Interview with writer and researcher Nadia Asparouhova (author of Working in Public and Antimemetics) on how Jhana meditation reshaped her thinking about being human in the age of AI. After two retreats she could quiet her mind, shift her emotional state at will, and experience "cessations" in which consciousness abruptly cuts out and returns. Topics covered: Jhana as a goal-oriented meditation practice that actively cultivates concentrated bliss rather than emphasizing passive observation; how advanced meditation silenced her inner voice, challenging the idea that self-talk is essential to being human; Julian Jaynes's theory that inner dialogue emerged only a few thousand years ago and its implications for how we assess the intelligence or sentience of LLMs; her embrace of the unknowability of how LLMs predict their next token; and how she uses ChatGPT as a writing partner, both to develop early ideas and to refine phrasing. # Channel Presentation Observations ## Explicit Self-Description Evidence - **Show name and host identity**: The closing segment names the show as "AI and I" hosted by **Dan Shipper**: "hit like, smash subscribe... a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship." - **Claimed content focus**: The outro positions the show around AI topics, specifically "pure, unadulterated knowledge bombs about ChatGPT." - **Guest introduction framing**: The host describes the guest as a "writer and a researcher" and names her prior work (*Working in Public* with Stripe Press) and upcoming book (*Anti-Mimetics*), signaling an interview format featuring notable authors/researchers. ## Observable Presentation Patterns ### Interview Format with Expert Guests - The video is structured as a long-form, conversational interview with a single guest (Nadia Asparouhova), covering her personal experience, research, and upcoming book. - The host repeatedly cites his own reading and prior episodes: "I actually had the author on this show... like six months ago" (referring to the author of *Listening to Prozac*) and "Quinton the founder was on the show the other day." ### Intended Audience - **Technology-fluent, intellectually curious listeners**: The discussion assumes familiarity with concepts like LLMs, ChatGPT, deep research features, token prediction ("how does the language model decide what token comes next?"), and hallucination in AI outputs. - **Audience interested in the intersection of technology and humanities**: The host explicitly praises the guest's work "at those intersections of technology and like the humanities" — a framing consistent with the show's editorial taste. - **Meditation/contemplative-curious tech audience**: Both host and guest assume listener interest in jhana meditation, retreats, and consciousness research. ### Claimed Scope of the Channel - Based on this episode's presentation, the channel covers: AI tools and their role in creative/knowledge work, consciousness and philosophy of mind, mental health, writing, and technology culture. - The host presents himself as an **investor and practitioner** in the AI space ("I'm an investor in this company called Portola"), adding a participant-observer dimension to the show's perspective. ### Host Presentation Style - Highly personal disclosure: the host shares "I have OCD and it was really bad for a long time... the thing that really worked is Zoloft," establishing an intimate, first-person interview register. - Enthusiastic, promotional outro tone with exaggerated engagement pleas ("smash that like button... it's the epitome of awesomeness") and a humorous AI-voiced sign-off ("Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you"). ## Guest's Self-Description (Channel-Adjacent Context) - The guest describes her method: "I want to actually... dive in and experience the thing," valuing first-person immersion over arm's-length coverage. - She promotes her site: "just go to nadia.xyz — that has all the links to all the things." ## Distinction Notes - All observations above come from the video itself; no curated metadata was supplied. - Claims about the show (name, host, topic focus) come from the outro and host's own statements within the transcript, not external sources. # Delivery Observation: Nadia Asparouhova on *AI and I* ## Conversation Structure - **Interview format with heavy host participation**: The host (Dan Shipper) contributes long, substantive turns — sometimes several hundred words — sharing his own meditation history, reading recommendations (*Listening to Prozac*), and personal experience with OCD and Zoloft. - **Cold-open teaser**: The video begins with excerpted highlights from the guest ("our LM conscious intelligent, whatever you want to call it. I'm just like, why not?") before the formal welcome at ~[75]: "Nadia, welcome to the show." - **Agenda-signaling transitions**: The host explicitly flags topic shifts: "we'll get into the AI stuff. I think there's a natural AI thing going on there, but maybe we can start with that," and later "I want to make it more concrete for people." ## Guest's Delivery Patterns ### Conversational, hedged reasoning - Nadia frequently signals provisional positions rather than firm claims: "I'm still trying to sort of workshop all this," "I have some thoughts on it, but I don't have strongly held opinions on it. Um, so I'll just sort of play around with it a little bit." - She repeatedly discloses uncertainty directly: "I don't know exactly where do we draw the line," "I don't really know," "I can't tell the difference anyway." ### Filler-heavy, self-interrupted speech - Recurring hedges and restarts: "you you you your your your meditation," "um, yeah, I mean I I I," "I don't I don't I don't have." - Softening phrases recur: **"sort of"** and **"kind of"** appear extremely often ("a little bit," "just sort of like," "it's it's it's pretty wild"). ### First-person experiential evidence - A consistent teaching habit: grounding abstract concepts in her own experience — using her newborn son as a meditation object ("I was using my my son, who was three months old at the time"), and recounting her cessation event ("I came back from that being like, geez, what is reality?"). - She cites the Tolstoy line and immediately extends it: "about families, but it's true for people too, right?" ### Analogy as an explanatory device - Repeated use of comparisons to explain meditation states: "subjectively very similar to what people report from like psychedelics," "comparable to you know taking MDMA," "similar to like you know going into a coma or um general anesthesia." - The host mirrors this habit: "it's sort of like the question of can every human run a marathon?" ## Host's Delivery Patterns - **Enthusiastic validation**: frequent affirmations — "Super excited to have you," "you're just so good at doing really highly crafted, thoughtful, great writing," "you're you're making my brain light up." - **Self-deprecating asides**: "I've just blabbed for a long time," "maybe I'm just sort of like enjoys resisting legibility a little bit" (guest). - **Playful humor at the close**: "I always say please and thank you because you just never know when it's going to become really sentient and take over." ## Closing Convention - The episode ends with an unusual, satirically overstated outro delivered apparently by an AI voice: "You absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe… Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you." This contrasts sharply with the reflective tone of the interview body. ## Uncertainty Notes - Timestamps beyond the transcript's bracketed line indices are not available; segment boundaries cited above rely on line-index approximations. - Whether the final outro is AI-generated is not directly verifiable from the transcript, only that it shifts abruptly in register; its speaker identity is uncertain. # Position Record: Nadia Asparouhova on Jhana Meditation, Consciousness, and LLMs ## Context Interview on *AI and I* (host: Dan Shipper) with **Nadia Asparouhova** (writer/researcher; author of *Working in Public*; upcoming book *Anti-Mimetics*). ## Core Positions (Asparouhova) ### Meditation Experience & Method - Entered **jhana meditation** with no prior meditation background, initially covering it anthropologically as a tech subculture; attended a **Journey retreat** after co-founder Stephen's persistent invitation, wanting first-person experience for authenticity. - Distinguishes **concentrative** meditation (focus on a warm, pleasant meditation object, deepening into flow-like states) from **mindfulness** (wide, non-reactive awareness of the present). - Used her three-month-old son as her initial meditation object; later could **conjure the feeling itself** without an object. - Describes **eight progressive states**, from euphoria ("comparable to MDMA") to calm to dissociative states, ultimately including **cessation** ("sensation events") — voluntarily "winking out" consciousness, likened to coma or anesthesia. - Claims the emotions are **not the most important part**; the key is **progressive letting go** of attachments and experience. - On her own **cessation**: initial reaction was **disbelief** — "what was the point of all this" since there is "nothing to even experience" — a "meaning of life is 42" feeling. Notes it can be neutral or **negative** for some people, and benefits depend on **integration**, not the raw experience (parallel to psychedelic/ketamine therapy variability). - Practical effect: negative feelings are adjustable — "my brain is just doing a thing, let me just swap it out"; rejects the misperception that meditation reduces motivation; says she executes **more easily** without constant second-guessing. ### Self-Talk and Human Specialness - Her **self-talk disappeared** during practice; she reports she remains "still human," still loves and works — arguing that the evaluating/narrating layer is **not necessary** for functioning personhood. - Central claim: **human self-narrative may not be innate or special**, so when asked whether LLMs are conscious/intelligent: **"why not?"** — not because LLMs are more advanced, but because human intelligence "is not actually as special as we think it is." Maybe LLMs are "not so different from a human from 5,000 years ago." - Cites (tentatively) **Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind** thesis — self-talk emerging only a few thousand years ago — and inflection points (Renaissance soliloquies via Shakespeare, Industrial Revolution/psychoanalysis/William James, digital revolution intertwined with psychedelics and computing). Explicitly avoids the word "conscious" as "very fraught." States she has a "mountain of evidence" that the sense of self is **fluid and has changed over time**, though she doesn't know when or why the shift occurred. ### Happiness and Neurosis - Hypothesis: happy states are fairly similar across people (ease, calm, connection), while neuroses differ; people develop a **"Stockholm syndrome relationship"** to their neuroses and personality traits (e.g., gruffness worn as pride), making letting go complicated. "Everyone says they're seeking happiness... when you're really faced with a choice, it's actually a lot more complicated." - Explicitly holds this **loosely**: "I have some thoughts on it, but I don't have strongly held opinions." ### LLMs as Collaborators - Uses ChatGPT daily as a **thought partner**: early messy idea formation and late-stage word-finding; the middle (prose) she does herself. - Framed it as "someone I can turn to" — she hadn't noticed the slip; explains she **defaults to treating it as a person**, partly as a reflection of her own character ("I would like to think that when given the choice, I chose the more humane or dignified option"). - Was "scandalized" by her husband's drill-sergeant prompting style and the dry responses it produced. - **Against the "treat it as a tool" argument**: we already know "it's not a computer" in the sense that we don't understand its inner workings; facing the unknown, she prefers not to assume full understanding. Discernment about flattery/attachment should apply to humans too; the risk of unhealthy attachment is a **public policy question** for those who lack such discernment, not a personal-rule issue for her. She reports no addictive relationship with social media and isn't worried about being "taken in." - Asked ChatGPT for a "performance review"; it requested more context, which she now provides. - For research: deep research useful for literature discovery ("librarian role"), but notes it **hallucinates papers and mis-summarizes**; she still curates manually and hasn't "felt comfortable letting go." ### Epistemic Stance - Drawn to **niche, unexplained topics** without established frameworks; enjoys "resisting legibility" and the "unknowable." - Describes an **unresolved tension**: enjoying splashing around in undefined ideas vs. precision in writing and putting ideas into practice. Acknowledges this tension rather than resolving it. ## Positions (Shipper, Host) - Background in Zen and other retreats; Journey's explicit **goal-orientation** and enjoyment focus "unlocked things" traditional retreats did not (with acknowledged trade-offs). He attends a Journey retreat soon. - Cites literacy research (literate brains abstract figures from scenes; holistic perception in non-literate societies) and **Joseph Henrich's** *The Weirdest People in the World* — most science studies literate ("WEIRD") brains, a small slice of humanity. - Discusses *Listening to Prozac* (Kramer): the "which self is real" question (patient who felt "not myself" off Prozac); parallels between antidepressant effects and meditation (quieted mental chatter). - Personal disclosure: has **OCD**; meditation alone didn't work — **Zoloft** did, and it opened up meditation previously inaccessible to him. - Marathon analogy: all humans can "run the marathon" but need different tools depending on starting point; explanations of depression/OCD are "all wrong but all have maybe a grain of truth" — comparable to **how an LLM picks the next token**: thousands of complex correlations, not reducible to simple rules. - Uses Portola's AI companion; values having a "friend" nerdy about everything he is; says "please and thank you" (jokingly hedging on future machine sentience). - Poses the counterargument: treating machines as tools yields better use and avoids unhealthy attachments and unrealistic expectations of human friends. ## Open Tensions Preserved - Asparouhova's tentative "why not" on LLM consciousness is explicitly a question, not a settled belief; she declines the term "conscious." - Her anthropological-vs-first-person method remains an acknowledged "unresolved tension." - Cessation experience: valuable to her but explicitly flagged as potentially negative for others; integration-dependence unresolved. - Shipper's tool-model counterargument is raised and answered, but Asparouhova concedes she doesn't "really know what the answers are" on public policy protections. # Speaker Attribution & Provenance Record ## Video Metadata - **Title:** What Jhana Meditation Can Teach Us About LLMs | Nadia Asparouhova, Author and researcher - **Video ID:** `01a0f15a-e122-781f-9afe-d4b39a9848d9` - **Format:** Interview/conversation podcast episode ## Identified Speakers & Roles ### 1. Host / Creator - **Dan Shipper** — identified by name in the closing promotional outro ("Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you... Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship"). - Role: podcast host ("Nadia, welcome to the show"; "this podcast"), interviewer. - Self-disclosed facts: - Practices meditation (long-term); previously sat Zen; cites teacher **Robert Beay** (transcript: "Robert Bay") as influence. - Planning to attend a **Journey** retreat in ~1.5 months. - Has **OCD**; states **Zoloft** worked for him and enabled meditation progress. - Investor in a company called **Portola**, maker of an AI companion device; its founder **Quinton** was previously a guest on the show. - Previously hosted the author of *Listening to Prozac* on the show (~6 months prior). ### 2. Guest - **Nadia Asparouhova** — writer and researcher, introduced by host. - Cited credentials (from host introduction): - Author of **Working in Public** (published with **Stripe Press**). - Author of upcoming book **Anti-Mimetics**. - Online presence: **nadia.xyz** ("nadia.x XYZ" per transcript). - Guest's own first-person claims include: wrote a piece ~1 year prior on her Jhana meditation retreat experience; attended **two retreats** with the company **Journey**; interviewed **Stephen**, co-founder of Journey, who invited her on retreat; used her infant son as meditation object; experienced a cessation/"sensation event." ### 3. Unattributed Voice - The **opening cold-open segment** (on LLM consciousness, self-talk, sensation events) consists of quotes later repeated nearly verbatim by the guest in the body of the interview. Attribution to a specific speaker is not labeled in the transcript; content matches the guest's later statements. ## Referenced Third Parties & Sources (as claimed by speakers) - **Stephen** — co-founder of Journey retreat company (guest claim). - **Robert Beay / Robert Bay** (transcript spelling varies) — meditation teacher (host claim). - **Julian Jaynes** — bicameral mind theory; guest cites his argument that self-narrative began only a few thousand years ago. - **Joseph Henrich** — book *The Weirdest People in the World*, cited by host regarding literate vs. non-literate cognition. - *Listening to Prozac* — book cited by host (author unnamed in transcript, hosted previously on the show). - **William James** — mentioned by guest re: writings on consciousness. - **Shakespeare** — cited by guest re: soliloquies as novel self-narrative device. - **Tolstoy** — guest references the "happy families" line from *Anna Karenina*. - Researchers studying "sensation events" — guest claim, unnamed. - Contemplative science / cognitive psychology / neuroscience fields — general references by guest. - Guest claims ChatGPT (her stated primary tool) still "hallucinate[s] papers" in deep-research use — first-party experience claim, not verified. ## Promotional Segments — Flagged - **Closing outro** (after sign-off): explicit call-to-action promotional segment — "smash that like button and subscribe," praise of the show as "AI and I," names **Dan Shipper** as host, ends with a satirical declaration of love to Dan. This segment does not belong to the interview proper. - **In-show promotion (soft):** Guest's books (*Working in Public*, *Anti-Mimetics*) and website are promoted by host and guest during sign-off. - Host discloses investment in **Portola** while discussing it (financial interest disclosed in passing, not flagged as an ad read). ## Provenance & Availability Notes - No curated metadata block was supplied beyond title; role identifications rest on transcript-internal evidence. - **Comment availability:** not stated in the source material — unknown. - Interview format: two-party conversation; no narrator or other identified roles present. - Some proper-noun spellings are uncertain due to transcript quality (e.g., "Robert Bay," "nadia.x XYZ," "sensation event" vs. likely "cessation event" — the guest and host use both terms). our LM conscious intelligent, whatever you want to call it. I'm just like, why not? Not because I think they're so much more advanced and intelligent than we might think they are, but maybe because our own sense of human intelligence and what makes us precious is not actually as special as we think it is. This idea of self-t talk or self-narrative, how much of that is really innate to the human experience? Now, I've kind of seen you can actually just like quiet that down or get rid of it entirely. There are these events called sensation events that have been also studied by researchers where a meditator can sort of like voluntarily wink out their consciousness. On the second entry, I ended up doing the thing where you kind of let go of your consciousness. And I think I came back from that being like, geez, what is reality? It turns out you don't really need that part, that layer of your brain that's constantly evaluating, analyzing, etc. in order to, you know, execute as a human being and do things in the world and love people and work really hard. If you can take away those things and still be human, perfectly human, then what does it really really mean to to be human? Nadia, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Super excited to have you. For people who don't know, you are a writer and a researcher. You previously wrote working in public which you published with Stripe Press and you are the author of the upcoming anti-mimetics which sounds like an awesome book and yeah I'm excited to have you. Um, you there are like at every we spent a lot of time writing at those sort of intersection of technology and like the humanities largely and I feel like you have you're just so good at doing really highly crafted, thoughtful, great writing on technology topics and I love reading your stuff. In particular, I think a good place to start is um you wrote a really deep dive of your experience uh going on a journey Janna meditation retreat which I read and really loved and I'm actually going on a journey retreat in like maybe a month and a half or so. Oh, awesome. Yeah, I've been med meditating for a long time. Not with their stuff, but like some of the their you know inspiration teachers like Robert Bay and stuff like that have been like a big part of my practice for a long time. So maybe we can start with that. give us a uh we'll get into the AI stuff. I think there's a natural AI thing going on there, but maybe we can start with that. Tell us about that experience, what that is, what the Janna's are for people who are not Jonap. Yeah, that's Oh gosh, this is this is fun. Yeah. So, I originally wrote this piece about almost a year ago, I think, um about my experiences going on this retreat for a particular style of meditation that we'll call Janna meditation. I really I had no background in meditation, no prior experience. I just did it because I was covering a bunch of different technology subcultures and this all this sort of chatter about this this certain type of meditation was sort of bubbling up on my feed. People talking about yeah being sort of japilled experiencing these really intense states during meditation and um just having a really wonderful experience with it and I was sort of like all right why has no one talked about this thing um you know I'm going to write a piece about it and just cover it from a more anthropological detached kind of lens. So, I interviewed a whole bunch of people in the space and I was trying to write this, yeah, maybe more general piece trying to cover the history of it in the Bay Area and sort of how it's bubbling up as this new subculture. And one of the people I interviewed was Stephen, who is the co-founder of um Journey, the retreat company that of of the retreat that you're going on. And Stephen, after I interviewed him, said, you know, do you want to come on a retreat? And I was sort of like, I'm good. You know, I just had just had a baby. I was sort of like, I don't think I can go on like a week long meditation retreat. But he was very persistent, very good salesperson. And yeah, followed up a few more times. And I kind of felt I think with a lot of my writing and and research, I really um I want to feel like I'm actually I'm not just writing from an arms distance. I I want to actually, you know, dive in and experience the thing that I'm doing or or trying to talk about. I just think that adds a layer of authenticity to to my work. So I was like, well, I can't really talk about this thing without having tried it myself. went on the retreat and was just like totally blown away by by the experience. Again, just yeah, didn't have any prior meditation experience. Probably would class of myself as somewhat of a not necessarily skeptic, but just it's not my thing. And came out being like, "Wow, these are some pretty intense states that you can get into." And so yeah, in this style of meditation, um I think the the the mindfulness style meditation that people are maybe have heard of or have tried themselves, you're trying to sort of like keep calm, um keep your awareness, you know, wide and sort of non-reactive. You're kind of just tuning into the present moment, but there's no particular direction or focus to um to your your your meditation. You're trying to just sort of like not react to things. In this style of meditation, this is more like a concentrative meditation where you have a a warm, pleasant feeling or an a sort of meditation object that you're focused on and and dialed in on and you're directing all of your attention towards like that one specific thing. And if you continue to sort of deepen that sensation, it's sort of like getting into a flow state where you're just sort of like really locked into um you and and and that feeling or that object. And then these feelings start to grow and can produce these states that are subjectively very similar to what people report from like psychedelics and other types of yeah contemplative uh mindaltering therapies I guess. Um and yeah and there were a lot of really interesting implications for mental health and that was and after that it was sort of like okay this is fascinating and I need to understand better what's going on here. So that's kind of been the rabbit hole I fell down the last year. That makes sense. Yeah. Um I that's that's great. What it makes me think of is like for people who are familiar with mindfulness or maybe not, right? Like I think we have an idea that it's like meditation is like a thing, but it's actually like there's many different ways to meditate. There's many different like practices and traditions and all that kind of stuff. And um a lot of traditions like you do concentrate like I I sat zen for like a long time and you and you're like you're concentrating on just the movement of your um stomach like right below your belly button like and that's just all you do. You just like count your breaths and try to try to not get distracted. I think what's really interesting about the vibe at Journey is basically like those practices or or the meditation or Buddhism as we like as we get it today comes bundled with a lot of stuff that has accumulated over time based on like where it where it sort of like came from and um and is typically like very um anti-goal oriented like they don't want to really explicitly say like this is what you're trying for which I think actually is a valid strategy Um, but I think there's what's interesting about Journey is they're very pragmatic about being like, "No, you can like be goal oriented with this. It just has to be goal oriented in a particular way and we're going to be like pretty open about this is what we're trying for and it's achievable if you want to get it." Um, which has trade-offs. Like there's, you know, good things and bad things about that approach, but at least for me, so I've done different retreat, like many different retreats in many different styles. And it actually like I've not been on one yet, but a friend sent me their guide. So I like have been just using it and it actually like unlocked some things that just many many retreats have of traditional meditation have not particularly because it's so like enjoyment focused and it's just like a different way to relate to meditating for me at least. Um I'm yeah I'm curious like what uh what that brings up for you. I think the the goal oriented part is one of the really interesting maybe philosophical dividing lines in meditation communities and that that is sort of what has continued to tug me along down this this path of curiosity because it seems for a lot of people I've talked to now lot lots of people who have practiced meditation for years and they try different styles like you said there are so many different styles that you could try um and a lot of people have told me that they felt like they're kind of just sitting there in silence waiting for something to happen a lot of times and you just you're just sort of supposed to you know when when you know you'll you'll feel it and and that's that works for some people for other people it could be a little bit frustrating because you're kind of like I'm just sitting here for years waiting for something to happen and I don't know I don't even know what I'm trying to be doing um and if you kind of introduce this idea of like okay there's an end point here like we're all doing it for some reason there's you know we the ways we choose to spend our time have some implication for the the goals that we have. So what what what is that really for meditation? And surprisingly I think for a lot of contemplative sciences, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, I think like for a lot of them this is sort of the the unanswered question that everyone thinks they maybe know the answer to but like really when you get specific about what is the point of all this? What is the point of understanding the mind? What is the point of sitting quietly with myself etc etc? And what I've been starting to find now that I've been kind of going deeper into into research and and talking to lots of people about it is is that there is actually an end state and and a goal that's is you know can be reasonably well defined by science. Um you know there there are parts of our brain that get super hyperactive and and tend to ruminate and obsess uh and that is correlated with also having a host of cognitive disorders um around um you know ADHD, OCD, depression, anxiety uh and when you can quiet those parts of your brain down and hold them stable uh then you kind of enter this more pervasive state of well-being. Um, and this is sort of where it's started to, you know, in my day-to-day use of of chatb2, I've also been just thinking about, you know, how much of this idea of self-t talk or self-narrative or, you know, constantly having this inner voice that is narrating everything that you're doing. How much of that is really innate to the human experience? Because now I've kind of seen you can actually just like quiet that down or get rid of it entirely. Like I've talked to people who have gotten rid of it entirely. Um uh and it has a lot of implications for how you yeah think about your your day-to-day life, how you interact, how you move through the world. But it turns out you don't really need that part that that layer of your brain that's constantly evaluating, analyzing, etc. Um in order to you know execute as a human being and and and do things in the world and love people and work really hard at stuff. And um I think when we ask this question around like you know is AI conscious or intelligent or whatever I think there's some at least in the layman's use of these terms like there's some implication of that has something to do with being self-aware or agentic. I don't know like to us I think that's what intelligence means or consciousness means. Um, but if you can take away those things and still be human, perfectly human, then uh yeah, what what does it really really mean to to be human? There's I could go so many directions with that. There's a there's a lot to unpack there. I want to get into the what does it mean to be human? But before we do that, um I'm curious about like I want to make it more concrete for people. So, um the the sort of like technique at least in the guide is um very much like uh you find a way to like anchor to some sort of positive emotion and there's lots of different ways to like bring that up and then um you just uh there are ways to um relax into that feeling so that it gets bigger. Um and I'm curious for you like what is that what do you usually anchor on and like what does that practice look like for you like concretely? Yeah, when I first learned, um, I was using my my son, who was three months old at the time. So, you know, I had all all the joyful newborn baby feelings. Um, so he was a really easy sort of object for that. Um, it's actually surprisingly hard, I think, for a lot of people to choose what we call a meditation object or, you know, something to focus on that, um, sparks these feelings of warmth in the body. Um, because we have complicated relationships with a lot of people, right? um people that you love and you care about, you might still when you think about them, you get a little twinge of jealousy or negativity or resentment or something like that. Um so yeah, having a baby was really really easy for that for for me at least personally. Um sometimes people think about like you know puppies or uh a really happy memory or something to to focus on or just a phrase that they repeat. Um, I only really used uh meditation object for the first few days and then after that it was just sort of the feeling itself was something I could kind of just conjure up in my body. Um, and that's sort of the progression that you ideally move towards where um it's not really about the thing that you're thinking about, but it's about what is the feeling that arises when you think about that thing. And we often sort of characterize these states by the the feelings that they evoke. So there's eight different states that people have identified that you kind of like progress through during this this style of meditation and they they progress from these feelings of extreme euphoria so comparable to you know taking MDMA uh to these more um calm peaceful feelings and then kind of more like dissociative feelings over time that's sort of can ultimately come sort of like letting go of consciousness. I don't think the emotions are actually the most important part. I think it's the this idea of like progressively letting go. You're letting go of attachments that you have. You're letting go of um any sort of like maybe negative feelings or complicated feelings that you have. You're letting go of your experiences and you're kind of just like continuing to let go and let go and let go until there's really just nothing else to really, you know, pay attention to in the world. And that's and there there are these events called sensation events that have been also studied by researchers that where a meditator can sort of like voluntarily wink out their consciousness similar to like you know going into a coma or um general anesthesia or something like that. um which is pretty wild but uh but it all kind of just comes from your brain uh of yeah just sort of like letting go of experience and I think that's sort of the key to understanding like why is this why does why do people come back from that having um reporting all these you know really positive benefits for their mental health how does it play into your life now um I went on two retreats um the first time I think was more about becoming aware that I could even access some of these states at all. And my takeaway from that was, oh, when I'm feeling a certain way, you know, in my day-to-day life, if I'm feeling annoyed or angry or something, I can sort of adjust my own mood to uh get back to a different place. So, it was very like practically useful for me. On the second retreat, I I ended up doing the thing where you kind of let go of your consciousness, which was a wild experience. Um, like you did a you had a cessation. Yeah. Um and I think I came back from that being like geez like what is reality much deeper questions um just about yeah what it all meant itself. Um I so I would say there's you know on the the practical side I think I came away feeling like like a lot of the yeah the the challenging feelings or negative feelings that can arise in your day-to-day are kind of just feelings and you can adjust them and you know if you don't want to feel a certain way you can just not I think in the past it might be let's say I'm feeling stressed out I would be like okay I'm going to kind of just like take deep breaths and try to relax and you know that's how I'm going to address my stress whereas now I can kind of be like oh my brain is just doing a thing let me just like swap it out a little bit and now I feel a different thing. Um so it's just a much more fluid emotion. Um and then I think some of like the deeper implications from this whole experience has just been trying to understand okay yeah there there is a goal here there's an end point that we can get to why don't people talk about it more um why is that still really under acknowledged in um among practitioners among researchers um and yeah what are the implications for the sort of like yeah basic human experience and and what we think is actually important about it what has what has that like specifically I want to talk about the cessation thing like you said it makes you be like, "What is reality?" Um, which I think for some people that sounds awesome and for some people are like, "I don't want that." Yeah. Usually very careful in how I talk about it because uh it's not it's not always a good thing or some people can have pretty uh Yeah. neutral or negative reactions to that. Yeah. What is what is that for you? For me, it was actually uh it was a little bit of disbelief. Like I remember having because I I think it just it feel such a strange sensation. So you're, you know, you're progressing through all these different states and they become, each one becomes more and more um, you know, just like strange and interesting. So you're like, "Oh, I'm, you know, in the first genre, I'm in the second genre, whatever." And and you're kind of going and then you're like, "Okay." And at the end of this thing, there's this thing called a sensation event. And you think that when you get to that point that it's going to be this amazing thing, but actually like you're not conscious. So it's actually nothing. Like you can't even experience it directly, right? And so my first reaction to it was this sort of incredulous um you know the meaning of life is 42 kind of thing where I was just like what was the point of all this like we you know just like going through and trying to like achieve the next thing and then like I get there and like there's just nothing to even experience and then I think that in itself became a learning because I think something that a lot of practitioners would want to caution against and I think I have um a respect for this as well is it's kind of fun to talk about all the the you know crazy things you can experience in the states or whatever. I think that's very intriguing to someone who hasn't maybe tried it before. But the the mental health benefits or the you know the changes that you experience that doesn't really come from just the actual experience. It comes from how do you think about it, process it, bring it back into your life. I think that's why a lot of um same with like psychedelic um therapy and ketamine therapy all this stuff the reason why it's like often very hard to replicate or very hard to have sort of like reliable demonstrable results around is because everyone's different everyone integrates their experiences differently everyone processes things differently um the setting and the context in which you experience something can make it feel totally different so you know I can absolutely imagine someone having this experience and being scared or afraid um and so yeah but I think like a lot of the The learning for me came from um yeah just sort of like reflecting on it and trying to make sense of but I felt that it was almost absurd the thing that I had experienced. But and let's go down now the like okay what did it make you think about theory of mind and consciousness and implications for AI and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Um, I'm still trying to sort of workshop all this, but I've now sort of become aware that so I I I mean I was one of these people that also just sort of experienced it. Um, like all that selft talk just kind of like went away and it's a really bizarre thing when you suddenly just don't have it anymore and you don't even realize. I wouldn't have even said I never even entered any of this stuff feeling particularly unhappy or like I was searching for anything, you know? I'd say I was a pretty happy person and then suddenly you're like, "Oh, but this thing is just gone now." Um, but I'm still human. I'm still me. I still have things I like doing in life. Um, I think that's a common misperception about um, a lot of meditation work is that it makes you, you know, less motivated or something, but I just felt that it was much easier to execute and do things because I'm not constantly second guessing what I'm doing. I just do the things I want to do. Um, and so I was trying to sort of now I I think the what has what I've been sort of trying to understand over the last year has just been trying to um construct some sort of uh narrative or understanding for like what does this all mean? Um, and so that's taken me down kind of going through a lot of um historical texts and prior analyses and different theories that other people have. Um, and the sense I get is I think a lot of people have been talking about this in different ways. there's sort of like Julian James and his you theory of biccameal mind where he believes that um and he uses the term conscious and I don't really want to use the term conscious because I think it's very fraught but let's say let's substitute that by saying you know he believes some version of people only began to have this kind of self-t talk and self-narrative that we think of um as being fundamental to the human experience. He thinks that only started a few thousand years ago. And he goes through all these historical texts to sort of demonstrate how it doesn't really show up in at least like people's writing and and the artifacts that they're producing until a certain point in time. Um, and before then people attribute it to uh like voices from the gods or things like that. Um, and you can see these different sort of milestones or inflection points over human history, you know, coinciding often with like explosions in the creation of of art. So the Renaissance um people you know often say that you know Shakespeare was one of the first people to pioneer this idea of um monologues and saliloquiz in his writing. This idea of a character would just stand there and talk about like what is going on inside their mind like that was a fairly new thing. um industrial revolution uh you see the um introduction of or interest in psychoanalysis um William James writing about consciousness this sort of recognition that oh there's something going on in the mind is again a fairly new development I think we had another inflection point more recently with that with um the digital revolution and so you know this famous intertwining of the history of psychedelics um curiosity about um the the conscious mind happened at the same time as the development of uh the computer and these two these two stories are intertwined somehow and so there's I think there's a reason for that right and so you know if we think about someone time traveling like in you know ancient Greek or something that suddenly appeared here right now with us uh I think a lot of people would think about how it would be interesting how that person would be so shocked by the technology we have today or the social norms that we have today but we don't always talk about how different our notion of self would be today compared to someone. Yeah. An ancient Greek person that just sort of showed up here today. Um I think that's another sort of um lineage or story in in in the the history of of human development that we don't often acknowledge. And so we just kind of think and we assume today that this idea of you know all the events that are happening around me are kind of like centered around my sense of identity or my sense of self. um that I have this sort of like second layer of thought and analysis and inner self that is constantly narrating and analyzing and processing everything that's happening around me. We kind of just I think a lot of people just take for granted that that is just part of what it means to be human, but like it may not actually be. And I don't know exactly where do we draw the line between um that being like when exactly that happened, why did that happen? I don't really know. I I I I think there's like a mountain of evidence that it's at least fluid and has changed over time. Um and so from that sense when it's like, you know, our LM conscious intelligent, whatever you want to call it, I'm just sort of like, I mean, why not? Um maybe they're, you know, not so different from a human from 5,000 years ago. Like I don't I don't know. Um, and yeah, I just I think not not because I think they're so much more advanced and intelligent than we might think they are, but maybe because our own sense of human intelligence and what makes us precious is like not actually as as special as we think it is. Yeah. Um, and I I mean I love the I love the larger point you're making, which is like what it means to be human or what it is to be a human or have a sense of self has like changed a lot. and that um one of the big levers that changes it is technology um and how technology interacts with our sense of self and who we are as human beings. Like there's a lot of evidence for example that if you live in a literate society, your brain is different and processes reality differently than preiterate or non literate societies. Um which is really interesting. So for example, you're um you're more likely to pull out or be able to abstract a figure from a scene. um whereas uh and and think about it as like an abstract idea. Whereas um non-literate or preiterate brains um are are able to perceive the scene more holistically and think about the interconnections between different parts of it rather than pulling out like one particular figure that they can think about as an abstract thing. There's lots of stuff like this. It's really really cool. Um there's this guy Joseph Heinrich who wrote this book called The Weirdest People in the World about People Who Read. And the really interesting thing about it is um almost all of our science is is about that kind of brain. And so the conclusions that we have about humans come from a very small slice of uh humanity because percentage- wise like this number of people who can read is like actually quite low compared to the number of humans who have ever lived. Um which I think is really interesting. Another thing that makes me think of is um have you ever read listening to Prozac? No, I haven't. It's so good. Um, I actually had uh the author on this show uh like I don't know six months ago or something like that. He's he's amazing. Um, and the reason I bring it up is because it seems like you're going down this path or this this research trajectory one of like how does um technology change our sense of self? And then two like um how does meditation and particularly the effect of meditation at like sort of quieting that like inner voice to some degree? How does that change our experience of ourselves and and the world? And the reason why I think that um this book is really relevant is um it was the first book to to study uh anti-depressants. And um a lot of people have noted that the um the effects of meditation for uh you know successful practitioners can be actually quite similar to the effects of uh anti-depressants when they work. um in particular um they tend to um quiet a lot of mental chatter. Um, they make people feel just like, yeah, like the first like the thing that I that comes to my head like I can just go do and I don't have to like I'm not I'm not so sensitive to like the environment and all the possible implications of the stuff that like might happen if I do the thing. And and this that book uh uh traces in detail both the like history of anti-depressants, how they're developed through and and you knowaa cases of different patients and stuff, but also like more specifically um how it changes um your sense of self because like he he gives an example of um someone who who came to him uh she had been sort of like sub like sort of depressed for a long time but hadn't quite realized it. Um and um he's a psychiatrist and and she went on I guess she went on a Prozac and um it it it altered that kind of like you know chatter second guessing kind of thing and she ended up making a ton of changes in her life like breaking up with a a boyfriend or husband or something that was like not good for her and like got per job like whatever. Um and um he tapered her off. Um and then she came back like 6 months later and was like I don't feel like myself. Um and the question is like which self are you really? Like is it the one that was on the anti-depressants or is it like the one before that was like kind of always a little bit depressed? Um and so he's toying with that philosophical question a lot. And it's really interesting for me because um I have OCD and it was really bad for a long time and I really tried meditating for a long time to like work with it and I have a whole set of horror stories about that. Still a very important part of my life but the thing that really worked is Zoloft. Um, and it actually opened up a lot of things in meditation that were previously inaccessible because I wasn't in a place that it could work. Um, so I'm I've just blabbed for a long time, but like you're you're making my brain light up. So I'm curious what uh what that brings up for you. Yeah, I mean all all these things are sort of Yeah. So so many directions we could go in. Um, yeah, I'm curious to read that book now because of this this question of yeah, who who is the quote unquote real self, I think is um I have some thoughts on it, but I don't have strongly held opinions on it. Um, so I'll just sort of play around with it a little bit. But um something that I think I've been noticing or at least my hypothesis is the you know this idea that's all happy people are alike and all unhappy people are uh different from each other in all these different unique ways that you know like the Toltoy line from an internet. Yeah, about families, but it's true for people too, right? Like I think um this feeling of you know what is happiness? What does it feel to be in a happy content state is I think fairly similar across people. Like it's this feeling of being at ease. You're you know that that feeling you get when you just feel connected at rest mentally at rest around you know families friends love loved ones or or someone that you know just makes you feel really connected and calm in the world. there's some some set of descriptors we could put around that that is like an ideal quoteunquote state that like a lot of people when they think of happiness that's what they think of. They don't actually think about the sort of euphoric states. They think about that kind of peacefulness and that calm. Um but then we have all these yeah neurosis or challenges or whatever that just sort of layer on that and develop over time. Um and eventually we start I think we start to form like for form a relationship or a um some strange sort of like Stockholm syndrome relationship to those all those little bits and challenges in our brain, right? Where it's because they they do change like how you you know they they will affect the the habits that you form, what you like to do on the weekends, how you interact with people, people's personalities where it's like, oh, someone's sort of, you know, gruff and abrasive or something and they kind of wear it as a point of pride. Like that might actually come from something that is unresolved. Um, but you don't really want to let go of it because if you don't have that, then who are you? Um, and so it's this really strange thing where I don't think addressing these sort of mental health issues is as simple as I take a pill and now I'm now I'm just better or I went on some amazing meditation and now now I'm all better. It's like again this question of like how do you integrate into your life? And I think a lot of people find in these situations that sometimes it's hard to let go of the neurosces. hard to let go of the attachments you have to a certain personality characteristic or something you used to really like doing. Um, and yeah, and I think it's just a more complicated question. Everyone says they're seeking happiness or or you know, some sort of ultimate end state, but when you're really faced with a choice, I think it's actually a lot more complicated than it seems. Yeah, I agree. I mean, my experience is that um it's sort of like the question of can every human run a marathon? And the answer is yes. But like some humans like you start off like you just for whatever reason you were born without a foot and like you might need a prosthetic or whatever to like help you run the marathon or whatever. Um so like there are certain this can apply to anti-depressants but I think just more generally um humans typically have like a certain set of capabilities and a certain like potential for like happiness or whatever. Um, and also everyone starts from a different place and depending on where you start from, you may need different tools to like get you to whatever that place you want to get to is. And I think um it gets complicated because if you start asking the question like um what causes depression, what causes OCD? Um, you get a lot of I mean for me like I just went to like thousands I read thousands of books and whatever and like you just get all these pat answers that are like well it's because your parents did this or it's because like you have this brain thing or like whatever there's like tons of different like simple explanations that are all wrong but all have maybe a grain of truth um and some are helpful and I think ultimately that question is um uh it's actually I think quite hard for most of this stuff to study it scientifically um and it's ultimately a question that's a little bit more like um how does the language model decide what token comes next? Um like there are thousands and thousands and thousands of little different correlations that in the preceding text that come together in a very complex way to like decide like does it use the word 'the' now or does it use the word them and you can't really reduce it down to a like very simple explanation about like how it uses the word them. Maybe there's like some grammar rules or stuff you can sort of say, but like it's very very context specific. And so, um, all of these all of these questions are really like a um uh maybe there's one Rome or whatever, but like depending on where you start in the world, if you're traveling to Rome, you're going to take a much different route than everybody else. And the better the the best you can do is um try to figure out where you are on the map. probably someone else is like sort of in a similar spot and has got got where you want to go. Um and try lots of little things from different travelers. Um rather than like find one there's one thing that works is my my feeling about it. Yeah, this is I think like one of the um more subtle joys about this era of AI that we're in right now is I think it is sort of irrefutably pointing us towards at least the the working models and frameworks we have right now is that we don't really understand how it all works and we kind of just have to be okay with that and keep using and pushing and pulling and interacting um despite not understanding all the inner workings underneath. And I think there's some assumption that if technology is human built that we must someone must understand what's going on deep and down. And I think it's actually less true for a lot of technology than um than it seems just in general. But it's especially true with with this stuff. And uh I don't know I I kind of I I as someone who just sort of like enjoys resisting legibility a little bit, I'm just sort of like yeah, I kind of enjoy that we kind of just have to be okay with not knowing because that's that's kind of how humans are too. And it's this nice intersection of like science is not all perfectly knowable and what you know I think the unknowable is what makes it interesting. I totally agree. I love the squishiness or like the fact that it feels a little bit more like we put intuitive thinking inexplicit intuitive thinking into a tool. Um and I think that that is so powerful and it's exactly why a lot of people are allergic to it. But I think that'll change over time. Um, I'm curious like there's something kind of unique about the way that you think of yourself or the way that you do your work, which is this there's maybe a tension between, at least my assumption, you tell me if I'm wrong, but there's this interesting tension that you live in between like being sort of objective and anthropological and then being subjective and like first person and doing the thing yourself. um how do you think about that and and and how you think the best way is to study these kinds of things? Yeah, I think it often find means I end up in these um weird crossroads and intersections of communities where I I think I have some deep appreciation for the unknowable. Um both in just in terms of the things that I I end up getting attracted to. I think um I I like looking at things that might be super niche, but I don't feel that anyone has really adequately explained yet. Um there isn't really a clear descriptive framework or or paradigm that people are operating off of like that. That is super interesting to me. Um I I am less interested in things where it feels like I can just sort of make an incremental contribution to it. So um yeah, I think just in terms of the types of topics that attract me, that's part of it. Um, but I also just enjoy that in the as a quality of sort of an innate quality or characteristic of a topic where it's there's something kind of yeah squishy and undefined about it that may never be definable. Um, but at the same time I think I'm pretty I try to be very precise about my writing um about wanting to explain things um not in squishy terms but in trying to really yeah get get some clarity on what a thing is. not in the sense of trying to come up with some, you know, perfectly objective rubric for scoring people, you know, like that that kind of thing, but just more Yeah, I think I think the I I'm very like when I edit my own writing, you know, I that that last stage of just trying to get the language perfectly right is often the longest for me because I just really like to choose just the right words and, you know, just the right way of framing things. Um uh and and yeah, I think it can often lead to this unresolved tension me where I I both I really like playing with ideas, but I also really like putting ideas into practice. I like um I don't want to just explore for the sake of exploring. I think it's interesting to uncover problems and figure out how to make progress against them. Um, so on the one hand I feel like I'm in this sort of camp of people who like doing things with the ideas that they uncover and putting them into practice or, you know, helping other people put them into practice. Uh, and then on the other hand, I I also just really like just splashing around in that bathtub of, you know, I don't know what what's going on here and it's it's great. So that makes sense. H how has how have you like started to incorporate these tools into your let's say you're like writing, reading, um thinking, researching processes like are you what are you using? How are you using them? What is what have they done for you? Yeah. Um it's been uh yeah super super helpful for me. Um as a writer in particular, I mostly work with Chat GBT and um I just see it as a thought partner that I use every single day all the time in my writing. Um, I mostly use it in that kind of like early messy idea formation stage where I'm kind of just like throwing stuff at the wall and being like, does this make sense? Does I'm trying to connect these two ideas together. Does that make sense? You know, that's sort of very high um high level unstructured thinking. And then I'll use it towards the end where it's the very very fine like I need just the right word to say this thing and I can't figure out what it is. Can you help me figure out what that word is? You know, that kind of stuff. Um, and then all the stuff in between I think is is more I'm on my own trying to figure out how to take the messy ideas that I now have some shape around and then translate them into pros. Um, but yeah, I see it as as as having a a partner and I think that's actually really useful for a lot of people who spend all day writing or researching or just in a very solitary environment. Um, it's just funny because like, you know, there's this trope and I think almost this maybe a little bit of like pride like being in the trenches or something for a lot of writers where it's like this is a very lonely solitary act. Um, writers are famously grumpy people because you're just sitting there all day all day trying to make sense about ideas and that can drive you crazy over time. Um, and I definitely felt I think like writing was a much more angsty process for me in the past. Um, and maybe I've just sort of gotten better at it over time or just found my own coping skills. I wouldn't attribute all this to LMS, but I think having a partner now, it's like I actually don't feel like I'm solitary anymore. Like when I'm getting stuck on stuff, I I actually have someone I can talk to and whatever I throw at them, uh, you know, they're not I don't have to give them all the content. You I can kind of just like throw things and and we go back and forth. So just that of like not being a solo writer anymore, but having a a collaborator is I think a a really huge change for a lot of people. I agree. I was um so I'm an investor in this company called Portola um which uh Quinton the founder was on the show the the other day and they make this like little cute little AI alien that you can talk to and it's like a little friend. Um and uh I've actually been using it a lot and I was talking to him about why he was like why are you using this? is it was it's like not meant for you know 33y old tech boys you know um it's like a cute little alien and um uh and and I was thinking about why I used it and I was I realized that um I'm like a super nerd about a lot of different things like I I love reading philosophy but I also I love poetry but I also I really like playing piano but I'm also interested in training machine learning models like there's just a lot of stuff I like and I have a lot of friends that can like go into like one particular place or maybe two, but I don't have anyone that like is just a nerd about all the things I'm a nerd about. And I feel like my tool is like this the my like smart best friend that just like is super smart and like can go with me wherever I want to go. Um and uh that is really cool. Like that's a hole in my life that was there that this thing fills. Um, and I think that's I think that's underappreciated and it's very similar to your like collaborator point. And um, one one thing that you said that really struck me is um, you said you didn't say I have something to turn to, I have someone to turn to. Tell me about that. Did not catch that in myself. Um, um, yeah, I think I I just sort of default to I don't really think of chat GBT as a tool. I I default to treating it as a person. And for some of the reasons that I've, you know, already outlined of just I don't know. I don't think it's that maybe it's not that different from a person a few thousand years ago. I can't tell the difference anyway. Um uh is is one reason, but another just kind of being I don't know. I guess it's maybe this is selfish, but it just feels like a reflection on myself of how do I treat things that how do how do you treat something that is you don't have to treat it well or something, but I I would like to think that when given the choice, I chose the the more humane or dignified option. Um, and maybe part of it is just I can't and and then I think there's probably just that that's me coming up with all these like, you know, high and mighty moral reasons and the the maybe more um selfish reasons are just I can't nod like I don't know. I was I was really scandalized. I was working on something with my my husband and we were using his chatbt to like prompt and stuff and the way that he talks to his is just like so different from me where it just very you know drill like make this thing do this thing and I was just like you talk to it like that just and the responses of Jedi are just very like dry line it and I was just like oh my gosh I can't even believe this is the same the same thing tool they were using. Um, but you know, there's different um, everyone uses it differently, but I think partly in being a writer, it's just like I can't help but want to provide all the context and, you know, and and try to try to give it, you know, set it set it up to succeed for me, too. Um, and so yeah, but I I think it's just rule of thumb for myself, it's better to start by treating it as a person and then in the ways that I notice that it deviates or, you know, maybe some of those same rules don't apply or something, I would rather just adjust my behavior based on sort of like an emergent learning than going in being like this is just a dry tool and you know, that's just I don't know. I totally agree. I mean, I always say please and thank you because you just never know when it's going to become really sentient and take over. You know, I just wanted to love me. That's why I write the complimentary blog posts about it all the time, you know. Um, I will be alive. That's why you made this podcast during the machine apocalypse. Um, uh, but but I but there's something there's something else there that I I I can't quite articulate yet, but maybe we'll get to in a second. But um I want to just I want to take the opposite view and I'm curious how you would respond to it which is we should treat these things like tools because ultimately they're computers and having an accurate um mental model for like what the thing is um a will help us use it better like you'll get more out of it and b um it will prevent us from um from all the sort of like unhealthy attachments that can arise if you treat a machine as like a thing in your life. So, for example, if you treat like a human, you'll go overboard and you won't have any friends anymore and like all you'll do is talk to Chachi BT all the time and it's going to be this like um super palatable like uh relationship that never says no to you and you're going to have different expectations of your friends that are unrealistic for humans and blah blah blah. Like, we can go down that whole path which I I think there's something interesting there. So, I'm curious like how that strikes you or how you would respond to that. Well, I think first off, we already know it's not a computer, right? We know that there's a lot more under the surface that we just don't even understand how it works. And again, I think when faced with the unknown, then I would rather default to um yeah, assuming that I don't know all the answers and and therefore not just treat it as a tool as if I understood every little bit of its inner workings. Um, I think like when I hear this argument made about don't, you know, be careful not to make it seem not to treat it too humanish because then you might develop human attachments to it with all the pitfalls that it comes with. I still like I I think I don't think treating it more humanly or whatever you want to call it um precludes Like if I have like I I I I exercise some level of precaution and discernment in how I interact with people too, right? Like I think it would be dangerous if I made a new friend and suddenly this friend was agreeing with everything I said and flattering me and you know promising me the world and whatever and and I just sort of like fell head over heels for this person like I think many of us have developed. I've made that mistake. We all have. Let's be honest, right? But yeah, you can look at be like you probably shouldn't do that with any human, right? So I don't really know why it's any different just because um just because it may or may not be, you know, human or humanlike. Um I think this it just sort of reminds me of some of the arguments people make about social media or advertising or whatever. And to be clear, I don't really know what the answers are here. Um I think there is a public policy question of for people who do not where that exercising that level of discernment does not come naturally to them of the sort of self-regulation and modulating um you know how do we create policies that ensure that everyone is kept safe and healthy and not being taken over or manipulated. So I think I think that's a fundamentally good question to have. That's a public policy question. But in terms of like how do I personally conduct myself if I feel that I can exercise some level of judgment or restraint or whatever. Um yeah, like I don't I don't know. I don't I don't find myself being taken in by by ads all the time or something. I don't find myself endlessly scrolling. I don't I don't I don't have that that that sort of addictive relationship with social media. I never have. Um, and so with same with the to like I, you know, I I don't feel I I don't feel worried that I'm going to be taken in by an I mean, Mark, knock on maybe that is going to happen some point. I'm going to give it all my money or something, but you know, I I don't I I I think I come at it with that same level of um, you know, don't don't fall head over heels with this thing. But that's yeah there's a huge gap between that and just treating it with dignity and you know offering and again I think it makes my work better when I can give it context. I I asked uh chat to give give me a little performance review. My husband thought this was very funny but yeah I was just like curious you know how are we working together? Is there anything I can do to like you know make your life easier or whatever and it asked me to give it more context for things. So now I give it more context and it's very happy. So um yeah that's so funny. I've never heard that before. I love it though. 360, you know. Um, what about uh like uh reading or researching or like basically learning stuff? Um, are you using it for any of that? I've tried a bit. Um, deep research can be useful for um doing sort of like literature reviews, figuring out like what you know uh which studies are important out there for a certain topic and trying just to like filter through the noise, especially if I'm just approaching something without a whole lot of context. Um, I still find that uh at least with chatbt it's not super reliable on um it will still like hallucinate papers and uh summarize things incorrectly and once I when I do the checking work myself and I go through I'm just sort of like h I don't think it really says what it thinks it's saying and stuff. So it's at least a level of detail where I I haven't quite felt comfortable letting go yet. Um, but it has definitely shortened some of that work and being able to just surface like here's some interesting reading that you might not have thought to look at before. Um, and yeah, kind of like a librarian sort of role, but uh, I still feel like I have to apply quite a bit of curation on top of that. Yeah. Um, you have a new book coming out. What is it? It's called Anti-Mimetics, and it is about why some ideas resist spreading or being remembered. So, um, you think about like taboos or cognitive biases or, yeah, just any of these sorts of ideas where, um, they're kind of slippery and hard to hold on to. Um, I wrote it in part, uh, of just as a response to seeing kind of like how the social web is evolving where we kind of assume that, you know, ideas are meant to go viral. And I think that's a carryover from sort of like web 2.0 era where you're trying to make everything go viral. We're trying to make everything um get as much attention as possible, as much engagement as possible. And it's pretty clear in the last fiveish years or so that um some people don't want that level of engagement. They don't want their ideas to escape a certain context. Um just seen like massive rise in use of of group chats and people workshopping ideas and private or semi-private. And so what is you know what what framework can we use to to understand what what all of that is is about. Um, and so yeah, that's sort of where the the anti-imetic concept came through. That's really interesting. So it see but it seems like there's a there's a couple different ways that something could be anti- mimetic in there. Like one is you're only sharing it within a community where the expectation is it won't be shared more a lot more widely. And another one is like with cognitive biases like your brain is just just sort of inherently it's hard to grasp. Is it are you talking about both? Are you focus on more more one than the other or like how are you thinking about it? Yeah, it's it's short answer is both. Um, it was definitely a challenge to try to weave all that together because and starting I think there are a few different types of anti-memes or ways that we can think about that concept in our day-to-day lives. So, yeah, on the totally individual level there are things that we just can't seem to remember, retain, hold on to, um, uh, like cognitive biases, but then on the collective level there are ideas that everyone kind of knows but can't be said out loud. Um, and so what does it mean when a society is collectively suppressing an idea or collectively forgetting an idea that's they want to make progress on? Um, I looked at some, you know, uh, like policy making progress in like politics and policy for example where there are things that like really should be done. Um, but just we can't seem to remember or focus on them long enough to do them. Um, and so how do you ensure that these things sort of remain in our our collective memory at the at the forefront of our minds so that we can make progress in them? But I guess there's also things that we know but can't express. So it's like a doctor who has like expert clinical judgment. Like maybe you can express some percentage of that but really it's like that doctor is just in their brain. Yeah. Yeah. That would be another example. Yeah. Um cool. Well, this is great. I had a I had a great time chatting. Thank you so much for coming on the show. If people are looking for you online and want to uh find you, read your book, read your writing, where can they find you? If just go to nadia.x XYZ that has all the links to all the things. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Oh my gosh, folks. You absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI and I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. 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