Mutual Understanding

You can find JC Cassis at jccassis.com, and can check out her own podcast, Risk.We cover a bunch of topics, including friendship in adulthood, what we owe each other, and a little about parenting.Divia (00:01.721)Hey, so I'm here today with my friend, JC. And I like to say that we went to school together and if people are like, like you mean like what? And I'm like, no, all the school we went to school together, starting in kindergarten through senior year of high school. And then we also went to college together. Yeah, it's yeah. Though, as we sometimes say, you were in the other class in kindergarten. really more like 16.JC (00:02.589)Hey.JC (00:20.116)17 years of nonstop togetherness.JC (00:27.356)Right, so it's, right. And then you were in a different dorm at Harvard and, you know, different friend group and all that. you know, yeah, yeah. It certainly wasn't, it wasn't overkill and it also wasn't nothing, you know?Divia (00:33.216)But we did hang out!Divia (00:38.83)Yeah, totally. And, you know, and we've kept in touch since then. I, you know, I wish I talked to you more ultimately, but, but I would say like at least, I don't know, like at least most years I think we check in. She seems like a.JC (00:45.106)Yeah, me too.JC (00:51.836)Yeah, and I think we totally could more and we probably just should do that. I don't think you're hard to reach at all, but I think it's just living in different cities and all that kind of stuff.Divia (00:57.377)Yeah, yeah that seems right.Divia (01:03.659)Yeah, totally. And, and JC also has a podcast. Do want to tell people a little about that?JC (01:07.252)Sure, yeah, so for the last 13 and a half years, which I cannot believe how long it's been, I've been working on the podcast called Risk, which is where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. No.Divia (01:17.857)Nice. Yeah. And so we were just texting the other day and I'm still sort of like restarting up with this podcast. Everybody took a pretty long break and trying to figure out what I'm doing. But one thing I know I want is just to like actually have conversations with people. And so I was like, yeah, let's, let's get on and, catch up and talk about stuff. I don't know, share our different perspectives. So JC, welcome to the podcast.JC (01:39.72)Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I think it's funny. You know, it's funny, I was talking to my brother the other day and he was saying that he remembered having a conversation with you when we were kids and you came over to my house and he was like, why are you friends with her about me? And you were like very diplomatic, classic Divya, you know, like he did his great impression of you. I forget exactly what the wording was, but it was just something like, you know, well, you know, I think we have good chemistry and I like to talk to her and we have a nice time together. So like, I'm friends with her, you know? And he was just like.I just thought that was hilarious.Divia (02:09.017)Yeah, siblings, siblings are really, I don't know, it's funny with sibling relationships. I hope your brother's doing well.JC (02:17.51)Yeah. Yeah, he is, you know, and he fondly remembers you, you know, so that's nice. But he could not believe that you have five kids. His head almost exploded when I said that. So I know I told him that. Yes, you have not wavered on this. I told him I was like, well, her dream was always three kids and then she had three kids and she wanted two more. So like she's doing what makes her happy. Like, you know, it's never it's never wavered, you know, but his head exploded.Divia (02:22.573)Yeah, it's mutual, totally.Divia (02:30.751)but I always wanted a bunch of kids. I feel like this has been consistent,Divia (02:45.229)You know, actually, so a little bit of it, you say that, I think that's almost right. I definitely said three kids, but this is, and I think we're gonna come back to this topic more than once, but like what I thought was normal growing up in New York, going to like a private girl's school with you like we did, and then what, you know, later I got older and I saw some more things. so I just, it sort of didn't occur to me, I think that anyone could have more than three kids.JC (03:08.928)that's hilarious.Divia (03:09.997)Because like, who did we really, I'm like, I don't know. I feel like I barely knew anyone who did. I was like, three kids is a big family. There was one Christian homeschool group at the music school I went to that had five kids, but I think that was maybe it for what I knew, which seems, I don't know, it seems sort of weird to reflect on that. And, okay, so then here's the other part of that.JC (03:15.751)Yeah.Divia (03:30.169)The next next week, assuming you know nothing goes wrong and I get everything recorded promptly etc. The podcast guest will be Michael Vassar whom I believe I introduced you to at one point. Yeah and I think you guys talked about like the New York City Counc

Jessica Ocean is on X, as is her husband Malcolm Ocean. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

Divia Eden and Ben Goldhaber of Mutuals interviewed me about what I’ve been thinking about over the last 5 years. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. (Link to audio on Youtube with clickable timestamps.)Topics discussed include:* what religion and spirituality might have to offer moral philosophy, AI alignment, and AI coordination* Christopher Langan's theory-of-everything, the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe, and how it might provide coherent intellectual foundations for synthesizing the metaphysical claims found across religious and spiritual traditions* speculations about non-naive interpretations of "the afterlife" * my interpretation of the Second Coming of Christ as a potential self-fulfilling prophecy, along with speculations about what it might look like* what embodied cognition means to me, and why it's led me to have longer AGI timelinesTable of contentsShow Notes[0:00] Introducing Alex[1:51] What is metaphysics?[2:54] Tenuous metaphysical assumptions behind the is-ought problem[4:43] Alex's AI alignment journey[8:30] Healing infant trauma – Alex's first formative spiritual experience[10:25] The relevance of spiritual experiences for moral philosophy[12:34] Convergent philosophical views among religious and spiritual traditions[14:43] Alex’s take on Buddhism[16:19] Mathematical formalizations of truth, goodness, and beauty might essentially coincide[18:21] Alex’s take on Christ’s crucifixion[20:14] Alex’s first "direct experience of God"[22:23] Psychological distortions as a central problem in AI alignment and AI coordination[25:18] A secular lens on spirituality – addressing psychological distortions[28:53] Introducing Chris Langan and the CTMU[29:41] How Alex got interested in the CTMU[32:48] Alex attempts to summarize core ideas of the CTMU[35:25] Alex’s ITT-passing habit[37:15] On Chris Langan’s political views[39:08] Metaethics from UDT and the CTMU, pt 1 – acting from behind the universal veil of ignorance[40:03] Logical time and the "lazy evaluation" of reality[41:31] Spirituality vs the orthogonality thesis[46:19] Metaethics from UDT and the CTMU, pt 2 – elaborations on "ethics as self-interest"[48:15] Speedrunning the AI "danger zone"?[49:20] Metaethics from UDT and the CTMU, pt 3 – "we are all one"[50:52] "Reincarnation" and "the afterlife"[54:53] How might information get transferred across lifetimes?[58:17] Is love a spandrel?[59:18] "Reincarnation" and "souls"[1:04:56] Karma[1:06:47] Overt physicalist vs subtle physicalist vs non-physicalist explanations[1:07:36] Cross-lightcone effects of prayer via influencing wave function collapse[1:10:18] The physicalism null hypothesis, pt 1[1:11:19] Cross-hemisphere remote healing with ayahuasca?[1:12:13] Learning from "plant spirits"[1:17:22] The physicalism null hypothesis, pt 2[1:19:45] "The afterlife" as already happening, but occluded by psychological distortions[1:23:37] The CTMU as an articulation of the metaphysical a priori[1:24:54] CTMU vs Tegmark IV vs ultrafinitism[1:26:19] The Distributed Second Coming as a self-fulfilling prophecy[1:30:26] Synthesizing the world religions with each other, and with science[1:31:35] AI coordination – the Second Coming as the prevailing of the "Schelling coalition"[1:33:31] AI peacemakers, for empowering human peacemakers[1:35:24] Cellular intelligence, "embodied cognition", and AI timelines[1:42:05] Transformative AIs may not outcompete humans at everything[1:43:04] Is the "AI" part of "AI alignment" a red herring?[1:45:16] ClosingSubscribe for upcoming pieces about related topicsShow notesDouble-crux: a conversational technique for arriving at mutual understandingPaul Dirac on truth and beauty: “If one is working from the point of view of getting beauty into one's equation, ... one is on a sure line of progress.”Eliezer’s LessWrong comment about a superintelligence stably believing that 51 is prime: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Djs38EWYZG8o7JMWY/paul-s-research-agenda-faq#:~:text=E.g.%3A%20Eliezer,ounce%20of%20understanding Reincarnation book that Alex recommended to Divia: https://www.amazon.com/Lifecycles-Reincarnation-Life-Christopher-Bache/dp/1557786453 Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/ Ayahuasca retreat centers where Alex "interfaced with plant spirits": https://templeofthewayoflight.org/ and https://niweraoxobo.com/Metareligion as the Human Singularity: https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/694 Michael Levin interview excerpt about cellular robustness, from 1:25:15 -1:27:08: [0:00] Introducing AlexDivia: Today we're here with Alex Zhu, whom I've known for a long time. I think I met you almost a decade ago? Alex: That sounds about right. Divia: Yeah, Alex is currently working full time. You have an institute now, you just said? Alex: Yes. Divia: What's it called? Alex: The Mathematical Metaphysics Institute.Divia: Okay, the Mathematical Metaphysics Institu

Sarah is a director at Nanotronics and writes on Twitter and on Substack.Timestamps[00:01:00] Why AI is probably a good thing[00:08:00] The limits of current robotics[00:13:00] Nanotronics and process improvements with AI[00:23:00] Predictions on AI[00:26:00] Input output limitations on AI models[00:35:00] Drug discovery[00:45:00] Instrumental convergence[01:05:00] Progress studies[1:13:00] Morality[01:27:30] Game Theory and Social Norms[01:41:00] Shrimp Welfare[01:48:00] LongevityShow NotesAlphaDev discovers faster sorting algorithmIt Looks Like You’re Trying to Take Over the WorldEA has a lying problemGoals (and not having them)Sarcopenia Experimental TreatmentsReality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

Coordination among 8 billion people is very tough. We're very far away from doing that with the intelligence that we have now, it's incredibly costly to send information to different people and for different people to learn about each other in order to trust each other… we should kind of expect that people will have a lot of trouble coordinating on a big scale. But if we could then we’d grow a lot!…In terms of least ‘failing with dignity’ do we think that the public did a good job in trying to investigate this and was misled? Or do we think that the public just like did a terrible job in like doing anything coordinated and just got hoodwinked super easily? I think we fall a lot more into the latter campOzzie Gooen is the president of the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute (QURI). In this episode we discuss Utilitarianism, improving trust in organizations, communities, and governments, and his work in building better software for thinking, forecasting, and estimation.Links from the Show* The Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute* The QURI Medley* A video explaining QURI’s new Relative Value Estimation tool.* Reports on the failure to identify Bernie Madoff’s fraud* How to Measure Anything* The OpenAI BoardTimestamps[00:01:00] Worldview[00:08:00] Starter Pack Philosophies[00:12:00] How tools for better Epistemics fits into Utilitarianism[00:20:00] Mistake theory vs Conflict Theory[00:24:00] Improving EA institutions[00:30:00] Justified Trust in Governments[00:38:00] Contracts and monitoring for evaluating orgs[00:46:30] Estimation utopias[00:52:00] Centralization vs Decentralization[00:58:00] The value of a good investigation in the case of FTX[01:05:00] The importance of the OpenAI Board[01:09:00] Estimating Relative Values[01:18:15] Shared intellectual infrastructure[01:26:00] Epistemically mature civilizations This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

This episode may make more sense after reading Quintin’s LessWrong post about evolution and the sharp left turn, but I think we end up talking through most of it.Our conversation appeared as two Twitter Spaces:https://twitter.com/diviacaroline/status/1649925920529223680?s=20 andhttps://twitter.com/diviacaroline/status/1649957263535394821?s=20 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

Robin talks about why he thinks developments in AI will be on a continuum with civilizational progress in general, and Ronny, who is mostly trying to understand Robin, talks some about why he thinks many of the things he values about humanity aren't on track to being preserved, and that he cares about that.Video version available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-fBdPnwFrI This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

In this episode we discuss several ‘frames’ - ways of processing and orienting to information - that are appearing in public discussions around AI, and in particular reflect on how grounded they are in longstanding debates within the AI X-Risk community."It’s sort of like the democratic ideal where everybody's sort of out there at the public square arguing with each other, talking about the things… I don't think there are a lot taboos about what to say yet either. It hasn't gotten super corrupted.Like it's very rare that in the real world, I'm encountering trolleys running over people right? And you can set up these fake scenarios that mess up my moral intuitions… but maybe it’s not always virtuous to endorse the repugnant conclusion that these very limited, decoupled thought experiment bring you to."Links:* MusicLM from Google* TV’s War With the Robots Is Already Here (Writer’s Strike connection with AI)* Ronny Fernandez and Robin Hanson Discuss AI Futures* Roko and Alexandros on AI Risk* Universal Fire* SpandrelsTimestamps[00:01:00] Updates on Politics[00:07:00] The State of the AI Discourse[00:13:00] The Yudkowskian Foomer vs Hansonian Continualist[00:18:00] Mood Affiliations[00:22:00] Biting Bullets vs Rejecting Fake Hypotheticals[00:28:00] Divide between Game Theorists and Engineers[00:36:00] The complexity of predictions about the future[00:47:00] How similar are the values of optimizing systems?[00:54:00] The rupture of the GMU Rationalist Alliance[01:00:00] Public Perception that AI has Moral Weight[01:03:00] AI Veganism/Freeganism[01:06:00] Overton Window Shifts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

No transcript for this episode yet, but I wanted to get it out there anyway, since it can be hard to listen on Twitter Spaces. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mutualunderstanding.substack.com

Ben Weinstein-RaunAnd so my guess is that that fairness seems like a plausible candidate for something like an alien species might have… kind of universal, like given some sort of assumptions about how evolution worked or works.Like there is something happening that results in us making choices. And if your philosophical determinism denies that, like you're wrong. And, I think it makes about as much sense to talk about will and free will in making choices as it does to talk about a glass of water.Ben Weinstein-Raun’s Twitter and Website.Timestamps[00:02:00] - Meta-Ethical Stance[00:11:00] - Contrasting with Moral Realism[00:26:00] - What EA misses[00:47:00] - Fanaticism and Outside of Distribution Sampling[01:28:00] - Building new Tools for Forecasting and Thinking[01:44:00] - Actually using Tooling for Better Decisions[01:53:00] - Guided by the Aesthetics of our Distributed SystemsThis transcript is machine generated and contains errorsBen Goldhaber: [00:00:00] And hi I'm going to maybe make a quick introduction to our guest here, and then we'll just dive into some conversation. Ben - who has a great first name - Ben Weinstein-Raun has worked at a number of top tech companies including crews and council, number of innovative tech research organizations such as MIRI and Redwood Research, and Secure DNA.Ben is currently building a tool for forecasting estimation, and dare I say, thinking. Having known Ben for some time now, I'd describe Ben as a careful, discerning thinker on issues of not just technology, but also philosophy.And so, yes, welcome to the pod, Ben. Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, we're excited to have you. I was saying to Divia, one of the reasons I was excited to invite you on[00:01:00] was because of a really great conversation that you and I had a few weeks ago about. Naturalism and ethics and how it's put into practice and like all good conversations about philosophy, it was like 3:00 AM around a kitchen table.And I felt like you really captured something important about I don't know, naturalism and ethics, and I really just wanna see if we could recapture some of that magic in our conversation today. Cool.Ben WR: Yeah, totally. Great. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about it. Awesome.Divia Eden: I'm excited. I haven't heard most of this yet, so I'll get to hear it for the first time.Ben WR: Yeah. Nice.Ben Goldhaber: Well, lemme just ask for the start. How would you describe your moral stance?Ben WR: Yeah, I guess, I guess at the moment, I would describe my, like best I don't know, my, my best stab or something. My best stab at understanding ethics as more like a pretty strong stance [00:02:00] on meta ethics. And not as strong of a stance on like, sort of object level ethics.Where meta ethics is sort of questions about like where ethics comes from. Like why do we say moral sentence or like sentences about morality, sentences about good and bad and should whereas like ethics, like object level ethics would be sort of like, what sentences do we say about or like should we say about good and bad?And like sort of what's true on the, on the direct object level there? I guess the, yes, so the meta ethical stance that I really wanna take is basically derived from an observation, which is that MetaEthical questions are under I think some pretty reasonable assumptions entirely empirical.So whatever the truth of the object level, ethical facts insofar as they exist. [00:03:00] There's some reason that people go around talking about shoulds and, and good and bad and so on. And, and that reason is like entirely inside of physics. It's not mysterious. It's the kind of thing that we could figure out by like, looking carefully at humans and at human societies and at maybe, maybe game theory and math.We don't need fundamentally different tools to answer that kind of question. If we're interested in answering like, the straightforward question, why do people say sentences like that? What is sort of the driver for humans having these intuitions and having these sort of discussions and, and and so on.And so that's sort of like the, the, the meta ethical stance. And then I think it has some kind of interesting implications for taking this stance has an interesting implications for the more object level stuff. So I think the most obvious one to me is that it, it does [00:04:00] not seem like it lends itself well to sort of very simplified rule-based systems.So I think it, it pushes me pretty far away from like a sort of total utilitarian kind of a view where you're aiming to make your object level ethical system very simple and make that sort of like this very beautiful sort of object that you know, is unassailable.Ben Goldhaber: I'd love to ask a question there about that because I could see some people actually like in intuition that I feel like I have, when I hear that from a meta ethical point of view, everything is within this same kind of system and I suppose all derived from physics on down it. Lends itse

Divia and Ben discuss politics, reminisce about elections gone by, and try and make AI predictions.This transcript is machine generated and contains errors.Ben Goldhaber: [00:00:00] so how's it going Divia?Divia Eden: It's going well. Great to have a chance to talk to you on the podcast.Ben Goldhaber: Yeah, same back at you and Hi. Who, who else is joining us for the next minutes?Divia Eden: Yeah, this is my 15 month old son. He'll be here just for a few minutes and and then, then it'll be just the two of us.He's our, our podcast guest. Yeah. Likely.Ben Goldhaber: Yeah. One of our easiest to understand guests. I would bet. You know, just very clear and direct. Absolutely. In a straightforward way. This is no slur against our previous guests but we, I feel like we invite people on in some ways for loving the Galaxy Brain takes.And the beautiful thing about a 15 month year old is just you know, that's right. Simple, clear wants, I imagine I'm speaking as if I have any actual parenting expertise, but,Divia Eden: It's all good one day. Yes. So we don't, we don't have a guest for today. But we have a plan that sometimes just two of us [00:01:00] are going to talk and catch up about things that are on our mind.Ben Goldhaber: Yeah. Seems good.Divia Eden: And before we started recording, we were just exchanging a few predictions about some political stuff, you know, as you do. So I thought, I thought maybe we would, we would talk aboutBen Goldhaber: that. Yeah. As maybe some listeners know and, and Dvia knows. I, I was about to say I don't have many vices, but I don't think that's for me to say.But one vice that I do have is I very much enjoy betting on politics. And I will say it has been exciting to see that predict it is looks like it's gonna survive, which, yeah, I was actually much more negative about a few months ago. I did not think it was gonna happen.Divia Eden: Yeah, there wasn't, unfortunately, I think there was no prediction market for predicted unpredicted, so weBen Goldhaber: were left not unpredicted.There was one unlike poly market, which I don't think I ever, I I, I have, the crypto ones have always been just a little, I don't know. I've, I've done some stuff with them, but I've always been like [00:02:00] feel like they're about to fail or about to run away. But yes, poly market had one, but yeah, was not, when I predicted that would've been way cooler.Divia Eden: Yeah. I'm also a longtime political better. I, one of my at the, this is actually, I don't know if you'll ever listen to this. Hello to my dad. If, if we had and wonderful short conversation with my dad back when, so I bet on Obama on, I guess it was Intrade at the time when he was running the first time.And I remember I, cuz my dad was, he was a big, like, he, his read was, Obama's gonna win. He was like, this guy's very charismatic, he's gonna win. And so I was talking to him and I was like, all right, well you think he's gonna win? He's trading it like at whatever it was like 57% right before the first debate or something like that.I was like, well how much do you think I should bet? And he was like, yeah, you should bet like 50 bucks or something. And I was kinda like, well, okay, but if you're so sure. And we talked about it for a while and then he, we hung up. Yeah. And then he called me back maybe an hour later and he was like, wait, how much do you have liquid?And I was like, yeah, this is the right question. Cause in fact, yeah. Yeah, [00:03:00] it was a big, and I mean I was, I think I was just out of college. I did not, I had very little money at the time, but I think I did put little liquid on Obama and Nice. It paid off. So that was then, you know, and then I was kind of hookedBen Goldhaber: after that.Yeah, it's, it's compelling. It's, we don't need to get into all the very good reasons. Prediction markets are, are awesome and, and should be more widely used. But yeah, it's just, it's, it's also just fun because I feel like when you're kind of chatting like with your dad, like I, I talk about politics with my, with my dad as well and with friends.It's really, it's easy to get into the kind of like blather mode and. It's both nice to have as a forcing function, thinking about what your actual bet is gonna turn into or like what this actually means in terms of betting. And also just adds like a nice little, like I, I guess this is for people who are more into sports than I am.It's the same reason why gambling on sports is probably fun. Just add when, then when you keep following it, you get to like have that additional zing of [00:04:00] excitement of like, oh I've got, got money on this debate.Divia Eden: Yeah, totally. And yeah, and I also, like, I've been on Trump the first time, but I didn't have a, the thing I was just saying before we started recording was that I, I think like many very online people, underrated Biden last time.I think I didn't make any big bets. I don't remember. I think I made some small, small ones.

As I’ve said often in the past, utilitarianism is a hell of a drug. And it can get you to do incredibly horrible things while you’re high on it. Utilitarianism not even once, just say no to utilitarian.All of these discussions are old discussions. Instead of being had among 200 people, they are being had in public among vast numbers.Perry Metzger writes on Substack at Diminished Capacity and on Twitter.* [00:02:00] Jupiter Brains and Extropians* [00:07:00] Life Extension* [00:11:00] Ethical Systems* [00:19:00] Rejection of Utilitarianism* [00:26:00] Anarcho-Capitalism* [00:30:00] SVB Collapse* [00:40:00] Finanical System Structuring* [00:54:00] AI* [01:00:00] The history of futurist discussion of AI* [01:03:00] AI Safety* [01:07:00] Fishing in the sea of AI Minds* [01:17:00] Mask on the Shoggoth* [01:22:00] Future Shock* [01:25:00] Competition in FDA Regulation* [01:38:00] Kardashev Scale Civilizations* [01:42:00] Estimates of X-Risk* [01:52:00] Cultural Effects of AI Developments* [01:56:00] Nanotechnology* [02:15:00] Sociology of the Nanotechnology field* [02:27:00] Engineering vs Theorizing* [02:43:00] Back to the future; accuracy of early extropian discussion* [02:52:00] Grabby Aliens* [02:56:00] AstrophysicsThis transcript was machine generated and contains errors.Perry Metzger: [00:00:00] to try to make our lives better, which is, I'm gonna quit my Firefox instance with 8,500 tabs in it.Ben Goldhaber: Can't hurt. And I do think that the recording is working now. Cool. Divia Eden: Yeah. Okay. So, and do you wanna introduce Perry or should I?Ben Goldhaber: No, Divia. I think why don't you do the introduction. Perry Metzger: Okay. Divia Eden: Perry Metzger is a computer scientist who's done academic research, who's also had a bunch of different programming jobs, including startups and consulting. He knows more than anyone else I talked to about nanotech.I originally met Perry through my husband, who met him through an ancap meetup (Anarcho-Capitalism). And from my perspective, he's one of those guys who's been around the futurist scene forever. He was an early member of the Cypherpunks mailing list, started the original cryptography list, and started the Extropians mailing list.He says that he claims no ownership or originality of any transhumanist ideas, except that he did coin the term Jupiter Brain. So, Perry thanks so much for coming on our podcast. Perry Metzger: Hello. Actually no one hires me to write software [00:01:00] anymore. People, people hire me to be a horrifying management consultant.Or what have you. Secretly I still write software here and there, and it horrifies people really, really badly. I have scarred a number of people working for me by having to deal with my software. They, you know, we, but we don't talk about that mostly, you know, and I've, I've gotten rid of most of the bodies over the years successfully.So provided, no one finds them. We should be okay. Yes. Yeah I’ve done all sorts of stuff. I have no idea actually what I'm going to be when I grow up, but I've been told that if you don't actually figure that out by the time you're 60 or 70, you don't have to grow up.So I might actually just have to opt for that. Divia Eden: Sounds good to me. Well, we have a lot of questions, but I was wondering if you could first start by telling our listeners what a Jupiter Brain is, in case they don't already know. Perry Metzger: Oh, okay. So, I should set a little context, which is for those that, [00:02:00] have no idea what Divia was mentioning when she said, I started the Extropians mailing list about 723,000 years ago.In, you know, slightly before Homo Sapien showed up I was hanging out with a friend of mine. And I'll cut the story really short by saying that we discovered this zine, this was back in the era when people would decide, you know, they'd get access to a photocopier and they'll start publishing a magazine.There was this Zine called Extropy: Vaccine for Future Shock put out by a gentleman who was then Max O'Connor, but is now Max Moore. And, you know, Harry and I were reading this thing and it looked like, oh, you know, these guys came down on the same spaceship as us. And I got in touch with Max and I said, Hey, I'd like to set up a mailing list to talk about these ideas.And the ideas like the Magazine was roughly centered on anarcho-capitalism, radical life extension, transhumanism, uploading artificial intelligence you know neurotropic drugs, the usual stuff that young people were interested in, back then. So, I got in touch with Max and I said, Hey, max, I want to set up a mailing list for subscribers of this thing.And he said, well, what's that? And I said, well, you know why I set up this thing and a bunch of people then can have an online conversation. And he said, okay. And I sent out invites on something that was called Libernet back then, which was for Crazy Libertarians and the Cryonics mailing list for crazy people who want to freeze their heads to save their