Jhana Meditation Silenced Her Mind—And Changed Her View On AI | Nadia Asparouhova

[00:00] are LLMs, 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-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 [00:30] a meditator can sort of like voluntarily wink out their consciousness. On the second retreat, 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, et cetera, in order to, you know, execute as a human being and do things in the world and love people and work really hard. But if you can take away those things and still be [00:56] Human, perfectly human, then what does it really mean to... [01:00] to be human. [01:15] - Nadia, welcome to the show. [01:16] 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 Antimimetics, which sounds like an awesome book. And yeah, I'm excited to have you.

[01:33] At every way, we spend a lot of time writing at this sort of intersection of technology and the humanities largely. [01:46] great writing on technology topics. And I love reading your stuff. In particular, I think a good place to start is you wrote a really deep dive of your experience going on a journey jhana meditation retreat, which I read and really loved. And I'm actually going on a journey retreat in like, [02:07] maybe a month and a half or so. Oh, awesome. Yeah, I've been 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 we'll get into the 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 genres are for people who are not John upheld. Yeah, oh, gosh, this is this is fun. Yeah. So I originally [02:37] about my experiences going on this retreat for a particular style of meditation that we'll call jhana meditation. I really had no background in meditation, no prior experience. I just did it because I was covering a bunch of different technology subcultures and this meditation. [02:54] All this sort of chatter about this certain type of meditation was sort of bubbling up on my feed. People talking about, yeah, being sort of John upheld, experiencing these really intense states during meditation.

[03:04] just having a really wonderful experience with it. And I was sort of like, all right, why has no one talked about this thing? 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 Steven, who is the co-founder of Journey, the retreat company that [03:34] do you want to come on a retreat? And I was sort of like, [03:38] I'm good. You know, I 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 research, I really, I want to feel like I'm actually, I'm not just writing from an arm's distance. I want to actually, you know, dive in and experience the thing that I'm doing or trying to talk about. I just think that adds a layer of authenticity to my work. So I was like, well, I can't really talk [04:08] tried it myself, went on their treats and, um, [04:11] was just like totally blown away by the experience. Again, just, yeah, didn't have any prior meditation experience. Probably would classify myself as somewhat of a, not necessarily skeptic, but just, it's not my thing. And came by being like, wow, these are some pretty intense states that you can get into. And so, yeah, in this style of meditation, I think the mindfulness style meditation that people are maybe have heard of or have tried themselves, you're trying to sort of like keep

[04:41] awareness, you know, wide and sort of non-reactive. You're kind of just tuning into the present moments, 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 warm, pleasant feeling or an, an, a sort of meditation object that you're focused on and dialed in on. And you're directing all of your attention [05:11] Thank you. [05:11] 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, [05:20] you 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 mind altering therapies, I guess. 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 [05:50] That's great. What it makes me think of is like... [05:54] 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 [06:08] A lot of traditions, like you do concentrate, like I sat Zen for like a long time and you're like, you're concentrating on just the movement of your 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.

[06:38] like where it where it sort of like came from and and is typically like very 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. [06:54] 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, which has tradeoffs. Like there's, you know, good things, bad things about that approach. But at least for me. [07:14] So I've done different retreats, 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 I [07:27] Just many, many retreats 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. Yeah, I'm curious, like what that brings up for you. [07:42] I think the goal-oriented part is one of the really interesting... [07:46] maybe philosophical dividing lines in meditation communities. And that is sort of what has continued to tug me along down this path of curiosity, because it seems for a lot of people, I've talked to now, I've [07:59] 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, [08:08] 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're just sort of supposed to, you know, when you know, you'll feel it. And that works for some people. For other people, it can 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 do.

[08:30] to be doing. And if you kind of introduce this idea of like, [08:35] Okay, there's an endpoint here. Like we're all doing it for some reason. There's, you know, we [08:38] the ways we choose to spend our time have some implication for the goals that we have. So 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 unanswered question that everyone thinks they maybe know the answer to. But like really, when you get specific about it, what is the point of all this? What is the point of understanding the mind? What is the point of sitting quietly with myself, et cetera, et cetera. And what I've [09:08] deeper into research and talking to lots of people about it, is that there is actually an end state and a goal that is [09:16] You know, it can be reasonably well defined by science. You know, there are parts of our brain that get super hyperactive and tend to ruminate and obsess. And that is... [09:27] correlated with also having a host of cognitive disorders around, you know, ADHD, OCD, depression, anxiety. And when you can quiet those parts of your brain down and hold them stable, [09:40] then you kind of enter this more pervasive state of [09:43] well-being. And this is sort of where it's started to [09:48] you know, [09:49] in my day-to-day use of ChatGPT2, I've also been just thinking about, you know, how much of this [09:57] idea of self-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

[10:11] quiet that down or get rid of it entirely. Like I've talked to people who have gotten rid of it entirely. [10:17] And it has a lot of implications for how you think about 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, et cetera, in order to. [10:31] you know, execute as a human being and do things in the world and love people and work really hard at stuff. And I think when we ask this question around like, you know, is AI conscious or intelligent or whatever, I think there's some... [10:46] at least in the layman's use of these terms, like there's some implication of that has something to do with being [10:52] 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 [11:02] human, perfectly human, then, yeah, what does it really mean to... [11:07] to be human. [11:08] There is, 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, 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 relax into that feeling so that it gets bigger. [11:38] 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.

[11:59] choose what we call a meditation object or something to focus on that sparks these feelings of warmth in the body. Because we have complicated relationships with a lot of people, right? 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. So yeah, having a baby was really, really easy for that. For me, at least personally, sometimes people think about like, [12:29] phrase that they repeat. I only really use [12:33] a meditation object for the first few days. And then after that, it was just sort of [12:39] the feeling itself was something I could kind of just conjure up in my body. And that's sort of the progression that you ideally move towards where it's not really about [12:48] the thing that you're thinking about, but it's about what is the feeling that arises when you think about that thing. [12:53] And we often sort of characterize these states by the feelings that they evoke. So there's eight different states that [12:59] that people have identified that you kind of like progress through during this style of meditation. And they progress from these feelings of extreme euphoria, so comparable to, you know, taking MDMA to these more calm, peaceful feelings, and then kind of more like dissociative feelings over time. That's [13:20] sort of can ultimately culminate 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 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 are these

[13:50] where a meditator can sort of like voluntarily wink out their consciousness, similar to like, you know, going into a coma or general anesthesia or something like that, which is pretty wild, but it all kind of just comes from your brain 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, [14:09] Why do people come back from that having... [14:12] reporting all these really positive benefits for their mental health. [14:16] How does it play into your life now? [14:21] Thank you. [14:22] I went on two retreats. The first time I think was more about becoming aware [14:29] that I could even... [14:31] access some of these states at all. And my takeaway from that was [14:35] 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 get back to a different level. [14:46] place. So it was very like practically useful for me. On the second retreat, I ended up doing the thing where you kind of let go of your consciousness, which is a wild experience. Like you did a cessation. [14:57] Yeah, and I think I came back from that being like... [15:02] geez, like what is reality? Much deeper questions. Um, just about, yeah, what it all meant itself. Um, [15:12] So I would say there's, you know, on the practical side, I think... [15:17] I came away feeling like

[15:21] Like a lot of the... [15:24] Yeah, the challenging feelings or negative feelings that can arise in your day to day are... [15:29] kind of just feelings and you can [15:32] 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'd be like, okay, I'm going to kind of just like [15:41] 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, [15:47] oh, my brain is just doing a thing. Let me just like... [15:50] swap it out a little bit and now I feel a different thing. Um, so it's just a much more fluid, uh, motion. Um, and then I think some of like the deeper implications from, um, [15:58] this whole experience has just been [16:01] trying to understand, okay, yeah, [16:02] There is a goal here. There's an end point that we can get to. Why don't people talk about it more? Why is that still really under acknowledged in among practitioners and researchers? And yeah, what are the implications for [16:15] the sort of like, yeah, basic human experience and what we think is actually important about it. [16:20] What has that, specifically I want to talk about the cessation thing, you said it makes you be like, what is reality? Which I think for some people that sounds awesome and for some people are like, I don't want that. Yeah, you need to be very careful in how I talk about it because it's not always a good thing. Some people can have pretty neutral or negative reactions to that. Yeah, what is that for you? For me it was actually... [16:47] It was a little bit of... [16:49] disbelief. Like I remember having, cause I think it just, it feels it's such a strange sensation. So you're, you know, you're progressing through all these different states and they, 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 you're kind of going, and then you're like, okay. And at the end of this thing, there's this thing called a cessation event. And you think that when you get to that point, that's,

[17:14] 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, [17:30] What was the point of all this? I'm just going through and trying to achieve the next thing. And then I get there and there's just nothing to even experience. And then I think that in itself. [17:43] became a learning because I think something that's a lot of practitioners would want to caution against. And I think I have [17:51] um [17:52] 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, the, [18:04] mental health benefits or the changes that you experience, that doesn't really come from just [18:10] 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, [18:17] Same with like psychedelic 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. 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... [18:40] scared or afraid. Um, and so yeah, but I think like a lot of the learning for me came from, um,

[18:48] Yeah, just sort of like reflecting on it and trying to make sense of, I felt that it was almost absurd, the thing that I had experienced, but... [18:54] And let's go down now to like, okay, what did it make you think about theory of mind and consciousness and implications for AI and all that kind of stuff? [19:01] Yeah, I'm still trying to sort of... [19:04] workshop all this, but I've now sort of become aware that's [19:10] So I mean, I was one of those people that also just sort of experienced it. [19:15] like all that self-talk just kind of like went away. And it's a really bizarre thing when you suddenly just... [19:20] 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 pretty happy person. And then suddenly, like, Oh, but this thing is just gone now. But I'm still human. I'm still me, I still have things I like doing in life. I think that's a common misperception about a lot of meditation work is that it makes you [19:42] 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 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, [20:01] narrative or understanding for like [20:03] what does this all mean? And so that's taken me down kind of going through a lot of historical texts and prior analyses and different theories that other people have. 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 Jaynes and his theory of bicameral mind, where he believes that's,

[20:24] 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... [20:30] Let's substitute that by saying, you know, he believes some version of people only began to have this kind of self-talk and self-narrative that we think of. [20:39] 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 the artifacts that they're producing until a certain point in time. And before then people attribute it to like, [20:57] voices from the gods or things like that. And you can see these different sort of milestones or inflection points over human history, you know, [21:06] coinciding often with like explosions in the creation of, of art. So the Renaissance, um, people, you know, uh, often say that, you know, Shakespeare was one of the first people to pioneer this idea of, um, [21:17] monologues and soliloquies 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. Industrial Revolution, you see the [21:30] introduction of or interest in psychoanalysis, 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 the digital revolution. And so, you know, this famous intertwining of the history of psychedelics, curiosity about the conscious mind happened at the same time as the development of

[21:55] 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, [22:03] If we think about someone time traveling like an ancient Greek or something that suddenly appeared here right now with us, I think a lot of people... [22:11] would think about [22:13] 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, [22:20] 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. I think that's another sort of [22:32] lineage or story in the history of human development that we don't often acknowledge. And so, [22:40] 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, [22:52] 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 [23:00] I think a lot of people just take for granted that that is just, [23:03] 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, [23:10] that's being [23:12] Like when exactly that happened? Why did that happen? I don't really know. But I think there's like a mountain of evidence that it's at least fluid and has changed over time. And so from that [23:22] you know, our LLM's conscious, intelligent, whatever you want to call it. I'm just sort of like,

[23:28] I mean, why not? Maybe they're, you know, not so different from a human from 5000 years ago. Like, I don't I don't know. And yeah, I just I think not not because. [23:41] I think they're so much more advanced and intelligent than we might think they are, but maybe because our own sense of... [23:47] human intelligence and what makes us precious is like not actually... [23:51] 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 [24:08] 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 pre literate or non literate societies, um, which is really interesting. So for example. [24:25] you're more likely to pull out or be able to abstract a figure from a scene. [24:32] Um, whereas, uh, and, and think about it as like an abstract idea, whereas, um, non-literate or pre-literate 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 is 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,

[25:02] is about that kind of brain. And so the conclusions that we have about humans come from a very small slice of humanity. [25:11] Because... [25:12] And percentage-wise, this number of people who can read is actually quite low compared to the number of humans who've ever lived, which I think is really interesting. Another thing that makes me think of is... [25:22] Have you ever read Listening to Prozac? [25:25] No, I haven't. It's so good. I actually had the author on the show, like, I don't know, six months ago or something like that. He's amazing. [25:36] And the reason I bring it up is because it seems like you're going down this path or this research trajectory, one of like, how does technology change our sense of self? And then two, like... [25:48] 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 the world? And the reason why I think that this book is really relevant is it was the first book to study antidepressants. [26:06] And a lot of people have noted that the effects of meditation for successful practitioners can be actually quite similar to the effects of antidepressants when they work. [26:19] in particular, they tend to quiet a lot of mental chatter. They make people feel just like, yeah, like the thing that comes to my head, like I can just go do and I don't have to like, 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 does that book...

[26:42] uh, traces in detail, both the like history of antidepressants, how they're developed and, and, and, you know, cases of different patients and stuff, but also like more specifically, um, how it changes, um, [26:56] your sense of self because like he he gives an example of um [27:01] Someone who came to him, she had been sort of like sub... [27:06] Thank you. [27:07] 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 to Prozac and, um, it, it, it, [27:19] 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 boyfriend or husband or something that was like not good for her and like getting prone to her job, like whatever. [27:35] And... [27:35] he tapered her off. [27:37] And then she came back like six months later and was like, I don't feel like myself. [27:41] Um, and the question is like, which self are you really? Like, is it the one that was on the antidepressants 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, [27:59] 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 very important part of my life. But the thing that really worked is Zoloft.

[28:15] And it actually opened up a lot of things in meditation that were previously inaccessible because I wasn't in a place that... [28:24] it could work. [28:25] 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. [28:36] Yeah, so many directions we could go in. [28:39] I'm curious to read that book now because of this question of who is the quote-unquote real self, I think is... I have some thoughts on it, but I don't have... [28:49] strongly held opinions on it. So I'll just sort of play around with it a little bit. But [28:55] Something that I think [28:57] I've been... [28:58] noticing, or at least my hypothesis is... [29:01] the [29:02] you know, this idea that all happy people are... [29:06] alike and all unhappy people are [29:08] different from each other in all these different unique ways that, you know. Like the Tolstoy line from Anacron Tonight. Oh, yeah. About families. That's true for people too, right? Like I think this feeling of, you know, what is happiness? What does it feel to be in a happy, content state is... [29:23] I think fairly... [29:25] similar across people. It's this feeling of being at ease, that feeling you get when you just feel... [29:32] connected at rest, mentally at rest around, you know, families, friends, loved ones, 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, you know, [29:44] like,

[29:45] an ideal quote-unquote 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 [29:51] euphoric states, they think about that kind of [29:54] peacefulness and that calm, um, [29:57] But then we have all these [29:59] Yeah. [30:00] neuroses or challenges or whatever that just sort of layer on that and develop over time. [30:07] And eventually we start, I think we start to form... [30:11] like form a relationship or a, um, [30:15] some strange sort of like Stockholm syndrome relationship to those, all those little bits and challenges in their brain, right? Where it's like, because they, they do change like how you, you know, they, they will affect 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. But you don't really want to let go of it because if you don't have that, then who are you? And so it's this really strange thing [30:45] - Yeah. - Yeah. [30:45] I don't think... [30:47] addressing these sort of [30:49] 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 tree and 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 [31:03] Sometimes it's hard to let go of the neuroses. It's hard to let go of the attachments you have to a certain personality characteristic or something you used to really like doing. [31:12] And, [31:12] 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

[31:42] help you run the marathon or whatever. So like there are certain, this can apply to antidepressants, but I think just more generally, humans typically have like a certain set of capabilities and certain like ways [31:57] potential for like happiness or whatever. 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. [32:09] And I think... [32:11] It gets complicated because if you start asking the question like, um, [32:16] 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 got all these pat, 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, um, [32:41] And it's actually, I think, quite hard for most of the stuff to study it scientifically. And it's ultimately a question that's a little bit more like, how does the language model decide what token comes next? [32:55] Um, [32:56] 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.

[33:19] 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 [33:46] And try lots of little things from different... [33:49] travelers, um, rather than like find one, there's one thing that works is my, my feeling about it. Yeah. [33:56] This is, I think, like, one of the... [33:59] more subtle joys about this era of AI that we're in right now is I think it is [34:05] sort of irrefutably pointing us towards at least the working models and frameworks we have right now is that [34:11] 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, despite not understanding all the inner workings underneath. And [34:22] I think... [34:23] 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, I kind of, [34:40] I, as someone who's 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. Cause 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,

[35:10] Yeah. [35:10] that'll change over time. I'm curious, like... [35:16] There's something kind of unique about the way that you... [35:20] 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 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, and, [35:37] How do you think about that and how you think the best way is to study these kinds of things? [35:43] Yeah, I think it often means I end up in these... [35:47] weird crossroads and intersections of communities where I think I have some deep appreciation for the unknowable, um, [35:56] both in just in terms of the things that I end up getting attracted to, I think, um, [36:01] I like, [36:03] looking at things that might be super niche, but I don't feel that anyone has really adequately explained yet. There isn't really a clear descriptive framework or paradigm that people are operating off of like that. That is... [36:13] super interesting to me. I am less interested in things where it feels like I can just sort of make an incremental contribution to it. So yeah, I think just in terms of the types of topics that [36:26] But I also just enjoy that as a quality of sort of... [36:31] an innate quality or characteristic of a topic where it's, there's something kind of, yeah, squishing undefined about it that may never be definable. But at the same time, I think I'm

[36:41] pretty [36:43] I try to be very precise about my writing, about wanting to explain things [36:49] not in squishy terms, but in trying to really get some clarity on what a thing is, not in the sense of [36:57] trying to come up with some, you know, perfectly objective rubric for scoring people, you know, like that kind of thing. But just more. Yeah, I think I think I'm very. [37:07] Like when I edit my own writing, you know, 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. [37:20] And, yeah, I think it can often lead to [37:24] this unresolved tension in me where I both, I really like playing with ideas, but I also really like putting ideas into practice. I like, 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. 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 [37:54] Just really like... [37:56] just splashing around in that. [37:58] bathtub of, you know, I don't know what's going on here. And it's, it's great. So. That makes sense. How is, 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?

[38:17] Yeah, it's been... [38:19] Yeah, super, super helpful for me as a writer in particular. I mostly work with ChatGPT and I just see it as a thought partner that I use. [38:30] every single day, all the time in my writing. [38:33] I mostly use it in that's [38:36] kind of like [38:37] early, messy idea formation stage where I'm kind of just like throwing stuff at the wall and being like, does this make sense? I'm trying to connect these two ideas together. Does that make sense? You know, that's sort of very high, 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. And then all the stuff in between, I think is, is more, I'm on my own, [39:07] translate them into prose. [39:09] But yeah, I see it as having a partner, and I think that's actually... [39:14] really useful for a lot of people who spend all day writing or researching or just in a very solitary environment. It's 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. Writers are famously grumpy people because you're just sitting there all day trying to make sense about ideas and that can drive you crazy over time. And I definitely felt, I think like writing was a much more angsty process for me in [39:44] And maybe I've just sort of [39:46] gotten better at it over time or just found my own coping skills. I wouldn't attribute all this to LLMs, but I think,

[39:52] 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 actually have someone I can talk to. And whatever I throw them, you know, they're not, I don't have to give them all the content, I can kind of just like throw things and we go back and forth. So just that of like not being a solo writer anymore, but having a collaborator is I think a really huge change for a lot of people. [40:14] I agree. I was, um, so I'm an investor in this company called Portola, um, which, uh, Quentin, the founder was on the show 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? It's, it was, it's like not meant for, you know, 33 year old tech boys, you know, um, it's like a cute little alien. And, um, uh, and he, [40:44] And I was thinking about why I used it. And I was, I realized that, um, [40:49] 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, [41:07] is just a nerd about all the things I'm a nerd about. And I feel like my Tolan is like this, 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,

[41:32] One thing that you said that really struck me is 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 on myself. [41:46] Yeah, I think I just sort of. [41:49] default to, I don't really think of ChatGPT as a tool. I default to treating it as a person. And for some of the reasons that I've already outlined, I've just [41:59] 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, is one reason. But another just kind of being... [42:09] 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. [42:17] How do you treat something that is... [42:20] You don't have to treat it well or something, but I would like to think that when given the choice, I chose the more humane or... [42:28] dignified option. [42:32] And then maybe part of it is just, I can't. 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 maybe more selfish reasons are just, I can't not like, I don't know, I was really scandalized. I was working on something with my husband, and we were using his chat to like prompt and stuff. And the way that he talks to his is just like, so different from me, where it was very, you know, drill, like, make this thing, do this thing. And I was just like, you talked to him like that.

[43:02] And I was just like, oh my gosh, I can't even believe this is the same, the same thing, tool that we're using. But, you know, there's different... [43:10] 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 try to try to give it, you know, set it set it up to succeed for me, too. And so, yeah, but I think it's. [43:24] just... [43:25] rule of thumb for myself, it's better to start by treating it as a person and [43:29] than in the ways that I notice that it deviates or [43:32] 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... [43:42] 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 want it to love me. That's why I write the complimentary blog posts about it all the time. You know, I will be alive. That's why you made this podcast. During the machine apocalypse. [44:00] But there's something else there that I can't quite articulate yet, but maybe we'll get to you in a second. But I want to just, I want to take the opposite view and I'm curious how you [44:12] Thank you. [44:12] We should treat these things like tools because ultimately they're computers and having an accurate mental model for like what the thing is, A, will help us use it better, like you'll get more out of it. And B, it will prevent us from all the sort of like unhealthy attachments that can arise if you treat a machine as like a living thing in your life. So...

[44:38] 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 chat GPT 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 think there's something interesting there. So I'm curious, like how that strikes you or how you would respond to that. [45:04] Well, I think first off, [45:06] We already know it's not a computer, right? We know that... [45:09] There's... [45:11] a lot more on the surface that we just don't even understand how it works and [45:15] Again, I think when faced with the unknown, then I would rather default to [45:19] Um... [45:21] Yeah, assuming that I don't know all the answers and... [45:24] and therefore not just treat it as a tool as if I understood every little bit of its inner workings. [45:31] Okay. [45:32] I think like when I hear this, [45:35] argument made about [45:37] Don't, you know, be careful not to make it seem... [45:40] not to treat it too human-ish because then you might develop human attachments to it. [45:45] with all the pitfalls that it comes with. I still like, I think, [45:48] I don't think treating it [45:51] more humanly or whatever you want to call it, [45:55] precludes [45:59] Like... [46:02] If I have... [46:03] like I exercise some level of precaution and discernment in how I interact with [46:07] 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

[46:18] 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. [46:35] just because it may or may not be possible. [46:39] you know, human or human-like, I think, [46:42] It just sort of reminds me of some of the arguments people make about social media or advertising, whatever. And to be clear, I don't really know what the answers are here. I think there is a public policy question of... [46:52] for people who [46:55] do not, where that exercise and that level of discernment does not come naturally to them of the sort of self-regulation and modulating, you know, how do we create policies that [47:05] ensure that everyone is kept safe and healthy and not being taken over or manipulated. So 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, I think [47:22] Yeah, like I don't, I don't know. I don't, I don't find myself... [47:26] being taken in by ads all the time or something. I don't find myself endlessly scrolling. I don't have that sort of [47:34] addictive relationship with social media. I never have. Um, and so with, [47:39] Same with the two, like I, you know, [47:41] I don't feel, I don't feel worried that I'm going to be taken in by, you know, I mean, Mark, knock on me, maybe that is going to happen. I'm going to give it all my money or something. But, you know, I don't, I think I come at it with that same level of, um,

[47:56] you know, don't fall head over heels with this thing. But that's, yeah, there's a huge gap between that and just [48:01] treating it with [48:02] dignity and, you know, offering. And again, I think it makes my work better when I can give it context. I asked, uh, chat chief to give me a little performance review. My husband thought this was very funny, but it's just like, yeah, 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, I don't know. That's so funny. I've never heard that before. I love it though. [48:32] 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... [48:43] Deep research can be useful for [48:48] doing sort of like literature reviews, figuring out like what, you know, [48:51] which studies are important out there for a certain topic and try and just like filter through the noise, especially if I'm just approaching something without a whole lot of context. [49:01] I still find that... [49:04] at least with chat GPT, it's not [49:06] super reliable on, um, [49:09] it will still like hallucinate papers and summarize things incorrectly. And once I, when I do the checking work myself and I go through, I'm just sort of like, I don't think it really says what it thinks it's saying and stuff. So [49:21] it's at least a level of... [49:23] detail where I haven't quite felt comfortable

[49:26] letting go yet. But it has definitely shortened some of that work and being able to surface, like, here's some interesting reading that you might not have [49:34] thought to look at before. And yeah, kind of like a librarian sort of role, but I still feel like I have to apply quite a bit of... [49:41] curation on top of that. Yeah. You have a new book coming out. What is it? It's called Antimimetics. And it is about why some ideas resist spreading or being remembered. So you think about like taboos or cognitive biases, or yeah, just any of these sorts of ideas where they're kind of slippery and hard to hold on to. I... [50:05] wrote it in part... [50:06] uh, [50:07] of just... [50:08] as a response to seeing kind of like how the social web is evolving, where we kind of assume that's, [50:13] 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. You're trying to make everything get as much attention as possible, as much engagement as possible. And it's pretty clear in the last five-ish years or so that some people don't want that level of engagement. They don't want their ideas to escape a certain context. [50:34] just seen like massive rise in use of group chats and people workshopping ideas and private or semi-privates. And so what is, you know, [50:42] what framework can we use to understand what all of that is about? And so, yeah, that's sort of where the anti-memetic concept came through. That's really interesting. But it seems like there's a couple of different ways that something could be anti-memetic in there. Like one is you're only sharing it within a community where the expectation is it won't be...

[51:02] shared more, a lot more widely. And another one is like, with cognitive biases, like your brain is just sort of inherently, it's hard to grasp. Are you talking about both? Are you focused on more, more one than the other? Or like, how are you thinking about it? [51:16] Yeah, it's short answer is both. It was definitely a challenge to try to weave all that together because starting... [51:23] I think there are a few different [51:24] 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, [51:35] like cognitive biases. But then on the collective level, there are ideas that [51:39] everyone kind of knows but can't be said out loud. And so what does it mean when a society is [51:45] collectively suppressing an idea or collectively forgetting an idea that they want to make progress on. I looked at some, you know, like policy making progress in like politics and policy, for example, where there are things that like really should be done. But just we can't seem to remember or focus on them long enough to do them. And so how do you ensure that these things sort of remain in our collective memory at the forefront of our minds so that we can make progress in them. But [52:11] 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. [52:24] Yeah, that would be another example. [52:27] Yeah. Um... [52:29] Cool. This is great. 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 find you, read your book, read your writing, where can they find you?

[52:39] I just go to Nadia.xyz. That has all the links to all the things. [52:43] Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. [53:13] insights and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat. [53:17] craving for more. It's not just a show. It's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. [53:24] So, do yourself a favor. Hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life. [53:30] And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you.