Build Your Autonomous Self - Ep 2

Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. As you can see from my face, I had some microneedling done on Friday and so it's a little beat up, so a little recovered. One or two more days and most of it will fade. All right, happy to see all of you. Happy Father's Day to those of you out there. As a reminder what the is in the 20th century, a cultural way of understanding would be to say that one could live fast and die young. And that was a reasonable way to live because there was no process of extending one's life and there was also no technology that was going to radically change things in a given lifetime. Choosing a fast life of a few decades versus slow a few more decades was a reasonable choice. In the year 2023. A lot of people don't realize just where we're at with the science of anti aging and health and wellness. It is no longer reasonable for someone to put a number on how long and how well a human can live. And I know a lot of people try to peg it at 120 and 140. And we make these speculations. We are steps away from creating ever closer super intelligence. And when that happens, it's not known what is possible. And so really the, the cult to be consistent with the time, it's no longer live fast, die young, it's don't die. And this has significant consequences in terms of how we think about ourselves. Because if we're living within a 20th century framework where we're going to imagine that we are going to participate in grind culture, work towards professional accomplishments and seek that as our form of immortality and not take care of ourselves. So we're willing to compromise on sleep, compromise our health in every aspect of what we eat, not exercising. If you fully internalize the new mindset of the 21st century, you will make your health your number one priority. This means setting up a bedtime and never negotiating with it. It means taking care of your health as your number one priority, even at the expense of professional accomplishment. Now, it doesn't have to be the case that these two things compete with each other. That making your health your number one priority, you're really, You're reconciling with where we're at in the possibility of human health and wellness and our potential. And secondarily is you're probably going to be, excuse me, you're probably going to be much better in your professional endeavors if we all know that when we don't sleep well, we don't feel great and the we're actually meaningfully Impaired as if we had drank alcohol. And so you think about this. The majority of the human race is impaired on a daily basis because we're not getting adequate sleep, which is not good for any of us. And so these sessions are about individual habit change and through a methodology of identifying the different versions of ourselves. But really it's a shift of identity where we are encouraging one another. We exist in a time and place that no other human in history has been. The potential of future life. We have this possibility of the most extraordinary life in the history of the human race with the technological progress at hand. Yes, we have challenges to address and yes, there's a lot of uncertainties, but it's appropriate that there's at least a group of us who are trying to make the cultural shift so that we value life, we appreciate this preciousness of what we have. We're alive. It's amazing to be alive and we want to continue to stay alive. And so in these sessions today as well, we'll go through these dialogues. The objective is for each one of us to see ourselves in this discussion. Last week, you heard the comment with Sarah and Judd, both with very different perspectives, with where they're at now, where they're trying to go, and I hope you're able to take away some key lessons. We're gonna do two today and then we'll check in again with Sarah and Judd, but I hope that it's useful to you. The feedback I've received from these sessions has been amazing. I've received so many emails and messages where people say, I just couldn't quite get over this hump. I was so confused with myself. This change in my life and these things have been breakthroughs for them. So with that said, let's get going. And over the past, I'll make this note, over the past few weeks, I've been trying to learn how to do these live streams and my attention has been very scattered screen and I'm watching comments to see what everyone's saying, like to get a pulse on where everyone's at and try to pay attention to the person I'm talking to. This week I'm really going to try to focus all of my attention on the conversation. I'm going to be, I think, a much more better, much better conversationalist. I'm not going to have my fingers on the pulse of where everybody's at with where you're at. So if you're making fun of me, by the way, please be nice to the participants. They're courageous in doing this in a public setting. So if you. If you need to be mean, if you want to be snarky, send it my way. But please be nice to the guests. I want to encourage people to be brave and courageous and like, they're putting themselves out there wanting to be a better version of themselves. So please be nice to them. Okay. All right, with that said, let's have our first conversation. Hey, great to see you.

Nice to see you too, Brian.

Did I say that night right? Yeah.

Congratulations. I've received Hawaii. Wahooha. So getting it first try is impressive.

It's a beautiful name.

Thank you.

So before you and I start in our conversation, there was meaningful speculation last week because we started to dialogue at the end of the session, and then you disappeared. And there was a theory put forward that someone heard my mouse click and I had just done away with you. And then there were also there was a speculation that the FBI had snagged you. So tell us what. What happened?

Yeah. Yeah. So I was actually abducted. And this is not a human body. I've been replaced with an Android? No, I kicked myself off. It was really awkward. I was really looking forward to chatting with you, getting your thoughts, and then you flipped the question back on me. And I don't know if I was just freaking out with my hand and the mouse, and I booted myself off the call. So it's entirely on me.

Well, I'm glad you're back.

Yeah. Thank you. No, I've been looking forward to this for a while. And before we get into the conversation, I just want to. I want to say you have provided a level of assurance and reinforcement behind self care that I haven't come across at, like, to this degree before. And it has provided me the permission necessary to fully commit to this process myself. And I've kind of been dancing in this arena of uncertainty and hesitancy, like appeasing the social narrative and not really wanting to be too extreme. Like, I've been called extreme for tracking my micronutrients when most people weren't tracking their macronutrients. I've been called extreme for prioritizing sleep over, drinking with friends, and quitting alcohol when I was 21. And seeing what you're doing, it just. It pushes the envelope to such a high degree, and I have so much respect and gratitude for that. So thank you. And the team behind Project Blueprint, it is absolutely paradigm shifting.

That makes me feel so happy to hear. Thank you for sharing that. I know that a lot of people have told me that in similar Situations where they're with a partner and they're doing their thing, and the partner's like, look, you're driving me nuts. Stop it. And then they say, you know, honey, it could be worse. Check out this guy like you. You could be with him, and that would just be a nightmare. And so, yeah, you're right. Like, it's interesting that a lot of people that these social pressures we feel are oftentimes the most forceful in our lives. And so maybe someone like myself who's like on the far end of the extreme creates a little bit of a movement. Okay, cool. That's great. Thanks again for saying that. I appreciate that. All right, cool. So what's on your mind in life?

Yeah, I wanted to dive into sleep a little bit. Cause I've been doubling down on that. But the previous conversations have touched on sleep. And it's. I feel like it's becoming more normalized within the Overton window as something that people should prioritize. So I'm challenging myself to get a zero in the next week and kind of training my bedtime back to 9:30pm um, I've been sleeping without an alarm clock for the past three and a half years or so. Um, I have the privilege of having a fairly flexible lifestyle, so I've been able to accommodate that. And I am reinforcing allowing my body to sleep for as long as it needs. And it's. It's really weird. As soon as I made that shift, I started sleeping for nine plus hours per night and waking up and actually feeling rested and rejuvenated as opposed to my body waking me up at a certain time. So I wanted to discuss that a little bit. But I have some other topics that are a little more pressing as well.

Yeah, whichever you'd like to prioritize.

Okay, cool. Then I guess something that I've been navigating for a while, haven't really been sure how to label it, is a script of self suppression. And I really appreciated the idea of the saboteur self that was brought up in the last discussion last week by Sarah and yourself. And I feel like we live two lives. There's that quote, like you have two lives, and the second begins when you realize you only have one. I think to a high degree, we have two lives or two sort of potentials that we can. That we can live out and embody. And our. Our. Our second potential is activated when we realize that we. We only have one. And so the way that I can best explain this is we are born as blank slates and we are optimized by biology and evolution to adapt to our local environment, to assimilate and as much information as quickly as we can. Behaviors, stories, narratives, religious ideology, just the stories around how to be human within the world. We absorb them so rapidly and then they become identity. And before we know it, we're behaving from that place. And that actively informs who we are, what we become. And until we realize that we have the ability to self direct and edit that narrative and that scripting, it's built automatically. So like the, the writing and the development process is happening regardless of intention. But once intention kicks in, we're able to start to reprogram all of that. And for the past few years, I've noticed when I wake up and I'm well rested, there's a gap or a space where my mind feels open and free and it's like I'm floating in a field of infinite potential. And then all of the hardware starts to wake up and kick in the stories from yesterday. And what about the future and what about this relationship and what about who you proved yourself to be over the past year and how that is going to limit all of the things that you're dreaming about? Those all start to come online and the inertia of all of that is so intense that often I won't find myself back in a place of like, intention and clarity, peace of mind, until like several hours later. And it's almost like these stories and these narratives have to sort of play out and then exhaust themselves before my, like, sort of my mind can kick in. And this is where I really love the idea of the autonomous self, these behaviors that you can just integrate into practice until they become habit and you don't even have to think about them. But I'm curious, what are your thoughts around that script, that accumulation of narrative that we absorb in building perspective and observation and space so we can look at them and then begin to unravel, edit, and replace them with intention.

Yeah. For the majority of human history, humans used storytelling as the primary technology of building society. Where we came from, why we're here, what exists after death, what rules we should follow, it's all been a storytelling based technology. And now, remarkably, we have science and technology that is an additional way in which we can manage the world. And so like you're saying, I think the most useful thing that blueprint contributes is I offered up my body myself and said, I'm, I'm aware that my mind is kind of a jumbled mess. Like you're saying of stories and identity and desires and emotions and it's always all over the place. I'm just going to let my body run itself. So I'm going to remove my mind from the entire equation because I know every time my mind gets involved I mess up. Like I'm, you know, I'm always compromising. And so this is, I really think this is the nugget of wisdom that we as a species to know which technology to apply. Where is for example, is storytelling the appropriate technology to take care of our body, our health and wellness or should we plug into an algorithm that automatically takes care of us? And so I've been one of the thought on this. I've and preparing to launch Blueprint xx so the female version and I've been working on a script of basically retelling the story of Adam and Eve. And so if we say that the very story we told about the origin of the human race, our very first story, what was it and what are the characteristics of how we told that story? And then if we were to retell that story today, right now, what would we tell as our new origin story as we step into this next era of being human? And so for everyone gathered here today, that's what I would encourage us to do is as you're trying to take on these significant life changes, whether it's trying to get to bed on time or your diet or whatever, don't make it a mental function function. Create a system that runs it for you and then that system becomes non negotiable. So if Your bedtime is 10:30, there's no you go to bed at 10:30 no matter what because it's a system that operates. It's when our mind intervenes. So I guess I'd yeah, I'd say that I love your ambition, I love your self awareness that you understand all the complexities that are happening in your own identity and you're trying to tackle it. My approach, which just is one way to do it is I said the likelihood of me succeeding in my own mind against my own self, with all my own identities is pretty low. And so therefore I'm just going to plug myself into, I'm going to run an algorithm, I can use the word plug. I'm going to run an algorithm that manages my health and wellness for me by default and it eliminates my mind from being able to mess it up. What are your thoughts to that?

Yeah, yeah, I absolutely love that and the amount of. The degree of confidence that can be embodied when you have something that is proven to, to be effective that you can just tap into and rely on is immense. And it's, it's terrifying to me that terrifying and really, really exciting that humanity, for as long as we can recall has relied predominantly on story based on anecdote. And it's not even anecdote from somebody who has directly observed phenomena. It's anecdote based on somebody who heard their neighbor talking to their friend about something. Somebody who claims they saw some phenomena and we just can't measure it. Like if you can't measure it, you can't shift it, you can't change it, you can't adjust with it and manipulate it. And it's incredibly problematic that we are trying. I'm going to shift this and place this solely on me. I am trying to achieve massive things in my life and relying on this inflexible, intangible, just mirage of information, hoping that I'll be able to lean into it and rely on it to get me to where I want to be. And that's, it's, it's, it's ludicrous. It's like it's trying to catch a dream with a fishing net. It's, it's non functional. And so when we can tap into the, the data stream, what you're saying, like rely on effective information and actually read the feedback in real time, you can start to tap, tighten that loop. And it seems like in many different ways, blueprint is a really great example of this. We are gradually entering into new territory as a species where we can truly begin to define and write what it means to be human on this planet and choose to build that experience because kind of like how the narrative and the identity and the habits, it's all developing whether or not you're there to steer the ship. We are actively creating and embodying and sort of projecting forward the definition of what it means to be human in the present and into the future. And currently, if you take, if you zoom out, I love the approach that you take when looking at Earth. If you zoom out and you look at humanity and kind of average the experience, we are creating a container for perpetual suffering and confusion and like lack of enthusiasm. And that doesn't have to be the case, but we're not going to get from where we are to where we could be unless we're relying on something that is tangible and measurable and effective.

Cool. Well, while you, it's great talking to you. So your goal this week, tangibly is sleep, right? Sleep every day and you're going, what are the specifics? You have a bedtime?

Yeah, yeah, I'm pushing my bedtime back to 9:30 and I'm just going to allow my body to wake up when it needs to.

Okay, and what is your, what is your grace zone? 9:30, plus or minus what, five minutes?

Plus or minus 10.

Okay, cool. And you're going seven out of seven.

Seven out of seven.

Okay. Looking forward to checking back with you. Thanks for being online today. Great talking to you and looking forward to checking in next week.

Thank you Brian, I appreciate it.

Thanks. All right. Anya.

Hello.

Hi Anya, hello. Nice to meet you.

Yes, nice to finally get to talk in person. Well, not really in person, but I guess live. I've been following you.

Yeah. Kind of a weird way to meet, huh? In front of a whole bunch of people.

Yeah, I've been thinking of a lot of topics. Usually problems don't come as one. Right. So having. Waha. Speak about sleep, maybe we can continue that route too. I do feel like sleep in terms of priority of what you have to do is the most important. Maybe even before eating. Let me try to gather my thoughts too.

So.

I actually have a question and I don't know if you'll be able to answer, but maybe you can hypothetically answer. What do you think about biphasic sleep pattern where you would divide your sleep into two parts in a 24 hour window? Have you thought of that?

Yeah, I'm unfamiliar with the evidence on that.

I had. It was like it actually came up from a talk yesterday with a dinner time with my friend and we were talking about some nations back in the day to be able to grow crop and do certain things on time, they would actually have to adapt to that type of lifestyle. And the reason why I brought it up is I've been trying to experiment that on myself. I work New York time even though I live in LA and I don't want to miss out on evening events in la. So I've been trying to incorporate that. It seems to go well with me and I don't have measurements. It's an anecdote I guess. One example which is me. Yeah. I don't know how to explain this.

Topic but yeah, you're trying to live like two lives, one east coast, one west and. Yep. And still trying to take care of your. Your health. Yeah. In this situation I, I'm unfamiliar with the evidence so I can't comment. The, the way I would approach it is data. It's really the. Of course you can have the subjective of the quality of what you're doing. But data is always going to be a more reliable entry point to let you know. So I would try to find the. I try to do research on the scientific evidence and then I also try to go about looking at data. But it sounds like you're. From your articulation, you're okay executing these plans. It's not a self control problem. It's really a functional problem of life, of what you're trying to manage.

Yes, I do think that this city makes you. There is an interesting thing. Someone told me that like in life, it's not about discovering new doors, it's about learning which doors to close. I forgot who said that to me. And I do feel like living in a city that has so many faces, it might trigger people with perhaps my character build to want to have it all. I wonder if it's something that will be fixed if I move to a more, I guess like one face town or not. And I haven't thought through about the.

I see. Okay, so this, this conversation really is not about sleep. It's about. It's about saying yes to certain things and saying no to other things. And right now you're trying to do it all. And this, this has echoes, I think, of what Sarah was talking about last week, of her wanting to be productive and also get to sleep. And also she wanted everything. Would that be a fair characterization that you're struggling with wanting to do and be many things that are in conflict?

Yes, I would say it's very much that. And I wonder if physical restrictions would help, for example. That's just something, a thought in my mind, which is to move to a city that is just smaller. It forces you into one type of lifestyle. Or if there is a way to compromise. Well, I know you don't like the word compromise.

Oh yeah. I have nothing against it. So I guess maybe the most meaningful way we could have this conversation would be to trial a decision. So make a decision in this conversation on what you're going to say yes to and what you're going to say no to. And then everyone listening to imagine you're in Anya's position and contemplating that you too have too many conflicting priorities in life and that it's, it's these, the number of things that you want to do that are creating the decision paralysis. And so maybe, maybe an approach to your solution would be to narrow the scope of what you're focused on in life and accepting that that is the appropriate scope for you. All right, so let's see what is driving the desire to maintain both of these, the east coast and West Coast.

To be honest, it's really the job that is I didn't really pick the job, but I did have an intention to move at one point in my life. I reverted that decision and I'm basically stuck with a job with New York Times Zone. With the recession, I don't think I can hold jobs that fast, even as an engineer. So the immediate solution you'd think would be to find a new job that is LA based. But I do like my team and I do like the projects that I work on. So this is a compromise that I have to think either have a conversation with the team to let me have later meetings. I think I don't really mind doing the work early, but I don't tend to do well with early meetings. Yeah, maybe this is where like even today's meeting. I'd say being an early bird is hard for me. I do well if I talk about, if I try to make logic of it is I do think my body has blood sugar issue. I do feel like I stay up late because my cortisol level would just like spike like randomly at night and I would just stay up. And that's actually when like all the epiphany and all like, like you call it, like good solutions and thoughts just come to me. But that compromises my sleep. And yeah, that's actually why I tried to compromise with the biphasal sleep pattern because I've just noticed I do work and I just have way better thoughts at night. But maybe because I screwed it up and how to reset it. I mean, I guess as you said, I can find literature to set it to learn how to reset it. But yeah.

Yep. Cool. All right. So what I hear you saying is, and I think hopefully this maps to everybody. We all face practical decisions in life, like many practical decisions and there's competing priorities. We have work that's asking us to do certain things. We have a social life they want to maintain for our fulfillment and we have other objectives we want and sometimes we feel like those things are immovable. But one thing you mentioned, there's a conversation you could have with your team that would potentially allow you to work on a different schedule that would allow you to maintain proper sleep patterns. You also mentioned that there's other employment you could possibly contemplate but these. I guess there's a whole of what you've laid out. And this goes back to the beginning of the conversation. Cultural shift that's relevant Here is to the best of your ability to making your health and wellness your top priority. And in the past it would have been culturally acceptable for you to accept this. Your health is compromised and you did you do burn the candle at both ends, but in this time and place that's not desirable. And so I guess the action here for you would be to identify things you can do to change your circumstances. And whether it be try to do biphasic sleep or whether it's a change with your employer on time schedules or whether it be a changing your social life, making the appropriate trade offs, your health is your number one priority. Would that be a helpful outcome?

I think so. Do you get lonely when you do that? Like when you prioritize your health? Because it's a very individual thing to do and I'm grateful to find this connection, community and I hope that it will be expanded and I would feel less, less alone but in the immediate surrounding. Like how do you deal with that?

Yeah, it's a, it's a great point and I think this is the, the common theme that is that we, we have now seen come up in almost every conversation is people are struggling to deal with the co cultural realities of you know, when people get together, what they do when they're together and they drink and they go out late and they do all sorts of things that are not prioritizing health. And if we don't participate in those things, we're excluded from those social bonds. And so as we try to embark on changing these cultural norms, sometimes it creates loneliness where you're the only person doing it and others aren't quite there yet. And, and so it does create friction which is I think is what you're identifying. I personally, I understand that process. I did go through that. I have now created a community of friends that desires the same thing. So I'd say there's a transition period but once you start doing this, you will, I think it's reasonable that you will find people who also want to be like you and will maintain the same habits and so they will adjust their schedule so that you guys can do it together. So I'd say this is really, this is the larger commentary about the human race is we do need to together. This is not about an individual prioritizing their health and then it's not of anyone else's concern. It's about all of us moving together in the same place. Yep. So I say it sounds like it would ease the change for you to try to find a community of people that would support you in these kinds of things in life.

I got you. So basically, lead by example.

Yeah. Yeah. Be the person you know, because I think, Anya, that you may find others who, if you start demonstrating these behaviors, they might say, you know, Anya, you really inspire me, like, to maintain the same. I'd like to do the same things because of whatever X, Y or Z, and that people will then come to you because they'll see what you're doing. But, yeah, I think you're probably going to have to be a pioneer with your own little circle, because a lot of people, they don't want to be doing these things. They're uncomfortable and they feel awful, but they do it just because they want to be a part of it. So everyone behaves that way because everyone else is. And so it takes a few people just to break it. And this is, I think, going back to the beginning, I think, hustle, like literally dying. And. And I think if that were to. If that were to die and that that shared expectation were to go away, I think there would be such a collective relief because it's. It's such a. A tragic way to live. It's really unpleasant. So. All right, cool. So, Anya, I hope this was helpful for you. And I hope that with all the different levers you have to turning your work discussions, social discussions, you know, whether you're looking at different sleep patterns, all the things, I hope you can make your health your number one priority. Form a community around these new practices and find yourself in a. In a good spot.

Yeah. Thank you. And thank you for listening to my chain of thoughts. And I know it's not very organized.

Oh, you did. You did a great job. And it's. It's always after these discussions, so many messages afterwards, they'll say, I related to so and so, so much. So. I think there's a lot of people like you. And this is the thing. We all individually believe our situation is entirely unique, but really we're just one of the same. And so I'm sure many people today, listening to you speak, identify with you, and it helped them understand themselves. So. Yep, thanks for articulating the thoughts. You did a great job. Okay. Best of luck to you.

Thank you.

Okay. Sarah. Hey, nice to see you.

Hey, great to see you. Can you hear me?

Okay.

Okay, I'm going to move my eyes to the comment section real quick. Okay. He's focusing on the conversation. Are you a psychopath? Thank you, Windyman. As opposed to chat. Sam. David, thank you for the hearts after sleeping five or six Hours a year inspired me to. Okay, so someone's making big changes to their sleep. That's awesome. What else is going on in, in the stream here? Lol. Hi Anna, Great chat so far, Brian. Much love, Brian. Hi, love you Brian. Hey, do you have an age goal? Hi everyone. And I have a, I have a two minute delay here on my comment string, so. All right, I'm sorry, like 10 second delay. Hi Brian. Okay, cool. I love seeing all you guys. This is so much fun. I have to say I'm really warming up to this format and I genuinely enjoy doing this. I feel like I'm getting a little bit better and I hope you hang with me as I try to do this because it will take me a little bit. I mean I of course am not a trained psychologist and I'm just doing this with my background, best abilities. I hope full in time, I'll get better. All right, cool. I love the comment section, lighting up. Okay. All right. Sarah, nice to see you.

Great to see you. And don't worry, Brian, you're doing amazing, sweetie.

Thanks. Okay, so you know, our, our conversation really stuck with me because last week is that cultural norms in your life. I'm sorry, cultural norms were the culprit that were inviting you to behave in a way that were inconsistent with you achieving your personal goals. And you didn't know that. And then in our conversations we peel back the onion, you identified these things and you're like, oh my goodness, sleep sabotage. Sarah is really just getting run over by these cultural norms. How would you summarize our conversation? What, what, what seemed to be the case to you?

I mean, I, I would summarize it perhaps by going up to a slightly higher level that there are so many factors that feed into why we do what we do and so many of them are at subconscious level that bringing them. Only by bringing these things into the conscious are we able to be more intentional about how we behave and thus who we are. And so sleep was a really clearly, sleep was a very accessible and something that a lot of people can relate to as lots of people have wanted to talk about sleep. So I think it's a really great, a really great vehicle to talk about that process.

Cool. And so we're, we want to hear out of seven days.

Firstly, I'm going to give it out a six because Hal said I could have some goal reserves. I set up a goal reserve of once a week which I unfortunately used with immediate effect. I appreciate at the start of this call you mentioned prioritizing health over Professional success. That's not something that I can necessarily ascribe to right now in the I'm still in a bit of a hustle period of my career. And I ended up staying up till 6am to get an application, which is late even for me. But the rest of the week was actually pretty good. I would still only give myself a five out of six because one day I fell asleep really early, which again was very uncharacteristic for me. So I thought I would end up staying up later. But actually I failed on one day by falling asleep three hours earlier. So I would say though, it's, it's going in the right direction. But where I would like your input is I feel like right now the bedtime. Bedtime is still a habit that needs to be formed. It still doesn't feel like part of my identity. And where I am struggling to sort of find its place is I'm a big fan of visualization. I like it so much I'm building a whole company around it. But it's, it's. For me, visualization is a very powerful tool. And with professional goals or fitness goals, I find it really easy because there's a really visceral money shot, like a very cinematic vision I have of signing deals, IPOs or I don't know, fitness goals, like doing 10 pull ups or whatever it might be. Whereas sleep, bedtime doesn't have the same cinematic sexiness as the other goals that I visualize. And for me I find visualization to be most potent when the goals are really precise and like there's a narrative and a really precise sort of scene around it. Whereas with sleep, I mean I do go to sleep every day, you know, it's not every day that I ipo, right? So that visualization is in its own little pedestal. Whereas I do sleep every day. So there's this kind of blurring of like trying to visualize something that I already do that does look exactly the same as when I currently go to bed. It's just doing it at a particular time. So for me it's harder to use visualization as a tool for setting this goal and for this becoming part of my identity. So I'm really interested like if you use visualization for becoming your like future self and if you do how you use it for the less, the less sexy things like bedtime.

Okay, so I'm, I'm going to try to step through this a little carefully because I want to convey what I think is the, the key idea here. Our reality is built currently based upon what we want. What I'm suggesting is we are walking into an era where the primary function of our health and wellness is not driven by what we want. I'm saying that with blueprint, my body and my health and wellness is run by, by an autonomous system. It's not consulting my ambitions, it's not consulting my identity, it's not consulting my wants, it's not consulting my creativity. It's running it as a computational system. Now, if we think about society in a way, many of these things have happened before in many countries you can just pull water out of the tap and be confident that it's okay to drink. It's magic. It just happens. Now throughout most of history, you couldn't assume that, right? There was just some complications with that. And in your commentary, Sarah, I'd make the observation, I hear a lot of identity based ambitions being expressed. And what I'm really trying to convey is if we really grasp this, the moment we're in with technology, are we driving our existence with story or technology? And in the situation where you confront bedtime or anything else and you're still negotiating with identity and this or that, I personally would forever be stuck in this cycle. And this is where I had to say in fairly radical terms to myself, my mind is out. Like it's entirely out. Health and wellness is a thing addressed by a computational system. That's it. Period. There's no negotiating with it. And I want it to be the case because every single time my mind gets engaged in my health and wellness, including what I should eat, when I should eat, when I should go to bed, my mind always messes it up. Like absolutely 100% of the time will mess it up. My mind is unqualified to manage my health and wellness period. And so I guess I would. And I think that's basically representative of the time and place we live. What are your thoughts to that?

I think that's, that's very interesting. It feels like, feels like a process that I think the, the level that you have gotten to. I think while some people might just be able to flick a switch and reach that level of sort of autonomous behavior when it comes to just the baseline of you're eating, you're sleeping, obviously you can do other things on top of that and have, still have a career on top of just those baseline, autonomous behaviors, I think for most of us it's going to be a process of getting to that point. And I, I think for a lot of us to make what you just said more Accessible is to find ways that we already do that. And there's a lot of behaviors that we have that are already on autopilot. Right. Most of our, you know, when you go into the science of habits and the, the science of, you know, our behaviors, the majority of the behaviors we exhibit are on autopilot because it would take so much brain processing power to constantly be consciously thinking about everything. Which is why when you travel to a new place and your routines are all out of whack, it's way more mentally fatiguing to just exist. Right. So I, I think a great, a great way to make what you just described seem less terrifying to the average person might be identifying areas of your life where you already do have autopilot behaviors that are positive and sort of building and building those up. At least for me, that that makes what you just described feel something that's far more accessible and achievable rather than it being like, well, there's the Brian Johnson's of the world and then there's the rest of us who could never. You can never do the sorts of things you do. So, yeah, I think that's a really interesting idea and something that I'm going to start to factor into my thought processes.

Cool. Yep. I think the. In the moment we live in, there's a contemplation of what is convenient for my life. There was a contemplation of what kind of change would I like to see what kind of change is too much? Sometimes reality tells us what is going to be required and that we just need to deal with it. And in this moment in time, there's a real serious question with the human race. Is everything on our preferred timescale or will we as a species need to make change at a certain rate that is uncomfortable. And if you. If. When I size up the problems in the world and I size up how fast we need to evolve as a species, my mind doesn't immediately go to what's comfortable for me. It goes to, we need to make very, very big changes and it's going to be very uncomfortable. But to do this, we really need to get our heads around what is really happening. It's a jarring situation. This is why I'm trying to do these, have these conversations, is there's significant changes in the way we understand ourselves from story to these systems. It's a big jump. So I understand what you're saying. It's a lot to take in. But once again, Sarah, really appreciate the conversation and thanks again for putting yourself out there.

Yeah, anytime. And I just want to say thank you so much to the other volunteers today. It was amazing hearing your conversations with them and Anya. I did biphasic sleeping for two years, so let's connect and talk more about that.

Cool. Thank you, Sarah. Judd.

Oh, my God.

Thanks. Bye.

Hey. Okay, Judd, give me one second. I'm going to check what's happening in the comments. Change is uncomfortable, but there are greater comfort on the other side. We all are food addicted to social media until it's automatic. Thank you so much. How do I join in future episodes? I'm addicted to sugar. Will be. I hear you. Hey, Brian. Love the live stream. Cool, guys. Judd, you're being called Chad.

I think that's a compliment.

I'm not sure it is a compliment. It is a compliment.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, Yeah. I get all Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dennis. Mind of her body. Right? Okay, cool. All right, I'll jump back in for the last. So. So, Judd, you and I, let's hang out six, seven minutes, and I'm gonna jump in and just hang out with streaming comments for the last few minutes. Um, so last. After last week converse conversation, my son Talmadge, we were talking about the stream, and he said, whoa, Judd. Like, man, that was a complicated. Judd laid out a complicated scenario. Like, it was nuanced. It was intricate. Like, it was really thoughtful. It was. So my son was. You know, he's heard me talk about this quite a bit, but our conversation really, really snagged him. So I think a lot of people felt the same way. So. So what's been going through your mind since we talked?

Oh, my gosh, it's been so interesting, like, having blueprint as a. Like a placeholder for a value system. And the way I've kind of understood my position in this conversation is I think other people are maybe in the implementation phase, and I'm kind of questioning the onboarding phase. And not for any negative reason or anything, but that's just where my attention has gone, I guess. One thing, Brian, I've thought a lot about the past week is by valuing longevity as kind of the highest aim, it works really well when it's. When there's a confluence between longevity, wellness, and then I think maybe underneath those is attractiveness. Have you done any introspection on that? Just, like, what if. What if the data that, like, sends you. What if the data takes you to the conclusion where you could have extreme longevity, but it would be to the detriment of your wellness or feeling good as you've called it. And it would be to the detriment of your attractiveness. Like, let's say having, like, having ears turns out to be more detrimental than positive. You know, what would you, what would you do in a scenario like that? Like, how do you stack these values? What are the limiting principles?

I guess. The. I would call this a wager. And my premise is that the speed of computational tools is of such a staggering pace that it creates an option, a future for the option for the future that is more expansive and unknown than anything in human history. Now, it could turn out to be awful, you know, like, we may not make it through this, this transition. Terrible thing, be dystopic. Like, there's all kinds of downsides that may happen. But when I look at the possibility and I say, okay, pretty familiar. I've existed for 45 years now. I've experienced a wide range of human emotions and experiences, and I've been through a lot of change and upheaval and successes and failures. So I have a pretty decent model of conscious existence, and I know I can adapt to that. But what I've never experienced is been on an exponential curve of intelligence improvement like we are with computational intelligence right now. And so my fundamental bet is I would so much rather have the option of being part of this future than missing it.

Yeah, I absolutely love that. And like, in the, like, I, I trust your judgment on that because I've followed your story and you know, part of the values of blueprint is showing, Showing your work.

Would.

Would you be willing to show your work, like, in a really extensive way as to how you've calculated that wager? Because it would totally help me on board with blueprint, knowing something that you may know and, you know, obviously your experiences with businesses. I remember one interview you were talking about, like talking to people in Saudi Arabia or something, like high level business people and some like investing in some medical stuff. And I don't know, maybe it's confidential or too personal or, or it's an instinct on your part. But to the extent that blueprint is highly. It values numbers and something other than like, other than like you trusting your own mind, what do you think about putting that, putting that strategy towards the wager itself as well?

Yeah, I love that, Judd. Yeah, you're right. I mean, I basically, these are my internal models that, I mean, I, I invested $100 million. I started investing it in 2014 after I sold Braintree Venmo, and I invested in synthetic biology, nanotech, computational therapeutics, genetics, the fields and these Companies are now 9, 10, 12 years old and they're, I mean, for example, like when I started the investing, the idea was we've done a remarkable job as a species building up the ability to code software. If we have a problem in the world that can be solved, the software to millions of people can write code and solve it. And now we've got AI that can even write code for us. So we're doing a really nice job. But what we didn't have the ability to do is to build the world with physical objects, atoms and molecules and organisms. And so what some of these companies have done, for example, is you can take a yeast cell and reprogram the yeast cell to manufacture what you need to manufacture, instead of having to go through the normal process of planting the seed, growing it, fertilizing it, harvesting it, et cetera. And so I guess it's coming from my personal experience of being in the trenches with these entrepreneur scientists and seeing the future right before me. And so it's a great invitation because what you're saying is you are open to this idea that the 20th century was live fast, die young, and you're open to the idea of 2023 is don't die. But you really want to be convinced because you hear these things, but you want to see the models yourself. You want to see if you're going to take the wager and potentially sacrifice things. Now you want to know there's a reasonable likelihood that you could also win in this longer term game.

Totally. And I guess to tie in what I had said initially, let's say, let's say I, I, I'm never convinced on that level. I'm still cool doing it so long as it's, so long as it's coterminous with attractiveness and wellness in the meantime. I mean, those are wonderful things and whatever. Those are somewhat subjective as well. But I think a lot of people, or at least me, when I search myself, longevity is appealing because I want to look as good as I can for as long as possible. It's also nice because you're right when you, when you live really healthy and go to bed on time and stuff, like, your psychology is a lot better.

Yeah.

But as far as like placing longevity at number one for a lifetime. Yeah. I would need a lot more information, I think.

What a great observation, Judd. I mean, I'm gonna think about that because, I mean, that's really what we're, that's really my objective is to try to persuade everyone we are at a different moment. And it's worth all of us making this choice together and include so individual life choices but also the cultural norms because of. Yeah. So that's a really. I'm you pressure tested that I'm going to think about how peace.

I look forward to sitting on the bench and judging it. I'm just kidding.

Yeah, no, it's great.

Really, I do. And then there, there are also some cultural things that I think are low hanging fruit where, where the, like the actual endeavor of the cultural practice is to be against longevity in some sort of collective counter signaling. Like that is one thing I noticed this week having, having blueprint as a placeholder for values. I've noticed that like I went to a wedding and there just everything about it was so perfectly unhealthy. The way that people were indulging at every moment. It was like, it was almost like they're telling each other like let's all die together and be happy about it or something, you know, so.

Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Sorry.

No, go ahead. Sorry, go ahead.

Well, so there's, I think there's certain cultural practices that are low hanging fruit. Like if you, if you just think about longevity, even a little bit superficially, it's like this is actually kind of stupid. Then there's like, all right, longevity is in the mix because it's, it's living amongst other values I have. But then with blueprint, which I think is so important because I know someone said Overton window earlier. It's like you're shifting the Overton window so far into like longevity is number one. All other values be damned. Let the data determine it. Like this is so wonderfully extreme.

Yeah.

So I'm just, I'm dying to know like. Yeah. What you come up with.

Yeah, it, it reminds me of the. When I think about this, I oftentimes imagine myself on monkey bars. So I've got two rungs, you know, one in each hand and I, and I need to let go of the back rung and reach my hand forward and grab the next rung. But in order to do that, I need to have a visual affirmative confirmation that when I reach my hand out, it's going to be there and I can grab it. Otherwise I'm just there hanging with one hand and I'm probably going to fall. And what you're saying is like, okay, you're open to making the next swing to the next rung, but you want to see it. You want to know if you put your hand out there, it's going to be there. Because otherwise Letting go of the priorities you have now, you know, like, you don't want to make a bad wager. And so I bet you, you're, you're. Yeah. Really great question. And because it gets to the heart of what I'm really trying to persuade is everyone. Like, basically, we've been evolving for 4 billion years on this planet from a prokaryote to a eukaryote, and finally we're at the doorstep of super intelligence. And it happened in the very moment we exist. Like, unbelievable timing. And like, we're just. It's on our doorstep and we've made it this far. The only thing we have on our to do list as a species, don't die. Don't die individually, don't kill each other, don't kill the Earth, and don't let AI kill us. Just, we have one thing as a species to do. Don't die. And, you know, we, of course, like, if we don't die, we can then put our attention to all the other things we could do to have fun. Like, we're going to figure out infinite ways to keep on playing games together, but we can't play games if we're not alive. And so this is why I'm saying, like, we're just at this interesting point where can it really be this simple to say, yeah, like, we're there?

And do you think that your sense of that prospect is why you're able to endure so much of what might look like pain to other people? For example, you mentioned getting therapy on your face. Like, is this all. Do you hold on to that prospect in moments of, you know, like, where you need to endure?

Yes. And I think one of the more motivating things I contemplate is Ernest Shackleton was an explorer, tried to cross the South Pole. He has a wonderful book, Endurance Voyage, and it chronicles their time of getting stuck in the ice down by the South Pole and then basically surviving this journey. And the amount of discomfort that they endured to survive their ordeal is mind blowing when you read it. And so I think about this all the time, of the human capacity to endure difficulty. Now, there's so many stories, you know, Viktor Frankl, you know, when he was in a concentration camp, there's so many inspiring stories of people who have taken, who've been in a really challenging situation and exhibited unbelievable levels of endurance. And, you know, I see the sacrifices I'm making as minuscule relative to what these people did in these heroic efforts. And so if I'm willing to forego a social event or, you know, like do some painful therapy here or there or be hungry because I'm not going to. Because Caloric restricted diet. I really view these as minuscule sacrifices for this larger objective. And I would love for all of us to make it into this next transition of being human. I think we're really at this evolution, this spot of evolution. And so if we can reframe this as like you're saying our cultural gatherings are just like. What's the word? It's just like so much sabotage. It's almost like unbelievable that we do this and we celebrate it and it's normalized and everyone just participates. But to shift these cultural norms.

Yeah, I mean, it's super ambitious. And I, I like everyone else, really admire you for taking it to such a deliberate and explicit. Explicit level. So. Yeah, thanks so much, Brian.

Yep. Cool. Jed, great talking to you. Great seeing you. And I'll work on this. I'll have you in mind as I'm trying to make the case more persuade, more clearly understood. So thank you for that feedback.

Thank you.

Cool. All right, just to wrap this up for a few minutes, I'm going to watch the streaming comments for a minute if you want to make any observations about today's discussions. Any feedback is also welcome. Okay. Weightlifting, Brian is zaddy of longevity. Adore you, Trenton. We do my hair protocol TA65 is question. We do not do TA65. I don't know the exact science on it. It's not part of the protocol. So I don't know what the specific commentary is. It's going so fast. Ipl, it's a. We use a BBL device. Cyton. BBL is the device we own. I am a freak in the best way. Thank you. Oh, now it's streaming so fast. Let me pause. I don't. I don't eat meat. Not because blueprint says not to eat meat. I don't eat meat because it's an ethical choice. And the reason why I think that the reason I've chosen that is we again, we're on the cusp of creating super intelligence. And I hope one of the scaling laws that exists with intelligence is compassion. I hope that compassion permeates the universe in every way, shape or form. And I hope that our new creations in intelligence, that is a fundamental component that we all share. So personal viewpoint on that. But design blueprint is a protocol that it's really a process of data. Respect. Thank you. Appreciate that. Plants fill, apparently. I'm with you. There's so much more we probably don't know, Judd. Getting some good shout outs. Very helpful. How often I treat my face, like once a week. I do some treatment. Laser or microneedling or ultrasound stuff. Discord Channel. Bad societal norms. Yep. Agree with you, Favorite vampire. Thank you. Yep. Female Blueprint is coming. We're trying to work out the announcement right now. And we're trying to do something cool around it. I told you, I'm rewriting. I've been rewriting this script of Adam and Eve for a few weeks now. Rewriting the first story and then retelling the second story. Yeah. A prize for age reversal. Yep. I'm working on Blueprint for making it do. And lower cost. I realize it's. It's sometimes out of people's. I'm trying very hard. Yep. VO2 Max is a fantastic marker. It's important. A very important one to work on. I'm so handsome. Thank you. That's very nice of you. I do take collagen peptides. I'm trying to find a vegan version of that right now. Hi, Brazil. I tried both NAD and NR. Both worked to get my intracellular NAD levels to age 16. They both work. Blueprint will remain. We are working on products for Blueprint, but Blueprint will remain free. I will continue to do what I'm doing and I will continue sharing my data with everyone so that the project stays true to its intent, that it's an open public science experiment. We'll also try to make this easier for people to implement. CO2 is a big one on resurfacing. I have not had a resurfacing. Talked about it. It's a big one, though. A lot of downtime. There's some risks with it. India, Good inspiration. South Africa. Okay, cool. All right, you guys, I'm. I'm gonna sign off. I'm having a lot of fun. I hope you are too. I hope you enjoy these and telling this. Not sure how long we would do it if we would continue to do it, but I. We're finding our groove, I think a little bit. Could you let me know if you like this. If you want this to continue and if you. So if you. If so, what would you prefer be changed and. Or improved and. Yeah. And then I guess for future guests, if you want to have a conversation, email. I think it's hellorianjohnson.co. send some information about yourself. What's on your mind for some context. Thank you, everyone, for all the love. Camera and connection needs improvement. Okay. Check. Yeah. So you know what? So there's a lot of questions about Talmage. And I should probably have Talmadge on this. You know, Talmadge and I have these discussions all the time. And it's such a sweet spot because he's 17 years old and he's now sizing up life. It's like the perfect time to get his brain on how to understand.