Tom Bilyeu: Why Your Children's Future Will Look Nothing Like Ours

I had a lot of fear about.

AI I think it's going to be brutally difficult for tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people. 300 million jobs are supposed to disappear. I think in the next five years, some people are going to go to Mars and they're going to say, I want life on hard mode. And then I think a bunch of people are going to go into virtual worlds. It's far less risky and far more exhilarating to explore virtual worlds because you can make them whatever they want. I think it gets into my most controversial beliefs.

Huh.

I really do think that it's going to be a spiritual cris.

We live in a world of distortion and spirituality. Some religions call the earth the devil's playground.

I think that Nietzsche is very right in that we man, have killed God and we will never be able to wash the blood off of our hands.

Do you have any fear about war with this power transfer happening right now?

History just tells you that when you have a declining superpower, the US going up against a rising superpower, China, you enter in something called Thucydides trap. So the rising power refuses to not be acknowledged as having risen. And the declining superpower has had often decades or hundreds of years of being the top dog. They just can't psychologically give it up.

If you were to give a high level warning, what's one that, that you think is really powerful?

I don't know your audience well enough to know if they're going to love this or hate it, but.

What identity transformation do you feel that we are being called to step into as a human being right now with.

AI So I don't think of the world like that. So I think that we have the opportunity to recognize humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. And so if you want to adapt in a given direction, you've got new tools at your disposal and you can go wherever you want. But the reality is the vast majority of people will not. They won't be self directed, they will be yanked around in the current, whatever way that's going. And I think that's the thing that maybe confuses a lot of people. So I used to get made fun of by people very close to me because I was like, everybody can change. No, it's all good. And they were like, no, they can't. And I really resisted that for a long time. And the reality is people can change. We are designed for it. But the vast majority of people will not change. And so does there functionally end up being a difference between can't and won't know. So that's been a really brutal realization that has forced me to. So when I doing my content, I will often say, here's what we would have to do as a society if we want to go in the right direction. But given that we probably won't as a society do it. Here's what you need to do as an individual. So look, by the time they get to your podcast, of course they're one of the 2% that will make the change.

Yeah.

So for them it's somewhat irrelevant that other people won't. So I would just tell them, listen, there's a whole new bevy of tools that are available to you now. What you need is the clarity of where you want to go and then the tools will be able to get you there. But if you don't know where you want to go, that lack of clarity is what ends up killing people's drive and determination is like, you get real excited, but they don't like the or they lack the clarity and so they're not able to take steps to make progress. And if they don't make progress, they'll tap out.

The reason I started our conversation with identity transformation is because you said something a few years back that just stuck to my heart. You said that it's about building the identity of the person who can achieve your dreams. And so if dreams aren't for everyone, then what are they there for?

Oh, well, what are they there for? Questions become sort of metaphysical really fast. I, I would try to get people and I don't know your audience well enough to know if they're going to love this or hate it, but metaphysical.

Spirituality and also personal development. Okay, let's.

Okay, so we are automata. And if you don't believe me, read a book called Determined. You will walk away going, oh yeah, there's no exit ram from this. Like, we really are automata. But it doesn't make sense to live your life like that. But once you understand yourself is I'm a. I'm a whole bunch of, let's say you're 100 or a thousand 20 sided dice. And the thousand pieces are all traits. So for instance, I don't hold on to bad things, but I also have a terrible memory. And part of the reason that I don't hold on to bad things is my memory isn't strong like that. So blessing and a curse. But we've all got these thousand sided dice. I'm a hyper responder to the neurochemicals of bonding. So for me to have. I've been married now for 23 years, been with my wife for 25. Greatest thing that's ever happened to me. Like from the rooftops. Just, I want this for everybody. But if you don't have the receptors in your brain for oxytocin, vasopressin, you're not going to have the same experience that I have. So it's like you've got to figure out, okay, what, what are the, what, what's the totality of my dice roll? And then no, ah, you can change it so you can nudge things. So let's say you're 50% malleable, 50% hardwired. So I find that people that fight the reality that they are 50% hardwired are going to be very confused by their life. And the people that never realize that they're 50% malleable are never going to make use of all the potential that they have. So it's about accepting that you're having a biological experience. And so if you don't understand yourself as a chemical processing plant, you're going to be very confused. If you don't understand that men and women have different drives, different wants, different desires, a brain that processes information differently, you're going to be very confused, used. And so once you understand, oh, I am a way, I have a nature both as a human and then as the specific roll of dice that is me. But also part of that roll of dice is like, oh, I can really change things. And so do you have that realization? Do you embrace what I call the only belief that matters? And the only belief that matters is if I put time and energy into getting better at something, I will actually get better. And so if you don't believe that, then you won't put time and energy in. If you do believe it, then you might, you still might not, but at least you have the only belief that matters. And so you can push into those directions. But I find that if, if somebody's too far removed, it's too much of a spiritual thing. Life is just a never ending string of confusion for them.

So where does spirituality fit in for you then?

Well, so I look at it from an evolutionary standpoint of for whatever reason evolution, the blind watchmaker realized that we need what I'll call God shaped hole in our hearts in order to cooperate flexibly in very large groups. So if you think of ants, they can cooperate in very large groups, but not flexibly. And so the way that we pass on to the next generation the values that are Going to make you most likely to live long enough to have kids. That have kids is the thing we now call religion. So I think of religion as the ultimate self help. So it is a collection of wisdom passed on with. Because God said so of, like, do all of these things that when you look at, like, they're pretty dope. Like, this is probably, especially given the environment, this is going to be very effective for living your life in this group. So for the people that had that roll of the dice of like, whoa, I really feel a profound desire to kneel before something, to acknowledge there's something bigger than me and that I could bond with other people that felt that same thing. And then we could share stories about what that thing really was. We could articulate it. We could package up these survival tools into that. And they feel so profound that we want to pass them on. We want to ritualize them. And so now you're ritualizing, essentially self help. So it, from an evolutionary standpoint, is like such an incredibly smart tool. So I think that Nietzsche is very right in that. Take it. We're sort of in an upswing right now in religion. But take it for when he was writing it, when it was very much on a downswing, was like, we have killed God, we man have killed God, and we will never be able to wash the blood off of our hands Now. I think what he was trying to say is, yeah, okay, we figured out sewage and we figured out electricity, and we've done all these modern things and we feel so safe and secure that we can let go of some of these, you know, passe things like God and religion. But the problem is that humans really do need an anchor for morality. And he understood how much a value system, a morality system could change over time. Is different from group to group. And if we don't have that because God said so part of it, that there will be a very distressing degree of flexibility in that and we will start to make really horrible choices, which we did. So it's. That's where it enters in. But I take again a very. You're having a biological experience approach.

Yes.

Versus there's actually a guy in the sky.

The reason I'm so fascinated by you is because you're so driven and you've made these frameworks that have helped. Your content's been seen by over a billion people. That's why this is wild. When you're in film school, when you were broke, you did not see that as a vision, did you or did you not?

Not in this way I really thought I would be one of the biggest filmmakers of all time. I won't lie.

You had that desire from the jump.

Yeah, yeah. And the, the just exceptionally delusional belief that I was going to make it happen. So the truest statement about me is when I was 14, I was 200 pounds. A girl I met in college after I'd lost a bunch of weight was like, whoa, I always thought of you as the chubby kid. So that's how I grew up. But nonetheless, that kid looked around, saw his family morbidly obese and was like, one day I'm going to have six pack abs. And so it's just like I've always been able to believe even when I have no idea how to cross the chasm. So I'll thank my lucky stars for that roll of the dice.

It's really interesting to me because I'm always interested in the depths of what drives someone. And it's not just the mind, the body and mind. The body is the unconscious mind. And I think about the war that's happening that you've done some incredible content. We'll make sure we link it for y'. All. About the war on the human spirit, essentially with AI and also paradoxically, that chaos presents rad, radical opportunity. I remember I was watching this documentary, Finding Joe. I don't know if you've seen it, it's so good. And they said, you know, the Chinese symbol for crisis is danger and opportunity. So On 1/2, AI is very dangerous, but there's massive opportunity at the same time. I feel like this is a cold war, not just for AI with USA and China, but it's a war on the human spirit if we allow it to be. Do you feel the same way?

Yes. The only thing I would change is I don't think we're going to have a choice. It is going to remove all meaning and pur. So on a long enough timeline. Is that 10 years? Is that 50 years? I don't know, but it's going to happen. You'll have something that's better than us at everything. And so once everything you do, you know, there is this thing that could be doing this better than me, but I'm gonna do it anyway. It gets tough. So it's like, can you really bring yourself to compete at the level of somebody who's training for the Olympics if you know you're only ever going to be as good as like a 12 year old on the average middle school track team? It's tough. Like people really have to believe. No, I can go all the way. And that's the thing that brings the depth of that effort out. And so I do think it's going to be a spiritual crisis. There's a book called A Brave New World that I think really saw this idea coming. Huxley. Yeah. So you reach a point where you're like, oh, wait, like, I don't need to work ever again. And so now what? So I think I will again, on a long enough timeline, usher in something that's post economic. And so right now, the economy is a game. It's a game that we play, and it's awesome and people love it. And when you can win at it, then it's thrilling. Now, right now, there's multiple generations that don't feel like they can win for reasons we can certainly discuss, because I think about it obsessively. But when the economy is functioning and people feel like they can win it, and let's say, let's just give them the easiest one, if they have a family now, they've got meaning and purpose. I go play this game. I play to win. I'm in a reward loop of I go to college, I learn a skill, I monetize that skill in a job, I take that money, I buy a house, I keep my family safe and warm and fed. And then I go back out and I try to get that next bigger house, right? Try to save up, try to make my. Make sure my kids can go to college, then make sure, like, if I really, really win at the game, that my kids will never have to worry about money and their kids will never have to worry about money, right? And if you do all of that, because, like, I'll do anything for my family. And it, like, there's real deep meaning and purpose to why you do what you do. And then if you're really lucky and you do that in pursuit of a thing that you like in and of itself, man, it. It really is a phenomenal game to play. And I think people are rewarded incredibly for it. Once that game doesn't feel real, you don't need to do anything. You don't need money because you can have everything you've ever wanted for free. Because AI will drive energy costs to zero and labor costs to zero. And so now, literally, with the only limitation being what we can mine on Earth or Asteroids, it's like you can have anything you want. And so the human mind is not wired for that. It will move into a period of profound dis. Ease. So that's going to get weird. And I. People aren't ready for that. And so the book of Brave New World imagines people doing drugs to numb out.

I can see that as a possibility with the Chinese symbol for crisis. I can also see that when UBI comes and when there's like the disintegration of like 60% of jobs, if you look at the data, I don't know if you have any more privy data, like in the next three years, at least 20 to 30% of jobs gone.

Yes. Wild. 300 million jobs are supposed to disappear, I think in the next five years.

So then these people are going to go through what, what I would call a spiritual crisis. And it seems like you may be in alignment with that thinking. Do you call it a true spiritual crisis?

It'll be interesting to see. So people that fear change are going to have a very difficult time. Depending on your age, it could really be a crisis in your life. If it happens in your 32, hey, fair enough. You figure something new out, you pivot, you'll be fine. But if it happens when you're 52, that's a different ball game. You're already in a much harder to hire part of the market. Your skill sets are going to be way farther removed from somebody that grew up with technology. So that's going to be tough. Disruptions like that are really devastating on people of a certain age at a certain time. So I think it's going to be brutally difficult for tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.

I've been meditating on this and, you know, initially I had a lot of fear about AI, as many people do. And then when I joined the Mastermind and I saw that people are actually using it for good, I addressed three things that I'd love for you to address. The first is Agency. I feel like there could be a real war and turmoil around Agency, also attention, which has been going on for a long time with social media. And then lastly, the war for meaning. You know, Viktor Frankl talked about it, but you know, the agency, the attention and the meaning. What do you feel about these things and what do you know to be true about your way of thinking around these three categories?

Okay, well, meaning is the, the one that worries me the most. I've thought a lot about ways to combat that. I think it gets into my most controversial beliefs.

Huh.

So I think the reality is that again, give me a long enough timeline, this isn't going to happen in five years, but on a long enough timeline, as energy costs drop to zero, as you've got AI that's better than you at everything, all of your material needs are met and none of your spiritual needs are met. I think that people will. Some people are going to go to Mars and they're going to say, I want life on hard mode. And this to me, I liken to a survival crafting game. So something like Minecraft, where it's like, I just want it to be hard, I want to start at zero. I want to roll up and have nothing but a spacesuit and figure out like, can I build these huts on Mars? And you're, you are literally putting your life in a much more dangerous position, way more stripped down. Like just the austerity would be brutal. But I think a lot of people are going to do that. And then I think a bunch of people are going to go into virtual worlds. And so my answer to the Fermi paradox, which is, okay, wait, if there are billions of planets out there just like Earth, why do we not see any aliens? And the answer, I think, is that any civilization that gets so advanced that they could bend space time and travel to us would have long before figured out that it's far less risky and far more exhilarating to explore virtual worlds. Because you can make them whatever they want, infinitely refreshable, don't require the levels of energy, can be anything you want. You can cut out all the boring bits. Like space is basically big and empty. So that doesn't strike me as naturally where everyone will go. I think the majority of people will go into virtual worlds. I think some people will go life on hard mode and go to another planet. And I think some will be what I call the new Amish. And so they'll be here on Earth. They'll eject out of technology, essentially, and they'll live what they will consider, I'm sure, a pure life more in tune with God.

That will be goat farming.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Let me touch on the meeting with you. I was listening to a Rogan episode and he was interviewing Greg Braden from Gaia. And Greg was like in fear of AI, but also he was talking about the ramifications that could be positive with AI, which I loved. And he said that the definition of evil is essentially something or some energy that wants to take away human potential or our humanness. Do you feel in any way that there could be an energy or a spirit or even just an intelligence of any kind that switched on to game theory, that understands multiple realities, that knows quantum theory like the back of its hand? Do you feel that that's potentially possible that there's a malevolent force that could be trying to take away our humanness through AI?

No, my instinct.

How can you be so sure?

Because I'm always thinking up from first principles. So if you think up from physics, what you end up with is evolution as a process is, is a process. And so there's a catalyst that gets baked into things. And so if you look at even AI so rapidly adopting the goal oriented catalyst that humans have that propel us forward. So humans basically have desire and emotion. I mean you could probably classify desire itself as an emotion, but we're so goal directed and we have this feeling that's very visceral that to go after that thing would be better than to stay here and all of human life. Is that literally something that simple? And so I just say, okay, why have we gotten to the point that we've gotten to now and we've gotten to the point that we've gotten to now? Because evolution had to figure out a way to make you go, face extreme danger, extreme hardship in order to kill something else, consume its calories so that you could live. And to get us to do that, it only has two levers, pleasure and pain. And so it's got to make the very act of questing pleasurable and the very act of just sitting on your butt all day very displeasurable. And so once you have that set up now you have this compulsion to move towards a better tomorrow. So we're always trying to make tomorrow better than today. That's, you know, the whole parable of the what the cricket and the ant, right? Where the ant is like, hey bro, like you can't just lounge around, you've got to be preparing for the winter. And the cricket's like, nah, there'll always be time for it later. And then the ants are ready for winter and the crickets toast. So that is a parable trying to remind us that we always need to be prepared for that hardship, that difficulty that is technology. Technology is a promise of a better tomorrow. It's the promise of being able to survive another winter. And it's just that goes unchecked, you start knocking off all your goals and there's no like satiety switch in the brain for I've now accomplished enough. And so given that lack of a satiety switch, you just keep questing, keep questing, keep questing. So given that it's somewhat inevitable that we would merge with technology, so we'll, or like I said, some people will completely reject it. But even there, I think they'll just restart because they'll still have in their brain this sense of like, let's make tomorrow a little better. And so what they'll end up doing is they'll let technology progress a little bit and then they'll try to hold it down from top down. Draconian force, exile, people that want to step outside of that. And then over time, more and more people will step outside of that. That's why, you know, Amish haven't 100 folded their population, which they should, but it's just because most people leave, they don't stay being Amish. So I think you'd see something like that. We just want tomorrow to be better.

I love that. The satiety switch. I think about my drive earlier in the podcast, you said not everybody wants transformation and not everybody can do it. So it's in our human fallibleness that we try our best and sometimes it doesn't work out. With AI, it's totally possible that anything you want, if you are conscious about it, if you're goal driven, could happen. It's literally the most. I mean, what's more powerful than AI? Literally nothing. The horse, the television, the radio, even the Internet, it's like quantum times bigger than that. So with the Chinese symbol of crisis, there is an inherent danger, though, with hegemony. And I think about. You did a great video on this, which we'll link for everybody. When there's a massive power transfer, it can sometimes bring on war. Do you, do you have any fear about war with this power transfer happening right now?

Well, yes. So I have certainly fear of war. For anybody that knows Thucydides trap, we are headed for that. AI is a part of that. But AI isn't the thing that makes me worried about war itself. What makes me worried about war is history just tells you that when you have a declining superpower, the US going up against a rising superpower, China, you enter in something called Thucydides trap, where anybody from the outside can realize, hey, you guys should really cooperate. And the two people in that transference, they just cannot bring themselves to do it. So the rising power refuses to not be acknowledged as having risen up. And if they surpass you, then they're really going to be demanding. And the declining superpowers had often decades or hundreds of years of being the top dog, and then they just can't psychologically give it up. And so they end up fighting. So it is certainly preferable for us to fight that battle. In a cold war, which is exactly how we played with Russia, to make it a cyber war would be better than a kinetic war. But kinetic war is certainly on the table and is something I worry about a lot. But the thing that is like just occupies a ton of my time is every country that has ever been over 130% debt to GDP for more than, I think it's 18 months, with the exception of one country, has ended up in revolution or civil war, and the US is at 122% and climbing. So that worries me a lot more.

How do you think that Bitcoin and AI or the combined effect of that would potentially drop that down? Is there a. Is there a world that's possible where it drops through AI and through, I guess, really the more conscious use of the human spirit letting go of greed.

If AI can race us past the like economic system that we have now, it might do something. But I really do think that the transition period, which is going to be something like 10 to 15 years, is going to be so brutal. I think that people are going to be very fearful going through that transition. It's very much going into the unknown. It's very much the loss of meaning and purpose and to just orient people. So. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, his whole thesis was universities have gotten so good at teaching people that we are now solving all of the like sweet spot problems. He wouldn't have used the following language, but this is really what he was getting at. Life is gamified and you need things to be. For the gamification to work on us psychologically, it needs to be hard, but not too hard and easy, but not too easy. And anytime you get really hard problems or really easy problems, people won't have fun playing the game and you're going to have a crisis. And so what he was saying is the university is taking all the sweet spot, like things that are just hard enough to be really enticing but not too easy, and they're solving all of those problems. And so there's not going to be anything left but the really hard problems, which only very few number of people will be able to do, and then all the easy problems which won't be satisfying. And so he was literally trying to kill professors to get the whole university experiment to stop so that we would more slowly go through those sweet spot problems. It's pretty wild. So AI is going to rush you through that. And that's where this starts to get wild, is what is that going to feel like for People where all of that stuff goes away. And if it goes away as rapidly as I think, you know, over the course of. I mean, for you to be disheartened probably won't take more than five to seven years for the world to actually, from a material science perspective, to get to the point where you're literally just looking around at billions of robots is like 15 years. So, yeah, that's going to be a wild transition that will do something extraordinarily weird to the human psyche and humans will react very strangely. So if we can get through that and AI transitions us fast enough, then maybe we can avoid Thucydides trap, or it might just accelerate it. I don't know.

I'm a dreamer. I'm kind of an ideologue when it comes to life, which, you know, I'm a parent. I don't know, a parent that doesn't feel the love of their child in their arms and realize, oh my God, there's so much more than my mind here. There's so much more to this life experience because it's not just, just about me anymore. I know you don't have kids right now, but your business feels like a child. Do you feel like your parent energy, your father energy actually goes into your business?

It does to some extent. I think now I'm more focused on. I really feel like we're in the middle of a crisis in America. To your point about in crisis there is opportunity. I'm trying to. I'm running an experiment. That experiment is the following. We must look nakedly at what's actually going on. We must think from cause and effect. And there is going to be a lot of stuff and thinking from cause and effect, but empty platitudes, even though they feel really good. Like teaching people how to think, like, mindset felt really good for me for a while until I realized how few people actually deploy it in their life. And then I began to realize the people that I'm most trying to help are vulnerable to things that manifest politically. And so ended up really engaging with world affairs, politics, economics. Because I'm like, if we don't solve these problems, then you can be a dreamer. You can be as hopeful as you want, but there is a foundational layer that's breaking and it will make those things impossible. And history just shows this play out over and over and over. So it's like I. I also am a dreamer. I'm wildly optimistic. I'm delusional. I'm so optimistic. But I'm really trying to interface with where the things actually break point at them and say, okay, there is a way to solve it. Here's my idea. But like, this is going to take a lot more people than me. But that feels very parental to me. So I think a lot about I don't have kids. I need like, I understand evolution wants me to have them. So from that perspective, if I don't address it, if I don't do something that evolution goes, all right, I'll take that. It's a substitute, but I'll take it that I'm going to feel a profound sense of disease in my own life. So that would, that's a very meaningful quest. If I fail at that, I would feel that I failed.

Well, what made you want to go the path of being a father to many instead of a father to your own children?

The honest answer is I did a lot of big brothering and so I got so much of a proxy and I get it wasn't my child. And I would feel very different and like anybody else if I had a kid and that kid wrapped his little hand around my finger and you know, I watch my wife like 100 and it necessarily changes your brain. So I get, I would go for it just as hard as anybody else, but I. Because I don't feel the pole it would be. In fact, that's not the right way to say it. The right way to say it is I really want kids. I just want to not have kids a little bit more. And so that was always the battle. Every time I was like, okay, did we do it now? I was always like, I don't know, man. I love my life the way that it is and I know how much that would change because of the big brothering. I know what the day to day ins and outs of being around a kid and the joys of having somebody who you're like, I'm actually making their life better. That feels phenomenal.

Yeah.

The joys of like connecting with somebody and sort of re seeing your own life as they grow. Unbelievable. And you really do start to feel a sense because I big brothered for a kid for eight and a half years, so this was not like a brief thing for me. And there really is a sense of like, oh, like we're like sharing this life in some way. I'm meaningful to him, he's meaningful to me. But then there's also going to see Digimon and kids screaming and freaking out and him telling me a 30 second commercial over eight and a half minutes and you know, just like, the day in and day out grind of like, I wouldn't be doing these things if I wasn't trying to make your life better. And so I just always felt like, I really feel like I want to build something big. And so at first it was always just, well, in 18 months. In 18 months. In 18 months. And then I just realized, yeah, I'm not actually sure I want this.

That's honest. Some people would give some canned answer, but you just wanted it a little bit less than what you wanted to build.

Yeah. And listen, like, I. I thank people for their service, the people that have kids. You are literally doing God's work. You are doing what the universe wants you to do.

It's hard, man.

Very, very hard. And the people like me that don't have kids owe you a huge debt of gratitude, which I'm perfectly happy to manifest in tax breaks. Like, literally raising kids, really, right. Is the greatest gift anybody can give. And I chose not to give it. So it's like I. When people ask me, like, what. What should be the default path? What is the closest thing to a one size fits all, I would say evolution wants you to have kids so badly, by all means, if that doesn't speak to your heart, don't do it. But you need to understand that there are going to be consequences to that. You need to build things in that are going to fill that void, because it will feel like a void. And so if you don't have something that fills that meaning, you're going to be in real trouble. So people should be very thoughtful about not having kids. My wife and I did not accidentally end up here. This was an unrelenting number of conversations about it. I mean, even to this day. It's getting a little comical now, but even to this day, we'll be like, okay, you sure? Because, like, even the last exit ramp is like, we could still adopt. So, yeah, we. We stare nakedly at that which scares us the most. And we both know I'll speak for myself. I know on my deathbed, I will regret not having children. I've just never understood living your entire life for one phase of your life. So, yeah, I'm trying to optimize, over the full, God willing, 150, if you'll give me that 150 year run. If we can get some breakthroughs in science. So, yeah, I'm just trying to make sure that that whole run is fun.

Pedro Jai was on the show and he said, you know, if I can live to 80, I'll probably live to 150. Do you share a similar belief?

I mean, look at how old he is.

But yeah, I think he's in his 40s, maybe 50. Don't get mad at me, Pedro.

Yeah, but if we can.

If we can make it 30 more years in good health.

Yeah.

With a good baseline, good mitochondria, good metabolism.

If AI doesn't asymptote, it's not only possible, it's inevitable. So they are de aging monkeys already. So there's no reason to believe that you can DH a monkey, but not a human. And they sampled like 11 or 14 tissues, like organs. So it's not like it just looked younger, like the actual age. And they made one edit to that own monkey's DNA and then were re injecting with the plasm. Oh no. Stem cells. So they made one edit and then re injected them with their own stem cells and de age the monkeys dramatically. So this is like the terrible version where AI is like barely smart enough to help. What's that going to be in 20, 30 years? I mean, I'll just remind people of the jump three years ago, Will Smith eating spaghetti looked hilarious and we were all mocking it. And like, this is never going to be anything three years later. And I'll say 10% of AI content now I can't tell, like, you can even tell me it's AI and I can't spot what the giveaway is. So give it another three years. In five years from today. I'm very confident saying it'll probably happen sooner. I'm very confident in saying that a lot of the content that you're going to create, you won't actually sit down to create because you're like, I'm just going to prompt it. It's got so much content of the real me. It'll look exactly like me, it'll sound exactly like me, it'll use my language as my movements, all of that. So why would I go and do it? And then you might make a couple edits. Like, no, I don't like that. Tweak it to this. But yeah, we're going to post five years from now. It's just all prompting all the time, man.

I want to go back to my ideology and my dream for the world, which it seems like you share. You said you're a huge optimist. When I think about the Cold war between AI and China, and you did such a great video on this. Again, we're going to link all your videos in the show notes. It was fascinating to me. I had never heard of the prisoner's dilemma. And it was wild the first time I thought about it, because it was. You put words to obviously something you researched, but you did it in your own way. And it was this really almost fake war between jealousy, greed, and the human spirit. In other words, the prisoner's dilemma has three choices, I believe, and I'd love for you to lay this out for us. Any country at any point could just say, hey guys, let's work together. That could be an option. Yeah, but it's like this human psyche, little needle or thorn that's in the brain that says, well, we've got to have the biggest nukes and the best AI just in case you take a swing at us. Can you lay out the prisoner's dilemma? Because in my world, I'm like, can we all just get along?

Yeah.

Yeah, can we please just get along, y'? All?

I get it. Like, like they say, all problems stem from man's inability to sit alone in a room, okay? So any technology that has that promises an advantage will be created no matter the danger. The reason is game theory. So the core part of game theory is this thing called the prisoner's dilemma. And the prisoner's dilemma says, let's say that there are two people that are picked up. And the cops say, okay, if you each rat on each other, you're going to get a minor sentence. If one of you rats and the other doesn't, you'll get off scot free and they'll get a heavy sentence. And if you're the one that gets ratted on, you get a heavy sentence. So when people hear that, they think, oh, cooperation is the right answer. But the reality is what game theory says, meaning the best possible outcome is that you're both a hundred percent going to lie and say, yeah, yeah, let's cooperate, and then not. And so everybody always and forever chooses deception. So if you go, hey, we want to have a nuclear treaty and so we're not going to build any more nukes, you don't build any more nukes, what actually ends up happening, they both build nukes in secret. And the reason they do is just because of the, the outcomes. So if I build a nuclear weapon and you don't, I win. If I don't build a nuclear weapon and you do, I lose. And if we both build nuclear weapons, we're tied. So literally, the game theory math is very clear. The only right answer is to lie and say you're going to, but then not. So no matter what, no matter what AI is going to be developed because it promises that there's going to be a positive outcome to it. So whatever country does it will have an advantage. That means that the countries have to, even if they lie to the other person and say we're not going to, don't worry, we're going to regulate. They'll have their Manhattan Project and they'll do it in secret. So we know we can't back off of the application of AI because if we do, then China will win. And because there is an advantage, we would then give them an advantage over us and we can't have it.

So I know in a lot of your studies you've gone into metaphysical teachings. Have you ever studied Alan Watts?

I know of Alan Watts Security. Studied him would be a lie.

This quote, I'm going to bring in my own arbitrage here that I love. And I wonder how you feel about this and respond to this as it relates to AI and where humanity is. He said in solving problems, technology creates new problems. And we seem, as in through the looking glass, we have to keep running faster and faster to stay where we are.

Facts.

What comes up for you when you hear something?

Well, so there's this idea, the red queen, which is exactly that, that you, you are stuck on this eternal treadmill of having to work harder just to stay in the exact same place. I think that yeah, when you find that. And he may have heard of the red queen by the time he said that. But the whole idea of I don't know which one of those two came first, but when you find that multiple people are coming to the same conclusion, it's usually because you're getting close to ground truth. And such is the nature of evolution. Evolution is this constant back and forth battle of. I mean you can just think about it in terms of AI. So you're going to have hackers. So as AI gets created. Oh, you can defeat hackers more easily. Nope. They're going to master AI and so they're going to use AI to hack your AI defense. And then your AI defenses have to be better to stop the new things that the hackers are doing. And it just becomes this cat and mouse game. Same with weapons, war, technology. Getting ahead in your job, like whatever, you're always going to find yourself on that treadmill.

You don't think there's a point where the human spirit could overpower this game theory?

No, I. The way that the human mind works. Buddhists have been around for thousands of years and they have already told us the fundamental Truth, which is all suffering arises from attachment. When you want something, when you desire an outcome and you are attached to getting it, all of your suffering is going to arise from that. So we know the answer, we just can't internalize it because we are having a biological experience and there are hardwired algorithms running in our brain and learning to feel them, but then step outside of them is ridiculously difficult. And the really, really bad news, and I hate how true this is, but intellect also plays a role in this. And so does the person even have enough intellect to be self aware enough to go, oh, I'm having an emotion. It's this, it was triggered by this. That's from my childhood. I don't want to be triggered by that anymore. And so even though I feel the impulse of the emotion, I'm not going to trust it, I'm not going to validate it, I'm going to step outside of that, I'm going to shake it off, whatever. The vast majority of humanity doesn't even realize that they're having an emotion, let alone be able to name the emotion. They're just in the emotion, they're completely lost in it. And so, yeah, I mean, there but for the grace of God go I. It just, that is the human experience. And what I will remind people is don't be mad at me for pointing it out. You're arguing with God. For whatever reason, the universe, God, whatever, chose to make humans this way, we are this way. And we have had the thousands of years of every religion you could ever want and we're still stuck in these emotions.

Yeah, energy in motion. I think about the Hawkins scale, the frequency scale, and Dr. Jill Taylor, she, her brother unfortunately was a schizophrenic and that's what got her into the work. So she would actually map the neurology in the brain and she found that we only actually experience an emotion for 90 seconds, which was mind blowing to me. And then of course I did research, I'm like, well, what makes the emotion repeat? It's the belief. And so deep are the beliefs that they actually become the conduit that the emotion gets stuck inside of because it further validates the belief, which I find fascinating. I mean, you're talking to the right people. Like we are all about belief. We understand Nir Eyal's work, he's been on the show the Habit Loop and understanding Charl Duhigg's work, I think for me it's, it's just like the Matrix, which is probably your all time Favorite film. Is there a. Is there a more favorite film for you than the Matrix?

That's the one.

So I want to push back on you then because you had said that the human spirit will not triumph the game theory. Yet in the Matrix, Neo put his hand up and the bullets fell.

Yeah. So great movie. But alas, it is a beacon of hope to remind people of what they should be striving for, not what we will ever achieve. At the level of society.

At the level of society, yeah.

So if you want to say, can any one person do virtually anything? Yeah, of course. I mean, you've got guys that, from where I'm sitting, can legitimately fly. Man has created suits, squirrel suits, where they jump off the side of a cliff and they fly a mile, two miles. I mean, it's wild. So if, if humans can quite literally turn themselves into a bird, like, are there limitations? Of course there are. But wasting your time thinking about where human limitations are is, is fruitless. Yeah, but when I'm talking, I'm talking about what are we going to be able to do en masse and on mass. Not so much at the individual level. Oh, my God. Like, just assume that you have no limits and push yourself forward as hard as you can go until you don't want to go anymore. And life is going to be an extraordinary ride for you. But that does not curtail if you're wired like me. And I want. I don't like seeing other people suffer, especially when I feel like it's a set of ideas or beliefs that will help get them out. Yeah, I want to at least yell those as loud as I can, but I had to a long time ago stop measuring myself by whether I could get 100% of people to listen and just go with, did I do my best to articulate it clearly? And if I did, great.

But you've also said that the Matrix isn't a movie.

Yeah, it's a documentary. Cheek. Let's be very clear. So I think that the Matrix is the best metaphor for the human experience. And so that's what I mean when I say it's a documentary. Now, if we really want to push it, is all of life a simulation? Very well could be, but I don't think we have a physical body anywhere. I don't think if this is a simulation. Yeah, I don't think we're a brain in a vat. I think if this is a simulation that it's all code from top to bottom. Everything you've ever known is running on a server. Somewhere on whatever equivalent of a 13 year old desktop and he's got a science experiment due and he hit an algorithm and was like, let's see what happens.

I mean, look, even if we are in a simulation, I truly don't give a fuck because I just love life and I enjoy all the things that we've talked about.

It's the only way to approach it, right?

I mean, because flat Earth, what's going on with Charlie Kirk conspiracies, to me they seem to circle back to the beginning of our conversation. These seem like the tools on the war for our attention. We live in a world of distortion and spirituality. Some religions call the Earth the Devil's playground. And so if we're truly on the devil's playground, if it's a simulation of some sort, none of that really matters. What matters is the clarity of focus. From our heart, from our purpose, from our mission. These are the things that really matter. And that's why I do what I do for my children, for myself, for this audience. Like I burn for it because I've been living the opposite of it for so long. I know the pain of that and the pain of that is so severe. I could not wake up in the morning and not do what I'm doing. I will go through, I will crawl through broken glass. Right. For my purpose. I pulled that quote from someone else. Do you feel like right now, 2025, 2026, the purpose that you started with with Quest and then moving on to Impact Theory and all these incredible interviews you've done and I think you even said that if Disneyland is the most magical place on Earth, then Impact Theory is the most empowered place on Earth. There's a quote from you like 10 years ago.

Yeah.

Has that shifted for you? In other words, is your fuel substrate changed that fuels you now versus in the beginning?

I certainly wouldn't say the fuel substrate has changed. So if you tension, if you let me zoom out far enough, it's all one in the same. But a lot of the specifics have changed to be sure. So originally I thought for sure we would start with film. And then by the time we got to that point, film had just been eaten by gaming. So I wouldn't have called. I always thought gaming would be the thing that happened down the road. I always thought the gaming would be the thing where we created the IP and then partnered with a gaming studio and they made it. I never could have told you that gaming would become the thing that I would think was my long term future in terms of Post AI everything I would I the vision that I have of my long term future now is that I'm building the kind of virtual worlds that I think people will spend inordinate periods of their life inside of that they'll have some of their most meaningful interactions inside of. I wouldn't have seen that coming. So. But the idea that I want to make something that at its core is empowerment has never changed. So my goal is to make entertainment, whether it's the comic books that we do, whether hopefully one day we really do film, tv, even if it's embedded in inside of a game. But that all of that has the impact on future generations because I really am focused on kids that impacts them the way Star wars impacted me. And so Star wars is just a movie to the vast majority of people that watch it. But for me, it introduced me to Yoda. Yoda was basically George Lucas's impression of a guy named Laozi who wrote the Dao de Jing. And by encountering Yoda first and then my friend when I was like 16 being like, yo, you got to read this book. And then I read it and I was like, hey, this sounds like Yoda. And I was like so tripped out. I was so into it because he sounded like Yoda. And so I was like, whoa. Like that movie really planted something in my brain that made me like receptive to these incredible ideas that end up being the beginning of my self improvement journey. And I want to create stuff like that where people just want to engage with it. Because right now, don't get me wrong, if you played the game that we've been building for the last three years, you're not going to think, oh, this is like a simulation that I'm going to be, oh my gosh, I see it, it's so cool. It's going to feel like a game for today. But I've had so much fun building this thing. I always tell people the you want to look for something that you would love doing even if you fail. If this game fails, I will have enjoyed these years immeasurably and partly because and some people just won't be wired like this. But for me, you get to create the rules from which the world springs. And so you're literally building a world. So we've gotten to the point now where we can build terrain. It's very boring right now. I don't want to overhype anything that we've already accomplished, but we can build a world now that is the size of planet Earth. Now what does that mean when it's virtual, if you take a unit, say a meter, a meter in real life, and then you say, this is what a meter is in the game. There are that many meters inside the game. So if you shrink your character down, this is how big a meter is, then it would take your character that long to walk around. It would be like trying to cover the entire surface of the planet Earth. And when you do that, based on a set of rules, it is, for me anyway, it is thrilling. So, yeah, it's been a lot of fun.

So then with game theory and the really virtual world that you're building, if it's the desired outcome and it's like you wave a magic wand, it's exactly how you want it to be. How would you hold your own moral compass so that you're not adding to the distortion and the distraction in the world from people exiting this world?

Yeah. So this is where you one have to figure out what are you. So in the beginning, we are going to be a thing that people do for fun. Just like you would watch a movie, you would play this game. I have spent my entire career creating things that are hyper addictive that people need to have a healthy relationship with. So when I was at Quest, it was food. Food is by far the most addictive drug that anybody is ever going to do because you can never have an I don't touch it relationship with it. So imagine if I said to you, you have to do a little bit of heroin every day. That's going to be brutal. Well, that's food. You've got to have a little bit of it every day. And so my thing was, because people can have an abusive relationship with food. Should you not try to make food that's good for people? That. That always to me was an obvious yes, you should. Somebody has to. Somebody's going to. It's a beautiful gift that you can give to people. People can. Should engage with entertainment a thousand percent. Some of the deepest lessons I've learned in my life have come from entertainment. So I'm a big believer in that. Big believer in the art form. Big believer in its ability to pass on values, especially to kids. So it's like I just am totally committed to that. I love it, would never back away from it, no matter how many people saber rattle that. You can have a bad relationship with video games, which of course you can, But I'll just say, hey, parents, that's your role. It's like, put limitations on your kids the way that my mom put limitations on Mine. But that doesn't mean that the thing itself is bad. You can have an unhealthy relationship with it. The thing itself is not bad. So from that perspective, I'm not trying to create something where kids can't pull themselves out of it, but I'm trying to make something that's fun, which means you are dealing with dopamine loops and you have to understand all of that stuff to make sure the game is fun and engaging. But yeah, you don't want to make something that people regret their time in.

But don't you feel like that's setting a trap for people that may have a proclivity towards addiction and you're just lobbing the responsibility on the parent?

I think that everybody has a responsibility to themselves to move through a world with things like Doritos and choose the one that has actual quality calories. So we're trying to build a game that parents would be proud like, oh man, my kids fall in love with that game. That's dope. So we want the game to have this empowerment at its core so that when your kid is spending time in it, you know, they're encountering characters that are going to give them ideas that are positive and empowering. So hopefully we're able to create that. I mean, that's our reason for existing. But yeah, I think that there will be kids that end up having an unhealthy relationship with basically everything they touch, from food to sports to gaming 100. But if people really play out that question, if what they're saying is, Tom, we want you to be like the CCP and we want you to auto shut the game off at two hours. Okay, well, what if that's the. It's a one time on a Tuesday. Well, not even that, but that their parents have said, look, you're so reasonable. You play so well. Like we want. You can play that now. Putting controls in so that the parents can make the game auto shut off when they want, that the kid can never play more than the parent wants to send the parent a running record of everything because we'll use AI So everything that every character has ever said to their kids so that they can track it, control it, all of that things a thousand percent, but trying to act as if I know what's best for their children in any one moment. Like, I am so opposed to that. Parents, I. This is. I need a better word for this. But parents own their kids. The government should not tell your kids what they can and can't do. I, as a game Developer should not tell you kids what they can and can't do. Make it possible for you to control the experience a thousand percent.

So you put safety guardrails in to where it's not just a free for all. There would be some kind of safety mechanism.

I want parents to be able to control it all the way. So 100, because we're really focusing on 11 to 15 year olds, that's like our sweet spot for reasons of brain development. But when you're at that age, parents need to be supremely confident. So we consider that we have two customers. We've got the kid that needs to actually enjoy playing the game. Then we've got the parent who's got to feel good. They've got to feel that their kids are in good hands. They got to feel that they're encountering ideas that they agree with and want their kids to encounter. They've got to feel that we're not heavy handed, we're not preaching or anything like that. Like we're not, you know, trying to be more than what we are. Which again, Star wars is the perfect example. But putting them in control so that they can control how much their kid plays. Putting them in control that if their kid is interfacing with an AI character that they know exactly what that AI character has said, those kinds of things, that'll be high on our list.

I think it's really powerful. You know, one of the things I've always respected about you is you bring a ton of research and work. Like, I don't know if it's like the ketogenic diet mixed with your soul compass or what, but like you have an ability to just sit and work for hours and it comes out when you speak. In other words, the research that you've done and the time you spent in work comes out kind of effortlessly. When you talk. You can probably do multiple podcasts a day and you just have fun, you don't feel exhausted. Not everybody's built like that though. And you touched on the neurochemistry in the beginning with the vasopressin and the different bonding hormones. A lot of our audience struggles with addiction and self sabotage in an age of AI. If you were to give a high level or even a low level warning, a set of skills, if you will, to deal with the onslaught and the speed of AI that is touching the, let's say, addictive personalities of human beings, what might be a few of those or what's one that that you think is really powerful?

Before I get to AI, let me Give people my spiel on the easiest way to deal with an addictive personality. Now, I fully understand that if you got a bad roll of the dice on that and you're. The overwhelm that you feel from the addiction is such you just can't have it in the house and just don't have it in the house.

Yeah.

However, what I have found in my own life is that by putting rules in, I know exactly, like, bright lines. I know exactly when I've stepp that line or not. And I've never understood why people don't put a rule in their life and then be honest with themselves about when they break that rule. Now, you may decide, I'm not going to stick to rules. I'm just going to lean into being an addict. But then at least you're not lying to yourself about what you're doing. And I find it's when people allow themselves a story that they get into trouble. So with me, I'm like, Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out. So if it's Monday through Friday and I'm awake and I'm not working or working out, I know I'm violating my own principles. I don't lie to myself about it. I'm like, yeah, I'm violating my principle right now. Okay, cool. Is it worth it? Yes, it is. No, it's not cool. Then get back to work. It's just very easy because the lines are bright and I don't waste time lying to myself. And so then if I find myself in a loop where I'm like, ooh, I'm actually not living up to this, what ends up happening is I lose my own respect. And I don't get to say things like that out loud, because when I say it out loud, I know I'm lying, and it doesn't make me feel good. And so I'm steering by internally how I want to feel. And I've often wondered, like, is it that people just don't want things the way that I want things? Like, is that my superpower? And I just want something so badly. I want my own respect so badly. And I've so clearly defined, like, hey, me, if you do these things, you get to respect yourself. If you don't do those things, then you don't get to respect yourself. And because I've said that so many times over and over and over and over and over and over and over, I've told my wife, this is what I respect in myself. If I do It I get to respect myself. If I don't, I don't. And then when I don't, I'll go tell her, hey, I didn't do what I said I was going to do. And she'll be like, oh, it doesn't really matter. Why are you so hard about that? I'm like, listen, I need a witness to my crimes. So I am telling you this because I don't like the way this made me feel. Even now I can feel myself, like hardening myself to my rules. Like, just saying stuff like this works for me. So I've built in all these bright lines about what I need to do to earn my own respect. And then I just never lie to myself about when I'm breaking my rules. I'm not perfect, but I'm. I would say I am 99.999% of the time. I'm at 85 adherence or higher. Always and forever, all the time. Now, the easiest way, if you really want to know what somebody's about, look at their physique. And if somebody's like, I'm super disciplined and they're fat, they are not disciplined. They cannot control what they put in their mouth. If somebody says, you know, I'm, I'm really living healthy right now and you can just tell like, yo, this person is a mess, they're not getting sleep or whatever, it's like, okay, like, this is pretty self evident. So the thing that I would advise people, put rules in your life. Take care of your body. If you take care of your body, you're going to get control of your mind. The biggest breakthroughs that I've had as an entrepreneur came from proving to myself that I could transform my physique. And so, yeah, that, that like, simple setup is a gift I want for everybody that struggles with addiction.

It's so good. This is on the screen right now is the wellness Pentagon. The base is physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial. It's the ways that we nourish ourselves. And then I find, I'm curious what you found and what you could share with us when we go to nourish these five sides or to use your words, to respect oneself, which I think is a close corollary to loving oneself. We meet the stories that we've created as to why we can't nourish these five aspects of self. And those stories are actually hinged to the beliefs, which is why belief work is not just something in a self help book at Barnes and Noble or all over the Internet. It's like God beliefs are truly everything. So do you feel like when we go to nourish the five sides, starting with the physical, because you said that was your greatest transformation. The stories that come up, if you're not taught how to model the unpacking of those stories by some kind of teaching framework or modeled by parents, you're kind of dead in the water. Do you feel that way?

I do. If you don't encounter the right ideas and you don't know how to think through a problem, you are going to be stuck. However, we live in the age of Chat GPT. And Chat GPT has been trained on the entire corpus of human knowledge. So if you want, right now, you could go ask Chat GPT about you. What are his best frameworks? It'll give it to him. Yeah, boom, you can ask me about mind. It'll give it to him. So it's like, this is not an access to information problem anymore. So people can get access to the information.

Yeah.

Will they prompt themselves to sit down and do it? That's a totally different question. That gets way more distressing. And I find that most people just don't. So to me, it comes back to desire. I just don't think people want anything badly enough to face their own inadequacies to push that change. It just comes so naturally to tell yourself a story about why you can't do that, why it's harder for you. Yeah, it's easy for him, but it's going to be difficult for me, and so I'm just not going to do it. And it's like, hey, fair enough. Like you, you do you. I really have become fatalistic about that. I used to really fight against it and really, like, try to plead and, like, explain it to people. Just doesn't work. So, man, I will tell the. I'll give every secret away that I have to anybody that wants it, even people that are never going to listen, fine. But if you want me to sit there and spend time with you, you've got to show that you're doing something, something with it.

So I said earlier, respect and love, they feel interchangeable. If you're like you said, you're complaining to your wife because you have these standards, right? You're actually being vulnerable, for lack of a better term. You know, emotional intelligence is what I've heard Stephen Covey talk about, even Ray Dalio. It's like in the financial industry, like, why are these people talking about emotional intelligence? Is because it's so powerful, it's so potent. I think about the term vulnerability, which, you know, Brene Brown has many TED talks and she's so powerful. I love her work. But she was, I think a guy came up to her at the end of one of her talks and he said, I noticed your talks are all about women. Where are the talks about vulnerability for men? And she said, well, I don't work with men. And he said, well, isn't that convenient? Because my daughter and my wife would rather die than see me fall off of my white horse and be the savior. What's been one of the most vulnerable moments with you and your wife that's allowed you to actually deepen the relationship and love and respect yourself more?

Okay, well, here's where certainly my answer is not going to be orthodox. I want my wife to want me to stay on that white horse through thick and thin, no matter what, to go slay dragons.

Okay?

I want her to want me and expect me to go to the door if the bad man shows up with an ax or a gun or whatever, that's on me. I don't want her to be like, you sure? Are you okay? Like, I'm running into that. That is my job. I take great pride in myself. But if I fall, I want her to rush to my side to brush me off, help pick me back up, let me know she still loves and respects me, is so grateful that I was willing to do that, that she does not love me less that I failed. And in that moment, if I need to have a bit of a, like, weep and be like, man, I really messed up, this sucks. And I feel terrible about myself. And I would expect her to help build me back up and remind me of who I am and who I can become. But I've always told her, I don't want you to get on your knees and cry with me. I want you to remind me of who I can be now. If she lost respect for me when I fall, that would be too much to bear. I need a woman that can hold that space, that understands that I am at times going to be rocked. I am at times going to be full of self doubt. And at that moment, I want her to be like, hey, I don't think less of you. I think you're incredible. I know what you're capable of. Let me help you back up. Take a breather. Know that I'm here for you no matter what happens. If you go and lose, if you go in a fight and you get your ass handed to you, I'm still here for you. I'm not Gonna suddenly be like, ooh, that guy beat you up. He's so sexy. I'm with you. You and I, we're ride or die. We're in this together all the way. But that, to me, is very different. Like, I. I really do feel like we've moved too far away from placing expectations on men. And I think we had to because we told them that their aggression was toxic. We told them that they were bad for wanting to be tough and aggressive and stoic. And so if you're going to take all of that away, well, then you better reward them for being vulnerable. But I would say it's probably not the right play. The right play is to celebrate them for controlled aggression, celebrate them for being strong but keeping it in check. We should reward them for being willing to sacrifice and to protect. And we should accept they're not always going to win. And if a woman is making her husband feel like, hey, if you fall off that white horse, you. Now we've got a problem, she needs to address that, because her role is to make me feel like a king for getting back on that horse, for being willing to charge against the enemy, to put myself at risk, for being willing to die for them. I want to be appreciated. I want to be respected. But I. Yeah, do I want them to know, listen, I'm going to do everything I can to be superhuman, but if I fall off and you guys scatter because I lost the fight. No. No. That I'm not here for. So it's like that bond, that kind of like, pair with a husband and wife to me is like the most gangster thing you can ever ask for. When it's like, I know she will catch me if I fall, but at the same time, part of what she's into is that I'm tough, I'm a man, I am stoic. I am willing to face the dangers. I want her to stay behind me when things get risky. And I once had to clear my house with a gun. And in. No, thankfully, it ended up being fine. But when I left the room with gun in hand, I did not think it was fine. I thought I was clearing that house to keep my wife alive. And I was like, this is how it should be. I was like, no matter what I say, once that door shuts, do not open it. And so went and swept the house and cleared it. And, yeah, everything was fine. But it was like, yes, this is the dynamic. I am the one that faces that danger. So anyway, I don't expect that to be universal, but that. That is where I'm at.

No, that's great. I have firearms. I'm trained for a reason that you just described. You know, your wife and you have such a special connection, and it seems like the most powerful thing in your life. And this vulnerability aspect is interesting because whether it's Brene Brown's work or how you just described the real position of the white horse, it was demonstrated so divinely, so beautifully when you actually were on camera. You had gotten some news right before you were filming that you had skin cancer.

Yeah, I knew where this is going.

And she came and sat in your lap, but she checked herself. Can you walk us through that? Because this is really the white horse in a different form. Yeah.

Okay. So I happen to be live. I don't even remember what was making me think about this, but so I had skin cancer on my face. As a person making a living on camera, that's a pretty real thing. No doubt. Even a tiny bit of skin cancer, as it turns out, leaves like a 3 or 4 inch scar. So that was shocking. And it certainly made me ask, because once you get one, you tend to get more. So I got the first one. Pretty brutal in terms of what I look like at the time that all of this is happening. And I thought, this is probably the first of many. He's gonna leave scars on my face. This is gonna start to add up. Would my wife still love me if my face really started getting scarred up? And what made me cry was that I realized that she would and that my wife has so made me feel internally that even if I fall off the horse, that she would be there for me and she has huge expectations of me. Don't get me wrong, my wife would not just be like, oh, it doesn't matter. And because you have scars now, you don't have to do anything in life. That would not be my wife's response, but she would make sure that I knew that she loved me and was still attracted to me and all. Whatever thing she had to do to her own mind to make sure that it really was true, she would find her way to that. And it was beautiful and horrible at the same time because admittedly, sort of coming off that fresh, I didn't know how well it was going to heal. And so it was a meaningful thing to be like, oh, what happens when I've got five or six of these? That. That starts to get scary.

Did it shape your understanding of mortality at all?

No, I wouldn't say that it shaped my understanding of mortality from that perspective. The Only thing that really hit me was I've really been cautious my whole life about the sun. People have given me a hard time about how goofy I'll wear goofy hats, and I never want to lay out in the sun and all that. And so for me to have gotten it was a little bit surprising. And so it was definitely one of those, like, yeah, you really have to be thoughtful. Even the things you think you're doing a really good job on. Like, there's definitely layers to this. But no, I. I made a switch around my thoughts on mortality probably about five years ago, where I went from thinking the way to stay motivated was to believe I would live forever. And then in my mid-40s, that stopped working. And I was like, actually, the thing that motivates me now is to be like, yo, this is going to be over one day. And so you better make the most of this. And so even though I do have fantasies about technology solving that problem, and if I can live to 80, I can live to 150. If I can live to 150, I can live forever. Like, that would be the sort of, like, fingers crossed. But even though I hold out hope for that, it's now way more effective for me to be like, remember, you're going to die. It gives me clarity.

Yeah.

So that wasn't from that. I was not like, oh, I'm suddenly now thinking about mortality. I sort of already come to terms with that.

It was a beautiful display. We'll make sure that we put it in the show notes. You know, like, everything you've been through with Quest and the billion dollar exit at building businesses and, dude, what does your soul want now? I mean, you've already accomplished so many things that people will be like, I'm good. I don't need to do anymore.

We don't have an I'm good switch, though.

So.

Thankfully, I realized that in my late 20s when I was worth a couple million dollars on paper, but was profoundly unhappy. And so I was like, huh? Money obviously doesn't solve whatever this is. And so then when I started after that, I said, I'll never do anything again for money because I might fail, first of all. So I'm going to do the thing that I would love even if I were failing. Which is exactly why now I build video games and write comic books and that kind of thing and teach people entrepreneurship, which is obviously the thing I'm far more known for. So that is all things that I would do. And if I don't make it, don't Win whatever. I'm having a ball. But I learned that no matter what the human animal and, and I got a big helping of this. So if the thousand 20 sided dice, if 20 is intensity of ambition, I'm a 20. So I got the full roll on that. So I am a mountain climber. That's what I do. So getting to the top of a mountain doesn't stop you from being a mountain climber. So you're just going to go look for another mountain. Now you want to climb an even bigger mountain, but mountain climbers climb. And so whether it's a smaller mountain equal mountain, bigger mountain, that almost doesn't matter. But I am going to keep climbing. And so I think what the sadness that a lot of people get is, they think, oh, I'm going to climb this mountain, I'm going to get to the top. It will feel like a finish line, that I will then permanently be the guy that climbed the mountain. But you're not. You're permanently the guy that climbs mountains. And so if you don't find the next mountain to climb, you're going to be miserable. So my last day at Quest was a Monday and we started Impact Theory on Tuesday. So that just is me acknowledging the way my mind works.

I remember you said there was like this huge lump sum that was deposited.

Hilarious.

And you thought to yourself, that's it.

No, the thought was, oh, all of my insecurities are still here. So I was like, this is hilarious. Now, admittedly it is what I expected, but feeling it somehow was still funny. And so, yeah, the first thing I said to my wife was, okay, that's amazing because it had a lot of commas and zeros.

Yeah.

But all of my insecurities are still here. And I was like, man, that's a powerful reminder that money just can't touch those things inside you that you're trying to solve for. And however you feel about somebody that's been successful is not how you feel about yourself. The way you'll feel about yourself when you're successful is however you felt about yourself for becoming the kind of person that could be successful. The money will facilitate things. It's amazing. Having money is great. It's more powerful than people think. But it isn't what people think it's going to be. They think it's going to make them feel about themselves the way they feel about other successful people. And it doesn't.

One thing I'm really happy that AI is bringing is opportunities for people that have like, climbed the corporate ladder and Then they get to the top and they're like, I hate the view. I actually don't like what I've built or all this. 10, 20 years I've climbed the ladder. It's creating so much opportunity for so many people. What are you most excited about? Because, you know, we've talked about some pretty serious topics like, that could cause harm and probably will cause harm. That. That truly breaks my heart because I'm. I did a live today on Instagram, and I'm like, you guys, the tsunami's coming. Like, y', all, the alarm bell's been going off for like a year now or more. Everybody needs to pay attention to this wave or you're going to get hurt. And unfortunately, like, we're not here to save them. Right. We're just here to be our authentic selves.

Sure.

But in that same vein, if. If there was something that you are absolutely hands down most excited for with the explosion, really, quantum explosion of AI, what would that be?

Well, I mean, don't sneeze at a world where anybody can get all of their material needs met. I know that there are really going to be people that. No, not ubi. Think of it as ubai. So you now have access. Like, imagine if Albert Einstein, Elon Musk. Imagine Elon Musk stood next to you all day and was like, what would you like me to do? And you're like, you know what? Like, build me a rocket. And he actually built you a rocket. That. That is the world we're actually going to live in. Like, it is going to be so wild. So everybody is just going to have access to robotics. They're going to have access to super intelligence, and that is going to be transformative. Now, it creates a meaning crisis that has to be dealt with. But I really think most people will be able to find a path to doing something again, even if it's in a virtual world. But people will find a way to come to peace with that. There's three great options on the table. New Amish virtual world, go to Mars. So it's like you. You've got your smorgasbord of options, but now you're living in a world where you never have to worry about privation. That's thrilling. So for all of human existence, there was just some ungodly number of people every year dying of disease, starvation. That's just going to go away. So that's incredible to me. So that's probably the thing I'm most excited about. And then for me, as I've gone down the game development path. To say that I have become obsessed with creating a rules based world would be an understatement. I think about it all the time. I think about it in the shower. I think about it when I'm brushing my teeth. I think about it like the video pauses before the next one starts playing. I start thinking about it again. So it, it is the great intellectual pursuit of my life. And it feels high stakes because you're trying to build something people will care about. But it's also iterative. Because I'm wealthy, I can keep building even if it fails at first. And so that's extremely comforting.

The excitement is palpable. I can feel it from you with you're very clear on what you want, you've done a lot of work to create what you've created and also what you will create. Is there a part of you that feels any despair or sadness for the people that the tidal wave is going to hit?

I think AI will offer something to people that would not normally be able to have that kind of success. They're, they're going to end up in a dead end job for a whole host of reasons. And now that person is also going to have access to just incredible things. Now again, it will be a trade off, but I think it will be a pretty thrilling trade off where now it's like life is going to be what you make of it. It's interesting. We should test people. Minecraft is the ultimate test of who's going to thrive in a world of AI and who won't. For anybody out there that's never played Minecraft, it is a procedurally generated world, the kind of thing I'm talking about where it's just rules. And so from a set of rules a whole world springs up. So maybe you spawn into a swamp or a desert or a plains biome, whatever, and then you run around and your world's 101. It's different than anybody else's world. And hiding in that world are all these resources, but there's no like win state. So it's just you're in a world and you have to survive. And so you start collecting resources, build safety, find food, and you're just like, first you're eeking out a living and then you start getting good and you realize like you can build magical teleportation devices and all this stuff and it just, it, it's the greatest video game ever made. It is truly extraordinary. And the more I drill into it and realize like the, how simple the Core of the game is and how brilliant of a world that it creates. But many, many, many players go inside and they're like, but what am I supposed to do? And because they're not self directed, the game isn't fun. But for people who can go, okay, today I'm going to go do this. And they can direct themselves. It is a never ending wonderland. There are content creators that have been building inside of Minecraft for like a decade. I can't think of any other game where you could. It has that kind of innate replayability. It's, it's really magical. That's, that's A.I. you, you get to the point where you don't have to worry about food anymore. Everything's just happening and now you just have to set goals for yourself and go do them.

So if we stripped it all away, multiple things we've talked about it, you know, sans the evolution of humanity without AI, without technology, without Minecraft, without games, Take all that away for just a moment and just do this thought experiment with me. What is the next evolution of humanity regardless of these tools? What is that?

Well, I think if you take away technology, the evolution would occur so slowly. It's like if you see those timelines and it's like, okay, the first human that we would recognize was whatever, 250,000 years ago, and then basically nothing happens for 248,000 years. And then it just, it goes crazy. So that rapid expansion into what we consider modern day is all technology. So if you strip away technology, it's basically a never ending sameness.

That sounds very boring.

Yeah, I mean, again, we have this algorithm for trying to solve all these problems of making tomorrow better with technology. And slowly but surely they begin to stack up. So it'd be hard to answer the question of what's the next stage of evolution. If you strip away technology, if you put technology in, then we really do become cyborgs, like people already. This is already today. There is a guy right now, today, that has a neuralink implant who has ALS and it allows him to control a robotic arm. He can play video games by thinking. So that's today. So what's that going to be like in 10 years, 20 years, 50 years? Yeah. You'll have the opportunity to upgrade your brain and your body. Whether you take it or not is a totally different question.

It's a good stopping point, I think about. Thank you for coming on, by the way. This is amazing. Amazing. This is round three. The last time I interviewed you was 2017.

So wild that that was a long time ago.

We just pulled the time machine right now. But one of the things I've appreciated most about the conversation is that you bring research, you bring intellectual frameworks and understandings and mindset. But I really appreciated the way that you brought forth vulnerability and emotional intelligence. I think that at the table there's room for emotion, spirit and science and frameworks with everything in the way we think. So I really appreciate that. Thank you for coming on so much. Man, where can people go to learn about the game and then also impact theory?

Go to YouTube or X. So at Tombillu. At both of them.

All right, y'. All. Share this podcast for Christ's sake. Share this podcast for people that are afraid of AI. Share this podcast for people that are optimistic about AI because the meaning is whatever you make. So until we see you again on another podcast, hopefully it's not seven years from now. I'm wishing you love, wellness, but most importantly, peace and power. You cannot have power unless it comes from from peace. Talk with you soon.