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Welcome back to Bitcoin Study Sessions. Today we're covering part two of Our Tribal Future.

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In reading through this, the thing that hit me most was the emphasis on friendship and the importance of having those people that make you who you are.

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The five people you surround yourself with are what define you.

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when i post this episode at the end of it there's a line that i always put

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share with friends and please consider us yours we're all in this together and as we build our

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tribe first through camps then into bands and finally into the tribe of people that we

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will walk through life with and meet the challenges that come to face us

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it really strikes me the importance of defining those friends and being intentional about the way

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that we have people in our lives the author david samson discusses one of the dangers of ideology

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in that if we identify as a member of an ideology in something that we can't control

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Republican, Democrat, MAGA, woke, Yankee fan,

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then what we're doing is we're robbing ourselves

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of the ability to have control over our own lives.

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And so as I read through this,

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I wrote down what it means to me to have an identity.

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And my identity as a brother, as a friend, as a son,

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as a band member. And I realized that being a Bitcoiner wasn't on that list anymore.

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I can't control it. Bitcoin's out of the box. It's going to be what it's going to be. But where can I

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make an impact in my community? And it's going to be through my tribe, through my camp, through my

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friends. And so I wanted to start by reading this very simple quote.

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in fact friends are evolved to be irreplaceable that's what makes them real friends and the

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science to support this is only now coming to full fruition we're learning about the importance of

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each other here and there's nobody that i'd rather talk about this with than mr grant record friend

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Friend to all.

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Friend to all.

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Enemy to none.

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Beloved by dogs in the neighborhood world round.

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So as Lucas mentioned, our tribal future.

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We did the first part last time.

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Thank you for that lovely introduction.

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We're going to get into the nature of friendship here, how to build good friendships, how to build camps beyond friendships, how to deal with our own tribal nature.

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The last discussion we have, we did the first part of this book, which was the science of tribalism, essentially.

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And then in this part, we're going to go into kind of the practice of tribalism, how to use our tribal instinct in a good way.

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So we'll do what we always do.

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We'll give like a short introduction and then Lucas and I will hash it out and we'll continue on in that manner.

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We like to make sure, kind of give you a bit of a summary of the reading because that's kind of our proof of work.

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We invest a lot of time in reading these books.

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We want to tie our discussions to the matter in the books.

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We want to convey that to you, the dear listener, that what these books say is important and we need to attend to the words themselves.

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And so in the first discussion, I'll kind of give a big recap just so we can situate the second discussion as well.

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This whole book begins with the problem, who do we trust?

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The first evolutionary response to this question is genetics.

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You trust your family.

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You have this drive built into you to want to help out your blood kin.

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The second evolved response then, as Lucas mentioned, is friendship.

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This requires larger brains and a social nature.

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But then how do we scale beyond this small group?

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The brain has a limited channel capacity with up to about 150.

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That's Dunbar's number.

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We discussed that last time.

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Being a sort of cap on our ability to remember, catalog, a history of social reactions, interactions with the person in a way that makes us comfortable around them.

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We do that with about 150 people.

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To move past this Dunbar's number, then, we evolved the capacity for symbolic manipulation to emit symbols and read symbols.

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The tribe drive is that instinct to build bigger coalitions by reading and emitting symbols that signal trustworthiness, sort of like social passwords, secret handshakes.

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We evolved to judge each other.

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We could, for example, suddenly be able to trust a stranger if they emit a symbol by making the sign of the cross.

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We could feel relaxed that we're now with a fellow Christian, a tribe bigger than 150, a tribe where we can't know everybody face to face.

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Yeah, we can still come to trust somebody.

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So we moved to the tribe as the biggest social unit, a group of groups.

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Samson in the first part described this kind of nesting structure, telescoping out with camps, the smallest nuclear unit, those with whom we find our calories and keep safe, maybe 20 to 30 adults in a hunter-gatherer camp.

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bands then a group of camps up to about the Dunbar's number of 150,

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which allow for genetic diversity so that these camp structures can proliferate over time.

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And then those bands nest into tribes, this imagined community beyond face-to-face,

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held together by symbols, linguistic, behavioral, gestural, ritualistic,

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that provide for group identity so you can come to know and trust somebody who you do not know face-to-face.

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We call that tribalism.

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Usually it has bad connotations.

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Sometimes it does, rather.

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But it helped us to scale trustworthiness beyond face-to-face.

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And in any case, it is an evolved genetic drive, a tribe drive, that is a basic constitutive

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fact of our human nature.

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So you can't just condemn or ignore it.

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It would be like condemning being hungry or something like that.

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It's simply a drive we have.

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So in part two, Lucas and I are going to discuss today is called The Practice of Tribalism. It now applies, continues applying this evolutionary anthropology lens to understand how our evolved instinctual tribe drive can be used to help us build better communities, better social relations, better friendships, something referred to by Samson as camp crafting, how to consciously, intentionally craft a camp.

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So before moving to that, though, Lucas, that was our kind of first discussion summarized.

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Anything just to recap that conversation you'd want to add or continue forward?

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No, it's he does a good job of basically giving us the background of the science behind it, how we evolved into this camp to band to tribe.

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And now we're going to walk through some more things that are going to help us implement this, that are going to help us make this actionable and operational within our lives.

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Part two is if you if you think about like a movie, you've got the first one and then the sequel comes out.

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We've had this discussion that the sequels are rarely as good as the first one.

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Part two is utterly phenomenal.

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I think I really enjoyed.

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He takes us through all kinds of different things.

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We finally talk about Bitcoin.

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We talk about Bologi's network state.

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We talk about the examples that exist in the world today that have been around for decades of co-living and cohabitation, co-location, I think is the term he uses.

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So, yeah, no, he did a phenomenal job with it.

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And Lucas is a subject matter expert on camp crafting, having been at the network state.

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So we're also going to dig into that.

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So Samson kind of begins this.

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In case you aren't convinced that community is even a good idea, Samson begins by making the case that we should see greater social connectivity and more communal ways of living.

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Some people's suggestion is going to be just kind of duh, right?

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I mean, it's good to have good social relations, right?

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It's good to be in good community.

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But actually, in the United States, we do have the ideal, the rugged individualist, the person who lives a life of absolute independence, the sovereign individual.

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And even more practically in the United States, we tend to want single nuclear family dwellings, which are prone to what Samson calls dyadic withdrawal or cocooning,

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which is when you have a married or an established couple that then begins to seek the majority of their social interactions with each other and kind of fall out of a larger social network.

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They cocoon wife and husband and they seek, again, social fulfillment in doing things together and kind of lose friends.

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And even within this, the men tend to have a more precipitously declining social network because of the nature of relationships that men and women tend to have.

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And Samson kind of frames this in a nice way.

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Men tend to have shoulder-to-shoulder relationships, which are activity-based, and females tend to have face-to-face or disclosure-based relationships.

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And so those types of activity-based relationships that tend to form the core of male relationships after initial periods of our life where we have like team sports and things like that, it gets harder to carve out the time or so it seems to do these activities to build shoulder-to-shoulder typically male activity-based relationships.

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we can also now just buy the benefits of camps you can allo parenting is one of the benefits

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where you have other adults around to help look after your children and you look after theirs

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instead people can just pay a nanny or drop their kids off at a daycare

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therapists can come to replace close kith and kin friends and family for those types of close

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conversations that one might have otherwise had with close social friends. So Samson goes into

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depth. I won't kind of go into all the research here, but he does describe the benefits of living

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in what he calls inintentional proximity with others. So in summary, the benefits are things

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like improved psychological well-being. That's not hard to imagine. We all know what social

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isolation feels like. Protection from the negative effects of dyadic withdrawal, which is again,

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when couples withdraw into each other rather than having wider social networks.

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Improving conditions for family and children to grow with cooperative alloparenting.

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That's another benefit of living in intentional proximity.

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Improved quality of life while consuming less resources.

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If you have more people paying the same rent, you have more resources to use on other things.

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And then, of course, increased access to human and social capital.

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As you have wider social networks, you know somebody who's a butcher or someone who's a baker,

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and you can reach out to them.

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Somebody knows how to fix the engine that breaks down

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when you don't know how to fix the engine.

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So just to pause right there,

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are there any, I mean,

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do these seem like reasonable benefits

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of living in close intentional proximity?

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And are there others, I guess,

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or other reasons why people should be concerned

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with the way that we live now

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and want to consciously try to live

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in intentional proximity?

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Yeah, I think we need to really focus on the framing of why this is important.

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You did mention that we all know what social isolation feels like.

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But to me, when I read through that, it was a bit of a revelation to me because that social isolation that we feel is a bit of a boiling the frog type of thing where we are living in it right now.

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And most of us have this break in our memory that began in 2020.

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And it's kind of the past is the past.

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and then whatever the world that we're living in now has been, has taken over. And so when we

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think about social isolation, I'm really struggling with that S, when we think about that,

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it's hard to overstate the importance of the situation that we are living in right now,

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where social isolation is the norm. And we've been conditioned to it. And, you know, one of the

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things that, you know, you and I and a lot of other people are coming to the realization now is that

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sleep is the most important part of your health. And I remember when I first got a good night of

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sleep as an adult. It was, you know, about six years ago. I had completely forgotten what it

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felt like to feel good in the morning, even though, you know, I wasn't doing anything that was

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crazier order. But, you know, like a lot of other people, I was watching Netflix to fall asleep and

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had the lights on and wasn't getting up with the sun, wasn't getting early morning sun in my eyes,

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was it getting the sun at night? And it's a revelation because you remember something that

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you had completely forgotten. You remember what it feels like to be ready to engage with the world.

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It's social isolation. It's not just something that we should accept because it's not natural.

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we can there is there's a much better life and I would almost liken it to like

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escaping some sort of addiction yeah because the the power of engaging with a community of

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having that knowledge that you have people around you that are supportive and are going to be

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are going to be there for you.

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There's so many people that they just don't have people.

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Right.

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So, and that leads into another thing that you mentioned,

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which is that danger of cocooning,

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which is something that we, I think we,

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with the best of intentions,

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we have heralded and celebrated, you know,

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the good father who goes home to his wife and kids and doesn't go play poker, doesn't go golf,

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doesn't, you know, engage with a group of male friends that we've somehow we have started to

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look at those people, those men and women who they get married and they effectively remove

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themselves from society and they lean upon each other for everything.

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Samson does a great job of going into not only the kind of the first principles idea

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of it, but also the, just the, the reality of it is that if you, if you forge with someone,

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And if you're fused together, then there's no longer a connection.

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If I'm so close to someone that they are my everything, that they are my heartbeat, they are literally everything to me, then we no longer have a connection because we truly are one.

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I think when I read that, I thought about welding and just fusing two pieces of metal together.

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And when you do that, it's no longer flexible.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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It can no longer bend.

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It can no longer adjust.

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It can no longer have any give.

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and so that when we exclude all those things from our lives these as men when we exclude our

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our group of friends as women when we exclude our group of friends then we're no longer able to

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connect with our spouse or our partner because we have fused with them and we talked about this

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last night that there needs to be that mystique that you you have to have something interesting

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about that person that you you still want to find out you still want to you always want to be

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continuously learning about this person and never feel like you've reached the end because then the

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book is done and you want to move on to another book and that's it's it may sound counterintuitive

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But this idea that being with one person and making them your everything is laudable is actually the cause of a lot of fractured relationships and poor parenting and poor childhoods and poor marriages.

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Yeah. Samson refers to it as the paradox of intimacy, that you do have to, as much as you want to know every contour and aspect of a person, there needs to be some mystery of them to make you want to continue to learn and know about them, to have something to learn and know about them.

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It was interesting that you began your remarks noting kind of the analogy to sleep, how it was a revelation to suddenly have a good night's sleep in the same way that when you come out of social isolation, it can also be a personal revelation as to well-being.

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And Samson, he, in his other research as an evolutionary anthropologist, talks about the nature of beginning in our early kind of our early ancestors, whatever ape, slept in trees.

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And then we became ground sleepers after that.

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And when you become ground sleepers, there are certain dangers you have to attend to that you're when you're a tree sleeper, you're kind of safer in your branch or whatever.

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When you're ground sleepers, we then have to become more social.

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We have to look out for each other.

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And so that the nature of sleep is also part of this evolutionary history that makes us more social and that brings us together and inculcates in us this tribe drive.

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Yeah. Just another thing about that was the research into the social.

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We're just going to I'm going to say loneliness because I'm struggling with that.

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But loneliness literally has a genetic effect on your body in that your genes no longer express characteristics that make you, that raise your immune system and protect you from illness.

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And they protect you from, you know, actual physical maladies that you're going to suffer from when you're alone.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. You know, you said an addiction. There is a social craving you have when you're in isolation.

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And as we're going to see later on here, there are surrogate forms of community tribes that are going to latch on to that, make people you want a sense of belonging.

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Join our larger tribe, our political tribe, our religious tribe, our cult, whatever.

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Instant acceptance.

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Yeah. You're going to get that craving to be in intentional proximity with other people satisfied one way or another.

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So there are healthy ways to do it.

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So those are the kind of benefits of being in intentional proximity with others and the dangers of withdrawing from that, falling out of intentional proximity of social isolation.

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So then what is it that makes a camp or group survive?

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If you want to form these bigger coalitions, these bigger groups, what are the parameters of that?

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So we are humans.

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We've evolved as specific types of animals, social, symbol, using apes.

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There is a specific, like, you know, state space of possible social relations.

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There's not just, we can imagine an infinite number of types of camps, of bizarre rituals, behaviors, and customs, but only a finite range of those are actually things we can put into place, just given the types of beings that we are and our behaviors.

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Samson calls this the social suite.

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Any group that you form is going to have to satisfy certain dynamics.

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And these are things like basic things like love, friends, social networks, cooperation, but also things, a couple of interesting ones, in-group bias, things that pulled the group together, a mild hierarchy.

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Even he says individual identity.

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Being in a group is not, and this is kind of, again, that paradox of intimacy.

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It's not about completely losing your individuality, but about everybody having their individual identity so that they can form some relationship with other people in the groups.

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Can I read the quote?

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Yeah, if you got a quote, read it.

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The quote is that, let me follow this.

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The more we depend on each other, the closer we come to independence.

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More effectively dependent people, the more effectively you are dependent upon the people around you,

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the more independent and daring you are with the world.

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So it is this paradox of the tighter you have this group around you and the more that you depend on other people around you to be that person that is going to raise you up when you fall, the more free you are in order to become your true self and express your, you know, chase your dreams and follow what you want to do in the world.

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Yes. He calls that the dependency paradox and why it's important to specifically build strong camps and honor groups, tight groups of friends before you develop or seek like an intimate relationship with a pair bond, with a male or female who's going to be your spouse.

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because you want to not be totally dependent on another person.

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You want to like form this reservoir of confidence before you stride out into the world.

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The individual identity that is part of the social suite that defines the state space of potential groups

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is also just like about the potential to reciprocally engage with other people.

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just even as basic as that just even to have something to like give and to be able to receive

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something from a group you have to be something separate and apart from it um before we look at

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larger groups samson does he focuses on like smaller combinations and like i just mentioned

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though so when i get into that one of the first is the honor group that's like a small group of

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close friends bound by honor you consider this like a chosen or he says a forged family um this

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group and we're just kind of talking about this should precede in a sense your dyadic pair bond

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that you form with the wife a husband once you have that honor group in place you will relate

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better to a potential spouse and to the world because you have certain basic needs on maslow's

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hierarchy of needs satisfied and so you can self-actualize in relation to others rather than

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like going out into the world existentially vulnerable and seeking everything, falling

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on the knee to the first girl or guy you see and declaring your love because you just need

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it so bad, you know?

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And that, that, the importance of that honor group, this is when I read this, I think like

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these are in your mind, these are the people that you call to hide the body.

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Like if the worst thing happens, it's like, who are the five people that I can call and

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be like, oh, shit just went really bad.

244
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Yeah.

245
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Yeah. And on hiding the body, the third part of the pusher trilogy, hiding the body is not a trivial ordeal. It's a very messy thing. Continue, though.

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Remember, you've been here. You've heard me talk about this many times on stage. We should all have a murder plan. You shouldn't plan on the murder, but if it happens, then you should always have a plan to dispose the body. So make sure that you develop that.

247
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But the importance of that, developing that honor group, is that without those people around you, then you have not yet outwardly defined your moral existence.

248
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And by having that honor group, you're able to navigate what is the personal morality by which I want to live in the world.

249
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And then you can have that as a baseline to go find a mate.

250
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You said this very well, you know, that if you don't have that in the absence of that, then you will fall prey to finding someone who purports to or who you project upon your need to fulfill everything.

251
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Yeah.

252
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And that's a fail.

253
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Like, no one can be everything to one person.

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this was my bros before hoes note where you as a woman you need to have these friends

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that are your support group that help you know what is the line and who am I and as men it's

256
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it's also incredibly important because otherwise then you just wander out into the world alone

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with someone else who is alone and two lonely people are just going to fuse together and be

258
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aimlessly floating in a sea of trouble you know so yeah it's tough but yeah date after you have

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a defined honor group um because you are going to remove yourself somewhat from that group when you

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have that person. And so you need to have a solid understanding of who you are as an individual

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and what are the morals that you value. Right. And not just dating. I mean, that's one

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application that's very helpful in that. But just even to be a strong, independent individual in the

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world, to know the profession that you want to enter into, to be able to help others in the

264
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community, you need to be, you know, have your basic needs satisfied. And one of those is not

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is company is being with others. And so that honor group helps in so many ways. So then how do we

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forge this honor group? And then here we get begin to get into earnest this idea of camp crafting,

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which is a lot of what the second part of this book is about. So to quote Samson, in essence,

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humans are wired in a way that makes a group experiencing adversity stronger and mentally

269
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more resilient where the adversity itself is recollected with fondness and nostalgia i read

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that to introduce the first way that we can't craft which is adversity there's many ways we'll

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go through a few here i'm going to say adversity is the first so therefore if you want to create

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stronger bonds do challenging things together with the people who you want to be in an honor group

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with to find new friends, seek out experiences that simulate adversity or that maybe are

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actually adverse.

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He mentions Samson does hot yoga, martial arts, or even tabletop role playing, like a

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literal simulation of adversity and seeing how other people team together in that role

277
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playing simulation to deal with the situations that you're all communally as a team confronting.

278
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In addition to adversity, Samson notes that there are maybe a simpler way or an accompanying way rather is to create rituals of a different sort that can forge an honor group.

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There can be, for example, time-based rituals is something as simple as every week on Wednesday evening, we're going to go to the same restaurant and get a meal, all of us together.

280
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We're going to hold that time sacred.

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We're all going to be sure to be there.

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And we're going to do that.

283
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Or maybe an annual one where we're all going to do a retreat, a vacation together, a trip, a hike.

284
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And it's going to be something where you have to pool resources, plan it out.

285
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Again, hold it sacred that time.

286
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Keep it that it is something you're going to do.

287
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There's also specific types of consecration rituals.

288
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We've probably you've heard about being a blood brother, maybe getting a tattoo, things like that.

289
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You consecrate this new bond that you forge with somebody by something to mark that in a very ritualistic way.

290
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So those are a couple adversity, ritual. I'll pause there. Those are kind of camp crafting on the friendship level. Do you have anything to add to that as far as like how to build those bonds?

291
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Just experiences. Two months in to my stay at the network school, there was this period. We kind of entered a lull. You know, everybody.

292
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So you're going to be talking about the network school. Maybe just like define what it is just a bit.

293
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:33,280
Okay, so Balaji Surnavasan, the idea that we have moved past the foundational structure of a nation state into what are called network states, that the church was the source of information for everybody.

294
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and then the printing press came along and we could all get information. And that democratized

295
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information a little bit, but it got re-centralized because power always moved to a single source

296
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in order for protection. So the nation states arose, which is the world that we ostensibly live

297
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in today. United States, Russia, China, El Salvador, Suriname, these are nation states.

298
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But the internet has further democratized information to the point that you are the media. We're a perfect example of this. We are the media now. And we are the source of information by which everyone can individually check against their own life experience to find, to move themselves closer to the truth.

299
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And so the organizational structure of society in Balaji's thesis is that we move from the church state to the nation state to the network state.

300
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And Balaji is building this in public with the network school which is currently about 150 to 200 people from all across the entire world who are techno who believe that they can come together

301
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that they have met in the cloud, and now they are on land together building a community

302
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that will give them basically a values-based system with which to navigate the world.

303
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Yes. So you were at the network state then. And then what did you learn then about this?

304
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So I was just having this memory of, like I said, about two months in, you know, the newness and the novelty had worn off a little bit for people.

305
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And we'd kind of entered maybe a little bit of a lull.

306
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And I remember that there was a group that started a Dungeons and Dragons get together.

307
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and uh there's this fella named tim trutna who's there who is like the most interesting man in the

308
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world and and uh just as he says uh once you've completed the main quest it's just side quests

309
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all the way out and he became a dungeon master and i i watched it in the matter of days go from

310
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oh there's six nerds in this group to now they're meeting off site and there's 20 people and um

311
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They're spending hours a day planning and crafting and there's pizza and there's beer or whatever.

312
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They're going to get together.

313
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And it really became a cohesive thing that brought people together.

314
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Yeah.

315
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And it was fantastic what it did for the group morale.

316
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And so that's one of the that's an example of building through ritual.

317
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Yeah.

318
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And that's because Dungeons and Dragons is all about creating an imagined community.

319
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So it's just so directly a type of camp craft.

320
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That's very interesting.

321
00:32:33,896 --> 00:32:34,036
Yeah.

322
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And I had the other example of when you and I first reconnected after 15 years of, you know, not really having, I think, seen each other.

323
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One of the things that I had mentioned to you was I had read this guy.

324
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He had this great idea.

325
00:32:51,996 --> 00:33:00,916
Not his idea, but it's this Japanese term called, I think it's a masogi, which is like every month you do something difficult that takes you out of your comfort zone.

326
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And I had mentioned that to you. And we decided that we would start cold plunging in the Columbia River at 430 in the morning in the dark, ice floating by river otters crawling by homeless guys in the bushes, you know.

327
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And it started with you and I, right?

328
00:33:24,796 --> 00:33:27,496
And it certainly was kind of terrible.

329
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Like you're out there, it's completely dark.

330
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There's sounds that you don't know.

331
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You're utterly free.

332
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We had literally no clue what we were doing.

333
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We left it up to me to determine how long we were going to stay in the water.

334
00:33:38,916 --> 00:33:42,376
If you're cold plunging anything more than three minutes, you're just working on your brain.

335
00:33:43,216 --> 00:33:47,656
We just arbitrarily was like, oh, 15 minutes seems like a good time to start with.

336
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So we're just dying out there.

337
00:33:49,676 --> 00:33:58,976
But it started with you and I, and within a month, we had 10 to 12, 15 people.

338
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There was a story written about it in the newspaper.

339
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And through that, we built this group that was super tight and really leaned upon each other because we did, we braved that together.

340
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And it was incredibly difficult.

341
00:34:16,316 --> 00:34:16,616
Yes.

342
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You know, and it really built those bonds between people. So real life examples of those things, you know, yoga and the working out together, just go camping and do something that takes you away from the creature comforts that you otherwise, without doing that, you can't appreciate the abundance that you have around you.

343
00:34:40,576 --> 00:34:56,996
Yeah. Adversity. I mean, another word is suffering. And in Samson, I don't know if it's his coinage or if it's another thesis somebody else has. It's the community of sufferers idea that when you're with other people and you're suffering together, you build strong bonds.

344
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And we saw this after 9-11, people that went through that together.

345
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There was this nationwide pause in mass shootings and a lot less suicide around the nation.

346
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People came together.

347
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We experienced this moment of communal adversity, maybe literal suffering for many people.

348
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And yeah, it brought us together.

349
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And like Lucas said, we can stimulate that.

350
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If there's a cold river, go jump in it.

351
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Plan this out with some friends.

352
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Do it together.

353
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And it is something that builds bonds.

354
00:35:31,136 --> 00:35:39,096
Now, so that's kind of adversity, rituals, just some ways that with individuals you can kind of begin to forge these bonds.

355
00:35:39,456 --> 00:35:44,396
And Samson continues to move more in earnest into this whole camp crafting science.

356
00:35:44,876 --> 00:35:50,716
What Samson wants to give us in part two is a scientifically grounded guide on how to create an ancestral home,

357
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A space with capacity to transcend generations and bring people you most care about together.

358
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So it's not just, it's very important about friendship, but it is about building this idea of a home, a place where you can have communal and generational contact with people.

359
00:36:08,356 --> 00:36:11,716
More succinctly, camp crafting then is this act of building intentional community.

360
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Camp crafting, unsurprisingly, is about the camp, which is an honor group situated in its environment.

361
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There's different sizes, estimates he kind of gives, different points, maybe up to about 50 people.

362
00:36:24,816 --> 00:36:30,616
You don't all have to be friends, but there has to be transitivity where everybody's a friend of a friend, essentially.

363
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And there's a high degree of like, OK, I'm not, you know, the best friends with Kevin, but Kevin is friends with Alan and Alan's my best friend or whatever.

364
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So there's that high transitivity where you're all connected like that.

365
00:36:43,476 --> 00:36:46,936
In camp crafting, that group cohesion is incredibly important.

366
00:36:46,936 --> 00:36:53,936
And it stems from having not just that transitivity, but a strong group purpose and a shared identity.

367
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Some ways that this can be done, define and ritualize membership and onboarding process and initiation ceremony, something that demarcates entry and makes people feel that they've entered and belong to something.

368
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Create a space for personal, meaningful communication with rich psychological safety.

369
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Consistent meeting times where people can bring and plan projects and related activities together without judgment.

370
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Without bad judgment in any case.

371
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Enhance similarity in the context of diversity.

372
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You can have shared like t-shirts, rituals.

373
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Everybody can have their own nickname that's individual to them, but you all have nicknames.

374
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He also notes that as a source for these types of things, you can draw from religion, existing ones, past religions, create ritual without religious context.

375
00:37:43,596 --> 00:38:02,916
And that's why, you know, your emphasis on Dungeons and Dragons there or mentioning that's very interesting because within Dungeons and Dragons, in a situation like that, you're focusing on fantasy and you're often drawing from the history of like the medieval ages or some specific era that was very rich in rituals and religious types of symbols.

376
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And you're creating a literal form of imagined community.

377
00:38:07,896 --> 00:38:25,436
So one last note on this, perhaps even more important than maybe ritual or adversity for camps, and you mentioned this in the introduction, Lucas, is co-location, living next to or near those who will be in your honor group.

378
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take many forms, buying houses in the same neighborhood, pooling together to buy a house,

379
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communally constructing a new house or compound together, doing this by giving in doing this,

380
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giving consideration for people having their own personal space while also preserving a shared

381
00:38:44,016 --> 00:38:50,016
communal space. And then considering things like urban versus rural, which often comes down to

382
00:38:50,016 --> 00:38:55,756
not one is bad or good, but access to culture, which is often in the urban setting, or access

383
00:38:55,756 --> 00:38:58,176
to cheap space, which is often in the rural setting.

384
00:38:58,516 --> 00:39:06,856
So those are some ritual adversity, co-location, creating rituals, membership, enhancing similarity

385
00:39:06,856 --> 00:39:07,936
to the context of diversity.

386
00:39:07,936 --> 00:39:10,376
Those are some ways of camp crafting.

387
00:39:11,076 --> 00:39:11,856
I guess, is there anything?

388
00:39:11,996 --> 00:39:13,236
And he gives a lot of other ones.

389
00:39:13,276 --> 00:39:17,096
He looks at the big five psychological characteristics, how those fit in.

390
00:39:17,096 --> 00:39:20,176
And he even gives an evolutionary account of group governance.

391
00:39:20,856 --> 00:39:22,276
But what do you think?

392
00:39:22,416 --> 00:39:27,076
Is there anything I guess you would add to those aspects of camp crafting as a science?

393
00:39:27,216 --> 00:39:28,756
Or do you think that those are good considerations?

394
00:39:30,436 --> 00:39:34,216
I think they're natural.

395
00:39:34,216 --> 00:39:42,436
When I read the book, what I'm doing is I'm thinking about how does this relate to the life that I've lived and what I've experienced?

396
00:39:42,436 --> 00:39:50,436
And the hazing is, you know, it's got it's all it's it's had such a negative connotation.

397
00:39:51,796 --> 00:39:54,436
But hazing is is really important.

398
00:39:54,656 --> 00:39:56,896
A group initiation is a problem.

399
00:39:57,136 --> 00:40:02,196
And an initiation of an individual to a group is a better way to say it.

400
00:40:02,196 --> 00:40:11,896
but it's important to distinguish yourself as you join a group because it lets everyone else know,

401
00:40:12,436 --> 00:40:16,236
you know, look, we suffered to get here and you're going to suffer just a little bit,

402
00:40:16,236 --> 00:40:22,296
but once you have, then you're in. And yeah, you just think about the importance of that

403
00:40:22,296 --> 00:40:29,096
and having that community of sufferers. I had a football coach who actually explained to me one

404
00:40:29,096 --> 00:40:37,116
time. We all hated the guy. And he explained one time that it's really important to give

405
00:40:37,116 --> 00:40:43,656
everybody a common enemy. Yeah. Because then they can bond together. And once they bond together,

406
00:40:43,856 --> 00:40:49,736
then all of a sudden he moves in and he flipped from being the enemy to being, okay, now you guys

407
00:40:49,736 --> 00:40:56,416
have forged yourself as a team. And here I am to be the person that will be a guide for you.

408
00:40:56,416 --> 00:41:02,696
But you have to go through this together. You have to experience what it's like to suffer individually.

409
00:41:03,596 --> 00:41:09,576
And then the nicknames like, yeah, you know, I just I love having nicknames for people.

410
00:41:09,956 --> 00:41:19,996
I in when I was teaching a man camp and we're in the band when you're on the baseball team, you know, that's how you know that you're you have something.

411
00:41:19,996 --> 00:41:27,056
It is that secret handshake, but verbally said, that signifies that you're part of a group.

412
00:41:28,456 --> 00:41:30,096
And yeah, it's just really important, you know.

413
00:41:30,216 --> 00:41:36,936
So I guess the lesson is, you know, haze each other, give each other nicknames, you know, create these rituals.

414
00:41:37,316 --> 00:41:37,436
Yeah.

415
00:41:37,656 --> 00:41:41,716
Were any of these types of things present at the network state?

416
00:41:41,716 --> 00:41:49,476
Was there an onboarding process that reinforced the solemnity or the identity of the group that you were joining, if you recall?

417
00:41:49,476 --> 00:41:55,056
or like any sort of shared t-shirt ritual or some sort of shared, yeah,

418
00:41:55,156 --> 00:41:59,116
like a thing that gave a person an identity individual to them,

419
00:41:59,136 --> 00:42:00,976
but also as a part of a group, any of these things?

420
00:42:02,376 --> 00:42:08,116
So I think that the number of people there, which is, you know, like 150 to 200,

421
00:42:08,116 --> 00:42:10,476
that kind of exceeds that camp size.

422
00:42:10,956 --> 00:42:16,216
And so maybe, you know, we all have this initiation where we come in

423
00:42:16,216 --> 00:42:22,136
And it's chaos for the first couple of days where you're trying to find where the gym is and get into your schedule.

424
00:42:22,436 --> 00:42:25,216
And Balaji speaks and give his overall vision.

425
00:42:25,476 --> 00:42:30,696
But then within that, the camps start defining themselves, you know.

426
00:42:30,916 --> 00:42:39,256
And so I think like that was probably a reason why Man Camp was such a success was because.

427
00:42:39,396 --> 00:42:40,536
What was Man Camp?

428
00:42:40,636 --> 00:42:44,456
So Man Camp was an evolution of me fixing stuff.

429
00:42:45,176 --> 00:42:49,796
I was there and there was a cold plunge, but it hadn't been put together yet.

430
00:42:49,876 --> 00:42:51,116
And so I wanted to use a cold plunge.

431
00:42:51,156 --> 00:42:56,396
So I put together and then we got a sauna and it came in pallets and 4,000 pieces.

432
00:42:56,396 --> 00:43:03,276
And I recruited four Indian dudes that had never swung a hammer and didn't know that there was more than one type of screwdriver to help me put it together.

433
00:43:03,276 --> 00:43:14,676
And they came Donovan, who's the co-founder and Jackson, who's the founding director, came to me and said, hey, this is actually really useful.

434
00:43:15,176 --> 00:43:22,356
A lot of the people that are here did not grow up in an environment where they needed to have these practical skills.

435
00:43:22,356 --> 00:43:33,316
Most of the people there were from bigger cities and oftentimes from cultures where labor is so cheap that it just makes more sense to pay someone else to do all that stuff for you.

436
00:43:34,236 --> 00:43:44,396
But the joy that these guys had, and the girls, by the way, that they had in participating in this was such that it raised the morale.

437
00:43:44,876 --> 00:43:46,376
There was a lot of excitement about it.

438
00:43:46,416 --> 00:43:50,556
And so they came to me and they said, hey, would you be interested in creating a curriculum around this?

439
00:43:50,556 --> 00:43:56,876
And so we created Man Camp, which is, you know, we had a course on tying knots.

440
00:43:57,516 --> 00:44:06,476
We had a shop Olympics where we took, I'll never forget my friend Juba, who went from, it took him eight minutes to saw through a board.

441
00:44:06,936 --> 00:44:13,096
The first time that I gave him a handsaw and the next day he was doing in 45 seconds.

442
00:44:13,096 --> 00:44:16,996
And there was just so much appreciation and accomplishment.

443
00:44:16,996 --> 00:44:30,456
I meant another time I remember handing a guy a power drill and thinking, oh, I'm just going to teach this guy the fine intricacy of using a power drill, you know, to be able to keep the torque proper and keep it straight.

444
00:44:30,816 --> 00:44:35,376
And I gave it to him and the first thing he did was try to hammer a screw in with the power drill.

445
00:44:35,456 --> 00:44:36,996
It's like, oh, OK, we got to start.

446
00:44:37,216 --> 00:44:38,256
We're not starting at zero.

447
00:44:38,396 --> 00:44:39,916
We're starting at like negative five.

448
00:44:41,196 --> 00:44:44,236
But it was it was difficult for these guys.

449
00:44:44,236 --> 00:45:02,736
We did another one where I taught him how to rope. And you had Matt Berman was this kid from England who stayed an extra two hours the first time and had never been able to even rope something three feet in front of him until he was able to consistently do it.

450
00:45:02,736 --> 00:45:16,236
And in learning what we taught, because they built their own lariets, in learning that, he took that knowledge and he used it to build his own community, which was a badminton group.

451
00:45:16,236 --> 00:45:31,056
Because by knowing how to tie these knots that we taught and he applied that and he said, oh, I can go into the gym and I can clear away the space where we do our workouts and I can string up a badminton net temporarily.

452
00:45:31,516 --> 00:45:35,876
And then all of a sudden we had 45 people playing badminton.

453
00:45:36,076 --> 00:45:36,256
Yeah.

454
00:45:36,436 --> 00:45:42,316
You know, so it had such a huge effect on that.

455
00:45:42,316 --> 00:45:43,096
I can't remember.

456
00:45:43,456 --> 00:45:50,736
It's interesting because I began asking you, like, does the network state have these types of things that characterize camp crafting?

457
00:45:50,876 --> 00:45:52,336
Yeah, but also like you make a really good point.

458
00:45:52,476 --> 00:45:56,716
Like the network state is 150 or above.

459
00:45:56,836 --> 00:45:58,256
It's like hitting Dunbar's number.

460
00:45:58,676 --> 00:46:02,956
You can be comfortable with the people at the network state, but maybe you don't have that personal relationship.

461
00:46:03,396 --> 00:46:08,456
A tribe or groups is like nested groups of groups within that camps begin to arise.

462
00:46:08,596 --> 00:46:09,476
Man camp literally.

463
00:46:09,676 --> 00:46:11,296
And then you have these moments of adversity.

464
00:46:11,296 --> 00:46:16,256
We need to learn a skill to take care of a problem and then you do it together communally.

465
00:46:16,756 --> 00:46:19,556
And then there's the D&D camp and then there's the badminton camp.

466
00:46:19,636 --> 00:46:24,516
So these camps are nested within a bigger identity, which is the network state.

467
00:46:25,116 --> 00:46:26,236
And there's nothing wrong with that.

468
00:46:26,276 --> 00:46:34,516
It's interesting that that's how the network state is kind of – it's this bigger identity and all these camps on which you have the face-to-face relationship kind of emerge within that.

469
00:46:34,516 --> 00:46:39,916
Yeah, and they said when you show up, Balji is going to be very up front.

470
00:46:40,076 --> 00:46:41,076
Like this is Frontier.

471
00:46:41,076 --> 00:46:45,116
It's not fancy. We're going to learn through adversity. And I wanted to give one more example,

472
00:46:45,116 --> 00:46:52,036
because this one I think was the one that really, really brought us together, was three weeks in.

473
00:46:52,576 --> 00:46:57,996
So the first week I was just figuring stuff out, but I went and bought myself a guitar on the second

474
00:46:57,996 --> 00:47:03,016
day. And two weeks in, I was like, if I don't play music, I'm going to lose my mind. And so

475
00:47:03,016 --> 00:47:08,616
I hosted a concert. It was awesome. It was a big success. We had all these people.

476
00:47:08,616 --> 00:47:13,856
and the first thing I did was like, I don't want to do this alone. I don't want to own this. I went

477
00:47:13,856 --> 00:47:21,756
to my friend Leo, who is a guy with two PhDs in philosophy that dresses in a cape and walks around

478
00:47:21,756 --> 00:47:28,196
and reads tarot cards to people, but he also makes fine Italian food. And so he started La Dolce Vita,

479
00:47:28,196 --> 00:47:36,176
which was this little pop-up kitchen. And then we had other people, Manasa and Adam, these people

480
00:47:36,176 --> 00:47:43,036
that came in and they helped with setup and they helped. We had five people acting as waiters and

481
00:47:43,036 --> 00:47:47,056
waitresses in order to serve everybody that were just volunteering and they were coming together.

482
00:47:48,136 --> 00:47:56,136
And the third week, the air conditioning went out. And, you know, this is in Malaysia. It's very hot.

483
00:47:57,416 --> 00:48:01,636
And we're up on the 11th floor. The air conditioning had been out for a couple of days

484
00:48:01,636 --> 00:48:21,936
And we're in this room and it is pushing 90 degrees Fahrenheit. People are sweating and they're just, it was miserable in there. But we decided not to cancel it. We went ahead and we pushed through and we had this like great bonding experience that I still to this day, and so do the people that were there.

485
00:48:21,936 --> 00:48:36,376
They still remember that because that was when we defined a theme song, kind of, which was a, there was an instance we had a lost and found box to put the stuff that people left laying around.

486
00:48:37,136 --> 00:48:42,096
And we showed up that day and the stuff was there and somebody had stolen the damn lost and found box.

487
00:48:42,596 --> 00:48:44,756
And I have a lot, I have a song called Lost and Found.

488
00:48:44,896 --> 00:48:47,416
And so we reflected on the hilarity of that.

489
00:48:47,556 --> 00:48:49,176
And that became kind of our theme.

490
00:48:49,176 --> 00:48:51,836
It really bonded us together and really brought us together.

491
00:48:51,936 --> 00:49:00,796
We're up there sweating like crazy, but gathering together to rejoice in fellowship and play music.

492
00:49:00,796 --> 00:49:07,496
Yeah, I'm glad you give all that context about regarding what the network state is about.

493
00:49:07,736 --> 00:49:16,396
We read and discussed Bology's online hyperlinked series of essays that is kind of the network state book, which is kind of an evolving sort of book.

494
00:49:16,396 --> 00:49:20,816
one of the things that struck me throughout the discussion, very interesting intellectual thesis,

495
00:49:21,096 --> 00:49:26,856
but there was like a sterility to it of like a nation for me was not just a set of people

496
00:49:26,856 --> 00:49:33,436
together, but it was about this almost unchosen set of bonds that you have with a group of people.

497
00:49:34,016 --> 00:49:38,876
And so to hear you talk about the emergent camps within the network state, it fills out

498
00:49:38,876 --> 00:49:43,636
Balaji's thesis in a critical way, I think. You can talk abstractly about community,

499
00:49:43,636 --> 00:49:51,736
But when you see, oh, community can arise when people place themselves in intentional proximity, they can consciously create it.

500
00:49:52,216 --> 00:50:00,536
And, you know, they're probably going to create it because that instinct we have this tribe drive, people are going to want to build the groups that they're a part of.

501
00:50:00,856 --> 00:50:02,016
There's a really good quote here.

502
00:50:02,356 --> 00:50:10,616
Samson is talking about kind of the role, I believe he's talking about the role of like shamans, shamanic figures in helping to craft the identity of a group.

503
00:50:10,616 --> 00:50:24,196
And he notes, this is kind of from our evolutionary history, we literally survived and thrived as a species because some leaders of our past told good stories about what made us special.

504
00:50:24,196 --> 00:50:40,656
So it's that feeling of becoming special by sharing in a story with others that people who are leaders have taken the time to either consciously or unconsciously tell a story about what we're all doing here together.

505
00:50:40,876 --> 00:50:44,616
And then you have you're infused with a shared purpose and a shared identity.

506
00:50:45,396 --> 00:50:47,516
So, yeah, I just want to note that it's really cool.

507
00:50:47,516 --> 00:50:57,976
I hope you keep on talking about that and that this network state idea is kind of enriched with the actual community that's involved in it and not just an intellectual thesis.

508
00:50:58,616 --> 00:51:02,896
Yeah, a country, a nation, to me, it's three things.

509
00:51:03,036 --> 00:51:08,996
It is borders, because without that, then you don't have, you know, this geographically defined area.

510
00:51:09,196 --> 00:51:13,396
It's property rights, because without that, then you can't prosper.

511
00:51:14,176 --> 00:51:16,396
But then the third thing, it is it's that narrative.

512
00:51:16,396 --> 00:51:29,876
It's that we are collectively going to agree to the same basic story because without that, then we don't have this inherent trust with each other.

513
00:51:30,176 --> 00:51:39,896
We don't have this inherent similarity and the bond that comes from comes from living in the same.

514
00:51:40,136 --> 00:51:40,676
Yeah.

515
00:51:40,736 --> 00:51:42,456
Living in the same movie, I guess.

516
00:51:42,456 --> 00:51:43,556
That's a good way to put it.

517
00:51:43,676 --> 00:51:45,396
That same shared story that makes us special.

518
00:51:45,496 --> 00:51:46,096
The same movie.

519
00:51:46,396 --> 00:51:55,716
There's another, I wanted to get, I know I'm giving a lot of examples, but there, I did want to give a shout out to Sam who runs the gym there, came up with a bootcamp.

520
00:51:56,196 --> 00:52:06,176
Like a, it's just like it was a more aggressive workout program for people who really wanted to make a physical transformation.

521
00:52:06,576 --> 00:52:14,436
And that group, you know, these are guys that, and girls, that came in, a lot of them had never lifted weights before.

522
00:52:14,436 --> 00:52:23,256
many of them had never really these are keyboard warriors by and large there are some phenomenal

523
00:52:23,256 --> 00:52:29,576
athletes there but by and large they were keyboard warriors coming in and coming together at the same

524
00:52:29,576 --> 00:52:35,156
time every day in order to work out and having the group chat where people are sharing their

525
00:52:35,156 --> 00:52:40,476
progress and when they go off campus they're sending back proof of workout yeah you know

526
00:52:40,476 --> 00:52:42,916
They're showing, hey, look, I'm still with you.

527
00:52:43,056 --> 00:52:47,016
I'm still, I found a gym or I went outside and I did my work out there.

528
00:52:48,276 --> 00:52:50,716
And that group got really tight as well, too.

529
00:52:51,196 --> 00:52:53,856
Yeah. And so this, these examples are all great.

530
00:52:54,036 --> 00:52:59,456
And I hope someone listening can, when one, maybe in one sense, maybe they come to understand Samson's thesis.

531
00:52:59,676 --> 00:53:02,016
In other sense, maybe they see what the network state is about.

532
00:53:02,016 --> 00:53:05,596
But in a third, very real sense, we can take whatever community you're in.

533
00:53:05,736 --> 00:53:09,476
We can begin to camp craft within our local community.

534
00:53:09,476 --> 00:53:35,316
We can get some workout partners together. We can do a practical skills course. None of that is impossible. You don't have to go to the network state to do that. These are all just fantastic ideas because I think we do all find ourselves in our modern, as Samson mentions and describes, in a suburban society of single nuclear families where we begin to lose the community that if we don't consciously create, we're never going to have.

535
00:53:36,156 --> 00:53:39,476
So those are some of the—that's camp crafting in a nutshell.

536
00:53:39,716 --> 00:53:42,216
There's a lot of stuff we kind of left out of the discussion by necessity.

537
00:53:42,976 --> 00:53:45,616
We kind of saw the good part of community.

538
00:53:45,996 --> 00:54:01,156
In the last two chapters, Samson describes how the tribe drive, though, can be bad, and then how we can address the badness of the tribe drive by kind of bootstrapping the tribe drive itself to move beyond tribalism to a metatribal era.

539
00:54:01,156 --> 00:54:08,096
so to continue and kind of summarizing the book recall that tribalism arises as a solution to

540
00:54:08,096 --> 00:54:13,856
this need to how do we trust how do we know who to trust we evolve first genetic kinship we trust

541
00:54:13,856 --> 00:54:18,016
the people we're related to then friendship we trust the people in face-to-face relationships

542
00:54:18,016 --> 00:54:26,716
and then we develop we evolve the tribe drive the civility disability to believe to trust people who

543
00:54:26,716 --> 00:54:30,996
believe the same symbolic stuff that you do, participate in the same larger stories.

544
00:54:31,516 --> 00:54:37,396
So we move from the kinship era to the friendship era to the tribal era, and that's where we're at

545
00:54:37,396 --> 00:54:43,256
right now. We are still living in a tribal era. In this tribal era, we have tended to become more

546
00:54:43,256 --> 00:54:49,156
and more centralized and authoritarian to kind of coerce and control and enforce cooperation among

547
00:54:49,156 --> 00:54:53,276
members of different coalitions, different groups within the larger tribal identity.

548
00:54:53,276 --> 00:55:04,496
To quote Sampson, the chains of centralization with elite autocrats and tyrants commanding bureaucratic thralls that hold the keys to our shackles has been a favored stratagem.

549
00:55:04,896 --> 00:55:08,936
Around 4 billion humans currently live under authoritarian regimes.

550
00:55:08,936 --> 00:55:38,676
And alongside that, we just got finished reading the Satoshi papers. And in the introduction to that, we learned about how the U.S. founding, our Republican project, was an ad hoc system of kind of checks and balances to rein in authority and give individuals living within – who wanted to start a new project together under the values of democracy, the enlightenment values, free markets, freedom of association, as kind of a reaction to that authoritarian.

551
00:55:38,936 --> 00:55:45,516
way that groups are held together and how we kind of need now a refounding given the

552
00:55:45,516 --> 00:55:48,736
authoritarian drift and centralizing drift of the last 250 years.

553
00:55:48,916 --> 00:55:50,756
That's kind of the general picture in any case.

554
00:55:51,336 --> 00:55:55,856
Things can look even bleaker for us when we think about what it means that we are in a

555
00:55:55,856 --> 00:55:58,476
tribal area, that we're all still essentially tribal.

556
00:55:58,576 --> 00:56:03,816
On one hand, we have the evils of in-group tribalism, us versus them, in-group versus

557
00:56:03,816 --> 00:56:06,116
out-group, racism, genocide.

558
00:56:06,116 --> 00:56:25,056
On the other hand, to combat that, the evil of increasing centralization, authoritarianism to deal with our tribal impulses, the increasing attempts to dismantle our private associations and ignore our very real genetic impulse to care more for those closest to us than we care for strangers.

559
00:56:25,056 --> 00:56:39,456
And I kind of describe that as evil in-group tribalism, evil centralization and saying evil. But one of Samson's key points is that the tribe drive and tribalism really is not an ethical crisis. It's an energy crisis.

560
00:56:39,456 --> 00:56:56,756
And what he means by that is that it's cognitively difficult, energetically costly to think equally of everybody, to think of everyone as friend and family, because we evolved to have a channel capacity mentally to see a certain subset of people as irreplaceable, as valuable.

561
00:56:57,456 --> 00:57:00,576
Despite what people say, you really can't love everybody equally.

562
00:57:00,576 --> 00:57:07,276
It's kind of a good abstract notion to consider, but we don't literally have the brain capacity to do that.

563
00:57:07,376 --> 00:57:10,856
We don't have the energy to process that number of social relations.

564
00:57:11,396 --> 00:57:18,256
We have limited bandwidth for empathy and a larger but more energy-intensive set of mental processes

565
00:57:18,256 --> 00:57:22,456
that allow us to deal with people who we don't have that empathic bond with, with strangers.

566
00:57:22,456 --> 00:57:36,316
So Samson then suggests a new moral framework to deal with this tribalism that we still have in the tribal era we're in, in which we can still embrace the good parts of tribalism to a degree while curtailing its negative aspects.

567
00:57:36,436 --> 00:57:38,336
And he calls this view the concentric circle.

568
00:57:38,336 --> 00:57:55,856
So in this view, this moral theory, we can imagine an inner circle with our honor group and then greater circles around that kind of proceeding outward with more and more people added up to like Dunbar's number, the number of people we can process and be comfortable around, then expanding beyond that.

569
00:57:55,856 --> 00:58:10,816
Those are the concentric circles. So the moral principle behind this theory is essentially that it's okay to privilege that inner circle, your in-group, as long as you don't cause the outer circle pain or harm them.

570
00:58:11,176 --> 00:58:16,756
So it's kind of like a negative liberty conception where the freedom to swing my fist stops at my neighbor's nose.

571
00:58:16,916 --> 00:58:21,656
You can privilege your in-group, but you can't do so in a way that harms the out-group.

572
00:58:21,656 --> 00:58:27,476
um this it's not necessarily problematic to privilege the in-group it's actually very

573
00:58:27,476 --> 00:58:32,436
important we should be allowed to love friends and family more than we love you know some stranger

574
00:58:32,436 --> 00:58:36,816
we've never met um and if we focus on our individual health before helping others then

575
00:58:36,816 --> 00:58:41,436
focus on our in-group before other groups we tend to build a stronger world because we're focusing

576
00:58:41,436 --> 00:58:46,056
on communities where we can move the needle a bit and actually influence and impact things

577
00:58:46,056 --> 00:58:51,976
so again on this view as long as you don't cause pain or loss of human thriving to an out group

578
00:58:51,976 --> 00:58:57,616
you can continue to operate with your in group and shower you know your attention and gifts upon them

579
00:58:57,616 --> 00:59:03,036
so i guess what do you think about this either the framing of ourselves living in a tribal era

580
00:59:03,036 --> 00:59:11,636
or and or samson's response that we should reframe our morality as a sort of concentric circle

581
00:59:11,636 --> 00:59:14,856
privileging an inner circle but not harming the outer circle

582
00:59:14,856 --> 00:59:24,656
the beginning of having good relationships with other people is having a good relationship with

583
00:59:24,656 --> 00:59:36,176
yourself and self-care and self-love is a caring act for other people because when you

584
00:59:36,176 --> 00:59:44,416
take care of your body when you take care of your mind when you take care of your responsibilities and

585
00:59:44,416 --> 00:59:51,256
focus on your spirituality and your ability to navigate the world with confidence.

586
00:59:52,716 --> 00:59:58,636
You're building yourself up, but what you're also doing is making yourself less of a burden

587
00:59:58,636 --> 01:00:05,396
to other people. If I'm healthy and in good shape, then I can come help you move.

588
01:00:06,916 --> 01:00:13,676
The converse of that is if I'm not, if I eat myself into a wheelchair, then I'm now a burden

589
01:00:13,676 --> 01:00:19,376
on the people around me. And so self-care is a loving act for other people. And that concentric

590
01:00:19,376 --> 01:00:27,896
circle starts individually with the person and then expands to the honor group and then to the

591
01:00:27,896 --> 01:00:35,456
sympathy group and then to Dunbar's numbers, that tribe. I love the thought example that Samson gives,

592
01:00:35,456 --> 01:00:42,256
which is the sympathy group is the dozen or so people who,

593
01:00:42,696 --> 01:00:46,716
if they were to pass, you would be crushed and it would,

594
01:00:46,716 --> 01:00:50,476
it would truly, it would truly wreck you emotionally.

595
01:00:51,256 --> 01:00:53,176
And he says, well, you know,

596
01:00:53,256 --> 01:00:58,896
I think it's like 180,000 or however many people die every single day.

597
01:00:59,416 --> 01:01:05,436
And imagine trying to live in a world where you're,

598
01:01:05,456 --> 01:01:13,236
you had the same, like if you were to pass away and that would just wreck, like imagine if I felt

599
01:01:13,236 --> 01:01:20,536
that 180,000 times a day, every single day, I wouldn't be able to navigate the world. And so

600
01:01:20,536 --> 01:01:42,872
he does a good job of framing to us why why you can love everyone equally and why it important to prioritize your in your close concentric circles as long as you not and that the litmus test is as long as you

601
01:01:42,872 --> 01:01:48,432
not hurting those other people around you yeah um yeah it's just uh

602
01:01:48,432 --> 01:01:55,892
yeah self-care is a loving act is the thing that i that i start like he

603
01:01:55,892 --> 01:02:03,012
I think that it's important to take it all the way down to the atomic level of you don't start with your honor group.

604
01:02:03,312 --> 01:02:04,572
You start with yourself.

605
01:02:05,492 --> 01:02:18,092
And a lot of times you need that honor group to help you find yourself and help you keep moving morally in the direction that you want to go.

606
01:02:18,092 --> 01:02:20,632
You know, it's moral to be physically fit.

607
01:02:20,792 --> 01:02:22,112
It's moral to be educated.

608
01:02:22,112 --> 01:02:33,152
It's moral to go to bed and get up early in order to be the best person you can be for the people around you.

609
01:02:33,232 --> 01:02:39,272
Because the more you can do that, the more you can elevate the group and build concentrically around.

610
01:02:39,272 --> 01:02:49,172
I had a question for you because he talks about the – I believe it's the MetaTribe and he gives the example of the conquerors of the past.

611
01:02:49,172 --> 01:03:01,832
What they did was they completely erased any sort of like tribal, you know, we're going to take your gods, your statues, and we're going to take them away.

612
01:03:01,972 --> 01:03:05,672
We're going to kill the entire line of your royalty.

613
01:03:05,672 --> 01:03:18,872
And we're just literally going to wipe away any sort of tie that you have to the people that you were before we conquered you in order to effectively force you to integrate into what we have.

614
01:03:19,172 --> 01:03:34,232
And success was finally found when the approach became that we're going to allow for that to be part of the story.

615
01:03:35,612 --> 01:03:40,492
And not a fracture of the story, but literally like, look, this was part of the fate.

616
01:03:40,692 --> 01:03:46,612
Part of the fate of your story was to become part of our story and that we're going to build.

617
01:03:46,612 --> 01:04:14,852
And so what it makes me think of is like back at the network state, you know, there's people from 120 different countries there. And I'd love to ask, and maybe we'll get the chance to talk to Balaji someday about this, but I'm curious about, is it necessary to leave behind your previous identity as an American, as an Indian, as a Japanese or Chinese?

618
01:04:14,852 --> 01:04:28,272
Is it necessary for us as we move into this era of network states to leave that identity behind and to identify as a network state, you know, primarily?

619
01:04:28,852 --> 01:04:29,912
What do you think about that?

620
01:04:29,912 --> 01:04:31,252
On the first part, that's very interesting.

621
01:04:31,472 --> 01:04:40,812
That is a story that Sam relates in his book about how Cirrus the Great in the past invented a new mode of empire creating.

622
01:04:40,812 --> 01:04:45,212
Before, it was, as he said, symbolic genocide was the way that conquerors did it.

623
01:04:45,272 --> 01:04:49,672
They came in, rolled through, destroyed all customs, local gods, and everything.

624
01:04:50,232 --> 01:04:58,672
Cirrus the Great had a new mode of empire building where he let people keep the local gods, but they essentially had to recognize him as kind of a meta god over them.

625
01:04:58,752 --> 01:05:02,932
He integrated them into a new symbolic structure while allowing them to keep their old one.

626
01:05:03,472 --> 01:05:08,752
And that's a lot easier to do because, as Samson notes, identities are very sticky.

627
01:05:08,752 --> 01:05:16,592
You try to do a symbolic genocide, but you really can't root out from the human heart all of those associations that people have.

628
01:05:17,072 --> 01:05:21,272
You know, people will die for their God and they'll continue to believe in their God even if the representations are destroyed.

629
01:05:21,552 --> 01:05:28,552
As to whether we can integrate our own identities into some new notion of a network state.

630
01:05:28,552 --> 01:05:35,692
one of the things about the network state it's like the idea is society as a service is a

631
01:05:35,692 --> 01:05:42,312
subscription model is exit is the primary aspect of it where if you don't like it you can leave

632
01:05:42,312 --> 01:05:48,152
marked against loyalty and voice which are the other modes of operation where you can be loyal

633
01:05:48,152 --> 01:05:53,752
to something and not leave it and think you have to stay in and build the house that's burning down

634
01:05:53,752 --> 01:05:54,852
or whatever to repair it.

635
01:05:55,392 --> 01:05:56,832
And I think that there's some,

636
01:05:57,592 --> 01:05:58,892
how it felt to me

637
01:05:58,892 --> 01:06:00,432
when we were discussing the network state

638
01:06:00,432 --> 01:06:03,632
is there's some conflict there

639
01:06:03,632 --> 01:06:06,552
with being able to freely leave,

640
01:06:06,692 --> 01:06:08,092
being able to freely choose

641
01:06:08,092 --> 01:06:09,432
who you will associate with

642
01:06:09,432 --> 01:06:13,512
and the notion of identity being unchosen,

643
01:06:14,532 --> 01:06:17,512
which is how I kind of deeply feel.

644
01:06:19,012 --> 01:06:21,312
I have a book up here by Alistair McIntyre

645
01:06:21,312 --> 01:06:22,592
that's kind of facing the camera.

646
01:06:22,592 --> 01:06:42,172
We have a lot of books by Alistair McIntyre. He's my favorite philosopher. And one of his quotes is, if you want to know what you should do in life, first ask yourself, what stories am I a part of? These are stories that you find yourself a part of. You don't create the story. The stories are already there.

647
01:06:42,172 --> 01:06:55,552
He critiques existentialist philosophy, saying, if you think that existence precedes essence, that you can freely choose every aspect of who you are, on what criteria will you choose?

648
01:06:56,112 --> 01:06:58,852
Do you choose the criteria by which you're going to choose?

649
01:06:59,032 --> 01:07:05,132
There's an infinite regress if you think that every aspect of who you are can be freely chosen.

650
01:07:05,552 --> 01:07:10,172
There's a bedrock-bottom foundational aspect of you that is unchosen.

651
01:07:10,172 --> 01:07:18,072
unchosen. That's like you are born as a son. You are born as a member of the local religion,

652
01:07:18,352 --> 01:07:24,312
the local physical, spatial community. All of these things are unchosen. You can later go on

653
01:07:24,312 --> 01:07:29,572
in life to develop and elaborate the stories that those unchosen identities impart on you,

654
01:07:29,672 --> 01:07:33,952
but I don't think you can exit them. I think you'll always bring them with you.

655
01:07:34,352 --> 01:07:38,872
Maybe a network state, can I integrate those to a certain degree? But for me,

656
01:07:38,872 --> 01:07:46,232
exit has always seemed less important than loyalty or voice. Then working within the narratives you

657
01:07:46,232 --> 01:07:50,972
find yourself a part of to help elaborate them is much more important than trying and much,

658
01:07:51,512 --> 01:07:58,232
from my own perspective, much better than trying to leave those stories and find new stories that

659
01:07:58,232 --> 01:08:02,912
are better. The things that you choose, you're always going to end up choosing based on criteria

660
01:08:02,912 --> 01:08:08,232
that in some sense were unchosen. And so just accept that. Accept that we have identities we

661
01:08:08,232 --> 01:08:12,712
don't choose and then work within those to realize fully the potential you can have.

662
01:08:13,112 --> 01:08:13,232
Yeah.

663
01:08:13,352 --> 01:08:13,572
Yeah.

664
01:08:13,832 --> 01:08:19,072
The creation of no fault divorce in the United States is what I'm thinking about right now,

665
01:08:19,112 --> 01:08:20,292
which is that's the exit.

666
01:08:20,572 --> 01:08:23,332
You know, previously you kind of had loyalty.

667
01:08:23,332 --> 01:08:30,872
I'm just going to suffer through whatever this relationship has become or voice, which

668
01:08:30,872 --> 01:08:36,432
is, you know, that I'm going to try and assert my position and make things better.

669
01:08:36,432 --> 01:08:58,912
But adding exit to the institution of marriage seemed like a great idea at the time. But what we have observed since then, obviously skyrocketing divorce rates, but also people that generally speaking are less happy in their relationships and they're less.

670
01:08:58,912 --> 01:09:07,612
they're less because they have the option of just leaving then you don't have to put

671
01:09:07,612 --> 01:09:13,592
into it that type of investment that you do when you when you don't have that option yeah

672
01:09:13,592 --> 01:09:23,052
um that you can you can um yeah you there there is a negative um there is a negative

673
01:09:23,052 --> 01:09:30,832
unintended consequence of exit, which is that you lack the forcing function of,

674
01:09:31,252 --> 01:09:39,271
I have to figure this out. You know, I'm going to sentence you to another year of hard marriage

675
01:09:39,271 --> 01:09:43,732
and then come back and see me. Maybe you guys figure it out. And some people did and some

676
01:09:43,732 --> 01:09:50,192
people didn't. But, you know, marriage as the institution is, as we have it in the Western

677
01:09:50,192 --> 01:09:56,652
in society is you made a vow before your family, your friends, and your God that you're going to

678
01:09:56,652 --> 01:10:02,892
do this till you die. And then we put this loophole in that would just like, well, unless you decide

679
01:10:02,892 --> 01:10:12,912
not to. And I think that the consequence of that has probably been negative overall. It's, you know,

680
01:10:12,972 --> 01:10:17,432
we don't want to force people to stay in something that's horrible, but it turns out that maybe giving

681
01:10:17,432 --> 01:10:23,872
them the option to just throw up their hands and exit is not helping anybody.

682
01:10:24,172 --> 01:10:25,852
Yeah, no, for sure.

683
01:10:25,992 --> 01:10:31,392
Another example, in the West, we have really developed this idea of autonomy, your ability

684
01:10:31,392 --> 01:10:35,332
to choose freely every aspect of your being.

685
01:10:35,492 --> 01:10:39,072
You're allowed to exit everything up into including your gender.

686
01:10:39,292 --> 01:10:44,092
But the question is, even if you find these institutions oppressive that you find yourself

687
01:10:44,092 --> 01:10:47,092
a part of, being born in a gender that you don't feel identified with.

688
01:10:47,672 --> 01:10:50,952
Another way to respond to that is to say, I'm not going to exit.

689
01:10:51,271 --> 01:10:55,592
I'm going to continue to elaborate the institution I find myself a part of.

690
01:10:55,672 --> 01:10:56,632
Institutions grow.

691
01:10:57,152 --> 01:11:01,672
Change organically comes from within based on understanding.

692
01:11:02,052 --> 01:11:05,672
And this is kind of the idea of common law, that the principles build based on their own

693
01:11:05,672 --> 01:11:05,992
logic.

694
01:11:05,992 --> 01:11:08,292
And the system elaborates from within.

695
01:11:08,452 --> 01:11:12,612
Instead of leaving the system and trying to build the new one, you instead work within

696
01:11:12,612 --> 01:11:19,052
the system, to reform and to find the parts of it that are good and promising and encourage

697
01:11:19,052 --> 01:11:23,072
and grow those and to, you know, try to diminish the focus on others.

698
01:11:23,232 --> 01:11:28,192
So that's, I don't know if that's a critique of camp crafting as such, probably not, because

699
01:11:28,192 --> 01:11:32,412
whatever group you find yourself in, you're always going to want to, you know, grow through

700
01:11:32,412 --> 01:11:35,072
adversity, have certain sort of bonding rituals.

701
01:11:35,712 --> 01:11:40,912
I guess the one qualification I would put on Samson's framework is, I don't think you

702
01:11:40,912 --> 01:11:47,271
can invent religious rituals to give significance to a group. Maybe you can find old rituals that

703
01:11:47,271 --> 01:11:53,072
had some symbolic potency and repurpose them. But, you know, if you draw from outside of a framework

704
01:11:53,072 --> 01:11:58,432
that you're already a part of, they're going to lack some essential meaning that they had as part

705
01:11:58,432 --> 01:12:04,112
of the framework that they were a part of. Like symbolic relics from another culture, if we bring

706
01:12:04,112 --> 01:12:08,932
them into the West, maybe they have some sort of exoticism or something. But at the end of the day,

707
01:12:08,932 --> 01:12:14,672
rediscovering the own, the traditions that you find yourself already a part of, learning about

708
01:12:14,672 --> 01:12:19,712
those, I think is probably for many people would be a much more fruitful way of camp crafting

709
01:12:19,712 --> 01:12:23,752
than to try to draw in a bunch of traditions that they're not a part of.

710
01:12:23,752 --> 01:12:28,532
Yeah. It's interesting what you bring up about, I know you gave the example of like exiting your

711
01:12:28,532 --> 01:12:33,492
gender, but there's, you know, anything that you exit, what you're doing essentially is you're

712
01:12:33,492 --> 01:12:39,552
admitting to yourself that you don't have the power to change within that structure, that you

713
01:12:39,552 --> 01:12:49,152
can't be impactful within that institution in order to evolve it. And if you go through a Tony

714
01:12:49,152 --> 01:12:56,172
Robbins seminar, like the first thing that they talk about is that the most powerful force in the

715
01:12:56,172 --> 01:13:04,271
world is your brain's desire to stay consistent with the narrative that it's telling itself,

716
01:13:04,452 --> 01:13:08,392
that your beliefs build your identity. And if you want to change your identity,

717
01:13:08,392 --> 01:13:15,732
then you need to change your beliefs. James Clear has really systematized this in Atomic Habits,

718
01:13:16,352 --> 01:13:21,332
which is in order to change your actions, you need to change your identity.

719
01:13:21,332 --> 01:13:27,532
if you want to quit drinking if you want to quit overeating if you want to quit doing these things

720
01:13:27,532 --> 01:13:33,072
that you know are negative or if you want to start doing something that you know is positive

721
01:13:33,072 --> 01:13:40,271
you need to identify as that it's not i'm going to start running it's i am a runner and and tell

722
01:13:40,271 --> 01:13:46,192
yourself that it's not i am going to try and learn how to play guitar it's i'm i'm a guitar player

723
01:13:46,192 --> 01:14:00,192
And you first have to tell yourself a better story to align with the identity that you want to bring into the world because the identity is not static.

724
01:14:01,112 --> 01:14:04,192
That identities can change and they can evolve over time.

725
01:14:04,732 --> 01:14:09,032
And an institution is just an expression of the identity of the people that come together.

726
01:14:09,032 --> 01:14:16,532
And so you do bring up a really good point there in that, you know, it's admitting powerlessness.

727
01:14:16,892 --> 01:14:19,712
It's admitting that you don't have control to make a change.

728
01:14:19,972 --> 01:14:22,232
And we all have control to make a change.

729
01:14:22,332 --> 01:14:30,892
We all have the ability to change at the core level within our own mind and then to affect people around us.

730
01:14:31,692 --> 01:14:36,252
And through that, bring, you know, be the light that you want the world to see.

731
01:14:36,252 --> 01:15:03,771
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's very well said. Tribalism. So we've been talking about tribalism as an evolved solution in the next part of the book. We're just moving directly on from this. So tribalism evolves as a way to solve this problem of how do we know who to trust? If we can read the symbols of another person, I can say Lucas is somebody from by the way he dresses from Northwest Kansas. Look at the boots and everything. I know I can trust him.

732
01:15:03,771 --> 01:15:05,152
This doesn't look San Francisco?

733
01:15:05,492 --> 01:15:09,771
You know, the Livestrong Polo is nice, but maybe not Silicon Valley nice.

734
01:15:10,572 --> 01:15:20,632
But there's also, in addition to this tribe drive that's an evolved solution, we also are now developing technological solutions to the problem of trust.

735
01:15:21,012 --> 01:15:22,811
And now Bitcoin enters the chat.

736
01:15:23,152 --> 01:15:23,472
It's awesome.

737
01:15:23,992 --> 01:15:24,952
It's so great.

738
01:15:25,092 --> 01:15:28,172
Like, it took 400 pages to get to it.

739
01:15:28,292 --> 01:15:29,412
But it's a culmination, though.

740
01:15:29,412 --> 01:15:48,852
But it is the technology. I know you're going to say this better than I am, but it is the life-changing technology that allows us to scale trust beyond the tribe. And it changes everything. It changes everything about the way that we're going to interact with the world.

741
01:15:48,852 --> 01:16:08,092
Yeah, and you said, you know, it takes 300, 400 pages to get here. It takes, you know, what, two, two and a half hours of conversation for us to get to this point where we can cogently talk about Bitcoin's role as far as trust facilitator, given our evolved need to know who we can trust.

742
01:16:08,092 --> 01:16:22,532
If we don't have all this prehistory, all this discussion, we're talking about the tribe drive, how it evolves as a solution to resolve problems of who to know, who to trust, then you lose an essential aspect of the power of Bitcoin as a technology.

743
01:16:22,532 --> 01:16:29,912
And so, I mean, that's why it's really important that I think we read books that don't have Bitcoin on the cover.

744
01:16:30,072 --> 01:16:36,612
Even if you're looking to read something about Bitcoin, you're going to need to learn about sociology, anthropology, evolutionary theory.

745
01:16:36,612 --> 01:16:41,672
If you really want to understand the system of incentives that is the Bitcoin protocol.

746
01:16:42,372 --> 01:16:51,832
So Samson here discusses how Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, had a solution to the trust paradox, this problem of how do we know who to trust?

747
01:16:52,452 --> 01:16:59,092
So Satoshi gave us a way for strangers to interact with strangers and know beyond any doubt that the interaction is trustworthy.

748
01:16:59,512 --> 01:17:11,292
With the integration of proof of work into the Bitcoin protocol, he gives us a way to develop a globally shared consensus view that is established without any particular person having to trust any other particular person.

749
01:17:11,292 --> 01:17:37,452
So without going into like the nitty gritty of proof of work, all that's involved there, for our purposes here, we can simply observe that Bitcoin, the protocol, allows the creation of a ledger, a way of conducting and recording transactions where zero trust is required of the people participating, who you are transacting with, and you don't have to trust equally anybody to maintain the overall ledger itself.

750
01:17:37,452 --> 01:18:02,672
So with this trust technology, with Bitcoin as a trust technology, we have something that scales beyond Dunbar's number. Our limited cognitive channel capacity to process social relations is something that makes Bitcoin very well suited as a technology to allow us to interact with strangers who we can't keep in our head essentially as one of the 150 people we're comfortable with.

751
01:18:02,672 --> 01:18:08,012
We don't need to personally trust everybody who we contract, who we transact with through the Bitcoin protocol.

752
01:18:08,612 --> 01:18:18,852
Because we don't need to trust them, because we don't have to trust them, we don't have to read their tribal symbols and judge to see if they're a threat or a potential ally.

753
01:18:19,271 --> 01:18:22,311
We don't need to make sure the person is a member of the same tribe.

754
01:18:22,372 --> 01:18:28,532
We don't need to know the color of their skin, the ideological contents of their brain, their faith, any of that.

755
01:18:28,532 --> 01:18:39,352
Instead, we can rely on a technology that scales trust without creating an in-group or an out-group and without involving a centralizing tyrant to enforce it.

756
01:18:39,552 --> 01:18:53,892
So there's some more there, but I guess I'll pause there because it's quite the pain to Bitcoin to put it at the culmination of our evolutionary history trying to find a way to solve this problem.

757
01:18:54,032 --> 01:18:54,771
Who do we trust?

758
01:18:55,072 --> 01:18:57,872
Yeah, it takes away the need for ideology.

759
01:18:57,872 --> 01:19:20,552
This is a callback to the introduction that I gave, which is that in reading this, I had this revelation of, you know, I've been for four and a half years, I've been thinking of myself like first as a Bitcoiner. And that's why we're that's why we're reading this book. It's not because we're Bitcoiners, but it's because we are approaching the world from a Bitcoin perspective.

760
01:19:20,552 --> 01:19:38,771
And in doing so, what we realize is that it's merely the base layer. And there is so much more richness on top of that with developing a community, with understanding that, you know, my primary identity is no longer.

761
01:19:38,771 --> 01:19:50,632
That was the revelation I had at four o'clock in the morning when I was finishing the reading like a like a kid before a test was that I I'm not I'm not going to identify as that anymore.

762
01:19:50,632 --> 01:20:07,952
I'm not going to let that be my ideology, that my most important identity is as a brother and a friend and as as an honor group member to these people around me, because I no longer need to have an ideology.

763
01:20:07,952 --> 01:20:15,731
in order to signal myself as belonging to an in-group because there was not a solution for

764
01:20:15,731 --> 01:20:24,432
the trust dilemma. And so now I can just accept Bitcoin like I accept gravity. I can accept

765
01:20:24,432 --> 01:20:29,892
Bitcoin like I can accept the sun coming up. And this is just something that I live in,

766
01:20:30,452 --> 01:20:36,372
but it doesn't define me. The things that I do define me, the actions that I take, the

767
01:20:36,372 --> 01:20:45,692
way that I interact with the people around me in order to refine my morality, promote those values

768
01:20:45,692 --> 01:20:51,811
and surround myself with other people who do the same. That's so much more important than being a

769
01:20:51,811 --> 01:20:58,612
Bitcoiner. I know this podcast, you know, is called Bitcoin Study Sessions, but it's, it can't be the

770
01:20:58,612 --> 01:21:03,712
thing that defines us. We can't limit ourselves to being a Bitcoiner. We can't limit ourselves to

771
01:21:03,712 --> 01:21:09,712
just reading books that are solely about how Bitcoin changes everything, we are still going

772
01:21:09,712 --> 01:21:11,032
to have to be that change.

773
01:21:11,092 --> 01:21:14,372
We're still going to have to be the change that we want to see in the world.

774
01:21:15,252 --> 01:21:21,892
And it's so impactful to have that realization that I can let go of these ideologies.

775
01:21:22,712 --> 01:21:22,912
Yeah.

776
01:21:22,912 --> 01:21:23,112
Yeah.

777
01:21:23,252 --> 01:21:24,811
And Samsung continues on.

778
01:21:24,892 --> 01:21:25,892
He doesn't stop at Bitcoin.

779
01:21:25,892 --> 01:21:29,792
So he continues the dialogue in the direction you're going that Bitcoin changes things.

780
01:21:29,792 --> 01:21:32,952
But then what direction is this change going to take us?

781
01:21:32,952 --> 01:21:35,292
How further are we going to change society?

782
01:21:35,512 --> 01:21:40,912
So Bitcoin introduces this decentralized ledger that we can record transactions of value.

783
01:21:41,612 --> 01:21:56,832
There's this then decentralized ethos is a direct check and balance to the developing authoritarian centralizing trajectory we find ourselves on as a way to control all these kind of different groups and tribes.

784
01:21:56,832 --> 01:22:06,332
So Samson describes four different pillars of decentralization that we get from jumping off from Bitcoin as a technology.

785
01:22:06,612 --> 01:22:13,552
Decentralized communication, decentralized law, decentralized production, decentralized finance.

786
01:22:14,072 --> 01:22:20,212
And decentralizing all of these areas permits the possibility of a network state.

787
01:22:20,212 --> 01:22:26,592
And here, we've already talked about this, but here in the book is where Samson discusses this type of state, as you've described it.

788
01:22:26,592 --> 01:22:33,432
in more detail, lying on a continuum of development of what a state is from a church state to a nation

789
01:22:33,432 --> 01:22:39,072
state to a network state. He describes it as, you know, what it is, an intentional community of

790
01:22:39,072 --> 01:22:47,452
people. You gather in the digital realm and then acquire real world property to organize a society

791
01:22:47,452 --> 01:22:54,311
around moral innovation. Samson has Balaji's one sentence recapitulation of what the network state

792
01:22:54,311 --> 01:22:56,372
is. It has all the different elements that

793
01:22:56,372 --> 01:22:58,152
Bology considers kind of

794
01:22:58,152 --> 01:22:59,632
significant or necessary.

795
01:23:00,532 --> 01:23:02,352
Generally, as we kind of mentioned, it's a type

796
01:23:02,352 --> 01:23:04,172
of society that is also like a subscription

797
01:23:04,172 --> 01:23:06,512
service where exit is very important.

798
01:23:06,672 --> 01:23:08,432
You can leave and join a different one if the

799
01:23:08,432 --> 01:23:10,252
current one does not meet your

800
01:23:10,252 --> 01:23:10,752
needs.

801
01:23:12,632 --> 01:23:14,472
We already kind of talked about

802
01:23:14,472 --> 01:23:16,231
the network state and how it fits in.

803
01:23:16,332 --> 01:23:17,811
Is there anything to add to that?

804
01:23:19,012 --> 01:23:19,892
One of the things that

805
01:23:19,892 --> 01:23:22,271
of those four pillars that I find really

806
01:23:22,271 --> 01:23:23,752
interesting and why

807
01:23:24,311 --> 01:23:27,152
I know this would be a very contrarian thing to say,

808
01:23:27,252 --> 01:23:32,512
but why I would bet against Amazon is decentralized production.

809
01:23:33,532 --> 01:23:38,512
Because what we have right now are products,

810
01:23:38,632 --> 01:23:45,172
I think it's 55% of all the things Americans buy come from Amazon or 45 or something like that.

811
01:23:45,172 --> 01:23:48,612
Literally everybody else, Walmart, Target, everybody else,

812
01:23:48,712 --> 01:23:51,572
they fight over the remaining, say, half.

813
01:23:51,572 --> 01:24:02,932
but the model is centralization here's the production it's going to a distribution facility

814
01:24:02,932 --> 01:24:08,592
and then it's getting on a plane or a truck and then it's getting to you and if you break down

815
01:24:08,592 --> 01:24:16,672
the cost structure of what you end up paying a lot of what you pay is delivery and transportation

816
01:24:16,672 --> 01:24:25,852
cost and just simply the energy to get it there. And so with 3D printing, where you have the

817
01:24:25,852 --> 01:24:34,311
ability to have a factory where you have in one side, we're putting in goods. Sorry, we're putting

818
01:24:34,311 --> 01:24:41,992
in raw materials. And in the other side, out comes finished goods. And we can do that in Osborne,

819
01:24:41,992 --> 01:24:49,432
Kansas and we can do that in Manitoba and we can do that in Chile, then I think you see that

820
01:24:49,432 --> 01:24:59,512
the logistical advantage that Amazon holds over competitors that evolved as

821
01:24:59,512 --> 01:25:07,452
when they took that to scale, like that's what they beat people on is we're going to get it to

822
01:25:07,452 --> 01:25:14,771
you fast. And we're going to get it to you with a wide variety of selection. Like that's when

823
01:25:14,771 --> 01:25:19,811
Jeff Bezos talks about people always make the mistake of looking into the future and saying

824
01:25:19,811 --> 01:25:23,372
what's going to be different. And he says, you know, what you should do is look into the future

825
01:25:23,372 --> 01:25:27,212
and say what's going to be the same. And what's going to be the same is that people are going to

826
01:25:27,212 --> 01:25:32,712
want a wide variety. They're going to want it quick and they're going to want it cheap. And

827
01:25:32,712 --> 01:25:52,271
And if we can decentralize production such that there is in every town, every village, every hamlet, they have their own little production facilities that makes their shoes, makes their rugs, makes their their furniture, et cetera, et cetera.

828
01:25:53,492 --> 01:25:58,492
Then we have solved all of those problems at a local level.

829
01:25:58,492 --> 01:25:58,832
Yeah.

830
01:25:58,832 --> 01:26:13,072
So I find that one to be like a really fascinating potential consequence of technology, which is that the decentralized everything.

831
01:26:13,512 --> 01:26:18,072
It's not, hey, we're going to have decentralized money, but Amazon's going to rule the world.

832
01:26:18,172 --> 01:26:19,952
I actually think that it's going to go the other way.

833
01:26:19,952 --> 01:26:20,252
Yeah.

834
01:26:20,452 --> 01:26:24,292
And maybe it'll be Amazon that puts them all there, that puts all these little ones there.

835
01:26:24,292 --> 01:26:42,392
But in the end, I think it's still going to be more advantageous for a community to individually purchase that, run it, and that removes the added layer of the profit incentive of Amazon.

836
01:26:42,612 --> 01:26:44,292
You still have to maintain the equipment and stuff.

837
01:26:44,292 --> 01:26:50,512
But we're just going along this path of removing middlemen.

838
01:26:50,672 --> 01:26:53,052
We're taking middlemen out of banking.

839
01:26:53,052 --> 01:27:04,692
We're taking middlemen out of law. We're taking them out of health care. And so I have no reason to believe that it wouldn't continue with production.

840
01:27:04,692 --> 01:27:22,912
And maybe it continues further. Decentralizing technologies may be even more disruptive than we can imagine. Samson continues on to discuss something we've discussed, Jason Lowery's software thesis. We have six or so podcasts going in-depth into that.

841
01:27:22,912 --> 01:27:29,771
But Samson noted on Twitter that he had initially a lot more space devoted to Lowry and Bology.

842
01:27:30,472 --> 01:27:34,252
He's got like now like half a page on Lowry here.

843
01:27:34,332 --> 01:27:35,452
I could just read the entirety.

844
01:27:35,452 --> 01:27:45,492
But I'll give kind of a summary of Samson's summary of software, which is useful, I think, because software is an often misunderstood thesis.

845
01:27:45,811 --> 01:27:48,252
I don't know that I even fully understand it perfectly.

846
01:27:48,252 --> 01:27:55,672
if you look at the Twitter takes on it there's a lot of hate towards it but it's often by people

847
01:27:55,672 --> 01:28:02,012
who you know haven't done the time to really consider what it means and so Samson it looks

848
01:28:02,012 --> 01:28:07,572
like he did do the time and so here's kind of my summary of Samson's summary the generalize so

849
01:28:07,572 --> 01:28:13,771
generally ownership of a resource is determined by who projects the most power over it you own

850
01:28:13,771 --> 01:28:20,832
something if you can project power to forcibly prevent others from taking it from you war is the

851
01:28:20,832 --> 01:28:27,932
current power projection protocol that determines ownership of societal resources we verify who owns

852
01:28:27,932 --> 01:28:34,212
something according to who is able to project the most military power to control it control access

853
01:28:34,212 --> 01:28:40,652
to it control who has it but war is ineffective against data secured by the bitcoin protocol

854
01:28:40,652 --> 01:28:48,912
No amount of tanks or drones or military violence of any sort can breach the protocol and take the resource that it secures.

855
01:28:49,532 --> 01:28:58,152
We can now, therefore, determine the owner of a resource in a way that doesn't require the projection of kinetic military power.

856
01:28:58,712 --> 01:29:00,872
Samson concludes in one sentence,

857
01:29:00,872 --> 01:29:06,092
Bitcoin is the first property in human history that you cannot take with violence.

858
01:29:06,092 --> 01:29:19,811
So, again, that's a huge condensation of a very complex thesis. But do you feel, I mean, that the software thesis does fit into this accounting of our tribal nature in the practice of making tribes?

859
01:29:19,811 --> 01:29:41,652
Yeah. And we're going to look back on Satoshi Nakamoto as maybe the Wright brothers who invented flight. And we're going to look back on Jason Lowry as the modern day Billy Mitchell who recognized the importance. Satoshi obviously recognized the importance, but Jason takes it to another level that I don't think Satoshi even envisioned.

860
01:29:41,652 --> 01:29:53,372
which is that to understand war you have to understand resources and he does it in software

861
01:29:53,372 --> 01:30:00,692
from a biological level from single-celled organisms all the way up to the most complex

862
01:30:00,692 --> 01:30:09,572
individuals humans that war is controlling access to and denying access from resources

863
01:30:09,572 --> 01:30:25,152
And the way that we, it's a competition and the winner of the competition gets the resources and then they have to continue competing at all times in order to control access to and deny access from those resources.

864
01:30:25,152 --> 01:30:45,792
And the place that we end up going is that we find ourselves realizing that on the outside, war looks like an ideological battle.

865
01:30:45,792 --> 01:30:56,092
You know, capitalist countries don't really go to war against other capitalist countries. Communist countries don't really go to war with other communist countries. It's typically a battle of ideology.

866
01:30:56,092 --> 01:31:23,652
But if you extract out and you understand what Samson introduced before, which is the idea of the in-group and that what we're doing is we're simply directing our energy to the benefit of our in-group and then recognizing that doing so makes our in-group stronger,

867
01:31:23,652 --> 01:31:30,952
even though it comes at the expense of the out group. That's what war is. I'm trying to make my

868
01:31:30,952 --> 01:31:37,152
in-group stronger and I'm going a little over the edge in that I am swinging my fist where it

869
01:31:37,152 --> 01:31:43,992
connects with your nose and I am causing harm to the out group. But because I prefer my in-group

870
01:31:43,992 --> 01:31:52,492
to my out group, then I have no moral problem doing that. And that's all of these wars that

871
01:31:52,492 --> 01:31:59,512
we've been involved in in the United States for the last 80 years they're all moral wars they're

872
01:31:59,512 --> 01:32:08,992
all this is a battle of values this is reportedly moral yeah exactly sold as morality yeah where he

873
01:32:08,992 --> 01:32:22,727
even talks about that there somebody that was fighting and I think the Iraq war and you know talked to some people from the other side and was like oh I didn like I was shocked to find out that they thought of themselves as

874
01:32:22,727 --> 01:32:29,628
the rebel alliance in Star Wars and we were the, you know, we're the Death Star. When over here,

875
01:32:29,628 --> 01:32:34,748
we think of the exact opposite, you know, we're, you know, we're freeing these people, we're

876
01:32:34,748 --> 01:32:43,568
giving them democracy at the point of a gun. Um, and yeah, just the importance of

877
01:32:43,568 --> 01:32:53,167
not having to use physical violence and take lives, um, in order to,

878
01:32:53,167 --> 01:33:01,768
in order to preference your in-group, um, is elevating to all of humanity. Um, and it gives

879
01:33:01,768 --> 01:33:06,688
another just giant feather in the cap of hope.

880
01:33:06,688 --> 01:33:07,128
Yeah.

881
01:33:07,708 --> 01:33:12,428
And Samson, maybe he would have elaborated more had he dedicated the space to it, had

882
01:33:12,428 --> 01:33:18,868
his editor not cruelly forced him to remove that portion.

883
01:33:18,988 --> 01:33:23,908
He might have gone on to Lowry discussing how Bitcoin itself is power projection and

884
01:33:23,908 --> 01:33:25,348
is going to continue the competition.

885
01:33:25,708 --> 01:33:29,988
We all have a tribal drive, in a sense, to compete against the outgroup.

886
01:33:29,988 --> 01:33:43,048
We can now do so peacefully by participating in a hashing power competition through Bitcoin miners out of the loop warfare in which machines do all the fighting by participating in the Bitcoin protocol.

887
01:33:44,068 --> 01:33:46,048
As envisioned by Nikola Tesla.

888
01:33:46,048 --> 01:33:46,408
That's right.

889
01:33:46,408 --> 01:34:01,788
I can't let that opportunity pass that, you know, Bitcoin is not something that we've been working towards this for over a century or it's been the path that we've been on for over a century.

890
01:34:01,788 --> 01:34:14,688
And as Lynn Alden notes in Broken Money that the need for Bitcoin, the need for this has been around since I think it was like 1856, which was the invention of the telegraph.

891
01:34:14,948 --> 01:34:15,088
Yeah.

892
01:34:15,088 --> 01:34:44,628
I probably got that date wrong, but...

893
01:34:45,088 --> 01:34:50,248
Although Samson, so Samson does laud the role that Bitcoin can play here.

894
01:34:50,328 --> 01:34:55,488
He does even talk about Jason Lowery's software thesis, which can sound utopic to a certain degree.

895
01:34:55,968 --> 01:35:03,008
But he does, I mean, he does know and continue on to discuss, I mean, Bitcoin doesn't truly eradicate tribalism as such.

896
01:35:03,908 --> 01:35:05,388
The tribe drive is who we are.

897
01:35:05,488 --> 01:35:06,128
It's part of us.

898
01:35:06,167 --> 01:35:07,088
It's a genetic thing.

899
01:35:07,188 --> 01:35:12,188
At most, of course, it's a set of incentives that plays well with who we are as tribal creatures.

900
01:35:12,188 --> 01:35:27,268
The true solution, in Samson's estimation, comes when we can bootstrap the tribe drive itself to eradicate the malevolent forms of tribalism and help humanity enter a new era.

901
01:35:27,428 --> 01:35:36,828
So we have to be the surgeon doing surgery on ourselves to use this tribe drive to better ourselves, to redirect it to useful ends, so to speak.

902
01:35:36,828 --> 01:35:41,208
so to restate the problem that we're going to that we're going to use tribalism to solve

903
01:35:41,208 --> 01:35:48,608
ideology has been at the center of a lot of 21st century violence ideology is a form of tribalism

904
01:35:48,608 --> 01:35:53,928
is an expression of the tribal drive of the need to tribally signal to see who to trust

905
01:35:53,928 --> 01:36:01,208
ideology is a set of symbols adhered to as a way to signal trustworthiness to other adherents of

906
01:36:01,208 --> 01:36:06,788
the ideology. Ideologies aren't usually a set of arguments we accept. They are just a set of

907
01:36:06,788 --> 01:36:13,028
symbols we buy into so we can determine who to trust. Ideologies have led to a lot of impaired

908
01:36:13,028 --> 01:36:20,088
thinking and bad ideas, in Samson's estimation. Religious ideologies have given us terror bombings.

909
01:36:20,227 --> 01:36:25,868
Religious racial ideologies led to discrimination and racism. Political ideologies, dissension,

910
01:36:25,868 --> 01:36:33,768
cancel culture, political violence. Ideologies have this effect of compromising our cognitive

911
01:36:33,768 --> 01:36:41,268
immune system, our ability. A bad idea is a mind virus. It travels mind to mind like viruses travel

912
01:36:41,268 --> 01:36:48,048
body to body. Ideologies compromise. They weaken the immune system we have to bad ideas.

913
01:36:48,428 --> 01:36:53,088
Samson gives this framework, drawing on Andy Norman's work to discuss cognitive immunology.

914
01:36:53,868 --> 01:37:03,548
Ideologies do this by inducing in us a state of what Samson calls willful unreason, where we refuse to consider.

915
01:37:03,548 --> 01:37:15,268
So willful unreason, when you're under an ideological thrall, is the refusal to consider evidence and instead to defend our ideological group identity at all costs.

916
01:37:15,808 --> 01:37:23,168
Samson calls this the tribe virus when willful unreason is attached to an identity that we will not give up.

917
01:37:23,168 --> 01:37:28,608
In those cases, the tribe trumps truth because the tribe is what ensures our survival.

918
01:37:28,788 --> 01:37:30,648
There's evolutionary reasoning behind this.

919
01:37:31,068 --> 01:37:39,248
There's a reason why we adhere to ideologies even when the evidence tells us that our ideology is bunk because they help us survive.

920
01:37:39,908 --> 01:37:48,048
Samson believes then that the solution is for all of us to join or subscribe to a metatribal identity.

921
01:37:48,488 --> 01:37:53,828
An identity that sits on top of all of our other identities.

922
01:37:54,068 --> 01:37:56,328
It's the top of the identity stack, so to speak.

923
01:37:56,788 --> 01:37:59,868
The metatribal identity has only one principle.

924
01:38:00,328 --> 01:38:07,988
It is the metabelief, a belief about beliefs, the metabelief that beliefs should change in response to evidence.

925
01:38:07,988 --> 01:38:13,888
that is the meta the metal the meta tribal identity is designed to surgically remove

926
01:38:13,888 --> 01:38:20,428
the willful unreason portion of all the ideologies we might adhere to so in this view you can still

927
01:38:20,428 --> 01:38:25,248
adhere to whatever other ideology you can still be a progressive a christian whatever

928
01:38:25,248 --> 01:38:31,568
but you have to subject all of them to the meta belief the overriding commitment that you will

929
01:38:31,568 --> 01:38:37,268
be willing to change your commitments those other ideologies in response to the evidence so in this

930
01:38:37,268 --> 01:38:43,188
view, if you have the metatribal identity of revising your views based on evidence, if you

931
01:38:43,188 --> 01:38:47,828
believe that Donald Trump is an evil authoritarian who's trying to become king, you can still believe

932
01:38:47,828 --> 01:38:53,168
that, but you have to be open to evidence that would disprove that. And then to actually change

933
01:38:53,168 --> 01:39:00,248
your mind if you do receive such evidence, the overall idea of the metatrib is to create a tribe

934
01:39:00,248 --> 01:39:05,968
that is simply called Team Human. So one final and universal tribe to rule them all and to restate

935
01:39:05,968 --> 01:39:13,868
what that entails, Samson gives us the creed of Team Human, the MetaTribe. This is the belief that

936
01:39:13,868 --> 01:39:18,888
everybody's a member of Team Human, the MetaTribe would have to have. That is, I'm a member of Team

937
01:39:18,888 --> 01:39:24,227
Human. Our creed is that beliefs can change in light of evidence. We are a community of inquiry

938
01:39:24,227 --> 01:39:28,768
where beliefs are deemed reasonable if they can withstand reasonable challenges to their veracity.

939
01:39:29,288 --> 01:39:35,688
We are the MetaTribe. My question to you then, Lucas, is do you find that, I guess, viable

940
01:39:35,688 --> 01:39:40,348
practical, realistic, beautiful, whatever. Do you think that you are a member of Team Human

941
01:39:40,348 --> 01:39:47,988
and do you have this metatribal belief? Yeah, I think we all want to, we all aspire to be

942
01:39:47,988 --> 01:39:57,428
the person who sees the world as it is unaffected by your bias. And this is the value of steel

943
01:39:57,428 --> 01:40:05,928
Manning, the other side's position where you make the case for the side that you are opposed to

944
01:40:05,928 --> 01:40:13,227
from their side using their best argument in a way that they would not object to.

945
01:40:14,768 --> 01:40:23,048
And what this makes me think of is just you sit next to somebody who's a rabid fan of a football

946
01:40:23,048 --> 01:40:31,068
team and there's a penalty on their team. And of course, they think that it's spurious and they

947
01:40:31,068 --> 01:40:35,568
think that it's wrong. And then the exact same thing happens for the other team. And of course,

948
01:40:35,628 --> 01:40:43,528
it's deserved. I'm a Kansas City Royals baseball fan. And in 1985, they won the World Series,

949
01:40:43,648 --> 01:40:49,348
but they won the World Series on a blown call at first base that when you review the tape,

950
01:40:49,348 --> 01:40:59,448
the guy was clearly out by like six to eight feet like it's not it is not justifiable at all

951
01:40:59,448 --> 01:41:09,168
yeah um and and so you know as a royals fan i'm glad that i was not only alive but um able to

952
01:41:09,168 --> 01:41:15,128
participate in 2015 when they won their technically second world series but to me it was the first one

953
01:41:15,128 --> 01:41:16,568
because I saw that video.

954
01:41:16,888 --> 01:41:18,488
And I looked at that and I goes,

955
01:41:18,568 --> 01:41:21,248
there is no way that I can justify

956
01:41:21,248 --> 01:41:26,208
supporting the end result of them becoming the champions

957
01:41:26,208 --> 01:41:30,168
when that was the call that gave them the opportunity to win.

958
01:41:30,227 --> 01:41:31,908
Without that, then they lose.

959
01:41:31,908 --> 01:41:35,888
And so we all want to aspire to be that person

960
01:41:35,888 --> 01:41:42,648
that is comfortable in the face of opposition

961
01:41:42,648 --> 01:41:47,508
and that's able to face their own bias.

962
01:41:47,508 --> 01:41:53,148
And Samson does a good job of giving us these examples where, you know,

963
01:41:53,368 --> 01:42:00,288
if you, in the scenario that Donald Trump is accused of tax evasion

964
01:42:00,288 --> 01:42:07,148
and there's, you know, a misdemeanor is elevated to 30-some felonies

965
01:42:07,148 --> 01:42:12,488
because it's passed the statute of limitations, is that deserve it?

966
01:42:12,648 --> 01:42:18,148
And, oh, you know, on one side, of course, that is, you know, this is a horrible person who's doing horrible things.

967
01:42:18,248 --> 01:42:26,048
And, OK, well, what if it's Joe Biden or what if it's Barack Obama or Donald Trump is a racist or not?

968
01:42:26,588 --> 01:42:29,368
He's a racist or he's a rapist.

969
01:42:29,908 --> 01:42:31,708
You know, that's horrible things.

970
01:42:31,968 --> 01:42:33,968
You know, it's just a terrible person.

971
01:42:33,968 --> 01:42:38,948
Well, OK, but, you know, Bill Clinton settled like a half a dozen rape cases.

972
01:42:38,948 --> 01:42:51,748
Is that something that you also feel the same amount of fervent emotionality about or that you also see as just as legitimate?

973
01:42:51,748 --> 01:43:01,388
the benefit of steel manning is just that you make yourself more comfortable in the beliefs that you have

974
01:43:01,388 --> 01:43:10,088
because you've put them to the ultimate test of fighting the war for the other side with the best weapons that are available.

975
01:43:10,088 --> 01:43:13,248
Yeah, he calls that the moral mirror test.

976
01:43:13,428 --> 01:43:19,848
When you imagine one figure of the opposing tribe doing something and then imagine a member of your tribe doing the same thing,

977
01:43:19,848 --> 01:43:23,248
do you have the same emotional interior reaction to that?

978
01:43:23,348 --> 01:43:25,148
And in that way, you can evaluate your tribal identity.

979
01:43:25,548 --> 01:43:29,288
But I want to get you on record with the response to this question.

980
01:43:29,608 --> 01:43:31,488
Are you a member of Team Human, the Meta Tribe?

981
01:43:31,548 --> 01:43:36,948
Do you think that adhering to a meta belief that all beliefs should be revisable based

982
01:43:36,948 --> 01:43:42,468
on openness to the evidence, that that should sit atop the identity stack, so to speak,

983
01:43:42,688 --> 01:43:48,268
and that that is a commitment that you think for yourself is valuable, or you should commit

984
01:43:48,268 --> 01:43:49,368
to that and other people should as well?

985
01:43:49,848 --> 01:44:03,308
And it's tough because the example he gives in the book is, you know, a debate between an atheist and a believer in Christ.

986
01:44:03,308 --> 01:44:07,828
And he asks the atheist what it would take in order to change his opinion.

987
01:44:08,468 --> 01:44:09,368
And he says evidence.

988
01:44:09,608 --> 01:44:12,227
And you ask the believer what it would take to change his opinion.

989
01:44:12,368 --> 01:44:13,088
And he says nothing.

990
01:44:13,088 --> 01:44:21,208
And Samson calls that out as, you know, this is the thing that causes our problems, you know.

991
01:44:21,988 --> 01:44:27,328
Yet there, to me, is something so beautiful about faith.

992
01:44:28,608 --> 01:44:36,748
There is something beautiful about not needing evidence.

993
01:44:38,108 --> 01:44:42,988
It's hope, and hope is what moves us forward.

994
01:44:43,088 --> 01:45:03,368
Hope is what gives us the, hope is what gives us an ability to better the world and think that there's a reason to get up in the morning and not be in constant existential dread.

995
01:45:03,368 --> 01:45:06,608
so I

996
01:45:06,608 --> 01:45:09,768
I'm glad that you're putting me to the fire on that

997
01:45:09,768 --> 01:45:11,488
because I do really struggle with that one

998
01:45:11,488 --> 01:45:12,568
because I

999
01:45:12,568 --> 01:45:17,388
above all else

1000
01:45:17,388 --> 01:45:18,727
what I want

1001
01:45:18,727 --> 01:45:21,948
I think is the ability to believe

1002
01:45:21,948 --> 01:45:24,288
in something without requiring evidence

1003
01:45:24,288 --> 01:45:26,227
and just because

1004
01:45:26,227 --> 01:45:28,408
I think it's beautiful

1005
01:45:28,408 --> 01:45:30,448
I think it's romantic

1006
01:45:30,448 --> 01:45:31,628
and I think it's

1007
01:45:31,628 --> 01:45:38,648
yeah, it's, it's a wonderful, it's a wonderful position to be in. So I, yeah, I'm, I don't know

1008
01:45:38,648 --> 01:45:48,488
if I'm, I don't know if I could come around to that just because I think it is, I think,

1009
01:45:48,488 --> 01:45:57,108
I think that it is what drives us as humanity is that we do have hope, that we do have faith,

1010
01:45:57,108 --> 01:46:01,068
and that our reach doesn't exceed our grasp.

1011
01:46:01,388 --> 01:46:03,108
What's a heaven for without that?

1012
01:46:03,888 --> 01:46:05,748
And so, yeah, I don't know.

1013
01:46:05,908 --> 01:46:09,268
I think I may fail that more, whatever you call it,

1014
01:46:09,668 --> 01:46:10,768
moral mirror or whatever.

1015
01:46:10,808 --> 01:46:12,848
No, that's the meta-tribal,

1016
01:46:13,008 --> 01:46:15,748
the meta-belief for the meta-tribe of team humanity,

1017
01:46:15,988 --> 01:46:16,508
that commitment.

1018
01:46:17,408 --> 01:46:19,288
Yeah, I wouldn't, I think it's,

1019
01:46:19,408 --> 01:46:20,828
I disagree with Samson on this.

1020
01:46:20,968 --> 01:46:23,028
I don't think, he has that dialogue you mentioned

1021
01:46:23,028 --> 01:46:24,428
between Bill Nye and Ken Ham.

1022
01:46:24,428 --> 01:46:26,828
Nye says, I'll change my mind based on the evidence.

1023
01:46:26,828 --> 01:46:31,028
Ham says, I'm a Christian. Nothing will convince that the word of God is not true.

1024
01:46:31,748 --> 01:46:35,028
Nye's response, I find to be glib, trivial and wrong.

1025
01:46:35,528 --> 01:46:38,968
Like, who decides what evidence is? Evidence of what?

1026
01:46:39,428 --> 01:46:41,248
Why does evidence work?

1027
01:46:41,588 --> 01:46:48,008
Does evidence itself presuppose a law like observable objective reality that one can only accept based on faith?

1028
01:46:48,008 --> 01:46:49,808
I mean, that's kind of the natural law theory.

1029
01:46:49,808 --> 01:46:58,808
Like this idea that you can be a scientist without and that that can supplement or like can like supplant your whole substantive view of reality.

1030
01:46:59,068 --> 01:47:01,368
I just find that to be very, very wrong.

1031
01:47:01,508 --> 01:47:09,808
Neil deGrasse Tyson had this idea at one point that we could have a virtual country called Rationalia where all policy was decided on the weight of the evidence.

1032
01:47:10,408 --> 01:47:14,388
And it's just like that's like evidence does not work in that way.

1033
01:47:14,388 --> 01:47:35,088
And again, there's all sorts of metaphysical arguments about like, what is this evidence? What's going to be sufficient evidence? Who decides what the evidence is? Like evidence of what? Does evidence presuppose that there's a non-material truth or no truth? Like you said, that our reach can never exceed our grasp or whatever, that there's no truth beyond human kin.

1034
01:47:35,088 --> 01:47:43,148
Can we, I mean, I just find that such a blinkered and small conception of what the human experience is to say that evidence will rule over everything.

1035
01:47:43,408 --> 01:47:57,408
I certainly have commitments that I would say no evidence could convince me because what I mean as a shorthand is no evidence I could receive through the modality of my five senses could convince me that this truth that I perceived in a different way is not true.

1036
01:47:57,408 --> 01:48:09,128
So in James, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, he talks about how the mystic who has had an encounter with God is, in some sense, you can't argue with them because they had an encounter.

1037
01:48:09,268 --> 01:48:10,248
They had an experience.

1038
01:48:10,408 --> 01:48:11,388
They received evidence.

1039
01:48:11,388 --> 01:48:15,488
The religious person who says, I'm a Christian, they have received evidence.

1040
01:48:15,648 --> 01:48:17,048
They feel God's presence.

1041
01:48:17,048 --> 01:48:22,227
And so like Ham wasn't saying when he says nothing will convince that the word of God is not true.

1042
01:48:22,328 --> 01:48:31,108
What he means is I've had a mystical perception of a truth that is not going to be disproved by you showing me how, you know, humans evolve from apes.

1043
01:48:31,208 --> 01:48:32,808
There's different types of evidence.

1044
01:48:32,988 --> 01:48:38,088
And like that perception of a spiritual reality sits atop the stack for me.

1045
01:48:38,188 --> 01:48:44,588
And so like there's a sign from a Neutral Milk Hotel song, like how strange it is to be anything at all.

1046
01:48:44,588 --> 01:48:51,388
And that's like a truth that sits atop my stack that like there's an utter strangeness to every moment of existence.

1047
01:48:51,388 --> 01:48:54,968
Just to be here now is so utterly strange.

1048
01:48:55,088 --> 01:49:02,188
And like that repels any sort of evidence to disconfirm that there's something distinct about this.

1049
01:49:02,268 --> 01:49:05,208
And so like I don't agree with evidence or science, I guess.

1050
01:49:05,208 --> 01:49:15,388
love love is the answer and love requires faith beyond what the evidence shows because

1051
01:49:15,388 --> 01:49:26,088
to love someone is to disregard that one day and as long as we're quoting from songs

1052
01:49:26,088 --> 01:49:30,788
And Jason Isbell has a song called If We Were Vampires.

1053
01:49:31,748 --> 01:49:39,988
And in it, he talks about, you know, one day one of us is going to be alone.

1054
01:49:41,588 --> 01:49:50,188
And, you know, that's that realization that this isn't going to, I'm entering this knowing that it's going to end.

1055
01:49:50,188 --> 01:49:56,048
I'm entering this knowing that you're not perfect, that you're going to fail me.

1056
01:49:56,168 --> 01:49:57,368
I'm going to fail you.

1057
01:49:58,028 --> 01:50:05,668
Yet I'm going to move into that direction of love because of the faith that I have,

1058
01:50:05,748 --> 01:50:09,328
that things will become better because I'm participating in this.

1059
01:50:09,408 --> 01:50:17,688
I just quoted this on X this morning, which is this is Derek Sivers wrote a book called

1060
01:50:17,688 --> 01:50:26,008
useful but not true, but there are also things that are true but not useful.

1061
01:50:26,708 --> 01:50:33,848
And while it may be true that there is no evidence for God or there is no evidence for

1062
01:50:33,848 --> 01:50:38,988
the perfect relationship because the perfect relationship doesn't exist,

1063
01:50:38,988 --> 01:50:43,388
it doesn't mean that you shouldn't pursue it. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't

1064
01:50:43,388 --> 01:50:48,348
move into that direction because it does.

1065
01:50:48,428 --> 01:50:52,868
It comes back down to, you know, am I team human?

1066
01:50:52,948 --> 01:51:00,068
I'm team human because I believe in the power of love and that is faith.

1067
01:51:00,068 --> 01:51:06,068
And it does not require evidence and it does not care about it.

1068
01:51:06,308 --> 01:51:12,208
You know, I don't need evidence of love to know that it exists.

1069
01:51:12,208 --> 01:51:19,668
and to experience it is ineffable.

1070
01:51:19,948 --> 01:51:23,448
It is not able to be shared.

1071
01:51:23,768 --> 01:51:29,968
You know, this is why I think it's like 99% or 97% of all songs are written about love.

1072
01:51:30,128 --> 01:51:33,008
We're just trying to explain this thing that we can't explain

1073
01:51:33,008 --> 01:51:36,088
and we're going to keep doing it forever and ever and ever.

1074
01:51:36,088 --> 01:51:41,227
The scientist glibly responds, well, it's just a set of hormones, Lucas.

1075
01:51:41,428 --> 01:51:41,668
Yeah.

1076
01:51:41,668 --> 01:52:11,648
Yeah. And that's the naivete and the ignorance that is so obvious when you hear someone talk about psychedelics who's never done psychedelics, who's never had that out-of-body experience that you experience during meditation or breath work or even during like incredibly vigorous exercise when you are leaving this.

1077
01:52:11,668 --> 01:52:21,248
thinking part of yourself and you're just being, um, it is like, I've, I've heard people, I won't

1078
01:52:21,248 --> 01:52:26,607
say who, um, cause hopefully we'll get them on the podcast sometime, but I've heard people dismiss

1079
01:52:26,607 --> 01:52:34,988
psychedelics. Um, and as someone who's, who's done, it's just you, like what you said about God,

1080
01:52:34,988 --> 01:52:41,088
um, is that you don't, it's very obvious when you haven't felt that experience because the way

1081
01:52:41,088 --> 01:52:46,268
people talk about it. And if you hear somebody talk about psychedelics or, you know, having an

1082
01:52:46,268 --> 01:52:54,368
out-of-body experience, however you access that, to hear someone who's ignorant of that talk about

1083
01:52:54,368 --> 01:53:01,648
it and try to justify a position on it is, it just sounds silly. And you're like, I,

1084
01:53:02,328 --> 01:53:06,908
another, you know, is there any way to learn from what you've been told or do you have to really

1085
01:53:06,908 --> 01:53:07,948
You hold the experience.

1086
01:53:08,528 --> 01:53:09,048
And you do.

1087
01:53:09,168 --> 01:53:18,408
You have to hold the experience in order to understand what it means to be loved, what it means to feel God, what it means to truly be a part of team human.

1088
01:53:18,408 --> 01:53:18,848
Yeah.

1089
01:53:19,508 --> 01:53:19,948
Yeah.

1090
01:53:20,128 --> 01:53:24,488
And I will say that Samson, he does endorse entheogens in this book.

1091
01:53:24,548 --> 01:53:36,048
Not endorse in the sense that you should do them, but he notes that as a camp crafting experience, entheogens, hallucinogens, certain types of compounds that stimulate certain sorts of experiences can be useful.

1092
01:53:36,048 --> 01:53:40,607
maybe as adverse experiences or team building or to give you your group a sense of identity and

1093
01:53:40,607 --> 01:53:47,448
purpose um so he's not i see what he's doing here like you know he's identified what is bad about

1094
01:53:47,448 --> 01:53:53,288
many ideologies they induce a sense of willful unreason that's has caused a lot of harm a lot

1095
01:53:53,288 --> 01:53:59,368
of pain you know a lot of death there's a lot of blood flowing in rivers for this very reason that

1096
01:53:59,368 --> 01:54:05,908
we're willful we we have willful unreason and won't revise our opinions about certain things

1097
01:54:05,908 --> 01:54:12,727
but i just don't think that this idea of team human is a useful one um that we can have a

1098
01:54:12,727 --> 01:54:20,488
commitment to revise everything based on the weight of the evidence because even that conception of

1099
01:54:20,488 --> 01:54:25,648
the evidence it presupposes like an enlightenment tradition that people would say comes from the

1100
01:54:25,648 --> 01:54:32,008
Judeo-Christian, like, this time in European history where a specific conception of truth

1101
01:54:32,008 --> 01:54:38,888
arose that has an antecedent tradition that brings us to that point. And you can't just divorce it

1102
01:54:38,888 --> 01:54:43,948
from that thing. I think that, like, truth always occurs within a specific tradition.

1103
01:54:45,168 --> 01:54:48,828
Another Alistair MacIntyre reference, even just the title of this book,

1104
01:54:49,068 --> 01:54:54,908
Whose Justice? Which Rationality? You can't just appeal to rationality or evidence. Rationality

1105
01:54:54,908 --> 01:55:00,588
evidence only makes sense within a specific tradition that defines like what you know he

1106
01:55:00,588 --> 01:55:04,948
endorses the concentric circle conception of morality that's based on utilitarian moral

1107
01:55:04,948 --> 01:55:11,107
reasoning he talks about peter singer in here i just disagree with utilitarianism as such for

1108
01:55:11,107 --> 01:55:16,368
reasons that i mean like we could get into as far as alistair mcintyre and his description of virtue

1109
01:55:16,368 --> 01:55:22,908
ethics stemming from aristotle and so i don't find the concentric circle you know to be persuasive

1110
01:55:22,908 --> 01:55:30,168
I think that it's trying to graft on a philosophical tradition that one doesn't need to have to recognize the evils of tribalism.

1111
01:55:30,688 --> 01:55:34,188
And again, like this idea that evidence will save us.

1112
01:55:34,528 --> 01:55:36,148
Nothing is going to save us from who we are.

1113
01:55:36,308 --> 01:55:40,488
It's going to be an irrational enterprise we all embark on together to save ourselves.

1114
01:55:41,028 --> 01:55:45,808
Yeah. And the arguing over truth is just tilting at windmills.

1115
01:55:45,968 --> 01:55:52,208
We talked about this with Jason Lowry's software thesis and the understanding of what science is.

1116
01:55:52,208 --> 01:56:07,628
I had looked this quote up yesterday. I'm going to butcher it. It's from Richard Feynman. But science is, you know, the science is the process of believing in the ignorance of experts or something like that.

1117
01:56:07,628 --> 01:56:22,248
And with Jason Lowry's software thesis, when he does this grounded theory methodology, as opposed to the hypothesis approach, the hypothesis approach gives us two things.

1118
01:56:22,568 --> 01:56:23,628
There is no truth.

1119
01:56:24,088 --> 01:56:25,068
There is no truth.

1120
01:56:25,168 --> 01:56:32,348
We either prove something to be false under certain conditions or we prove it to not yet be false.

1121
01:56:32,348 --> 01:56:41,268
and we never introduce the idea of truth because we we can't we can't say with certainty that

1122
01:56:41,268 --> 01:56:48,488
something is a truth and with the grounded theory methodology which lowry does and i would say that

1123
01:56:48,488 --> 01:56:56,688
samson absolutely has used that type of approach in our type of tribal future is that you come at

1124
01:56:56,688 --> 01:57:04,227
it from different angles and from every attack surface that you can find. And in doing so,

1125
01:57:04,568 --> 01:57:14,388
you don't find a truth, but you get further away from the false and hopefully closer to the

1126
01:57:14,388 --> 01:57:21,648
direction of truth. So yeah, this, you know, we just need to move beyond and dismiss this idea

1127
01:57:21,648 --> 01:57:26,308
that we're fighting over what's true and what's not, because there is like, we have to accept that

1128
01:57:26,308 --> 01:57:34,107
there is no truth, that we are just existing and we have things that we know that are false

1129
01:57:34,107 --> 01:57:38,948
and we have things that we know not yet to be false.

1130
01:57:39,928 --> 01:57:46,008
But as we enter this era of quantum, you know, I'm sitting here and you're sitting there,

1131
01:57:46,348 --> 01:57:47,908
but not in the quantum world.

1132
01:57:48,468 --> 01:57:50,968
You know, everything is everywhere all at once.

1133
01:57:51,068 --> 01:57:52,968
Everything is affecting everything all at once.

1134
01:57:52,968 --> 01:58:18,968
And that totally breaks our ability to understand the world as we see it now. But that is not false. And so it may not be true, but it's certainly not false that this particle here affects this particle here at the other end of the universe instantaneously. And we know that to be not false.

1135
01:58:18,968 --> 01:58:38,028
And so divorcing ourselves from the need to wrap ourselves in a blanket of truth is paramount in moving forward and being able to understand more about the world around us.

1136
01:58:38,028 --> 01:58:39,968
And there's beauty in that understanding.

1137
01:58:40,128 --> 01:58:43,428
And that's another Feynman quote, which was,

1138
01:58:43,828 --> 01:58:53,628
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars mere globes of gas atoms, but nothing is mere.

1139
01:58:54,548 --> 01:59:01,528
I, too, can see the stars as masses of gas, but they are mysterious masses of twinkling lights,

1140
01:59:01,768 --> 01:59:07,488
and their motions are determined by laws which we didn't invent but discovered.

1141
01:59:08,028 --> 01:59:13,408
And we find that, you know, the more that you understand something, the more beautiful it is.

1142
01:59:13,488 --> 01:59:16,308
The deeper you get into the law, the more beautiful law is.

1143
01:59:16,388 --> 01:59:19,448
The more I get into music, the more beautiful music is.

1144
01:59:19,508 --> 01:59:22,008
So we just move closer and closer to truth.

1145
01:59:22,128 --> 01:59:25,328
But we need to accept that it's not a place.

1146
01:59:25,408 --> 01:59:26,448
It's a journey.

1147
01:59:27,248 --> 01:59:28,568
And we're on that destiny.

1148
01:59:28,748 --> 01:59:30,048
We're on that journey together.

1149
01:59:31,908 --> 01:59:32,388
Wow.

1150
01:59:33,128 --> 01:59:37,448
From quantum theory to the nature of truth as a journey.

1151
01:59:37,448 --> 01:59:41,348
I don't know that I – my head's not big enough to fit these thoughts.

1152
01:59:41,727 --> 01:59:42,988
So I'm just a mere Bitcoiner.

1153
01:59:43,148 --> 01:59:43,788
That's all I do.

1154
01:59:43,968 --> 01:59:46,268
I just stack my coins, man, stack my stats.

1155
01:59:47,428 --> 01:59:50,288
So I evolved just for that reason.

1156
01:59:50,628 --> 01:59:51,908
Out of my depth, brother.

1157
01:59:53,268 --> 01:59:54,568
Is that you tapping out?

1158
01:59:54,888 --> 01:59:57,708
I think I tapped out long ago, man.

1159
01:59:57,768 --> 02:00:00,068
I couldn't – no, this is a fascinating book.

1160
02:00:00,268 --> 02:00:01,708
I'm not saying I'm tapping out.

1161
02:00:01,808 --> 02:00:05,508
I'm just saying it's gone beyond my grasp to comprehend truth here.

1162
02:00:05,508 --> 02:00:07,788
And I think it's a great book, I guess.

1163
02:00:08,208 --> 02:00:12,288
I don't know how to recap the conversation because it's been sprawling and a lot of fun.

1164
02:00:13,068 --> 02:00:15,107
I disagree with parts of the book, obviously.

1165
02:00:15,488 --> 02:00:16,548
I agree with a lot of it.

1166
02:00:16,628 --> 02:00:19,288
And whether I disagree or agree, it's very useful.

1167
02:00:19,468 --> 02:00:25,508
If you want to craft a camp, very good kind of contours for how to do that, outlines, parameters.

1168
02:00:26,568 --> 02:00:30,268
Very interesting science as far as like why we're tribal creatures.

1169
02:00:30,268 --> 02:00:36,768
and highly recommended for Bitcoiners exactly because you're only going to hit Bitcoin, you know, 360 pages in.

1170
02:00:36,768 --> 02:00:45,508
Yeah. You know, as we leave, there's one thing that we didn't talk about, which is not the overarching thesis or anything,

1171
02:00:45,708 --> 02:00:51,348
but it's what I want to leave people with, which is the importance of having a goal.

1172
02:00:52,768 --> 02:01:00,248
Samson notes, you know, all every study that has ever been conducted on goals versus not having goals.

1173
02:01:00,268 --> 02:01:05,148
is if you state a goal, then you're more likely to achieve something.

1174
02:01:05,948 --> 02:01:10,768
You know, it may not be the goal that you state, but at least you are,

1175
02:01:11,768 --> 02:01:16,588
you have given yourself a target, you know, as Jordan Peterson would say,

1176
02:01:16,588 --> 02:01:22,727
you know, you've given yourself something to aim at, you know, a peak to ascend.

1177
02:01:23,548 --> 02:01:29,968
And as you move in the direction of that goal, you start to marshal your resources

1178
02:01:29,968 --> 02:01:36,288
more efficiently and direct them into the purpose that you're trying to accomplish.

1179
02:01:37,588 --> 02:01:46,008
And it's not achieving the goal that is important. It's moving closer to it. It's not

1180
02:01:46,008 --> 02:01:52,528
ascending the mountain and being on the plateau. It's this step and this step and this step. It's

1181
02:01:52,528 --> 02:01:57,808
not the mountain. It's just another step. And so if you've made it this deep into the conversation

1182
02:01:57,808 --> 02:02:00,948
and you're looking for something that is a takeaway,

1183
02:02:01,888 --> 02:02:04,588
just one thing to walk away from this,

1184
02:02:06,208 --> 02:02:07,168
set a goal.

1185
02:02:08,008 --> 02:02:12,828
Set a goal and identify the steps

1186
02:02:12,828 --> 02:02:14,388
that it takes you to reach that goal

1187
02:02:14,388 --> 02:02:18,568
and give yourself something that moves you

1188
02:02:18,568 --> 02:02:21,688
in that direction, start to lay that groundwork.

1189
02:02:24,107 --> 02:02:25,768
You know, that was, you know,

1190
02:02:25,768 --> 02:02:30,148
We first started having these conversations and we didn't have a goal.

1191
02:02:30,328 --> 02:02:32,748
We just had a, well, it was a goal.

1192
02:02:32,868 --> 02:02:34,068
It was, hey, we're going to put these up.

1193
02:02:34,368 --> 02:02:35,107
You know, that's a goal.

1194
02:02:35,368 --> 02:02:36,528
Like a goal is there.

1195
02:02:36,607 --> 02:02:38,727
And then you can move to a different goal.

1196
02:02:39,328 --> 02:02:42,308
And every time you climb a mountain, you can just climb another mountain.

1197
02:02:42,308 --> 02:02:46,868
And every time you reach something and accomplish something, you can just go higher.

1198
02:02:47,628 --> 02:02:55,508
And so, yeah, that's what I would say is set a goal and find yourself in a better position today than you were yesterday.

1199
02:02:55,768 --> 02:02:56,268
Right on.

1200
02:02:56,528 --> 02:02:57,227
Practical Goal.

1201
02:02:57,528 --> 02:02:59,768
Buy Samson's book, read it, and let us know your thoughts.

1202
02:02:59,988 --> 02:03:01,088
But yeah, appreciate that, Lucas.

1203
02:03:01,548 --> 02:03:01,828
All right.

1204
02:03:02,008 --> 02:03:02,328
Thank you.