Podcast notes – Simone Weil on the need for roots – Philosophize This!

Follow-up to previous notes: https://kevinhabits.com/podcast-notes-philosopher-simone-weil-on-attention-human-dignity-and-factory-work/

Moral sage
Died at 34

If keep life at safe distance, prevents you from seeing world in truly clear way

Marx – if his predictions were wrong, it may be because he never truly lived a worker’s life

After working in factories, feeling affliction firsthand, ideas grow more radical

People hide behind the abstract
While many out there are truly suffering and starving

We’re also starving in “needs of the soul”

14 of these needs
1. Order – need some order to function, just like food
2. Liberty
3. etc
Many of these are in tension with each other – and need balance
Each contributes to peoples’ psychological needs

Biggest need that is sabotaged by modern society – “the need for roots”, like a plant

Any human being that is truly independent?
No, inseparable from society

People get roots from active participation in life of community

Colonialism destroys this culture and solidarity
In her time, France subjugated foreign cultures, tried to replace with French culture
This transplanting is like uprooting a plant, destroying the roots

Codified human rights won’t matter to a person like Hitler

Forced prostitution is wrong and we all agree on it – but it’s far deeper than legal rights

Preferred discussing human NEEDS rather than rights

Separating people from their own culture, roots is de-humanizing

Revolution was the new opiate of the masses – but very little comes out of it

After her factory experience, she discovered a new way to think about ethics

What makes someone sacred?
Is it their body? Their unique personality?

The way forward is a spiritual revolution
Cultivation of a new kind of attention
Renounce the ego
Receive the world in a more universal, impersonal way
De-creating biases, assumptions, that we bring to bear
This is a spiritual transformation
Connect to human beings on a universal shared level, instead of at level of personality or physicality

Similar to Catholic sacrament of Eucharist

This new form of attention is a new lens to see the world

Become an antenna for God to communicate with
An experience to feel closer connection to the universe

“Waiting for God” – her most famous book

Podcast notes – Skeptical take on the AI revolution – Gary Marcus on Ezra Klein: “They’re just autocomplete…it’s mysticism to think otherwise”

Guest: Gary Marcus, NYU professor emeritus

Derived from things humans said, but doesn’t always know connections between the things – which can lead to it saying whacky things

Transforms everything into an “embedding space”

It’s pastiche – imitating styles, cutting and pasting, template aspect
Both brilliance and errors come from this

Humans have some internal model – of physical world, of a relationship
Understanding is also about indirect meanings

AI doesn’t have these internal representations

Sam Altman – “humans are energy flowing through a neural network”

Human neural networks have much more structure than AI neural nets

Neural nets like ChatGPT have 2 problems:
-not reliable
-not truthful
Making them bigger doesn’t solve those problems – because they don’t have models of “reliability” or “truthfulness”
“They’re just auto-complete”
“It’s mysticism to think otherwise”

No conception of truth – all fundamentally bullshitting
It’s a very serious problem

Can use GPT3 to make up stories about covid, spread bullshit and misinformation

No existing tech to protect us from this potential tidal wave of misinformation

People used ChatGPT to make up fake coding answers to put on StackOverflow
StackOverflow had to ban ChatGPT

“Talking about having submachine guns of misinformation”

Ezra – ChatGPT is really good at mimicking styles, but core doesn’t have truth value or embedded meaning

Silicon Valley always good at surveillance capitalism
Now you can use AI to write targeted propaganda all day long

Ezra – this AI will be good for people and companies who don’t care about truthfulness. eg, Google doesn’t care about “truth” but about clicks

One of main AI use cases is SEO copy to drive clicks and engagement

In some aspects, as models get bigger they get better (eg, at generating synonyms); but at truthfulness, wasn’t as much progress

Loves AI and have thought about it his whole life – just wants it to work better, be on better path

Biology has enormous complexity – too much for humans – AI could really help us
Also climate change
Could empower individuals like DALL-E does for artists
“Reason according to human values”
Right now we have mediocre AI – risk of being net negative – polarization of society, growth of misinformation

Parable of drunk looking for keys at night around a street light
The street light in AI is deep learning

Human mind does many things: pattern recognition, use analogies, plan things, interpret language
We’ve only made progress on a tiny part
We need other tools (not just deep learning)

Fight between neural nets and symbols (symbolic systems / symbolic learning)
Find ways to bridge these 2 traditions

Ezra:
Deep learning – give all this data, figure it out itself, but bad at abstraction
Symbolic systems – great at abstraction (eg, teach it multiplication from first principles), abstract procedures that are guaranteed to work

Most symbol manipulation is hard wired
Kids learn to count using generalized rules

AI hasn’t matched humans in capacity to acquire new rules – some paradigm shift needed
We’re worshipping the false god of “more data”
Believes will be genuine new innovation in next decade

Stopped ~50 minutes in

Blitzed: “We snort and we inject!”

Thanks to Sam Parr’s recommendation, I am reading Blitzed, a book about Germany’s widespread manufacture and usage of meth and other drugs after WW1, and how, despite Hitler’s reputation as a strict clean teetotaler, there is plenty of evidence he was addicted to cocaine and opiates.

Just had to share this song that the author references from 1920s Berlin:

—

Once not so very long ago
Sweet alcohol, that beast,
Brought warmth and sweetness to our lives,
But then the price increased.

And so cocaine and morphine
Berliners now select.
Let lightning flashes rage outside
We snort and we inject!

At dinner in the restaurant
The waiter brings the tin
Of coke for us to feast upon—
Forget whisky and gin!

Let drowsy morphine take its Subcutaneous effect
Upon our nervous system—
We snort and we inject!

These medications aren’t allowed,
Of course, they’re quite forbidden.
But even such illicit treats
Are very seldom hidden.

Euphoria awaits us
And though, as we suspect,
Our foes can’t wait to shoot us down,
We snort and we inject!

And if we snort ourselves to death
Or into the asylum,
Our days are going downhill fast—
How better to beguile ’em?

Europe’s a madhouse anyway,
No need for genuflecting;
The only way to Paradise
Is snorting and injecting!

Huberman Lab – notes on Chris Palmer (ketogenic diet) and Kyle Gillett (hormones)

Took notes on parts of both podcasts

Started notes 1 hour+ in

Mitophagy – subset of autophagy
Autophagy is stimulated by fasting states
When body doesn’t have enough food, it hunkers down and recycles dead old parts
Can stimulate through fasting, calorie restriction
Becoming lean and conservative

Mitochondrial dysfunction – associated with many ailments

David Sinclair – Cell journal – mitochondria are unified link in everything we know about aging

Mitophagy – how to get rid of old / defective mitochondria
Most powerful signal is diet – calorie restriction, fasting

Glucose levels in brain need to be reduced
Neurons love glucose – but why is too much glucose bad?

High glucose levels may be a symptom of metabolic dysfunction, possibly mitochondrial dysfunction

Infants – breast milk is most beneficial / healthy food source
If infants have seizures – ketogenic diet can help

Even experts don’t know what causes obesity epidemic
Believes mitochondria is the answer
Maybe epigenetic factors in womb environment

Mitochondrial DNA comes exclusively from moms DNA?
“Unequivocally no”
Mitochondria encoded in 36 genes – but majority of proteins that comprise mitochondria are encoded in nuclear DNA which is inherited from both parents

Diet, drug, alcohol use (including THC), lack of sleep – all impair mitochondrial function

Alcohol disrupts how brain uses all kinds of fuel – including glucose metabolism
If alcoholics switch to ketogenic diet – less alcohol craving, better brain metabolism, reduced brain inflammation

Rats on ketogenic diet – much more responsive to alcohol (“cheap dates”)
5x higher BAC levels!

Hypothalamus – involved in motivation and craving

Brain metabolism deficits can be corrected in short term with ketone supplements (eg, liquid ketone esters / ketone salts)

Ketogenic diet isn’t just about ketones themselves – also lowering glucose levels, ramping mitochondrial biogenesis

If metabolically healthy, ketones themselves *could* have benefit

—

Started 1:08 in

L-carnitine – oral only absorbs 10%
Increases androgen receptor density

Vitamin D – optimizes testosterone if deficient

Free testosterone should be ~2% of total testosterone – reference range is 1-4%

Longjack – up regulates several enzymes

Tongkat – helps synthesize testosterone; 300-1200mg/day; be careful with standardization
Andrew takes it early in day, has stimulant effect – increases free testosterone for him
No reason to cycle it
Can increase DHEA

Fadogia – increases LH (luteinizing hormone), stimulates production of sperm / testosterone
300mg / day as a safe dose or 600mg / every other day

1st trimester pregnant ladies have high HCG levels in urine

Growth hormone / IGF-1 – usually don’t need to optimize it, but sometimes in diabetics it can be dysregulated
Amino acids before bed can help with growth hormone release
Some weight training regimens can increase growth hormone

Helpful to avoid eating 2 hours before bed as general health protocol
While fasting increases growth hormone release, downstream effects are mitigated so not significant net effect

Podcast notes: Ryan Zurrer and Jake Brukhman on Delphi podcast – “Crypto is fastest, most Darwinist industry in the world”

Recorded Dec 2022

Guests: Ryan Zurrer, Jake Brukhman
Interviewer: Tommy @ Delphi

Ryan – 10 years in crypto, mining in 2012-13, SAFTs / ICOs in 2017, defi summer in 2020, p2earn gaming in 2021

Jake – CoinFund in 2015, one of first to focus on digital assets, 8 years full time crypto investing, invested 150 projects, “technical discipline”

Ryan
More shoes to drop in crypto (eg, FileCoin because DCG in massive selloff)
OGs have driven the market for last decade, crypto native values matter
Starting defi summer, whole space got drunk on debt

Jake
FTX not failure of technology, traditional failure
If we adopted more decentralization, smart contracts – could have mitigated FTX risks
Founder quality has gone up – especially if you’re entering in bear market
Infra is more mature

DCG / Genesis
Ryan – could allow Genesis (lending book) to chapter 11, keep the rest safe
Jake – big dent in institutional investor interest

Ryan
After DAO hack, ETH developers disappointed from $30 back to $10 – but was great buying opportunity
Now possibly generational buying opportunity for ETH

Systemic risks?
Ryan – wants CZ to release audited crypto reserves – thousands of low liquidity projects depend on Binance; if Microstrategy starts to unwind, could be cascading waterfall; would be nice to see Binance buy their way into compliance eg by buying Coinbase
Jake – “should use a DEX no matter what”

Web3 social media

Jake – Twitter cannot become true free speech platform unless its decentralized, which Elon will not completely do; web3 social usability not quite there; Farcaster is familiar Twitter experience (low friction switching); people need to coordinate switching at same time, ideally with token rewards; lots of people jumping to Mastodon
Ryan – thought creator incentives would drive great migration, but haven’t been able to sign up big ticket influencers
Tommy – Audius brought successful musicians early on
Ryan – category of artists most oppressed is musicians; believes NFTs will help unlock for musicians; music needs radically different biz model; would be nice to tokenize record portfolio and have DAO buy it – but still regulatory uncertainty

Jake – what crypto product can you explain and try in 3 seconds?

DAOs

Jake
-Major reason why DEXes struggle is because you can’t move $1M from bank account to a DEX
-2015 Vitalik defined DAOs, everything revolves around smart contract
-2022 a typical DAO – very little is onchain, and vast majority of actions use web2 SaaS
-you need to build 10K iPhone apps to find one that really takes off – we’re in same process with web3

Ryan
-If too much ownership by too few people, there’s resistance to using it – eg, Uniswap “Gini coefficient” is too high
-Financial incentives can enable, but can also be huge drag on apps if you do it improperly – eg, Play2earn gaming

Jake
-DAO use cases today: Governance of public good, Grant writing organization
-future of DAOs – package of software that just works, easily upgrade your entire community

Ryan
-Most current DAOs aren’t decentralized, nor autonomous
-Broad mandate investment DAOs – have any distributed more than their fund back?
-Disappointed in how these funds are organized and operated today
-no multi-B fund has returned above 3 DPI

Tommy – best DAOs have a strong lead, clear vision, high alignment among members
Would be interested in investment DAO that is a collection of sub-DAOs with different themes, small teams

Jake – funds need to be good at 1) sourcing, 2) due diligence, and 3) portfolio construction
-Flamingo DAO has excellent network – one of best investment DAOs
-DAOs struggle at due diligence – voting isn’t the best method, how to allow non-consensus investments

Ryan – “You don’t need 50 people to do due diligence – you need one great guy”

NFTs

Jake
-NFTs are financial rails for many classes of assets
-Movies and music going on-chain
-Stock photography, AI outputs
-Real estate – more of them looking at NFTs to go onchain (instead of security tokens)

Ryan
-traditional art world has strong interest in “phygitals” – some physical manifestation of the digital art
-recommend that aspect to all NFT projects – a print, a physical piece, etc – tactile connection, “necessarily digital and necessarily physical”
-PFPs as social club
-decided to focus on art – personally resonated, impossible to focus on all areas of NFTs
-Hollywood model has not worked for most – better to focus on crypto native experiments
–

Tommy
-wish more NFT projects would lean into web2 experts, have good bizdev – eg, like what Bored Apes did
-if PFP collection is successful, automatically boxes out much of the community (bc price is too high)
-PFPs can go in movies / media – but it’s about the quality of the content, not the NFT
-license characters to legit movies and games – don’t need to build it yourself – Ryan: “just go and cut the deal with Netflix”
–

Macro

Ryan
-last 2 years saw coupling of crypto and macro
-does lot of MEV, delta-neutral, alt strategies beyond DeFi is now table stakes given high fed funds rate
-focused on timeline to liquidity – no more 7 years for full vesting
-crypto is fastest, most Darwinist industry in the world
–

Tommy
-hard to take bullish liquid position given current macro
-crypto sells off ahead – maybe it bottoms earlier
-VC: be disciplined on valuations
–

2023 predictions

Most exciting category: AI
Where will be crossover between crypto and AI?
Where does value accrue in AI? Or does it all flow to OpenAI?
If fat protocols is true, can you keep those as open public goods? What will happen to OpenAI?

Tommy – surprised by how quickly AI evolves, MidJourney, ChatGPT, “iteration cycle is insane”
Crypto use cases for AI: Auditing smart contracts, auto-rebalancing Uniswap LP positions

Ryan – early 2020s culture will be embedded into all the AI training data, could have huge impact as AI grows exponentially