very very very very
wrong so almost punishing people in a
digital space or something yeah like
torturing
people's memories
either as a deterrent like if you
committed a crime but also just for
personal pleasure if there's some
demented humans in this world um
dan carlin actually has this um
um episode
of hardcore history uh on
painfultainment oh that episode is
fucked it's dark because it he kind of
goes through human history and says like
we as humans seem to enjoy
secretly enjoy or used to be openly
enjoyed sort of the torture
and the death watching the death and
torture of other humans
i do think
if people were consenting we should be
allowed to have
gladiatorial
matches
but consent is hard to achieve in those
situations it always starts getting
slippery like it could be also forced
cons like it starts getting weird yeah
yeah there's way too much excitement
that this is what he highlights there's
something about human nature that wants
to see that violence and it's really
dark
and you hope that we can sort of
overcome that aspect of human nature but
that's still one
within us somewhere well i think that's
what we're doing right now i have this
theory that um what is very important
about the current moment is that um
all of evolution has been survival of
the fittest up until now and um at some
point you know it's kind of the lines
are kind of fuzzy but
in the recent
past or maybe even just right now we're
getting to this
point
where
we
can choose intelligent design
like we
probably since like the integration of
the iphone like we are becoming cyborgs
like
our brains are fundamentally changed
everyone who grew up with electronics we
are fundamentally different from
previous from homo sapiens i call us
homo techno i i think we have evolved
into homo techno which is like
essentially a new species like um if you
if you look at the way if you mr if you
took an mri of my brain and you took an
mri of like a
medieval brain i think it would be very
different the way the way that it has
evolved do you think when historians
look back at this time they'll see like
this was a fundamental shift to what a
human being is i think i i i do not
think we're we are still homo sapiens i
believe we are homo techno and i i think
we have evolved
um and
uh
and i think right now the way we are
evolving um we can we can choose how we
do that and i think we are being very
reckless about how we're doing that like
we're just having social media but i
think this idea that like this is a time
to choose intelligent design should be
taken very seriously it like now is the
moment to reprogram the human computer
um you know it's like if you go blind um
your uh visual cortex will get taken
over with um other functions we can
choose our own evolution we can change
the way our brains work and so we
actually have a huge responsibility to
do that and i think
i'm not sure who should be responsible
for that but there's definitely not
adequate education we're being inundated
with all this technology that is
fundamentally changing um the physical
structure of our brains and we are not
um adequately responding to to that
to choose how we want to evolve and we
could evolve
we could be really whatever we want and
i think this is a really important time
and i think if we choose correctly and
we choose wisely
um consciousness could exist for
a very long time and integration with ai
could be extremely positive
and i don't think enough people are
focusing on this specific situation do
you think we might irreversibly screw
things up if we get things wrong now
because like the flip side of that it
seems humans are pretty adaptive so
maybe the way we figure things out is by
screwing it up like social media over a
generation we'll see the negative
effects of social media and then we
build new social medias and we just keep
improving stuff and then we learn the
failure from the failures of the past
because humans seem to be really
adaptive on the flip side
you we can get it wrong in a way where
like literally we create weapons of war
or increase hate
past a certain threshold we really do a
lot of damage i mean i think we're
optimized to notice the negative things
but i would actually say
um
you know one of the things that i think
people aren't noticing is like if you
look at silicon valley and you look at
like whatever the tech technocracy like
what's been happening there like it's
like when silicon valley started it was
all just like facebook and
all this like for-profit crap that like
really
wasn't particular i guess it was useful
but it was it's sort of
just like whatever
um but like now you see like lab-grown
meat like compostable
um or like biodegradable
like single-use cutlery or like um you
know like meditation apps you know i i
think uh we are actually evolving and
changing and technology is changing i i
think there's just
maybe
there isn't
quite enough education
about this and also i don't know if
there's like quite enough incentive for
it because i i think the way capitalism
works um
what we define as profit
we're we're also working on an old model
of what we define as profit i i really
think
if we changed
um
the idea of profit to include social
good you can have like economic profit
social good also counting as profit
would incentivize things that are more
useful and more whatever spiritual
technology or like positive technology
or um you know
things that help reprogram the human
computer in a good way or things that um
help us
intelligently design
our new brains yeah there's no reason
why within the framework of capitalism
the word profit or the idea of profit
can't also incorporate you know the
well-being of a human being so like
long-term well-being long-term happiness
um or even for example you know we were
talking about motherhood like part of
the reason i'm so late because i had to
get the baby to bed um and it's like i
keep thinking about motherhood how um
under capitalism
it's like this extremely essential job
that is very difficult that is not
compensated and we sort of like value
things by by how much we
compensate them and so we really devalue
motherhood in our society and pretty
much all societies like capitalism does
not recognize motherhood it's just a job
that you're supposed to do for free
um and it's like but i feel like
producing great humans should be seen as
a great as as profit under capitalism
like that should be that's like a huge
social good like every
awesome human that gets made adds so
much to the world so like if that was
integrated into the profit structure
then
um
you know and if we potentially found a
way to compensate motherhood so
come up with a compensation that's much
broader than just money
or or it could just be money like what
if you just made
i don't know but i but i don't know how
you'd pay for that like i mean
that's where you start getting into
reallocation resources that people get
uh upset over like what if we made like
a motherhood dao
yeah yeah
you know and and and um
you know used it to fund
like single mothers like
you know
pay for
making
babies
so i mean if you create and put
beautiful things onto the world that
could be
companies that can be bridges they could
be
art they could be a lot of things and
that could be children
uh which are
or education or anything that could
should be valued by society and that
should be somehow incorporated into the
framework of what
as a market
of what like if you contribute children
to this world that should be valued and
respected and uh sort of celebrated
like proportional to what it is which is
it's the thing that fuels human
civilization yeah like kind of important
i feel like everyone's always saying i
mean i think we're in very different
social spheres but everyone's always
saying like dismantle capitalism and i'm
like well okay well i don't think the
government should own everything like i
don't think we should not have private
ownership like that's scary you know
like that starts getting into weird
stuff and just sort of like i feel
there's almost no way to do that without
a police state you know yeah um
but obviously capitalism has some major
flaws um and i think actually mac uh
showed me this idea called social
capitalism which is a form of capitalism
that just like
considers social good to be uh also
profit like you know it's like right now
companies need to like you're supposed
to grow every quarter or whatever
to like show that you're
functioning well but it's like okay well
what if you kept the same
amount of profit you're still in the
green but then you have also all the
social good like do you really need all
this extra economic growth or could you
add this social good and that counts and
you know
i i don't know if i i am not an
economist i have no idea how this could
be achieved but i don't think economists
know how anything can be achieved either
but they pretend it's the thing they
construct a model and they they go on tv
shows and sound like an expert
that's the definition of economist
um how did
being a mother becoming a mother
change you as a human being
would you say man i i think it kind of
changed
everything and it's still changing me a
lot it's actually changing me more right
now in this moment than it was before
like today like this just like they
getting in the
most recent months and stuff
can you elucidate that
child
chain like when you wake up in the
morning and you look at yourself it's
again which who are you
um how have you become different would
you say
i think it's just really reorienting my
priorities
and at first i was really fighting
against that because i somehow felt it
was like a failure of feminism or
something like i felt like it was like
bad if like my kids
started mattering more than my work
um
and then like more recently i started
sort of analyzing that
uh thought in myself and being like
that's also kind of a construct it's
like we've just devalued motherhood so
much in our culture that like i feel
guilty for
caring
about my kids more than i care about my
work so feminism includes breaking out
of whatever the construct is
so yeah continually breaking it's like
freedom
empower you to be free and that means
uh
but but it also but like being a mother
like i'm so much more creative like i
cannot believe
the massive amount of great brain growth
that i what do you think that is just
cause like the stakes are higher somehow
i think it's like
it's just so trippy watching
consciousness emerge it's just like
it's like going on
a crazy
journey or something it's like the
craziest science fiction
novel you could ever read it's just so
crazy watching consciousness
come into being and then at the same
time
like you're forced to
value your time
so much like when i have creative time
now it's so sacred i need to like
be really freaking
on it
um but the other thing is that uh
um
i used to just be like a cynic and i
used to just wanna like my last album
was called misanthropicine and it was
like this like
it was like a study in villainy like or
or like it was like well what if you
know we have instead of the old gods we
have like new gods and it's like
misenthropicity is like misanthrope like
and anthropocene which is like the you
know
like and she's the goddess of climate
change or whatever and it's like
destroying the world and it was just
like
it was like dark and it was like a study
in villainy and it was sort of just like
like i used to like have no problem just
making cynical
angry scary art
um and now that there's anything wrong
with that but i think having kids just
makes you such an optimist it just
inherently makes you want to be an
optimist so bad that like um like i feel
like a more responsibility to
make more optimistic
things and
i get a lot of shit for it because
everyone's like
oh you're so privileged stop talking
about like pie in the sky stupid
concepts and focus on like the now but
it's like
um
i think if we don't ideate about um
futures that could be good we won't be
able to get them if everything is blade
runner then we're gonna end up with
blade runner it's like as
we said earlier life imitates art like
life really does imitate art and so
we really need more protopian or utopian
art um i think this is incredibly
essential for uh the future of humanity
and i think the uh the current discourse
where
um that's seen as a
thinking about
protopia or utopia is seen as a
dismissal of the problems that we
currently have i think that is a an
incorrect mindset
um
and
like having kids just makes me want to
imagine amazing futures that like
maybe
i won't be able to build but they will
be able to build if they want to yeah it
does seem like ideation is a precursor
to creation you have to imagine it in
order to be able to build it and there
is a
sad thing about human nature that they
somehow a cynical view of the world is
seen as a
insightful view you know cynicism is
often confused for insight which is sad
to see
and optimism is confused for
naivete yes yes like you don't yes
you're blinded
by your maybe your privilege or whatever
you're blinded by something but you're
certainly blind and that's a
that's sad that's sad to see because it
seems like the optimists are the ones
that create the
the
our future they're the ones that build
in order to build the crazy thing you
have to be optimistic you have to be
either stupid or
uh excited or passionate or mad enough
to actually believe that it can be built
and those are the people that built it
my favorite
quote of all time is from star wars
episode 8 uh which i know everyone hates
hates do you like star wars episode 8 uh
no i yeah yeah probably i would say
would probably hate it yeah
i don't i don't have a strong feelings
about it let me backtrack i don't want
strong feelings about star wars i just
want to i'm a tolkien person i'm not i'm
not i'm more i'm more into dragons and
orcs okay
yeah i mean tolkien forever
i really want to have one more son and
call him i thought tau techno tolkien
would be cool
it's a lot of teas i like it yeah and
well and tau is six two eight two pie
yeah
yeah um yeah and then techno is
obviously the best genre of music but
also like technocracy it sounds really
good yeah that's right and techno
tolkien
um
but uh uh star wars episode eight um
i know a lot of people have issues with
it personally for on the record i think
it's the best uh star wars film um
uh
starting trouble today yeah so what uh
and uh but uh don't kill what you hate
save what you love don't kill what you
hate don't kill what you hate save what
you love and i think we're in in a
society right now we're in a diagnosis
mode we're just diagnosing and
diagnosing and diagnosing and we're
we're trying to kill what we hate
and we're not trying to save what we
love enough and it's um there's this
buck mr fuller quote which i'm gonna
butcher because i don't remember it
correctly but it's it go it's something
along the lines of um
uh
don't
like
try to destroy the old
bad models render them obsolete
with better models
you know
maybe we don't need to destroy the oil
industry maybe we just create a new
great new battery technology and
sustainable transport and just make it
economically unreasonable to still
continue to rely on fossil fuels you
know
um it's like it's like don't don't kill
you hate say what you love like make new
things and just render the old things
unusable you know it's like if the
college debt is so bad like and and
universities are so expensive like in
this like i feel like education is
becoming obsolete you know i i feel like
we could completely revolutionize
education and we could make it free and
it's like you look at jstor and like you
have to pay to get all the studies and
everything like what if we created a dao
that like bought jstor or we created a
dao that was funding studies and all and
those studies were open so like or free
for everyone and like like what if we
just open source to educate education
and decentralized education and made it
free and like um all research
was on the internet and like all the
um outcomes of studies are on the
internet and
uh you know
like
and no one has student debt and um you
just take tests
when you apply for a job and if you're
qualified then you can work there
i'm just just like no this is i don't
know how anything works i'm just
randomly ranting but
um i like the humility um
you got to think from just basic first
principles like what what is the problem
what's broken what are some ideas that's
it and get excited about those ideas and
share your excitement and uh don't tear
each other down like
it's just when you kill things you often
end up killing yourself like war
war is not a one-sided like you're not
going to go in and just kill them like
you're going to get stabbed it's like
and and i think that when i talk about
this nexus point of um
that we're in this point in society
where we're switching to intelligent
design i think part of our switch to
intelligent design is that we need to
choose non-violence and we need to like
i think we can choose to
start i don't think we can eradicate
violence from our species um because i
think
we we need it a little bit but i think
we can choose to really reorient our
primitive
brains that are fighting over scarcity
and fight and and um
that are so attack oriented and and move
into it we can optimize for creativity
and building
yeah it's interesting to think how that
happens so some of it is just education
some of it is
living life and introspecting your own
mind and trying to
live up to the better angels of your
nature for each one of us
all those kinds of things at scale
that's how we can sort of um start to
minimize the amount of destructive uh
war
in our world and that that's to me i
probably you're the same technology's
it's a really promising way to do that
like social media should be a really
promising way to do that it's a way to
reconnect i you know for the most part i
really enjoy social media i just ignore
all the negative stuff i don't engage
with any of the negative stuff
just not even like
by blocking or any of that kind of stuff
but just not letting it enter my mind
like just like uh when somebody says
something neg