Matt: Welcome to Brave the New World. I'm Matt Carano. ⁓ Typically CJ is with me, but he is out dealing with some family stuff. So wanted to bring in old friend Sterlin Nuhan to talk about a concept that I don't think I had a name for until Sterlin, you sent it to me, but it's something I've been thinking about anyway, and now I have a name to it. But Sterlin, ⁓ good see you and I'd love for you introduce yourself to ⁓ the audience. Sterlin: Absolutely, Matt. Thanks for having me, man. It's been way too long since we got to speak, so really happy to be here. Yeah, just a little bit about me. So I've been working in the blockchain cryptocurrency ⁓ or loosely or directly for about the last 10 years. ⁓ So a good while, I've worked for organizations like Bitcoin.com. ⁓ I for some exchanges in the space, one named Crypto Space. And recently I've been working in the parallel society space, working with Logos, also founded my own research institute called Pullus Laboratories. I also host a, it's primarily a ⁓ or a lecture series called The Parallel Mind. I host that weekly on X as well. So ⁓ a tidbit. Matt: Yeah, and I'm sure we'll get into more of that too, because that's going to infiltrate our conversation a bit for sure. to kind of like kick this off a little bit and describe to the audience what we're going to do. So this episode is going to be a little bit different than normal. Typically, we talk about kind of specific current events that are happening and even people who follow me on Twitter and see the videos that I've been producing. It's like a lot of current event stuff, but This is gonna be a little bit more of a conceptual episode, but I think it really fits into what we've been talking about. Specifically where it comes to like the Epstein stuff that's happening with that cabal, that kind of, the thing that ⁓ really me after looking into it is how the elites ⁓ are and ⁓ and sort elite organizations are in kind of a super state. Level and and that kind of contributes to to what we're going to talk to today. So as I said when we got started, I didn't really have a name for it But we're going to talk about this concept called the poly crisis So star on i'd love for you to like describe What that ⁓ is and go from there Sterlin: Sure, I want to tackle the terminology and we can unpack it in a lot of different ways. I'll mention first your comment on Epstein and some of these governmental cabals. You're exactly right, Matt. This is going to be directly connected to the polycrisis because there's another topic that we can get into and discuss that kind of explains how we got to where we're at. And this is this idea of being embedded in a situation where we have a vast failures of governance, right, or government. And these are usually exasperated by theoretic failures in social coordination mechanisms. ⁓ I'll be a little abstract, but I'll try to always bring things ⁓ down to the ground. So ⁓ we talk about game theory, by the way, we're just talking about people, people, they live in society and they're trying to achieve their goals, whatever those goals may be, ⁓ Oftentimes they're in a lose-lose scenario, right? Because of the nature of the system, the way that it's constructed, and the fact that most of the incentives are very perverse, right? So we'll get into that. I just wanted to mention this is how ideas around the polycrisis, which I'm about to define, fit very directly into a lot of the consequences that were. currently dealing with and a lot of this takes the form of a lot of these issues that you guys are talking about right on your show, Epstein files, kinds of governmental collapse, different types of attacks on the cryptocurrency industry. All this is like a fallout of this. So ⁓ yes, going to conceptually analyze how this whole situation manifested and then we can look at the solution that way. ⁓ I don't like to take the doomer path or the black pill. Matt: Me neither. Sterlin: Right, we'll try to, and I figured that was the case for you too, and we'll try to unpack how to move forward and get beyond this stuff. okay, let me start then with the polycrisis. So this is a term, there's two terms really associated with polycrisis. Polycrisis is one and the other is metacrisis. Metacrisis a term that was largely coined by one Daniel Schmoktenberger. Schmoktenberger is a huge thinker in the space. Usually we refer to the space as, ⁓ Matt: Yeah. Perfect. Sterlin: individuals who see that we have reached what's been referred to as planetary boundary issues worldwide, meaning have very high destructive competency as human beings now, with ⁓ intelligence potentially, synthetic biology, right, all kinds of catastrophe weapons. And this is something we can get into, well, let me just define. Okay, so. Matt: weapons and just yeah right all the buildup around war yeah Yeah. so much. Sterlin: Polycrisis, people hear the term and they just think, okay, it just means that there's a bunch of different crisis scenarios that we're confronted by. So that's part of the definition. It's all these things we mentioned, right? Threats of synthetic biology, from artificial super intelligence, governance and government failures. You have oceanic microplastics, possibilities of different aspects of climatological change. I know that's a trigger word for a lot of people and we can discuss that in a minute. But we're just saying outlining what the typical idea looks like, OK? But it's not just the different crisis scenarios. It's also the fact that they overlap and they have cascade dynamics, right? Which means that one of these crisis scenario potentially exacerbates another and creates new emergent novel properties as a result of that interaction. Matt: mean, we saw it during COVID you had an event and then there were systemic failures that came from it. So yeah, that makes complete sense. I mean, we're we're a global environment. We're interconnected, ⁓ not just over the internet, but like in person. And ⁓ stuff that affects one will reverberate throughout ⁓ the systems affect the other systems, I think, yeah. Sterlin: Yeah, 100%. Anybody who's even a tidbit familiar with theory, with various forms of information theory, know that there's types of triggers and different activities within ⁓ a event scenario that creates novel properties down the line or downstream ⁓ somewhere ⁓ We'll into this again when we get into game theory. So this is the polycrisis. This is what we're facing as a species and that we have to solve. I am a pretty firm believer that if we don't figure out how to solve some of these most vexing crises, this is including the governance failures that you guys probably focus on quite a bit on your show. If we don't solve these and find a way to solve them, are potentially going to face extinction level events as a species. Again, not being doomer, being more realistic, understanding. Matt: Yeah. Sterlin: that, because here's the thing, a lot of people would be like, well, that's just, that is kind of doomerism. People have been apocalyptic since time immemorial, right? the thing is right now in this juncture of time, we finally have the technological competency, right? And ⁓ surpassed boundaries on a lot of different fronts. And now have the capacity to actually destroy ourselves in a variety of different ways, right? Matt: Sure. Sterlin: It wasn't even 10 years ago, not even a couple years ago, where a guy could sit at his desk manufacture a bio weapon at home using a kit. That's not something that you could have done just a couple of years ago, ⁓ five, 10 years ago, depending on the... And the technology for all these different artifice, continue to improve as we move forward. Matt: And to like to the what exasperates us to is there's no off ramp really right now like we're not interplanetary yet. Like we can't go anywhere to escape just in case something crazy happens and it only takes one ultimately very crazy thing for some sort of extinction level event. ⁓ mean, I'm very optimistic too, because I look at it like humans have always tried to solve problems. We are mostly creative, industrious people. we're looking for, you know, win win scenarios, mostly, but you do have some psychopaths at the top who do not think that way. ⁓ and so, you know, ⁓ we to counteract that. ⁓ I technology is a big part of that technology. Of course, I know you agree with this too, because it can be used for, for evil, but it can also be used for great good. And I use AI as an example AI, of course, ⁓ this great. I don't know if you saw this, but anthropic basically told the Department of Defense go fuck yourselves. You're not going to use our you're not gonna use anthropic. You're not gonna use Claude to have completely autonomous weapons out there We're not doing that with you. And then you saw like all of this like an anthropic screwed it did all this like negative like force going back towards them, but But anyway, so it can be used for for evil But AI could be used for protection too. If you have your own sovereign AI that's on your own machine that's looking out for your own benefits can counteract kind of the negative of ⁓ poorly used ⁓ bad AI. So anyway, ⁓ continue. Sterlin: Yeah, no, you're exactly right. By the way, the situation with anthropic is interesting because of the concerns we do have at least with artificial intelligence, you know, ⁓ at point, we don't know the mechanism by which this will happen, but the fact that AI could become highly intelligent, This is this notion of AGI, artificial general intelligence, and then a form of super intelligence that self-replicates. But the fact that we do have some ⁓ of these actually starting to be concerned about that, i.e. anthropic that you mentioned in the news, ⁓ that represent they have a concern for risk, ⁓ is think part of a bit of the changing status in terms of people starting to recognize across the board that we have to change the way that we go about our activities as species. Now, let me get into this a little bit, how this has gone down. I have a little bit of a critique for the voluntarius community here, but it's all in good jest, right? Because I respect that philosophy a lot, and I respect the people involved in that community a lot. So I want to be upfront about that before I get into this. So of the things that is a important component of Voluntaryist thought is the idea that free markets are really vital and central to pushing innovation and also to upholding ⁓ moral around trade, right? Which I would wholeheartedly agree with. One of things that is often ⁓ missed in lot of the Voluntaryist literature is the idea that we do still have to figure out ways to throttle some aspects of the market. And let me explain why I say it. And this is not to imply or to suggest that it has to be government. We have to get really creative here, right? Okay, so one of the things here is that's not mentioned in almost any of the literature, and I'm gonna get into game theory now, is that when you have an organization that doesn't have a print like Amthropic here, this is a good sign that times are changing. But if you have an organization, let's use Google as an example. that doesn't have any like risk mitigation for the possible fallout or downstream consequences of their technology, they're just not gonna give a fuck, right? They're not gonna care. And this is what happened, right? Google wasn't thinking about fact that it could create a massive surveillance architecture all around the world, which is what it did, right? And this is why people like above agency, et cetera, have de-googled phones and people like, we gotta get the fuck away from this. This is really bad, ⁓ Cause this is a consequence. not of fool-free markets, obviously, but of a market environment, right? also a corporate relationship with government. That's kind of another thing we can talk about, and I agree with that sentiment. But it doesn't matter. The point is if ⁓ any kind of market environment, free or even like quasi-free, like a mixed economy as the Austrians called it, ⁓ ⁓ don't figure out ways to understand the downstream consequences and harms of what we create and build, And also when I say, when I use the pronoun we, I'm just referring to like human behavioral market dynamics generally, right now at least, okay? So we have to be able to solve for those downstream consequences as a species. And this is something Daniel Schmoktenberger talks about, Matt. We are extremely capable and really good at developing for immediate term solutions, right? We see a problem, we go out and fix it. And we're really good at that. And this is what most of the methodologies that we leverage using tech, so I work in tech as an example. So using like agile frameworks, right? Leveraging even like older models like waterfall methodologies, lean startup stuff, Eric Ries. These models are based on solving a particular problem and use like iterative feedback cycles to improve that. So something that isn't really built in these models and you can read these guys' books, really about like appeasing stakeholders. Right? Making sure you're getting capital so that you can make a profit and make sure that your stakeholders make a profit. That's what the whole thing is focused on. That's ultimately how a free market works with an innovation cycle. But if you're churning out a widget, right? Here's an example. If you're a company and say you're doing this, Google is a perfect example. You're just... iterating and you're trying to solve this problem of being a browser and then you like, ⁓ now well, data is cool too. We can do stuff, fancy stuff with data and algorithms. Let's play with that. We can do search. Okay. Now what we've done is because we're iterating on this and we're not thinking about the consequences. Next thing you know, we've created that surveillance infrastructure. And of course, ironically, Google changed their tagline from don't be evil, right? Like I don't even remember what the new one is, but it's like, okay, maybe we're being evil now, right? Maybe we can just accept that. Matt: I don't know either, but they had to. Sterlin: But so here's the thing. This is what in game theory, what this is referred to, this like creating things. What we're doing is we're actually creating actors in the market are creating perverse incentives. They're trying to optimize for their own well-being at the expense of human flourishing, right? At the expense of holistic betterment ⁓ because trying to satisfy everyone that's in their bubble, right? Okay. So what happens here, when that happens, you're like, if you're the company, Google, you've created a, you know, the surveillance regime as a result of this innovation iterative feedback cycle. And I've written about this before too. If you're a company, maybe you're just trying to churn out a physical widget and you don't realize you're polluting the stream down the well as a consequence of this. So this is why we have the part of the reason we have the poly crisis. We have created all of these downstream harms. as a result of being so fucking good about solving a problem in a narrow domain. There's a term for this the literature as well. This is called a Molokian dynamic. Okay, so ⁓ me describe this. Molok the ancient Canaanite deity of child sacrifice, right? Or another way to term it is like costly sacrifices. So the ancient Canaanites, what they, know, they were a tribal society and what they would do is they would sacrifice their children, right? to to Moloch to ensure that they won the next tribal war, to ensure that they got a good harvest, to ensure that the weather was gonna be good, whatever it is, to ensure a good hunt. the thing is they're meeting that short-term benefit, right? At the cost of what though? Their whole, ⁓ society is obviously gonna collapse. Down the line, your sacrifice, yeah, you just, it's like the birth deficit people talk about sometimes. So this is a Molochian dynamic. Now, Matt: Yeah, basically. Yeah, no kids. Right. Yeah. Sterlin: We can get into the solution to for this, but I want to give you a chance to, we can talk about maybe all aspects of this and agree and disagree in certain components. That's fine. But the point is here is that the solution is we need to have some type of mechanism in the cultural, like in our, in our cultural apparatus to understand this fallibility of our market, market dynamics and our need to produce on a market. Daniel. and his team came up with this idea called yellow teaming. probably heard of red teaming and blue. So ⁓ like blue teaming is when you test a market for its success probability, right? You put a small team together within your firm to test And red teaming is something that we do in tech sometimes. It's where you put a team together to see what the vulnerabilities in your technology are, right? Yeah, before, these are, teaming are little, Matt: Know it. Yeah, go ahead. Talk about it. Right. Adversarial. Yeah. Sterlin: many pet projects within a project that's not focused on the market particularly. It's focused on solving some problem. So yellow teaming is what he came up with. It's a really new idea. He wrote about it on an article his project, The Conciliance Project. And it's the idea that a yellow team comes together to figure out what are the consequences, what are the repercussions of the technology or tools we're creating downstream. And how do we manage that? But right now it's just that there's not a lot of incentive. There's some like regulatory incentive, quote unquote, but it's that there's all kinds of problems, regulatory capture, et cetera, with that. That's put into place. So I wanted to end it with that. I know I said a lot. can talk about this, explore the different possibilities and thoughts, but this is a situation that in the, by the way, I started with the critique of kind of volunteers, because I come from that school of thought. all the stuff that I just said is almost never talked about in the literature. Matt: agree, like this is more of a leftist concern typically, right? And there and the answer, like you'd hear the stuff from I don't mean this in a derogatory way. It's just the WEF, you would hear this in it like Davos, you'd hear this type of stuff. and so in some ways, like, it's good that they're thinking about this, their answer is always more government, more surveillance, more, you know, authoritarian, more tyrannical regimes, ⁓ more submission to the, you know, to the group and losing individual rights, that's kind of their method. But that doesn't mean these concepts shouldn't be thought through. They should. I wonder with the yellow team situation, I think there incentives for to put this in place because it's their own existential future that they do have to consider. Like if they want to perpetuate their company, they have to know what potential problems they're going to cause in the future, ⁓ would guess. So there is a little bit of that incentive. I also wanted to ask to thought I mean, ⁓ I'll you respond. But the other thing is, I think there's also a profit motive to solving some of the human crises as well, because you kind of think about it in terms of is like When one likes landfills, it sucks burying trash, mean, burning trash or burying trash, like that sucks. It just feels like you're you're defiling the land over time. But I do think that there is something to be said for future generations who want raw materials would actually mine those for raw materials again. so, especially if you ever get to a place where those type of materials are becoming scarce, why you have a mining firm that goes in and collects it from our landfill? So that's just like one example. ⁓ yeah, what do you think about, I guess the retort that there ⁓ potentially a profit motive. to solving some of these existential crises also that there ⁓ are, a extent, if a company is thinking long-term, like they want to stay in business for generationally or whatever, they do have to think about some of their external consequences. Sterlin: Yeah, this is a really good, yeah, this is the, and this is kind of typically like the voluntariest response, which is very right? And it's also applicable to a lot of different scenarios because I definitely wouldn't argue that there's no profit motive in all these problems. But I would say that a lot of the issues that we're dealing with, there's not always a profit motive. This is why we have this concept of a public good, right? ⁓ I don't mean public good like being a government good. I mean, even like a technology, like you worked with Logos for a while, like Logos is a public good that's. Matt: Yeah, right. Sterlin: has principally centered development, right? And this is not something that you can have a profit motive to build because it's focused on solving a certain kind of problem that's in a very narrow domain that doesn't always fulfill stakeholders right away, right? And this is of course why to get to a point of even having profit on something that's a public good is very difficult. ⁓ a lot of traditional investors or legacy investors, ⁓ entrepreneurs, you know, Anybody who's doing, having, has a fund or is an angel investor, they're very hesitant to get into these kinds of projects because the gain, right, the profit from that is potentially way down the line, right? Matt: Yeah, and let me just explain for the audience to like so logos is software, it's open, it's open source ⁓ software, which means that anybody can see it can work with it can fork with fork it do whatever they want with it. So therefore, it's hard to build a business on that. If you're the one developing and developing that that that software in the first place, other people can take it from you without having to put in the development costs that that logos did in the first place. Sterlin: Yeah, and this is by the way, this is one of the problems or one of the challenges with free and open source software since time immemorial, like organizations like Blender, et cetera, tried to do like a more traditional model, but what they were pushing out, there wasn't a lot of investor interest in that because they couldn't see a short term like profit motive for what they put in. So what happens is they just decentralized that ecosystem and a lot like Blender was fully developed, right? As a result of people. Matt: Yes. Sterlin: voluntarily contributing their time to it because it was what they needed. And I'm saying that it was necessarily like some grand way to save society by having a 3D platform, ⁓ it is an interesting case to be made that there are some things that just don't have an obvious profit motive and where investors don't wanna get involved and you have to find other ways to fund those, right? This is why nonprofits have typically tried to exist, right? Because they're... Matt: True. Sterlin: They're trying to fund stuff that is not, you're not necessarily gonna see a lot of profit from, right? And this is something that Logos, and I'm not here to shill, I just wanna mention this in passing, something that Logos has been working on recently with the Logos Circle movement, which is putting together groups of activists in local communities who wanna take back agency and solve some kind of specific problem in those communities. Problems that an investor's not gonna say, hey, here's a million dollars, let me throw at this issue and get it solved because there's no. Ultimately, there's no money in that particular issue. So this, go ahead. Matt: I mean, I was just gonna say to like, this is I mean, this public goods issue is something because I worked for get coin ⁓ some time ago as well. So there's another crypto project and get coin. It was all about funding public goods, which are in the software world open source software. And I really like this as an idea. Like quadratic funding in general, it's like you can, it's kind of this concept of, of, and it's a way to sort of balance this, but ⁓ a group people can get together and say, I this thing has to exist because it benefits us. And so we want to, we want to contribute to it. And but you do it using QF, you can do it in a way that creates this pool. And then there's sort of this vote with dollar situation, I won't get into the specifics of it, because we'll be here for for a while. But, but I liked that sort is very voluntary way of funding these things that need to be funded. So I think I mean, I thought that was an innovative solution. And I think there are others out there, which we can get into when we talk about the solution stuff. ⁓ people are definitely thinking about this problem and trying to come up with ways to solve it without involving threat of a gun like Monopoly of Force. Sterlin: That's right. So, and I think this is a really interesting ⁓ piece to talk about because this is where the rubber meets the road. I think we have a very strong understanding that the voluntariest anarchists in general are right their assessment of ⁓ status quo, especially of the state having monopolistic coercion in course of forces solve problems ⁓ largely failed. ⁓ think that they came up short in their like focus on markets, ⁓ on the voluntarious side. But I think now Matt: Yeah. Sterlin: What we're doing is we have a group of people who are very interested in how like, how can we solve these problems a market environment without like coercive monopolies, but also that we're not just saying, well, the market is just going to come to terms with it. Instead now what we have is like you mentioned, we have technologies that can help us out ⁓ this manner, like these funding technologies, quadratic funding, deep funding. There's a lot of different versions of this and you're right, we can't get into all that's a whole nother episode, ⁓ but have that plus we have all of these novel parallel societies cropping up all around the world that are a lot of times target solving a particular issue, right? Like Prospera, just as an example, very focused on human regenerative medicine. So they have one single biology calls it a one commandment. And by the way, I don't agree with everything he's doing, but I would say that that's a good idea where you come in, you create this space and you want to solve this problem. Because here's the other issue that we're contending with when we're dealing with the poly crisis. A lot of these ⁓ really trenchant issues. And let's just use like oceanic microplastics ⁓ an example. This what ⁓ philosopher Morton has called a hyperobject, meaning that it is a problem that moves beyond human time scales. So we're and we're dead and this is still a problem. Many generations are alive and dead and this is still an issue. ⁓ So in to understand that, we have had to create a We have had to leverage what's been referred to as planetary computation. So we have like a sensorium, a bunch of data sensors all throughout the ocean that are constantly pulling in information, right? Different data points, warmth, tide, salinity, bunch of different metrics in the ocean. ⁓ And pull that information together to create an analysis and to try to understand what exactly is happening. So. point is this, we're having to figure out ways to come together to solve problems that we could never solve in a traditional market because we can't solve it in ways that our legacy institutions typically think about solving problems. About like, okay, there's the issue, let's churn out whatever widget or whatever tool to fix it. Now it requires more multifaceted and multivariate responses from a lot of different segments. And it also requires thinking over time. right, into different time scales. And that requires very strong, like AI has a role to play in this, various technologies, parallel societies. is by the way, and I'll let you chime in on this, this is what I'm just referring to as needing to like awaken a planetary mind. So something like Pierre de Chardin called the nuosphere, right? Some way so that we can like compute these problems. in a way that is comprehensible to us, in a way that we can understand them over the long term so that we can have solutions. And of course, playing directly back into the fact that just having a traditional market program based on ⁓ stakeholders isn't good enough to solve these problems, is the point. Matt: Yeah. ⁓ get to ⁓ want to use the I'm gonna use AI for my for an example. But I but I do want to talk about your long the longevity project that you mentioned. like, that so the problem kind of the systemic problem with AI is it it is so powerful that it allows people to do things that they were unable to do before and if they want to, like they can in good way AI for me because I've been using it. a lot lately, it extends my capabilities a lot further than I can myself, I become a decision maker and a manager. But the actual production of stuff or like the technical part of stuff gets ⁓ can outsource that to this thing that doesn't sleep doesn't eat doesn't know doesn't stop. And so I can be as a productive person just a lot more productive. Well, me if I wanted to use my productive energy for as an evil genius, you know, I could, I could impact the world to a much greater level than I could just myself with my you know, current capabilities with my current assets, like whatever my current ⁓ sphere of influence. it just allows anybody to really very extend their influence by a lot. And so because that's a systemic issue for the world because you do have a certain percentage of the population who does want to do evil or They don't even think about it as evil. You have a psychopath They don't think in those terms They just think about how they want to achieve some sort of goal and they don't even care It doesn't matter to them who they hurt Long but my question is the longevity one though is a good question So how so ⁓ what happening in that very specific situation? You remember mentioned a group of people get together to tackle a specific problem Are you finding that it's people who are just so philosophically motivated that they just are so compelled that they have to? Or ⁓ they fundraising in some way to incentivize ⁓ figuring how to solve these problems? ⁓ How this ⁓ work you're looking at organizations who are started or together ⁓ to tackle of these things? Sterlin: Yeah, just a disclaimer or a preface, not all of this is going to be 100 % perfect. So a lot of these organizations and institutions and parallel societies, simply it's a human tendency, follow skeuomorphic design, right? They're implementing ⁓ older principles, older economic principles, and ⁓ applying to their work. And I would say that is a potential failure With that said, that's not the case with everyone. And I think what is really happening, if you look at these parallel societies and the organizations there in context, what they are is they're trying to find a way to free up their ability to work on a particular target problem without having governments interrupt them. looking for sandboxes, regulatory-wise. But more importantly, they're also looking for a cultural container. They want to be around people who share their values, who harbor their philosophical mindset. Because when we're all like entrained, right, when we are mostly getting along, we're unlikely to spend our time right? Draining glucose as a result of arguing and debating and ⁓ concerned over like minutiae, right? Which of course, ⁓ is like a base level of politics. In the worst case, you get like a situation in the US where everyone's at each other's throat all the time. There's identity politics and all this bullshit. Matt: Right, makes sense. Sterlin: But in these containers, these very small flattened micro communities, the focus on solving problems is more adroit, right? You have more energy put into that rather than other things. So that's how this comes together globally to solve a particular set of problems. But again, not to say that it's happening perfectly or that these are creating some kind of mini utopias, not the case at all. But it is a step in the right direction of trying to find the solution space. without hopefully getting too abstract, I want to kind of explain my vision of the future of how this is going to iron out so that we can solve problems. All right. So I want to be clear too, what I'm going to say could come across as metaphysical or kind of strange to some people. And that's fine. Matt: That's right, you got two skulls making out on your shirt as we talk, so I don't mind if we get metaphysical. Sterlin: Which is perfect, right? Okay, so I mentioned earlier that there's this writer who wrote this book called The Phenomenon of Man or The Phenomenon of Humanity named Pierre Thillhard Deschardons who is French. in book, he makes the case that what we're ⁓ doing earth, right, through technological advancement, through ⁓ not like biological evolution, but universal evolution process. the process of becoming more complex over time is that we're developing ⁓ planetary mind, right? ⁓ even creating a situation where the planet becomes conscious of itself in some way. And is not a, I don't think this takes a leap of intelligence to like grasp because all the time ⁓ as as matter becomes more complex, ⁓ you emergent properties that have magical like implications, like consciousness is a magical implication in some way. We don't understand it, we don't know how it works, but we do recognize that we have qualia, have like inner subjectivity, inner experiences, and this is a property of the complexification of matter over time. So in these, like in Chardon's perspective, matter takes on like a spiritual type of materiality. It's like moldable spiritual clay, if you will, that is ⁓ itself out over time and becoming more complex. We can get more into that, but the... So what I think is happening here is that of matter came organisms, came human beings eventually, ⁓ and conscious self-reflexive And then you to ask the question, well, what's next? Well, now we have all these sophisticated cultures. We have massive interconnectivity across the globe. ⁓ And now we have these nodes that are arising that have particular focuses called parallel societies that have their own parallel economies, their own cultures. This is also happening in the digital, has a digital connection, right, with like even web three ecosystems and cultures. So we're creating the necessary and the sufficient conditions to create a new kind of emergent property all around the earth through this hyper interconnectivity. Chardon saw this early on and really predicted the internet like global hyper connectivity through the newosphere. So he's way ahead of his time. So now what I think is happening or one way we can look at it is these different parallel communities, these parallel societies, they are like nodes in a planetary mind, right? Or like neurons in a planetary mind. And what they can do is they can focus on one particular task like trying to keep the abstraction understandable. Like Prospera focuses on biotech longevity. Network School Abologies thing is focused on education, but also a bit of biotech as well. And has its different circles focused on solving particular issues. What's happening these communities are emerging and they're thinking about solving one particular task, right? So think about computer architecture, you Parallel processing, MPP, Massively Multi-Parallel Processing. And in parallel processing, architecturally, its goal in ⁓ is to solve some particular task, right? It's a subroutine. But it's parallel processing nodes working together to give you efficiency gains, scaling gains. and over time to solve particular computational tasks so you can keep upgrading and getting better at what you're doing. So my thesis is that's happening on a planetary scale, right? So taking the metaphor of parallel processing and applying it to these nodes that are hyper-focused on one particular issue. And how it works is basically, okay, ⁓ I see that human longevity is a problem. Maybe cancer research with regenerative medicine is a problem. We haven't been able to solve those problems completely using traditional methods. goes back to what we're saying. Traditional fundraising methods haven't been quite good enough for this. ⁓ right, all corrupting, zero sum games, all that shit. So we're solving governance in these micro communities, right? So that we're not wasting time and energy and also getting into corrupting dynamics. ⁓ Matt: Yeah. Pharmaceuticals have their own incentives. Well, because you're aligning by that by that thing too. You're like, the only thing that the people that are attracted to that thing are going to already be aligned before they get there basically. Sterlin: percent. they're there. And if this is also why we up up, you remember being, ⁓ you know, working with logos. And I think a lot of people in this ecosystem have a very strong exit mindset or exit ideology. If there's shit that goes wrong back the day, you couldn't really write. If you're in North Korea, you don't have an exit, right? There's no exit unless you want to risk literal death. In the U.S., you can't exit very easily unless you renounce your citizenship. Matt: Yes. Sterlin: But now people are trying to figure out ways to do that, whether it's from North Korea or the US and go to these places and work because this is what they're passionate about. And now they have the technology, the cultural framework, the governance potentiality to solve this problem they're working on. And now if other people are seeing this as a massive problem, which it will be if people are communicating like they're doing, more nodes pop up to solve this most pressing issue that typically would be unsolvable with traditional and legacy architecture. So now we can actually like target solve that problem by leveraging a similar paradigm as like a parallel processing paradigm that computers use to solve problems computationally, right? So, and this is also why there's, and I'm not the only one talking about this. There's a guy, and by the way, disregard most of the shit that he says politically, cause he's just like a rabid, like, you know, COVID enjoyer, et cetera. But Benjamin Bratton, of his work is really good. He has this institute. Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Sterlin: that is working on planetary computation and thinking about some of the similar pieces of this puzzle. there's also a guy, I have the book somewhere called Process and Event that these philosophers Alexander Bard wrote. ⁓ their thesis is that over time, everything is becoming more complex because it's a building up toward the creation of some type of divinity, So it's like, this is what Chardon's final view was as well. It's like an Omega point. I'm not. necessarily taking it that far. do think that ultimately we can construct toward that because this is just the nature of how like emergent properties work when you get more and more complex forms. But I do think at very least it gives us a very realistic architecture to start solving problems and thinking about problems in ways that are completely novel and ways that we haven't done before. And this is like what's happening right now in my view. Matt: So it, and it has to be emergent because there's no way to orchestrate this from a central planned kind of scenario. It just does not work. So, but then how do you perpetuate it though, if it is emergent, like especially are we fast enough to react to some of the global problems that we face? I mean, even just take another COVID event again, it ended up not, know, it ended up being that the fear around it in the... the, and the response to it was much worse than the disease itself. But that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be some sort of global pandemic that would would be a real problem for us. So how do we as humans in an emergent way plan for that without some sort of centrally central infrastructure that's just gonna, you know, have its own there's so many problems with a monopoly, it has its own will that's a lot of times, not, not not humane, basically. But yeah, how do do this in a emergent way? Sterlin: Yeah, well, I think first we have to start with the idea that let's just assume this just to bear with me. Let's just assume that the pandemic was real, right? Like there was actual disease was killing people. I know there's a of people don't agree with that. I think that largely it was a political fervor, right? It was a theater. A lot of it was, that's my personal opinion. But let's just assume that this is a real thing that happens or that could happen. So for one, the first thing You can't solve that problem anyway from, I you can't even solve basic problems in a top-down command and control economy anyway. We know like the failures of communism in the 20th century all been because they tried to command everything from the top down. think the Austrians were largely right when they talked about things like the economic calculation problem. Like, so ⁓ know inherently that in order to solve problems, you have to have some level of decentralization and you have to have actors in those environments. Matt: Exactly. Sterlin: addressing problems of their own volition, right? And that's how problems get solved in a very quick, rapid fire sort of way. So I think that that's just a natural part of the issue. I think the other piece is that we have to apply all of the new tools, all of the new technologies, but not just that, also all of our accumulated and collective wisdom, right? I think this is the one thing that people don't talk about enough in any of the anarchist traditions, this concept of wisdom, right? We've built up so many really nice tool sets. We have a lot of experience on how things work and how we can push things forward. We also have a lot of experience on how things fail. So if we're bringing our collective wisdom to bear, and that's what I think we're doing with the possibility of building a parallel mind, right? Upgrading our planetary architecture that we're building new governance frameworks. We're building new coordination mechanisms to be able to respond to these kinds of Emergent crises events very quickly. Let me give you an example. Let me bring the abstraction down to just give you an example of how we can think about this using a new kind of wisdom. Wisdom training. All so there is we know ⁓ through at things like chaos theory, right? Looking at the things like mathematical attractors. We know in thinking about black swan events. We know because of the way that we understand how these ⁓ dynamical systems work, that there are going to be emergent phenomena, some of them bad, right? They're going to emerge rapidly, but there's always like a mathematical hint that they're arising. This is what's referred to as an attractor, right? And an attractor is something that a chaotic system tends toward. And we have addressed attractors before. More recently, let's think about Bitcoin for a minute. At one point in time, Bitcoin was an attractor. It was there, it existed, somebody created it, no one gave a fuck about it except for a few people. The quicker that we're able to respond to attractors the overall environmental system that we just call planet earth, right? Or culture or ⁓ or whatever, ⁓ quicker that we're able to respond and push that forward, put some momentum behind it, put some human ingenuity behind it ⁓ make it into a thing that... ⁓ In a way, if we're really paying attention to attractors and we understand the dynamical nature of the system that we're in, ⁓ able not only predict the future, but mold the future in the way that we want to see it. Matt: So let me ask you this. So this seems like a signal noise issue, which is gonna get worse because of all the AI content that's going out there. You're have multiples and multiples of people who are just sending out noise, sending out noise or static, right? So how do we amplify something? ⁓ Your was well made with Bitcoin. This was a kind of a, it was a generational move in very important direction. But again, 2008, when it was created, I didn't hear about very early, but I didn't hear about it till 2011 or 12, I think some four years into it. So how do we using wisdom, amplify the technologies or the systems or whatever that will that will bring humanity forward and, and remove all the noise, like get rid of all the noise, filter out all the noise around it ⁓ let that shine through. How's that happen? Sterlin: Yeah, I think good example of how that's happening now and how we can like make it more acute, like raise awareness is, well, first the example, one of the examples is of one happening right now is parallel societies, right? And about Bitcoin, how this ironed out, ⁓ going from non-existence within 10 years being like a global phenomenon, and this is not withstanding any of the critiques we might have of Bitcoin in that ecosystem, that... Matt: Sure. Yeah, of course. Sterlin: is a like in the grand scheme of universal time, that's like ⁓ even a week. Right? ⁓ this is happening with technology generally speaking. So in a way we are like starting to nail that down, but I think what has to happen now because there's probably still attractors that get away from us, right? I very much believe in like human agency and free will. ⁓ don't think that ⁓ is just ⁓ Terrence McKenna thought. Matt: That's true. Yeah, it's very quick. Sterlin: that we were just moving toward this strange attractor at the end of time and we didn't have a choice about, you know, getting there. It's like gonna happen. And maybe in some way it is gonna just happen, but I don't think that we're necessarily have to be involved in the story. We could get eradicated and shit's still gonna transpire universally without us. But I think what we have to do is we have to continue to create evolving frameworks for understanding attractors, right? It's like. seeing the parallel society phenomenon is like an attractor. And now we need to just continue to generate as much human interest and put as much human energy and capital into these as possible. And that requires a couple of things. One, the frameworks, the technological frameworks, the intellectual frameworks. And I think something really important that's not discussed enough is like the cultural frameworks. Because our traditional cultures, like if you're... Not thinking about any of this stuff at all. If you're just living in the the us and your small town and you're like just downloading all the republican propaganda Well, you're probably not tuned in to what's happening around with in terms of these attractors. So I think Trying to continue to break our society to miniaturize our societies to create more of a cosmopolitan and a a plural earth where people can easily opt into these different kinds of communities like continuing to upgrade that not not only like in reality by creating them like we're doing, but also to educate people on this phenomenon, it us into a better position to be able to react quicker to this ⁓ phenomenon. Just like we talked about, without getting too abstract, it's simply a fact of ⁓ being as centralized. And is, by the way, is the spiritual component, ⁓ of This is ⁓ just suggesting, this is how we move forward. in a way that not only liberates us in a very moral sense, but also allows us to save ourselves in the process. And I really believe that. Matt: So I think, ⁓ let's do this. Can you describe what parallel societies are? Because I think the audience would probably like to visualize that, would like to picture one in their head. Sterlin: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I do very much realize I have this discussion a lot and I do it in my talk and I talk to a very specific audience and not all audiences probably can come across as completely bizarre and like too abstract. So we'll try to do our best. So a parallel society is just a community of people who start their own society in parallel to traditional societies. Like you have... Matt: Sure. Sterlin: North America, the United States, right? And that's a society that has its own culture, right? Its own views and values, et cetera. So a parallel society is a society that emerges either digitally, like in the cloud, usually that happens first. then it maybe has a physical manifestation as well. So we talked about prosperity, which is real. ⁓ exists in Honduras in a special economic zone called the ZEDI. And has own culture and attitude. and memes and traditions that are different from a legacy culture, right? So they are maybe more, if we could even think about another example, maybe even less abstract is think about New Hampshire, ⁓ New Hampshire has its own like cultural attitude that's very different from a lot of different places in the US, right? More libertarian, has lot of that community ethos around values around first principles, et cetera. So that. That is like a parallel society, at least initial leaning of one. But if you wanna take it more hardcore, you think about Prospero where they left the US, so they could be more, even more distinct from the US and they have their own values and cultures and trends and ways of doing things. That's what a parallel society is. There's other terms for this too that people use that we could get into, but modern folks refer to this as like a network state or et cetera, right? Matt: Yeah. Yeah, so in just a kind of pilot pile onto that too, because I do think network states are the next iteration, like the as I don't know, the audience knows too much, but I worked in in blockchain technology for ⁓ for a long time, too. And kind of the natural order of things to me is is you have these blockchains that ⁓ the kind of like the second level, which hasn't really been achieved is then you have these decentralized marketplaces that spawn from that. And then after that, from these decentralized marketplaces, then you have these decentralized ⁓ external communities called network states. And what a network state is to me is it's just a group of like minded people or people who share some amount of philosophy, who come together and pool their their resources and create their own basically external state that provides some sort of goods and services to them and they pay into it some sort of some sort of like, like dues or monthly fee or whatever. And so imagine, you know, the government in it, ⁓ you think about it in a kind of a pure way, it's it's, ⁓ it's providing reputational services, like, this person's okay to do stuff with, but it's also prefer it's supposed to provide some sort of good collective goods and ⁓ for people. I don't think it's a good way to do it. But that if you think about it in like the nicest way, well, a network state can do the same thing and and ⁓ provide education services or insurance ⁓ travel or whatever. Those things are to me like the the the way that we can serve. There's political solution in my mind to the problems that we have the nation state and to me that is the that that developing network states using technology to circumvent the ⁓ state is the only way that we get out ⁓ this mess. And then imagine a scenario where you have a network state with enough people who are opted in. So you have a million people all part of this network state together. Well, they have a pretty large economic footprint now. And so then ⁓ that, they can start to negotiate with nation states for preferred. living status, low taxes, whatever, and then you can start to really move into one location if you want to together and, and thus, you know, the new world is born. But anyway, so that network state is like, I think is a that's a desirable next societal step in my mind, and I hope it does come to come to fruition. But that's just an example of a, you know, parallel society that using technology we could have in the near future. I hope we do. Sterlin: Well said, Matt. think exactly that. So even if, even if nations or even if network states or parallel societies ⁓ compete ⁓ ⁓ nation state in terms of they like negotiate and figure out their own situation, it's also possible. I mean, that could happen. Another possibility is, ⁓ that we can actually work toward is that they, their existence slowly erodes the capacity of nation states and nation state services get just unbundled. Matt: Yeah. That's right. Sterlin: There's a whole philosophy and school of thought around this called panarchy. think we've talked about that, but you're familiar with it. Or cosmopolitanism, where different aspects of the state, quote unquote, services get unbundled over time and then they get disseminated throughout the market. Market actors get to offer those governance. That's all that a network state, quote unquote, is or a parallel society is. actors offering different types of services, ⁓ Governance and otherwise to people who voluntarily opt into them. think even, and this is where we all agree with the like, voluntary frameworks, it's key part of exit is being able to voluntarily opt in and engage with people who you agree with. And I think that's something that we all will ⁓ and unilaterally agree on, right? ⁓ did want to mention too, and will definitely appeal to your audience and I want to get into it just a bit. So you the ⁓ politics that engages in. ⁓ I mentioned that this is a huge drain. Matt: Yes, that's right. Sterlin: on human resources, on human capital, on time, on glucose. All of our various energies are largely consumed by politicking and politicking and politicking, which doesn't serve any practical function in terms of the longevity of the species. What it is, is it actually causes, like, ⁓ harm on a mass scale, right? Because politicking is just trying to get a... It's like playing one-up-smanship. on another person and then trying to get some like third party to control those people. That's all politics in this context are. And I think what's happening with the emergence of parallel societies, network states, et cetera, is that we are moving into a position of thinking about abolishing politics or politicking. No one's ever gonna agree with everything in any given society, but politics and the need for it is greatly reduced or even eliminated. if you have a more flattened and decentralized society. Because people are able to move into the different kind of communities a lot easier. And this is something that was written about, this is actually an old book, the guy was way ahead of his time, I recommend it. I think it was in 1957, Leopold Kaur wrote The Breakdown of Nations. And he was one of the first people to make the case, why don't we just like break down all the different component parts of a nation and flatten everything. So he made an early case for decentralization. But the... Matt: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Sterlin: This has to be an important part of our growth and maturity as a species because we're going to politics ourselves into an early grave as a species unless we figure out ways to ourselves, coordinate and solve problems without having to constantly be at each other's throat. And a lot of people will be like, well, that's delusional politics has already existed. This is going to happen anyway. ⁓ I think we already have evidence that some communities are starting to not thinking about politics anymore. And already people in the US have been largely You they stopped even caring about politics or trying to, you hear a lot of people say, I don't engage in politics, I don't vote, whatnot, but they don't understand all the philosophies around it. I think what's happening is people are saying, we ⁓ join these digital communities, whether it's a blockchain community or otherwise. ⁓ And that way, you're in some ways escaping the politics of your traditional culture and you're engaging with people who you care about, who you wanna talk to, who agree with you. And you can kick out the people who don't digitally block them or whatever who don't agree with you. And now those communities, this is how network states actually came to fruition. Those communities online who had those values and took the actions that I just mentioned are now manifesting physically around, and this is not something that's just minutiae or like a fad or like a flash in the pan. It's happening all around the world right now. All the Zuzalu movement, network state movement. parallel polis or parallel society. This is happening everywhere and people are manifesting these because they realize that the traditional systems have failed on so many different domains and that we have really pressing problems to solve and people in the US are just talking about, know, fucking Trump and all the issues and like how do we ⁓ ⁓ figure out how to get along with each other and that's a non-starter I think for thinking about our problems that we're facing, poly-crisis-wise around the Matt: And as you said before, too, it took technology, like you needed to have some sort of infrastructure in place before those things were possible. And we have the internet now. communicating with like-minded people all over the earth is now possible. have blockchain technology. So we can now coordinate with people all over the world. We couldn't do that 20 years ago in the same way. So that exists. of course, humans who are looking for connection in a better way and to coordinate and to work with people and to be creative and to build. ⁓ They're finding each other because that technology exists now. So I have ⁓ I guess I have two questions for you one The nation states are putting their finger on the scale though, right? Like we've got all these ⁓ If you think about the polychrist you think about all the the global issues that that humans face a lot of those come from the sparring from the nation state level and and even above that like as I mentioned when we started thinking about this whole epstein thing He's a glue between influential billionaires, elites, elite organizations, right? Like that's his thing. He's connecting all these people who have very large spheres of influence. you're Elon. are, by the of you ⁓ running five businesses whatever it is, you are impacting the lives of millions if not billions of people. ⁓ and what you're trying to do at the scale you're trying to move things, your of influences is glow, it's huge. And then imagine other billionaires who have their own ⁓ projects sphere of influence, etc, butting up against each other. And so you've ⁓ you that with Epstein, you have this like glue, or or even, ⁓ I don't like oil sort of greasing the gears between these things, making these connections happen. All of them, they're not, you know, they they have their own pet projects, they have their own wants, they want more power, they want more money, they want the world to look, they want to shape the world a certain way. They've got together and separately, they have their fingers on the scale, and they can move mountains where, you know, we, we kind of can't. So like, how do we, I guess the question is, like, how do we counteract that super straight, super, super state thing? and the nation state thing, primarily, like the United States has got its is the biggest finger on the scale as you know, factions are wielding that to make certain things happen. How do we, how ⁓ we like push back against that? Sterlin: Yeah, that's a good question. I think that we're partially already doing that, at least to a larger degree than we have before. It's funny, Matt, my personal blog is titled Counter Governance. I very strongly believe that by creating these alternative societies, this is one of the reasons why I don't necessarily refer to myself as an anarchist per se anymore, more of a panarchist or cosmopolitan, because I don't think we really need to abolish the state. Also, by the way, Jared and Peter wrote about this in their book, Farewell to Westphalia. The government and legacy governance institutions and applications are falling apart of their own accord. And they make a very strong case in the book. And I think this is something that will get a lot of people to think lot of governance services that the government has traditionally offered. And let's just assume those are services that people actually do want, right? Security, protection, adjudication, dispute resolution. ⁓ are being offloaded and have been offloaded more and more and more. And there's a lot of evidence, like numerical evidence for this. over the last few decades. to give you an example, recently, this is kind of a funny example actually, ⁓ we that the cartels in Mexico are still very strong. ⁓ We the recent event with ⁓ them after the guy. The cartels are still ⁓ there. is all largely created as a fallout or consequence of governmental action, the US particularly, and the war on drugs. But what's also as a result of this is like in Mexico and in Latin America, A lot of governance services have consistently over the last, I don't know, we'll say over the course of the last century, but especially within the last several to four to five decades, have offloaded a lot of their dispute resolution. They've offloaded a lot of their general governance. They've offloaded even a lot of their funding to cartel members, right? It's well known that for instance, Pablo Escobar, one of the first major drug lords that came out of Latin America in the eighties, he was considered, people, Lauded him like he was part of the government right? He was a celebrated neighborhoods He was like a messiah type of character like someone would almost do to a politician has statues and like little icons everywhere related to his personage because he gave back to the neighborhoods right and the mob the North American mafia lacosa Nostra has is known to do this this is because the and this is not to say these organizations are good by any stretch of imagination Matt: Yeah. Sterlin: It's just to make the case that a lot of different governance services, if people don't feel like government is taking care of them, they look elsewhere for those services. this is also why think we see so much pandemonium in the, in like so much rising, the rising tide of chaos, it seems like in the, in the modern day. And there's all this, it's almost like we look at like historically when Rome was in its last days and barbarians were at the gates. They had overextended physically, territorially, economically. They had hyperinflated their dollar. was all this bickering. Parts of their territory are falling apart. We a lot of similar context to what's happening in the US, except happening at a much quicker rate than happened in ancient Rome. Except now, we have the tools, the technology, the parallel societies, the collected wisdom to... ⁓ off ramp ourselves from those traditional structures. And this is why governance applications are being spread out all around the world. examples are even like local organizations have taken on more governance responsibilities. This is like homeowners associations, et cetera. It's not to say that they're all good and perfect. ⁓ just to make the case that there's gap in the market now for governance services. This exactly why parallel societies have now risen ⁓ and are trying to go there and they're also experimenting with different kinds of, this is the other. Matt: Yeah. Right. Sterlin: This is the other thing that's important to mention. have made the case before that governance is an unsolved problem. And what I mean by that is like largely governance it's been implemented, it oftentimes You referenced this earlier. The quote that came to mind when you were talking about is like the Frank Herbert quote, it's not that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's that absolute power is magnetic to the corruptible. So we have a solution to that by decentralizing power, by creating parallel societies, which is happening. and then people emerging in those communities to experiment with novel coordination mechanisms and way of arranging that meets the needs of those communities. And then if bad things start to happen, now they can actually exit. know, people talked about democracy as being this great experiment in government, but was it really an experiment? How much data was ingested, right? Okay. how much data was ingested, how much analysis was done. Instead, it was just like really forced on the people. And then it was just copied and pasted all around the world as the ancient regime fell. wasn't an, people call it, it wasn't an experiment. Not in like the scientific sense of the term. Matt: No, no, an experiment would be if all 50 states, the United States had a different form of government. And then, you know, we it was the original plan. Or at least more. Yeah, closer, closer to that. For sure. No, I think that's a good point. Yeah, I guess. Any like final thoughts in terms of whether people want to if people want to learn more about this or or? Yeah, any other? Sterlin: Which was the original plan, or was supposed to be planned, yeah. Matt: Thoughts about what the future might entail, especially the near term. I think things are really accelerating. That's how it feels. Why I started this show is like Brave the New World is it feels like a very different, now feels very different than it felt 20, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And a lot of that has to do with AI and other technology, technological advances. But it feels a lot different now than 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So any thoughts on what the near future might look like? ⁓ and, ⁓ yeah, places that people can go to learn more about this stuff. Sterlin: Yeah, sure. So let me with a quote here that I really like that wield every now and then from Terrence McKenna. So, you know, he said that as we get toward the end of right, or the end of history, ⁓ that things get weirder weirder. And I think we would all agree that right now shit doesn't even make sense. You have people in some domains getting upset at Sidney Sweeney gene commercials. And then you have like, people sitting at a desk potentially manufacturing biological weapons. You have people at Tufts University, Michael Lebanon's team creating synthetic organisms like xenobrots from scratch, right? Telling sales how to think. You have all this crazy shit happening and then things that don't even make sense like people getting mad over just trivialities. this is what he said. So said, I have the quote. He said, the mushroom said to me once. This is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for the stars. You don't depart for the stars under calm and orderly conditions. It's a fire in a madhouse. And that's what we have, the fire in the madhouse at the end of time. I he, and he said that, that was in the late nineties. That was like one of the last interviews that he gave before he passed away of cancer, unfortunately. ⁓ this is where, this is what it feels like where we're at. And I think why it feels like things are starting to ramp up. There's been more compact, like history in terms of, you know, the first, like billions of years of the universe, right? Multi-millions of years of the universe, nothing happened. Yeah, super quiet, nothing happened. Now it's like the news has just came on and like the streets are rioting. apes have descended from the canopy jungles, right? The people are throwing molotov cocktails, like all the shit is happening. And I think in the near term future, we just continue to see more of this. But I think we also maybe start... Matt: Very quiet. Ha Sterlin: And again, this is just speculation. This is kind of my hopes and dreams and desires too, because it's what I'm working for. I do hope that we are able to like punch through this by creating these new social efforts around community. That's it, like around community, like building communities a way that doesn't create these giant command and control economies where people can reconnect. That is happening. I think we're going to, I don't, again, I don't think it's a flash in the pan. I think we're going to continue to see that. I think we're finally going to have, and we'll continue to see more people talking about the importance of using our wisdom. I think that's the thing that's been misused or disused over the course of the last few centuries. We have like so much capacity now as a species. This is the optimistic outlet. We have so much capacity as a species, so much understanding. And it's not just, it's like, there's a lot of things we haven't solved. Matt: I can't argue that. Sterlin: But we have the toolkit now to really solve problems in a way that is quick, in a way that doesn't create fallout, and in a way that like, uplifts all of our species. And I think what has to happen and could happen is that we need a blueprint for a global project that unites the world's peoples, right? Everyone's always like culturally at each other's throats, right? There's this, all this talk of immigration, right? That's been huge in the last. you know, decade or so and that being a problem. think about like being able to come together with like a project like the parallel mind or planetary computation and understanding that the poly crisis is something that we all have to work toward fighting together. ⁓ this is also where politics dies. This is wisdom, right? Because if you, ⁓ you all understand, if everyone understands that we have to solve this and we have to solve it now, we come together, figure out ways to like resolve our problems, whether it's going to a parallel society, whether it's figuring out how to live with your current physical neighbors. That's what's gotta happen in order for us to move forward in this firehouse, this madhouse that's on fire at the end of time. I do think that in the short term, this will continue to ramp up, but also these efforts that we have toward building the solutions will also continue to ramp up. ⁓ maybe there's also something that I think bears mentioning, again, we talked a little bit about AI. I think the impact that artificial intelligence is gonna have on all of our governance and all of our coordination. And the way that we build and the way that we work is gonna drastically continue to shift into the future. And I think it's gonna continue. You mentioned earlier, I just wanted to mention this too, of how it's like a prosthesis, like an extension, makes yourself better. I don't hardly have any free time because of the work that I'm doing, but at night, because I have AI, I just for fun started to learn how to code and do like ⁓ I'm modding a video game, something I never would have done. Matt: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Sterlin: And I've actually got actual code written. got the characters in the game. I would have even considered taking the time to do that. But now I'm doing that. Matt: Totally. Yeah, it's exactly. I mean, I built ⁓ an app that I used ⁓ every day at my last job ⁓ last June. was, it took me like three or four weeks to build, but now creating an app is like, is as long as you can think through the, what you want, like what the, what the outcome is, if you can think about it in terms of from like a teacher's mind, you're teaching it what you want. The technical ability to code is there. You don't, you just don't even, you just don't even. need it. And so it's it's a pretty exciting and amazing world. And I also think it's just a lot of things are going to come to a head because the Mexican government was just hacked. Like I just saw this is because AI is just going to be too good for for for the state like it things are just going to come to a head, we're gonna have to make some decisions on stuff and and and we're sort of being forced into it by our own technology. Yeah, I am optimistic about the future though, because I humans generally solve problems and we just need to, we just need to get around the psychopaths who are trying to destroy us. Sterlin: That's right. mean, if there's one thing that we're good at collectively as a species at solving problems, it's just learning to hone the wisdom and apply it to that problem solving capacity. And % like to prevent the psychopaths and the sociopaths and the kleptocrats and all these nasty people from doing bad things to us, ⁓ have to continue like decentralizing and flattening our ecosystems because that's not only the key to preventing those guys from running amok, like running roughshod over the rest of us. Matt: Ha Sterlin: It's also how we can figure out how to innovate in ways that protect our environment, that protect ourselves, and that allow us to what the downstream consequences of the things that we're doing. So that's my big message. It's like, yes, the centralized systems are what mainly these structural problems. And one example that I want to give before we, I know we're like overdue here. I love chatting with you. So a political system that is hierarchical, the zero game dynamics, they reach fever pitch because everyone who's a politician or ⁓ in this predator class, they're optimizing for their own benefit, which means they're trying to get up in the next higher rank. They're thinking about their career, maybe their family. ⁓ They don't a fuck about ⁓ the consequences their decisions. Drone bomb this. guy over here in this Middle Eastern place, who cares? And a lot of it is also Hobbesian traps, which ⁓ just concept that means they're trying to preempt the other guy. So all of these nation states are at each other's throats and they're in runaway arms races with each other. And this also ties back into this. We have the wisdom to mitigate and minimize that right now. And so we have to work toward applying it, but... Matt: Exactly. Sterlin: This is the problem we've discussed. think this is the final point. These guys aren't gonna do it of their own volition. They're in love with power, right? They're like, so this has to happen is we have to continue creating the tools, the technologies and the cultures that cause this power to be offloaded and dispensed throughout the rest of our societies. And this is what part of what I believe parallel societies are being used for and should be actively used for, deliberately. Matt: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think it's a ⁓ technology solution to our problems and to unwind ⁓ all the damage that's been done by the centralized nation state. I often said, ⁓ vote because I just don't think it ⁓ matters. ⁓ matters is us building the tools that allow us to ⁓ reclaim our own sovereignty, but still be able to coordinate with each other and to help make the bright future that we want and not a dystopian future. so much, Sterlin. Very fun to talk to you. I really appreciate you coming on. Audience, I'm glad you got a chance to meet Sterlin and I'm hoping that we'll have CJ back next week. But until signing off, talk you later. Bye bye.