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The following is a conversation with Ayla, a sex researcher who does some of the largest human sexuality survey studies in the world on everything from fetishes to relationships.
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She is fearless in pursuing her curiosity on these topics by asking challenging and fascinating questions and looking for answers in a rigorous data-driven way
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and writing about it on her blog, knowingless.com.
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She s also a sex worker, including OnlyFans and Escorting, and is an exceptionally prolific creator of thought-provoking Twitter polls.
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Ayla and I disagree on a bunch of things, but that just made this conversation even more interesting.
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I like interesting people, in the full range of the meaning that the word interesting implies.
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I m currently reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac and would be remiss if I didn t mention one of my favorite quotes from that book that feels relevant here.
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The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles, exploding like spiders across the stars.
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In the middle, you see the blue center light pop, and everybody goes,
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And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor.
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Check them out in the description.
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It s the best way to support this podcast.
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We got House of Macadamias for healthy midday snacks.
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Why midday snacks?
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Snacks anytime.
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Choose wisely, my friends.
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Also, if you want to work with our amazing team we re always hiring, go to lexfriedman.com
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Hiring and now on to the full ad reads as always no ads in the middle.
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I try to make this interesting But if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors.
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I enjoy their stuff.
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Maybe you will too This show is brought to you by probably our most delicious sponsor The sponsor that has given me a tremendous month of happiness and joy simple joy
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Sitting alone on a couch in a podcast room just eating macadamia snacks
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They ship delicious high-quality and healthy macadamia nuts directly to your door.
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Anyway, this thing is delicious.
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It s the only nut of the many nuts, and I ve researched this, but they ve also told me, that is rich in omega-7s.
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Professor Tim Noakes, who I should probably talk to at some point, sings macadamia oil praises.
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There s so much to say, that s awesome.
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The thing is, it s just delicious, it s portioned perfectly, it brings happiness.
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Get it, maybe it ll bring you happiness, and we can just telepathically enjoy these nuts together.
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That s houseofmacadamias.com slash lex.
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This show is also brought to you by Athletic Greens and its AG1 drink, which is an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance.
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It, too, is frickin  delicious.
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And it, too, is a source of a lot of happiness.
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Every day.
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Twice a day.
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In fact, I m now religiously bringing in, on the road with me, the travel packs.
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because I like to bring the happiness with me.
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It s actually really stressful for me to travel, as it is for a lot of people.
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This is a recent discovery for me.
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One of the things that kind of makes it a lot better, if I bring little trinkets that remind me of home, or little habits that remind me of home, or little food items and so on.
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And Athletic Greens is that.
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I bring Element Electrolyte and Athletic Greens with me on the road, and it just reminds me of home.
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And Athletic Greens, that s what I start the day with, in terms of breaking my fast, and I put it in the fridge.
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It s just, it s delicious, it s refreshing, and it s just a great mental boost for me.
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This show is also brought to you by Insight Tracker, a service I use to track biological data.
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It s interesting because this conversation with Ayala is, in fact, about data, a lot of data, a lot of data from, I think she has over 500,000 people that took a very extensive survey on their sexual preferences and all that kind of stuff, so basically,
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self-report information about your own understanding of your mind and body and so on.
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I mean, that s so powerful.
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That s so, so, so powerful.
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Data in general is really powerful for any kind of study, for medical studies, for psychological studies, sociological, for any kind of study that includes humans.
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it s nice to see Aiella do this gigantic data set, but to figure out what you need for your body, for your life, for your diet, that should not be based, no matter how big the data set is, that should not be based on population data, or it should only be in part based on population data, it should be hopefully in large part based on the data that comes from your own body, and that s what,
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Insight Tracker is one of the great folks that have taken a step forward in this thing that obviously represents the future.
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Get special savings for a limited time when you go to insighttracker.com slash Lex.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here s A-Lon.
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I feel like this conversation can go anywhere.
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Is that exciting or terrifying to you?
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SPEAKER_00
I think it s more exciting.
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The uncertainty exciting to you?
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Yes.
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In conversations in general or just this one?
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SPEAKER_00
I think conversations in general.
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Like, is anybody like, ah, the certainty is really exciting?
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Maybe if the certainty is something new.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, novelty always comes with uncertainty, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Almost always.
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I started trying to think of a counter example.
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Immediately.
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Yeah.
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You re uncomfortable with generalizations of that kind.
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Like, always is always a really bold word to use.
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But if it s truly novel, that means you don t really understand it.
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It s outside your distribution.
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So therefore, it s gonna have a bunch of uncertainty.
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But you don t think of it as uncertainty.
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You think about it as something new, but it actually also attracts you because there s a lot of uncertainty surround it, probably.
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Like what is this new thing?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like annihilating the mystery, like that drive.
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What about the danger of it?
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SPEAKER_00
It s like part, I was just thinking of on the drive over, cause I was like, I m like a little nervous about doing this podcast.
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And then I was like feeling into the unpleasantness of it, like the, like the fear of what if something goes terribly wrong.
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And then I was also feeling into like how much that feels like part of why it s exciting.
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Like if I knew that it was going to go great, I don t know.
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Did you actually imagine all the possible ways it can go wrong?
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SPEAKER_00
Not like all of them, but I was like, what if I say something really dumb or like you ask me a question and I answer it in a way that makes me sound like a lot less capable than I am.
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SPEAKER_00
I m like really afraid of being perceived as stupid or something.
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I was also thinking about this on the way over.
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I m kind of risk averse in some ways.
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I don t like driving fast in cars, because I was driving very carefully here because the roads are bad.
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And then I was thinking about, I m very pro-risk in other ways, like being really exposed to a wide variety of people who might hate you.
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And I think from the outside, that might look fine.
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But I think the monkey brain is really sensitive to lots of people yelling at you.
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for whatever problems that you seem to have.
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So that s the big risk you re taking is putting yourself out there as an intellectual, like through your writing, and then a lot of people yelling at you.
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Is that the worst embarrassment you ve experienced?
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SPEAKER_00
It s pretty bad, yeah.
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I think the worst embarrassment is if I put something out there that I failed to be properly skeptical of in myself, and then people are like, oh, we caught this thing that you didn t catch.
0
SPEAKER_00
I think that s the biggest terror.
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Yeah, from looking at your reading and listening to your interviews, you seem to be very defensive and worried about being a good scientist.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, definitely.
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But you re like methodology.
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Yes.
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And funny enough, you get attacked on that methodology, even though
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You know, I m a fan of psychology, of like academic psychology, and it s kind of disappointing often how non-rigorous their work is, how small the sample size and so on, and how big and ambitious, over-ambitious the proclamations about results is, especially when the news reports on it.
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Now, you re both the researcher, the scientist, and the reporter, right?
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So like that s what you have with the blog.
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Your sample size is often gigantic,
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the methodology s right there, the data s right there, you provide the data, and then you re raw and honest with your interpretation of the data.
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There s an honesty, authenticity to it.
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It s actually really refreshing.
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I don t know why people criticize it.
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I think this is what psychologists are probably terrified about being transparent and honest.
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transparent in that way is because they ll get attacked for their methodology.
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So they wanna cloak it in a sort of layer of authority.
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Like I m from this institution, it was peer-reviewed, this kind of, all these layers, and I m also not gonna share the data with you, and I m also gonna pretend like most psychology studies are not replicable.
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I m just going to pretend there s authority to it.
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I think it works on a lot of people.
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From the outside, you re like, ah, the scientists with the white lab coats with credentials, those are the people who are doing science.
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And doing science is, you have fancy terms that other people don t really understand.
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And to be fair, I have a lot to learn.
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I m still self-teaching.
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I m learning through people.
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Learning as I go, I m definitely not super knowledgeable about this stuff.
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But a lot of what those people are doing in science is not that hard.
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And a lot of people don t try to learn it because it seems so elevated.
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And this is one thing that really bothers me.
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I think everybody can do science.
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If you just have this aspect of curiosity and you just really want to figure something out, you can go and start asking people questions, doing surveys, writing down the answers.
0
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And then you can go learn how to look at that data in a way that gives you more information about the world.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s very simple and straightforward.
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SPEAKER_00
If you just approach it humbly and earnestly, and you re like, please, let s figure this out together.
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SPEAKER_00
But people are, I think, self-crippled in this because they view this as relegated to the domain of the experts and the fancy scientists.
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And I think that makes me feel really sad.
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You re almost attracted to the questions you re not supposed to ask.
0
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Oh, yeah.
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Also, yes.
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It might contribute to the controversy.
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Not exclusively, probably.
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Oh, no.
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But you re just not limited by
0
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Like part of your curiosity is asking questions that seem common sense.
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Some of the most controversial questions are around sex.
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It s like everybody thinks and talks and does sex.
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It s the driver of human civilization, and yet there s so little rigorous discussion about the philosophical and the scientific questions around it.
0
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It gets really weird to be able to discuss them.
0
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It becomes tricky to discuss them.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, super charged, super, because everybody has a really strong opinion, like whether or not, you know, pornography is damaging to society or like how sex corresponds to gender or like what kind of sexuality is acceptable.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like, do, can you have sexual preferences that in themselves are immoral?
0
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People get very angry about it.
0
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Well, the sad part is they re not just opinionated, but most of us, our relationship with sex is, I think, I guess I want to say not rigorous.
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I think it s very difficult to be rigorous about sex.
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I would consider sexual urges to be kind of elusive to introspection in a way that s a little bit disproportionate to a lot of other things.
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SPEAKER_00
You could introspect about how I want other people to like me and where my insecurities lie.
0
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But sex is one of those black box things.
0
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A really common thing is for people to, if you have a fetish, you sort of check back in your childhood to see an event that corresponds to that fetish.
0
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And then you develop a narrative like, ah, this event in my childhood must have caused this fetish.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I think this causes people to be biased towards a concrete, coherent, causative way that events happen, or that sexual fetishes happen.
0
SPEAKER_00
This is just one example of why I think it s really hard to be rigorous with introspection.
0
SPEAKER_00
Because we can t avoid, you just want to tend towards making coherent narratives, which I think is not always the correct way to explain it.
0
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the narratives that are connected to Charlton and so on, how they originate.
0
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I mean, we ll talk about fetishes, because you have a lot of really interesting writing on that.
0
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Just actually zooming out, I should mention, you tweeted, I wrote this down, you tweeted, I do not understand how to have normal conversations with people in person if I m not on drugs.
0
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So I guess let s both agree to not have a normal conversation, I guess, assuming you re not on drugs now.
0
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Or if you are, you don t have to tell me.
0
SPEAKER_00
I feel like a very small amount of phenibut, which is a nootropic.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if that counts.
0
SPEAKER_01
Is that a drug?
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, I guess I m on caffeine.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
So we re both
0
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Drugged up, let s go.
0
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Good enough to have a normal conversation.
0
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We don t have to.
0
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What is normal anyway?
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What do you think is the primary driver of human civilization?
0
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Is it the desire for sex, love, power, or immortality?
0
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Like avoiding the fear of death, constructing illusions that make us forget about our terror over mortality.
0
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So sex, love, power, death.
0
SPEAKER_00
This is a Twitter poll?
0
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It s four options.
0
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This is reality.
0
SPEAKER_01
Not everything maps perfectly to a Twitter poll, but in this case, because there s four options, and it is a small number of characters, it does.
0
SPEAKER_01
But I d like to think I m more interested.
0
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You know what?
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I think your Twitter polls are fundamentally interesting.
0
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There s something about the brevity of a poll, limited to a set of choices, and having an existential crisis and searching for the answer, that s beautiful.
0
SPEAKER_00
That combination.
0
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Well, this one is a big one.
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Like, what do you think is behind it?
0
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Do you believe that there is one primary driver?
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SPEAKER_00
Like, do you think that it can be understood in the terms of primary drivers?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think, well, maybe it s an engineering perspective, like trying to reverse engineer the brain.
0
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I don t think we re equipped or understand enough about the mind to get there.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like, what s the primary driver of a tree?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, then it gets to the question of what is life?
0
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What is a living organism?
0
SPEAKER_00
to self-replicate probably.
0
SPEAKER_01
That s a very clean simplification, but I think life is more interesting than just self-replication.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but it sounds like there s a curiosity in you that you re trying to like poke at, and I don t understand exactly what that curiosity is.
0
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So if I had to dedicate a thousand years to understand one of these topics, which one would be the most fruitful, I guess is the indirect thing I m asking.
0
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No, well, fun.
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To me, everything is fun.
0
SPEAKER_00
Really?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
0
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I mean, I m with David Foster Wallace, the key to life is to make sure that everything is unboreable, or to be unboreable, or nothing is boring, everything is fun.
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Like everything, I could just literally sit.
0
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I honestly, because I don t think, I don t know where you got that glass, but that glass exists, and I forgot it exists, and it was really fun to me to know that now it s there.
0
SPEAKER_00
What about the really unpleasant things?
0
SPEAKER_00
Like if you re in like deep agony.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s fun.
0
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
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SPEAKER_01
That s fun, because it s like, I mean, yeah, heartbreak is like knowing that I m capable of that.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s like from, you know, we re all living in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars.
0
SPEAKER_01
So when you re in that gutter, for some reason the stars look brighter, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
So like whenever you re going through a difficult time,
0
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or whenever you see maybe other people being shitty to each other, it makes you really appreciate when they re not.
0
SPEAKER_01
The contrast makes life kind of amazing.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m reading a bunch of books, and one of them is Brave New World, where they remove the ups and downs of life, partially through drugs, but over sexualization and all that kind of stuff.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I feel like you need the ups and downs of life
0
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the dark, you need the dark to have happiness, to have a deeply intense feeling of affection towards another thing or a human being.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so everything s fun.
0
SPEAKER_01
But fun is also a weird word to define, because fun, I think for a lot of people, that s why I talk about love a lot, I think love is
1
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a better word than fun?
1
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Because fun is lighthearted.
1
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Love is more intense.
1
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I love that glass and the water that s in it, because it s freaking awesome.
1
SPEAKER_01
Somebody made that glass, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And not have many mistakes.
1
SPEAKER_01
And the way it bends light in interesting ways, and the way water bends light in interesting ways, I can see part of your arm through that water.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s freaking amazing.
1
SPEAKER_01
Everything is amazing.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m with the Lego movie, anyway.
1
SPEAKER_01
But from a scientific perspective, if I were to investigate sex, I don t know why I put love in there.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let s just narrow it down in the Twitter poll.
1
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Let s focus on the basics here.
1
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Sex, power, or death, immortality.
1
SPEAKER_01
If I were to try to
1
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from a neuroscience, neurobiology perspective, or reverse engineer through building AI systems that focus on these kinds of dynamics, exploring the game theoretic aspects of it, exploring the sort of cognitive modeling aspects of it, which one would get me to a deeper understanding of the human condition?
1
SPEAKER_01
That s the question.
1
SPEAKER_01
Sex.
1
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Okay, Nietzsche is the will to power.
1
SPEAKER_01
Freud and the bunch is all about sex.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then death, Liv Burley, brilliant previous guest on this podcast, she just released a video where on her bedside was the book Denial of Death.
1
SPEAKER_01
by Ernest Becker, which of course she would have on her bedside.
1
SPEAKER_01
But his whole work is that everything is motivated by our trying to escape the cold, harsh reality that we re going to die and we re terrified of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
One of the gifts and burdens
1
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for human beings is that we are cognizant of our own death, and that terrifies us.
1
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That s the theory.
1
SPEAKER_01
And because of that, we do everything we can.
1
SPEAKER_01
We build empires to escape the fact that we re mortal.
1
SPEAKER_00
Wouldn t this change quite a bit for religious people then, who don t believe that they re going to die?
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, they created religion.
1
SPEAKER_01
The idea there is to create myths, religions.
1
SPEAKER_01
You can create religions of all kinds.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but if this is like one of the defining things that defines civilization, then we should expect to see like massive differences between people who believe we re gonna die and people who don t.
1
SPEAKER_01
Good, I love it.
1
SPEAKER_01
You think it like a scientifically here, but, and they have actually answers.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like there s a whole terror management theory where they do type, write psychology type papers and they do actual experiments.
1
SPEAKER_01
I can mention how their methodology is interesting.
1
SPEAKER_01
they prime with the discussion of death.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like they take one certain set of people, they have a conversation with them, another set of people, they mention death to them before the conversation and see how that affects the nature of the conversation.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s really interesting, because death fundamentally alters the nature of the conversation.
1
SPEAKER_01
Just even priming, like reminding you that you re going to die, briefly, changes a lot of things.
1
SPEAKER_00
These kinds of priming papers are usually not replicated.
1
SPEAKER_00
I just have like, I feel like I ve heard a bunch of priming ones that... I think you have PTSD over psychology papers is not replicated.
1
SPEAKER_00
I just did one, I just did a priming experiment on my own and found it didn t have any effect.
1
SPEAKER_01
But again... Can t you just give me a careless statement summarizing an entire scientific discipline of terror management theory?
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_01
I haven t rigorously looked at how good of it is psychologically.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think it is interesting philosophically, the way Freud talked about the subconscious mind.
1
SPEAKER_01
Philosophically, it s an interesting discussion.
1
SPEAKER_01
Then you have to get rigorous with each for sure.
1
SPEAKER_01
But the idea is that it s not that religious people get rid of the terror of death.
1
SPEAKER_01
This is just one of the popular ways they create an illusion on top of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s that idea, like a myth that makes it easier for them to forget, to escape that terror.
1
SPEAKER_01
But everybody else does different methods.
1
SPEAKER_01
You fill your days with, like capitalism has a whole religion of itself, like the rat race for getting more and more material possessions and so on.
1
SPEAKER_00
couldn t you argue it in the opposite direction?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, let s say, assume that we re Christians here, and we re like, ah, the atheists, you know, everybody has terror of hell, and the atheists invent this mythology where, you know, actually evolution is true in order to escape their terror of hell.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that doesn t feel like a persuasive argument to me.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I used to be very, very Christian, and I did not have a terror of death.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I lost my faith, and then I had a deep terror of death set in for a few years.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it felt very different to me.
1
SPEAKER_01
So for denial of death, I don t know if he says that it s actually possible without really a lot of work to get to the actual terror.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think his claim is that in early, early, early childhood development, that s when the terror is real.
1
SPEAKER_01
and then we aggressively construct systems around it of social interaction to sort of construct illusions on top of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m doing a half-ass description of this philosophy, but it is interesting to simplify the human mind into underlying mechanisms that drive it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I was gonna say, your thinking seems kind of poetic.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like the way that you re sort of handling these, these concepts feel like more like aesthetically driven.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think this theme is gonna continue throughout this conversation as we talk about relationships and sex, yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
For sure, I think so.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think your thinking seems to be very driven by how can I construct an experiment to test this hypothesis?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, something like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but aren t, there s some things, especially that have to do with the human mind, that are really messy, really difficult to understand.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s so many uncertainties and mysteries around that we don t yet have the tools to collect the data.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like one of your favorite tools is the survey, is asking people questions.
1
SPEAKER_01
and then figuring out different ways to indirectly get at the truth because there s flaws to the survey.
1
SPEAKER_01
You kind of learn about those flaws and you get better and better at asking the right questions and so on.
1
SPEAKER_01
But that s indirect access to the human mind.
1
SPEAKER_00
But do you think poetic narratives are?
1
SPEAKER_00
I m not saying poetic narratives are bad.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think it s a cool way of handling concepts.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I m not sure that they are more rigorous.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, but they might be,
1
SPEAKER_01
the more correct, like philosophy might be the right way to discuss things that were really far from understanding.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, they might be more useful shorthand.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like morality, like I don t think morality makes any sense, but it s really useful shorthand to use when handling concepts and a lot of the time.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right, like ethics and morality.
1
SPEAKER_01
You could construct studies that ask different questions.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, you know, just having worked with autonomous vehicles a lot, the trolley problem gets brought up.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I don t know, you can construct all kinds of interesting surveys about the trolley problem, but does that really get at some deep
1
SPEAKER_01
moral calculus that humans do.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s sexy because people write clickbait articles about it, but does it really get to what you value more, five grandmas or three children?
1
SPEAKER_01
They construct these arguments of if you could steer a train, if you could steer an autonomous car, which do you choose?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I don t know if it s possible with some of those to construct.
1
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes the fuzzy area, there s some topics that are fuzzy and will forever be fuzzy, given our limited cognitive capabilities.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, there s a way of looking at things where it s like, for example, the childhood fetish thing that I was talking about, like where do your fetishes come from?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like you can develop a narrative where it s like, you know, I think like this kind of thing is, you know, when you re surrounded by feet when you re a child, this causes foot fetishes.
1
SPEAKER_00
And this is like kind of a cool narrative.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think a lot of people s ideas about philosophy follow the same sort of thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like what is the narrative that is cool?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think this is useful for meaning making.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like I m very pro meaning making.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like when you re talking about everything is fun because,
1
SPEAKER_00
you know, the contrast or whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
I very much ascribe to that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I really enjoy that philosophy.
1
SPEAKER_00
I also find everything to be very delightful.
1
SPEAKER_00
And this isn t like a question of truth, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
We re not like, where is the true delight that we re objectively measuring?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like this is a frame, a poetic frame that you re using to like sort of change the way the light hits the world around you.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that s super useful because it like makes you happier or something.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but also gets to the truth or something.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I guess if what is truth.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yet another question, what is truth?
1
SPEAKER_01
You ve, actually to jump back, you believe that free will is an illusion.
1
SPEAKER_01
So why does it feel like I m free to make any decision I want?
1
SPEAKER_00
It s a cool illusion.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think that s probably where our sense of identity comes from.
1
SPEAKER_00
When you really meditate on your sense of identity, at least for me, it seems like it comes down to the sense of choice.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, oh, I am doing the thinking.
1
SPEAKER_00
What does it mean to do with thinking?
1
SPEAKER_00
It s like, ah, something in me has exerted agency over having this thought or not having this thought.
1
SPEAKER_00
The sense of self really comes down to choice.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so when I say that free will is an illusion, I also mean there s something like the self is an illusion, identity is a trick of the light.
1
SPEAKER_01
But it s a really fun one.
1
SPEAKER_01
You think a lot about your identity.
1
SPEAKER_00
I have occasionally.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like you really struggle with it.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re proud of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
I do too.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s not, we have different journeys, but so.
1
SPEAKER_00
I really take a lot of delight in it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I used to be very into like deconstructing it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like you probably, maybe, you know, I did a bunch of like way too much LSD for a while.
1
SPEAKER_00
And at that point, very, no ego.
1
SPEAKER_00
And now I m like very ego.
1
SPEAKER_00
I really enjoy having a lot of ego.
1
SPEAKER_01
I actually happen to know everything about you.
1
SPEAKER_00
Really?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like more than you do.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s fascinating.
1
SPEAKER_00
Wait, could you solve my problems?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes, all of them.
1
SPEAKER_01
I did thorough research.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, what is consciousness then?
1
SPEAKER_01
I actually wrote that as a quote.
1
SPEAKER_01
What is consciousness?
1
SPEAKER_01
I have to remind myself.
1
SPEAKER_01
So how does that tie in together with free will and identity and all of that?
1
SPEAKER_00
What is consciousness is one of the biggest questions ever.
1
SPEAKER_00
I do think that people often get confused when talking about consciousness because I think people are referring to two separate concepts and often combining them into one thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
We asked the question, you know, is AI going to be conscious?
1
SPEAKER_00
I think this is kind of the wrong question.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, we can identify signs of consciousness, like, ah, they seem to refer to themselves, but this is not necessarily proof of consciousness in the same way that, like, dream characters acting exactly the way normal human people do in your dream is not evidence that they themselves are conscious.
1
SPEAKER_00
So, like, signs of consciousness are not proof of consciousness, but there is something that we definitely know, which is, like, I currently am conscious.
1
SPEAKER_00
I can tell because, right.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m just directly observing my experience.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so there s one kind of consciousness, which is I am directly observing my experience, and that you cannot replicate it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I cannot observe two experiences.
1
SPEAKER_00
It is necessarily singular, and it is necessarily certain.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can make all the arguments you want.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m still directly observing.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s not a thing that s subject to reason.
1
SPEAKER_00
Whereas, are other things conscious?
1
SPEAKER_00
This is something that s replicable.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can apply it to multiple people.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s something that s not certain, almost definitionally not certain.
1
SPEAKER_00
We don t actually know if there is an internal experience.
1
SPEAKER_00
So my argument is that when people are talking about other things having experience, they re using a different concept than the thing that they re actually looking at when they look at their own experience.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think they re two different things.
1
SPEAKER_01
Definitionally not possible.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, if you understand the mechanism of consciousness, you ll be able to measure it probably, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but what are you measuring?
1
SPEAKER_00
I think there s just like a subtle difference.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like when you re asking the question, is this other thing conscious?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the easy thing to measure is like a survey.
1
SPEAKER_01
Does this thing appear conscious?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then the hard thing is you understand the actual mechanism of how consciousness arises.
1
SPEAKER_01
in the physics of the human brain.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but you can do that in a dream, presumably, like if you had a very good dream or a very good simulation.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
But we could then have somebody in a simulation or a dream where they go through and they fully understand, you know, they do all the tests and the tests come back exactly the way you d expect them to.
1
SPEAKER_00
But from the outside, we re like, well, this is misleading, they re not actually conscious.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like your dream characters aren t conscious, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Probably.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, are you asking or are you telling?
1
SPEAKER_00
I m like appealing to an intuition.
1
SPEAKER_01
But it sounds like you re driving towards a narrative.
1
SPEAKER_01
You did a poll about men and women and dreams.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Those are some kind of difference.
1
SPEAKER_01
I couldn t tell what the difference was except that more men than women.
1
SPEAKER_00
Quite a lot more women dream vividly than men.
1
SPEAKER_00
which I actually found in my chaos survey.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I did a survey, maybe you know.
1
SPEAKER_00
I just had a people- I know everything, do you remember?
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, yes, I m sorry.
1
SPEAKER_00
So as you clearly know.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ll try not to talk down to you through this conversation.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m sorry.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I not only know everything, I know how your future looks like.
1
SPEAKER_00
Really?
1
SPEAKER_01
And how everything ends, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you could probably win all the prediction markets on my life.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Cool.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we should also mention that you have prediction markets.
1
SPEAKER_01
You have votes.
1
SPEAKER_01
What s the site called again?
1
SPEAKER_00
Manifold.
1
SPEAKER_01
Manifold.
1
SPEAKER_01
And one of them was, will I be on the Lex Friedman podcast?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I voted.
1
SPEAKER_01
I invested everything I owned into the yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is there such thing as insider trading on there?
1
SPEAKER_01
Because that goes against the terms of the...
1
SPEAKER_00
No, I think insider trading is part of the information, so it s supposed to be.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I see.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I realized it s actually public information that I voted, because I think my face shows up there, it s like, damn it, it s gonna influence.
1
SPEAKER_01
Make a fake account.
1
SPEAKER_01
You could make the fake account, or I could be lying, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s true.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then dump the stock or whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, I try to manipulate.
1
SPEAKER_00
Somebody made a market like, is Ayla going to post a poll spelled P-O-L-E on her Twitter, like a photo.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, I m going to manipulate this market.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I like fucked around with it and I voted no.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I accidentally posted a photo of a poll without thinking.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, but that s like self-sabotage.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I accidentally fucked up my own market.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s like the reverse of insider trading.
1
SPEAKER_01
What were we talking about?
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, the women and the men and the difference, the vivid dreams and the markets.
1
SPEAKER_01
I forget what the market, oh, because I can perfectly predict your future.
1
SPEAKER_01
But then it s not fun.
1
SPEAKER_01
I like the romance of unpredictability.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I like to, even though I know everything, I like to forget everything.
1
SPEAKER_00
Very Buddhist of you.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the river.
1
SPEAKER_01
No man in the river wants whatever, the footsteps, however that goes.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s one of my favorite questions is like, if you could press a button and then have all of your wants fulfilled, anything that you want, to such a rapid degree that you don t really experience the want, as the want arises, it then is completed immediately, so that you are completely without want.
1
SPEAKER_00
Would you press that button?
1
SPEAKER_00
100% not.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I didn t think you would.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, no.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, because immediately everything stops being fun.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s only fun the first time.
1
SPEAKER_00
But if you want it to be fun.
1
SPEAKER_01
But what would be my source of fun?
1
SPEAKER_01
I feel like on day four, just to get off, I would need to like...
1
SPEAKER_01
do nuclear war, because it ll escalate quickly.
1
SPEAKER_01
I feel like if everything is possible, I assume you mean something that is not just normal human things.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, magical world.
1
SPEAKER_01
Magical world, then you start escalating really quickly.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, I wonder, I ll probably do like, I want everybody to just fly into the air and hover in the air.
1
SPEAKER_01
Everybody.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then you re like, oh, life is meaningless.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, why does, I feel like you get, no, actually, that d be a really interesting experiment.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, what are the limits?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, are we all capable of becoming psychopaths, essentially?
1
SPEAKER_01
I like to believe not, there s a very hard limits on that, like in our own mind, like of basic compassion.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because I love being compassionate towards other human beings.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s one of the things I think about if you give me power, like a lot of power, like absolute power.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s the power you mentioned is the scariest kind of power, because it s like,
1
SPEAKER_01
it s not even power in this normal world, it s like magical power, where you lose, it s like dream world power, where you, like video game power, you don t even think of it as reality, you could just mess with the world, and I feel like that s terrifying.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you d basically be God.
1
SPEAKER_01
God, yeah, but without, I feel like the idea of God, it wants to keep things functioning properly,
1
SPEAKER_00
And then you d probably, if you wanted to keep them functioning properly, then it would rapidly, like you would never experience a time where you re like, oh no, that was a mistake.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because as soon, like before you even experienced that, the world would shift to match it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, interesting.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, I think I would actually, I take it back.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think I would regret the first time I hurt somebody.
1
SPEAKER_01
See, in my visualization, it was like a video game.
2
SPEAKER_00
where everybody s like NPC, really dumb.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, I think the first time I witnessed pain from anybody, that s when I would stop.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I would probably run into that very quickly.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like even just the hovering, make a person hover, and they re gonna be probably really upset with the hovering, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And so I m gonna be like, no, don t do that anymore.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then I ll probably go to, honestly, I ll just return back to my normal life.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, that s kind of what I feel like.
2
SPEAKER_03
Like if I had the power to do anything, I think I would probably want to have a life very similar to where I am now.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, it s like with Uber, like it d be probably more convenient to do certain things.
2
SPEAKER_00
But even then, like the struggle, like I got a flat tire, so I have to fix that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I kind of, the flat tire makes everything more beautiful.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like, cool, I could do like a normal manual thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
But also it makes you appreciate your car, appreciate transportation, appreciate the convenience of transportation, all of it.
2
SPEAKER_03
I know some people who would call this a bunch of copium.
2
SPEAKER_03
You re just sort of making do with what you have.
2
SPEAKER_03
We wouldn t go back to Amish times or pre-technology in order to make ourselves appreciate things more.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so this seems like a hindsight reasoning, which I can appreciate that argument, but I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_00
Anyone who uses, sorry, to interrupt the word copium in their argumentation, I think it s sus.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s sus.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s sus, my entire argument is now.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, I m just kidding.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m sorry.
2
SPEAKER_00
Go ahead.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sorry.
2
SPEAKER_00
I interrupted rudely the flow of thought.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you don t think so?
2
SPEAKER_00
In part, you disagree with that kind of argument?
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, because I think people have this idea that if you come to accept or find meaning in what you have now, this is sort of at odds with trying to improve it.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I don t find this to be the case.
2
SPEAKER_03
I find like the attempt to improve it to also be part of it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Like I enjoy the fact that there s something like problematic going on because now I get the experience of like striving to make it go away.
2
SPEAKER_03
And like that in itself is where the meaning lies.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s not just that things are bad, it s that there s things are bad and we re trying to stop it and also.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s- If you combine that with a sense of optimism that the future can be better, yeah, that feeds into this productive effort of making things better.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it somehow makes the vision of the things that are better more intense, having experienced shitty things.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we talked about free will and consciousness and what drives human civilization.
2
SPEAKER_00
Question left unanswered.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a homework problem for the reader.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_03
I get like a scoreboard at the end, the amount of questions.
2
SPEAKER_00
The answer?
2
SPEAKER_03
Completed successfully versus not.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like polls.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can we talk about some practical things?
2
SPEAKER_03
Sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
So one of the many amazing things, I think of you as a researcher, but you ve also been doing research in the field.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, fieldwork.
2
SPEAKER_00
The Jane Goodall of sex work.
2
SPEAKER_00
How did you get, what s the short and the long story of how you got into sex work?
2
SPEAKER_03
How did I get into sex work?
2
SPEAKER_03
Well, I mean, there s a whole like childhood thing where I was conservatively homeschooled.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you want to actually talk about your childhood?
2
SPEAKER_00
I think it s interesting because you also worked at a factory.
2
SPEAKER_00
So like your childhood is really fascinating and difficult, traumatic.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, and you ve written about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of ways we could talk about it, but maybe what are the things you remember, the good and the bad of your childhood, of your maybe interaction with your father?
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, my dad probably has narcissistic personality disorder, and so it was very centered on very controlling childhood.
2
SPEAKER_03
Immensely so.
2
SPEAKER_03
We were homeschooled and pretty isolated from the outside world, like we didn t know anybody else who wasn t homeschooled.
2
SPEAKER_03
We went through a program called Growing Kids God s Way, which was very, it was like the kind of program where you re not supposed to pick up babies when they cry to train them that they can t manipulate the parents.
2
SPEAKER_03
Because like baby crying was viewed as like, you re just teaching them from an early age that they re allowed to make the parents do what the kids want.
2
SPEAKER_03
And we were very against this philosophy.
2
SPEAKER_03
So, you know, that combined with a narcissistic personality disorder, dad was pretty rough.
2
SPEAKER_00
So controlling.
2
SPEAKER_03
Super controlling, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
And developing and feeding the self-critical aspect of your brain.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, very much.
2
SPEAKER_03
It was, you know, I was like lazy.
2
SPEAKER_03
I was never gonna accomplish anything in life.
2
SPEAKER_03
I was gonna move out of the house and realize how good I had it at home, you know, the classic stuff.
2
SPEAKER_03
He was very, like, logical and smart, though.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so he d also, like, teach us logic stuff.
2
SPEAKER_03
I remember some of my earliest memories are him, like, giving me basic logic puzzles.
2
SPEAKER_03
Like, the dog has three legs.
2
SPEAKER_03
You know, how many dogs have four legs?
2
SPEAKER_03
And I would mess up.
2
SPEAKER_03
He was an evangelist, basically, a Christian evangelist.
2
SPEAKER_03
We did Bible study five nights a week.
2
SPEAKER_03
I memorized, I think, 800 verses of the Bible by the time before I became an adult.
2
SPEAKER_03
It was very patriarchal also.
2
SPEAKER_03
So I was expected to grow up and become a housewife, basically.
2
SPEAKER_03
They re like, oh, you can go to college to meet a man and also to get a little bit of education so that you can homeschool your own kids.
2
SPEAKER_03
Like we were explicitly told that women were subordinate to men in regards to like making decisions when you re married.
2
SPEAKER_03
Our pastor s daughter was not allowed to leave home because she would be outside of the authority of a man.
2
SPEAKER_03
So when she got married, she was allowed to leave because she was never allowed to live in a house where she was not under a hierarchy.
2
SPEAKER_03
So this is like the kind of culture that
2
SPEAKER_03
that we live with.
2
SPEAKER_00
So there s a hierarchy, and there s a gender aspect to the hierarchy, there s men at the top of that hierarchy.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, men at the top.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, but your own psychology and your own mind.
2
SPEAKER_00
So most of that self-critical brain is bad, right?
2
SPEAKER_03
It was confusing, because he told me that I was smart, but also that I would fail.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I think- But not smart enough, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like smart, but not smart enough?
2
SPEAKER_03
Smart, but like not virtuous or something.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, right, there s always a flaw.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, there s always a flaw.
2
SPEAKER_03
I think a lot of it was, a lot of the fucked upness of my brain came from feeling like I didn t have the authority to think.
2
SPEAKER_03
because it was so carefully suppressed.
2
SPEAKER_03
My ability to express or have any sort of power was just absolutely annihilated.
2
SPEAKER_03
Systemically, psychologically, they would do psychological torture mechanisms to make sure that I wasn t actually thinking on my own or being able to deviate from anything anybody ever told me.
2
SPEAKER_03
to the degree that it s still ingrained in me.
2
SPEAKER_03
I once was with a friend, we were traveling and he wanted me to hop a turnstile.
2
SPEAKER_03
It was very late at night, the train was here and I could not physically force myself to do it.
2
SPEAKER_03
He was yelling at me, like, come on, do it.
2
SPEAKER_03
I was trying so hard to make my body cross the line and it s embedded in my physical being to be unable to do stuff like that, which is really annoying.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you re not free to take action in this world?
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, some of them.
2
SPEAKER_03
So that was, I think, the most annoying part of my upbringing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Would you classify it as suffering?
2
SPEAKER_03
At the time, yeah, definitely.
2
SPEAKER_03
Well, it s confusing because when I was a child, it was just painful in the sense that things suck.
2
SPEAKER_03
But it was placed in a meaning framework, right?
2
SPEAKER_03
It is good, it is virtuous to submit to your parents and do what they want.
2
SPEAKER_03
If they tell you to say goodbye to your best friend forever and never talk to them again, you go do that without complaining.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so I would go do something like that, and it would suck.
2
SPEAKER_03
It really was concretely painful, but it was also placed in this narrative where I was fulfilling some sort of greater purpose.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so it s very confusing to refer to it as suffering, because there s so many painful things we do today that are placed in the narrative of a greater purpose, that I think I would agree with.
2
SPEAKER_03
I go get a medical procedure done, and that sucks, but I m like, ah, this is helping me in the long run.
2
SPEAKER_03
But say if I got abducted to an alien planet, and they re like, by the way, all of those medical procedures you got done, you didn t have to get them done, those are totally unnecessary, then I might get really upset about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I would trust those aliens, though, because they probably want to do different medical procedures than you.
2
SPEAKER_00
I saw a thumbnail for a video that I m proud of myself for not clicking on about a man who s claimed that he had sex with aliens.
2
SPEAKER_03
Proud of yourself for not clicking on that?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because I would probably watch it.
2
SPEAKER_00
for like 20 minutes, and then I should be doing work.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I m actually happy, because I get to imagine all the different possibilities that could have been for that man who had sex with them.
2
SPEAKER_03
Did you have like a really high resting happiness state?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yeah, probably like a mushroom state, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
Wow, do you do mushrooms?
2
SPEAKER_00
I ve done mushrooms before, it was very awesome.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like more intensely awesome.
2
SPEAKER_00
But like, because I was just looking at nature, it makes nature even more beautiful, I think.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it s already pretty beautiful.
2
SPEAKER_00
I haven t done MDMA.
2
SPEAKER_00
People say that I should.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s very nice, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, anyway.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I already, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
What did you call it?
2
SPEAKER_00
Resting happiness state?
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, high resting happiness.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s a good way to describe it.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it s not like, some of it is genetic, that you re able to notice the beauty in the world, and some of it is practiced, where you realize focusing on the negative things in life, like unproductively, is bad.
2
SPEAKER_00
it just doesn t help your mind flourish.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you just notice that, and it s like, I mean, I think people with depression learn that, or probably with trauma, too, is there s certain triggers, like if you suffer from depression, you have to kind of consciously know there s going to be triggers that will force you to spiral down, and so just avoid those triggers.
2
SPEAKER_00
Some people have that with diet, with food and so on, and so I just don t, whenever there s shady things happening or shady people,
2
SPEAKER_00
Unless I can help, unless I can somehow help.
2
SPEAKER_00
Why focus on it?
2
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, back to your upbringing, what was the journey of escaping that?
2
SPEAKER_03
Well, I left home kind of early because my dad and I were not getting along by the time I was a teenager, but I was still Christian for a while.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I lost my faith after I think I moved away and I started having friends that weren t religious or like weren t raised in the super conservative environment that I came from.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I think this was not conscious at the time, this is my hindsight story, but I believe that
2
SPEAKER_03
being exposed to a culture in which I had the capacity to believe allowed my brain to actually seriously consider the thought that maybe all of this stuff was untrue, that I d been taught 6,000-year-old Earth and evolution is a lie, macroevolution, and all of this stuff.
2
SPEAKER_03
Because when you re immersed in an environment like that, I don t think you actually have a choice.
2
SPEAKER_03
Your brain has to believe these things, because this is a survival thing.
2
SPEAKER_03
If you believe the wrong thing, you ll be totally cast out.
2
SPEAKER_03
Even if they re not going to cast you out, you re going to be cast out in communion with others, because we re always told that you can t trust non-believers, really.
2
SPEAKER_03
They don t have a moral compass.
2
SPEAKER_03
They re going to screw you over.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so I m like, oh, I can t be that.
2
SPEAKER_03
Everybody s going to outcast me internally.
2
SPEAKER_03
So anyway, I don t think I actually had the capacity to seriously question my faith, even though I thought that I was questioning it quite hard, until I got into an environment where it was safe to do so.
2
SPEAKER_03
And once I started being able to make friends who were not religious, I m like, oh, if I lose my faith, I m still gonna have some sort of community.
2
SPEAKER_03
And then at that time, I went through some questioning and then I lost my faith.
2
SPEAKER_00
So in that, given your friends, given your situation, you now have the freedom to think, essentially.
2
SPEAKER_03
Or at least the ability to think of something that was acceptable in the new culture, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, is there a danger of adopting the beliefs of the new culture?
2
SPEAKER_00
So there s some aspect of just being able to think freely, which you weren t able to do when you were growing up, just to think, like look at the world and wonder how it works, that kind of thing.
2
SPEAKER_03
I mean, you work it within certain boundaries, like there s certain basic assumptions.
2
SPEAKER_03
And as long as you are following those basic assumptions, which is to be fair, it s like kind of what we re doing now.
2
SPEAKER_03
Like we have, have I gone and done the personal research that like evolution is the thing that s going on?
2
SPEAKER_03
Have I looked at like the age of the stones?
2
SPEAKER_03
No, I haven t.
2
SPEAKER_03
I m trusting other people.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
Which I think is like a fair choice to make given where I m at right now.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you re also assuming there s causality in the universe, time is real.
2
SPEAKER_00
That first of all, the thing that your senses are perceiving is real.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re assuming a lot of things.
2
SPEAKER_03
I think it s better just to become aware of the assumptions you re making, as opposed to not making those assumptions at all.
2
SPEAKER_03
You have to assume something.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I did.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s very suspicious that I went out of this very conservative culture.
2
SPEAKER_03
And now, well, I guess I don t believe things that are super in line with the current culture.
2
SPEAKER_03
I think this is why I feel a little bit safer right now, because when I was Christian, I believed generally Christian things.
2
SPEAKER_03
But now I believe a bunch of things that people really hate.
2
SPEAKER_03
I get canceled online all the time.
2
SPEAKER_03
I m like, okay, this is a sign that maybe you re thinking independently if you re able to think things that are completely at odds with the people around you.
2
SPEAKER_03
And to be fair, this is a little bit easier to do when it s like general culture, but it s much harder to do with your peer group.
2
SPEAKER_03
Like the people that you trust, your friends, the people whose opinions you respect, like disagreeing with those people is very difficult and I m not very good at it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I do think that if you establish yourself as a person who can be trusted and is a good human being, you have a lot more freedom to then explore ideas that are different from your peer group.
2
SPEAKER_00
So those seem, if you separate the space of ideas versus some kind of deeper sense of what this person is, that they re an interesting and trustworthy and good human being.
2
SPEAKER_03
Well, is there somebody that you respect who you consider significantly smarter than you?
2
SPEAKER_03
And can you imagine believing an idea that you ve heard them talk really disdainfully about?
2
SPEAKER_03
Like, how would you feel coming to me, like, I believe this thing that you find to be?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I do all the time.
2
SPEAKER_03
Oh, yeah?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
You may be braver than me.
2
SPEAKER_03
And to be fair, I support doing this.
2
SPEAKER_03
I try to do this, but I think subconsciously, I notice that I don t do it as much.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so I m suspicious of myself.
2
SPEAKER_03
I m like, oh, I wonder if I m hiding to myself actual curiosity about things that might deviate from my peer group.
2
SPEAKER_03
Because I ve noticed that I m not actually deviating with them as much as I do with the outside world.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s interesting.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, like, because I do see most people I interact with as smarter than me, but I also have this intuitive feeling that dumb people, which I consider myself being, have wisdom.
2
SPEAKER_00
So like in the disagreement, actually, I also believe in the power of conversation and in the tension of disagreement.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I think even just disagreeing from a place, from a good place, from a place of like love and respect for each other, I think I just believe in that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s not like individuals you re disagreeing, you re like working towards arriving at some deeper truth together, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Even if the other person is,
2
SPEAKER_00
Maybe that s how I justify it for myself.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m also a fan of conversations, because I ve seen, just listening to conversations, it seems like a great conversation more emerges from it than the sum of its parts, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like somehow two people together can do, like that dance of ideas can somehow create a cool thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
By the way, I enjoyed, I saw a video of you dancing at a bar drunk.
2
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t the bar drunk.
2
SPEAKER_00
It didn t look drunk, but just the dancing.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was like ballroom dancing type of thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was like, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
Something like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ve been doing a bit of tango dancing.
2
SPEAKER_00
I like it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Argentina?
2
SPEAKER_00
Mm-hmm.
2
Nice.
2
SPEAKER_00
I like stuff with the body in general, like wrestling or combat.
2
SPEAKER_00
Usually when there s a tension, you have to understand the mechanics of how two bodies move when they re in conflict.
2
SPEAKER_00
And dancing is similar.
2
SPEAKER_03
Like you have to do like rapid thinking also, like rapid, intuitive, physical thinking.
2
SPEAKER_03
And that s my favorite kind of thing.
2
SPEAKER_03
Like a lot of exercise is really boring to me because you can just do it while your brain s off.
2
SPEAKER_03
But something like ballroom dancing or fusion dancing, like you have to constantly be like figuring out, like it s a rapid puzzle.
2
SPEAKER_03
And that s so wonderful.
2
SPEAKER_00
What s fusion dancing?
2
SPEAKER_03
That s the video.
2
SPEAKER_03
Fusion dancing is like, if you have any sort of dance background, you can come and you just kind of mix those together.
2
SPEAKER_03
Oh, you just kind of improvise.
2
SPEAKER_03
So you can have people doing ballet with people doing ballroom with people doing blues.
2
SPEAKER_00
Cool.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then there s an interesting dynamic because there s, I don t know, maybe you can correct me, but there s a, that s very meta.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s usually a lead and a follow.
2
SPEAKER_00
I guess most dancers have that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so that, but both have a different, like you both have to be quite sensitive to the other human being, but in a different way.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s interesting.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I like both that there is that definitive role.
3
SPEAKER_01
But also, like, it s not somehow that one is better than the other.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s an interesting tension between the two.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s good, because it s like a basic rule set that allows for a ton of expression.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve recently started to experiment with, like, reverse leading.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s not like back leading.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like, I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, sometimes I ll, like, lead a move.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you can lead as a follow.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, you can lead.
3
SPEAKER_00
What I m typically following.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ll, like, occasionally throw in a little lead here and there.
3
SPEAKER_01
But don t you kind of follow it?
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I see.
3
SPEAKER_01
Don t you hint at a lead when you re following?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, don t you, just by the dynamics of your movement, you re not perfectly following.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, because there is like, the lead is listening to your body, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
So like,
3
SPEAKER_01
you re kinda both figuring out what you do next.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s true, I m a very good follow though.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I m like, I m an invisible follow.
3
SPEAKER_00
You do move, it s like a... Oh, interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m not like good at technique.
3
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know those existed, like a perfect follow.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you could perfect follow.
3
SPEAKER_00
I really, I do.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m not great at technique and sometimes I ll fall over, but like with the following part, I m very good at it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you enjoy following?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s really nice.
3
SPEAKER_00
Again, it s a very fast physical puzzle you have to solve.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like typing.
3
SPEAKER_00
I really like typing.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s why I was inquiring about your keyboard earlier.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why do you like typing?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because it s like the very fast, like the really rapid response.
3
SPEAKER_00
What s it?
3
SPEAKER_00
Reaction time.
3
SPEAKER_00
I like things that have very fast reaction times, like games like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
But typing is not a reaction, or is it the brain generating words, and then you re, like, how s typing a reaction?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, okay, the sensation that I get when I am typing is the kind of thing that I m trying to point at.
3
SPEAKER_00
So maybe reaction time isn t the quite, I don t know what the term is, but whatever that thing is.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like the thing where you have to, like, look at a word and then communicate it into your fingers?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
It feels like dancing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like you re responding, you re responding to your brain.
3
SPEAKER_01
Your fingers are doing the responding to the brain that generated the words.
3
SPEAKER_00
making your body do what your brain wants it to do, but fast and precisely.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, then you might not like this Kinesis keyboard, because it makes it easier to do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
You probably like the struggle, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, I mean, it looks hard, because it looks like it s high depression on the keys.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, well, oh, I see.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, more than like a laptop keyboard, but like...
3
SPEAKER_01
that you don t have to, one of the main things is you don t have to move your fingers at all.
3
SPEAKER_01
So like, for example, a lot of people, I think they have a backspace up in the top right corner.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so if you have to make mistakes, which is like, I mean, that s like so metaphorical.
3
SPEAKER_01
Every mistake you have to like really hurt yourself for, you have to like stretch for the backspace.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s just that poetic narrative again.
3
SPEAKER_00
It emanates from a lot of your perspective.
3
SPEAKER_00
Everything.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and I see it as a good thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
A romantic element permeates my interpretation of the world, yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
But you left home early.
3
SPEAKER_01
How did you end up working at a factory?
3
SPEAKER_00
I tried to go to college, but failed.
3
SPEAKER_00
Couldn t afford it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you like it?
3
SPEAKER_00
I remember it just being really slow.
3
SPEAKER_00
I remember being shocked that the teachers didn t care.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was used to homeschooling.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, it felt like the people around me that were teaching me, because we had a mom s group also, directly cared about what I was learning, and I would be able to ask questions, and they would really respond.
3
SPEAKER_01
What s a mom s group?
3
SPEAKER_00
It was a homeschooling group, so there were a bunch of moms who were homeschooling their kids, get together, and then teach each other s kids.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, cool.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they have different interests and capabilities and so on, and they kind of... And sometimes if some of the kids are really good at something, you have the older kids teaching the other ones too.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it was very, like, everybody kind of figures out what they re good at, and they share that skill set with everybody else, which I think was a pretty great setup.
3
SPEAKER_00
Honestly, I think my childhood kind of sucked in a lot of ways, but homeschooling was excellent.
3
SPEAKER_00
for me, mainly because it just had so much free time.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just did two to three hours of school and then did whatever the fuck I wanted for the rest of the day.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I got to actually pursue skills that are still useful for me to this day.
3
SPEAKER_01
Even in that constrained environment?
3
SPEAKER_00
I read fantasy books and I wrote so much.
3
SPEAKER_00
And now I m writing a lot for my blog.
3
SPEAKER_01
What kind of fantasy books?
3
SPEAKER_01
Sci-fi type stuff?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like classic, like I read like Mercedes Lackey and the E.E.
3
SPEAKER_00
Knight and Ursula Le Guin.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know any of this.
3
SPEAKER_01
What is this?
3
SPEAKER_01
What is it?
3
SPEAKER_01
Is it like a romantic thing?
3
SPEAKER_01
Is it like, is it romance?
3
SPEAKER_00
Just all the fantasy books, like dragons and elves.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, dragons.
3
SPEAKER_01
Got it, got it, got it, got it.
3
SPEAKER_01
You didn t mention Tolkien for the fantasy.
3
SPEAKER_00
I read Tolkien.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
All right, well, it s beautiful.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you threw all the dragons.
3
SPEAKER_01
How did you end up in a factory?
3
SPEAKER_01
Tri-school?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, tri-school.
3
SPEAKER_00
Had to drop out for a couple months and then I was like, well, I m poor and I was ready to take any job.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was like applying for sewer jobs and then I got a factory.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m like, alright, let s do it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because my parents, no financial help at all.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re like, you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you know.
3
SPEAKER_00
So anyway, I went to work in a factory and that sucked ass.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do not recommend.
3
SPEAKER_00
We had to wake up like 4am, you know, work on weekends too.
3
SPEAKER_00
fluorescent lights.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was terrible.
3
SPEAKER_00
I did that for about a year.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was trying to grip my teeth and be like, this is my life, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
I didn t have high expectations for my life.
3
SPEAKER_00
I thought if you get a job where you don t have to be on your feet all the time, you re living a good life.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then I got another job briefly as a photographer and then they fired me.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think I was 19 at the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
Fired you for like- I was just too young and really, really bad at interacting with people in the outside world.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I was pretty well socialized as a homeschooler with other homeschoolers, but in the outside world, especially with all of the like hierarchy submission stuff beaten into me, like literally beaten into me, it was very difficult for me to interact with other people who were like older than me or had any sort of confidence at all.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they hired me to do like photography for people and then I was
3
SPEAKER_00
rapidly.
3
SPEAKER_00
It turned out that I was bad at this, and so they fired me.
3
SPEAKER_00
But at that point, I d left my factory job.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m like, I can t go back to the factory.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I had some savings, and I slept on friends  couches, and I tried various self-employment stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m like, oh, maybe I can do product photography or something.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it s Idaho, you know?
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you re like a 19-year-old with no experience in the outside world at all, it was really difficult.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I had a friend recommend that I try becoming a cam girl.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that s how it started.
3
SPEAKER_01
What is camming?
3
SPEAKER_01
What is being a cam girl?
3
SPEAKER_01
What s that all about?
3
SPEAKER_00
Camming is like you talk to the camera live on the computer, like you live stream.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of like Twitch.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then people are typing in the chat, like, hi, I do this stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then the people can tip you money, and then you can do things in response.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, oh, if you tip me 100 tokens, I ll take my shirt off or something like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And what site were you using at that time?
3
SPEAKER_00
MyFreeCams.
3
SPEAKER_01
MyFreeCams?
3
SPEAKER_01
Is that a popular site?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s pretty popular.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
And what were the next steps?
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you enjoy it?
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, well, it was the first time I had actual control over my life.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I made actual real money.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I just exploded into it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I thought about it nonstop.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was streaming all the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was coming up with new creative things.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the thing is, I don t know, there s something about public school that
3
SPEAKER_00
I ended up living in a house of cam girls full of other girls who had gone to public school.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how much of it is genetic or just because I m weird or is it because of our upbringing, but I felt like I was much more fearless and much more weird and creative online than other people were.
3
SPEAKER_00
Not because they weren t awesome people, but because I think public school, I got the impression based on them talking about it, that it sort of beats out any sort of deviance from you.
3
SPEAKER_00
More so than your, because I got the- We had moral deviance was beaten out, but you could do whatever- Creative deviance was not- Creative deviance wasn t so much.
3
SPEAKER_00
I didn t have other kids making fun of me ever.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t think I d ever heard an insult about my physical appearance as a child or teenager.
3
SPEAKER_00
Once.
3
SPEAKER_01
So your father was basically saying you re not good enough was intellectual.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, no, that was like moral failure.
3
SPEAKER_01
Moral failure.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like I was not virtuous.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like in various ways, like, you know, like you re lazy and mostly the lazy part.
3
SPEAKER_00
I have like ADHD or something.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was not good at it as a kid either.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would totally forget all the time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is there some sexual repression aspect to that?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, you know how they say that there s, it s not just homeschooling, but just like Catholic girls and so on, just because like there s moral, you re forbidden to do certain things, like there s a kind of liberating feeling of saying, like basically rediscovering yourself, rediscovering your freedom by doing just,
3
SPEAKER_01
diving head first into sexuality, into your own sexuality.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is there some aspect to that?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, absolutely to some degree.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think that people kind of model it slightly wrong.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think there s a truth to it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But when I first got out of the house, for me, freedom was going outside at 2 a.m.
3
SPEAKER_00
or eating chocolate on days that I previously wasn t allowed to eat chocolate.
3
SPEAKER_00
That was a really intense expression of rebellion for me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think people don t think of this.
3
SPEAKER_00
I got out a lot of my intense rebellion through things that people don t typically consider to be rebellious at all.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I wore a bikini.
3
SPEAKER_00
Insane.
3
SPEAKER_01
And just like walked around in it and like, I can do this.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, basically.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so like, this was most of that emotional processing for me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it took me a couple years from leaving home and all of that conservative culture into doing sex work.
3
SPEAKER_00
In the meantime, I did try having sex with a lot of people, but this was mainly because I didn t know what the norms were.
3
SPEAKER_00
I didn t really understand.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was just like, okay, take things logically, take things one step at a time.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, okay, if the whole previous set about how I m not supposed to kiss somebody until the altar of marriage, if that s not the way that things are supposed to go, then what is the way things are supposed to go?
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, well, if I m aroused, I should go have sex with someone, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there any reason not to?
3
SPEAKER_00
No.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I would go around asking random people to have sex with me.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you have any peer pressure saying like, that s not good or that is good or like any, did you feel any currents of society in any direction?
3
SPEAKER_01
Or are you independently just thinking like from first principles?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think, I mean, like, I m not saying it was a totally clean thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m sure that I was experiencing society telling me this is bad.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you have to know, like, I wasn t watching normal movies when I was a teen.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, we watched Christian movies, the stuff that we watched was filtered.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, I watched the Titanic and I had no idea that Jack and Rose had sex because it was put through a filtered- Wait, did they?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they went and, you know, he painted her naked and- Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
There was a scene in a car.
3
SPEAKER_00
On the ship.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, on the ship.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they had cars in storage and there s a hand.
3
SPEAKER_00
I watched it again later and I was like, oh my God.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t remember the sex scene.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, maybe were you also put through a filtered version?
3
SPEAKER_01
No, maybe it s the filter I see.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did the couple in the notebook also have sex?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because maybe for romantic movies, I focus on the romance.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And the sex scenes are always like weirdly filmed in these.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because it s never, I mean, it doesn t, it feels more like romance than sex.
3
SPEAKER_01
I guess that s the main focus of this, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
That makes sense.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, so they had sex.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s good to know.
3
SPEAKER_00
They did.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ll go back and watch now.
3
SPEAKER_00
You have your own personal filter on your brain.
3
SPEAKER_01
And once you realize that there are some, like the foundation of your beliefs were wrong, then everything might be wrong.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you re kind of just doing first principles.
3
SPEAKER_00
And again, like not totally separate from culture, but also I think in general, I also have a predisposition to just be like, you know, fuck what culture tells you, just figure out what s right for you and do it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so that mixed with, you know, the figuring things out from first principles.
3
SPEAKER_00
I did eventually figure out that I didn t like having casual sex with just anybody quite as much.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I stopped that, but it took me a while to figure that out.
3
SPEAKER_01
What s the negative of casual sex?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s just, like, not good.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, if you, like, figure out the chemistry you have with someone better, then it can be a lot nicer.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I wasn t doing that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was just, like, somebody I met, and I m like, you seem kind of cute.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, I didn t bother to try and develop this
3
SPEAKER_00
any chemistry.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I didn t chemistry even outside of sex, just chemistry, like human chemistry, conversation.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would, I would, I m, it s like kind of cringy, but I would like, I would like walk up to guys or send them messages.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, would you like to have coitus is what I would say.
3
SPEAKER_01
You would say coitus.
3
SPEAKER_00
I d said that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s kind of, it s kind of cute in a way.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s a girl asking you to get laid.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they probably didn t care that much.
3
SPEAKER_00
But anyway, I m saying that I had a lot of rebellion out of my system by the time I started sex work.
3
SPEAKER_00
So for me, maybe, I m sure it was somehow related, because we were extremely sexually repressed growing up.
3
SPEAKER_00
I remember the day I learned I had a vagina, which was absolutely horrifying.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do not recommend figuring out you have another orifice in your body.
3
SPEAKER_01
But like- Do you want to share the process of you figuring out that you had a vagina?
3
SPEAKER_00
They told me I had a vagina.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, like intellectually, like there was somebody said- You have a vagina, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that was horrifying to you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
I didn t know I had, cause you weren t supposed to ever like touch or look at yourself ever.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I never did.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was really disgusting.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I had no idea that what was going on in my genital region.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so one day my mom sat me down, I think it was like nine or 10 and she was like, you have a, there s another.
3
SPEAKER_00
What?
3
SPEAKER_00
And you re going to bleed out of it, is what she told me.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna bleed out of it for a while.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, what the fuck, mom?
3
SPEAKER_00
I didn t know what the word fuck was, but I would have said that if I had known.
3
SPEAKER_01
When did you first learn the word fuck?
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I think I learned it when I was at a playground and it was written somewhere and I read it out loud and then the kid next to me started giggling.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you ever, did you say fuck again for a while?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I think the next time I said, I swore the first time when I was 18.
3
SPEAKER_00
like intentionally said a swear word when I was 18.
3
SPEAKER_00
Did it feel good?
3
SPEAKER_00
I was like really nervous.
3
SPEAKER_00
What s your favorite swear word?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, fuck s pretty good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, fuck s pretty good.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so that s camming.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, what are the pros and cons of camming and how does OnlyFans map into this?
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you switch to OnlyFans at some point?
3
SPEAKER_00
I did, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
I came for like five or six years, and I burned out eventually.
3
SPEAKER_01
What are the good aspects?
3
SPEAKER_01
What are the bad aspects of camming?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, the good aspects were that it was just your own terms.
3
SPEAKER_00
You get to decide.
3
SPEAKER_00
Everything about it is under your control, which I loved at the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was like, I can work when I want, how I want, any sort of expression.
3
SPEAKER_00
I experimented, and I was very successful.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was making around $200 an hour, which for that website at the time was pretty good.
3
SPEAKER_00
I had elaborate routines, I was a mime.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would dress up as a mime and then dress up a chair, and I would seduce the chair.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, cool.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, or like.
3
SPEAKER_01
Was there an artistic element to it almost?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, very much.
3
SPEAKER_00
I had like gnomes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Did you talk to the chair?
3
SPEAKER_00
You had gnomes?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I was a mime, you know.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, sorry, right.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, get it straight, dude.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know what I really appreciate about you is I m asking some really dumb questions and you re answering it in a very intelligent way, so I appreciate that.
3
SPEAKER_01
All right, did you ask the chair questions?
3
SPEAKER_01
I was in mine, you fucking idiot.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, I m sorry.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s true.
3
SPEAKER_01
But there s gnomes on the, like big gnomes or small gnomes?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like lawn gnomes.
3
SPEAKER_01
Lawn gnomes?
3
SPEAKER_01
And you seduced a lawn gnome on the chair?
3
SPEAKER_01
The gnome is sitting on the chair?
3
SPEAKER_00
There were some, yeah, gnomes on the chair.
3
SPEAKER_00
I did a photo set, which I submitted to Reddit, where I got abducted.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was like stripping, taking my clothes off, and then slowly the gnomes surrounded me in the background and dragged me off.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I did this as a photo set.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I- Consensually?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I didn t feel consensual in the photos, but it was the 11th top post.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was very successful on Reddit, basically.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was the top post on Gone Wild and the 11th top post of all time on Reddit.
3
SPEAKER_01
Which I think it probably just means it s like,
3
SPEAKER_01
It s artistic, it s interesting, it s edgy, it s funny, so it s really, really well done.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it was really shocking to me that nobody else was doing anything creative with sex work.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, for me, it was like breathing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, you re just doing sex and you re bored, and I m like, what do you do?
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, let s try something funny.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, it s just the natural progression.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it felt to me like there was almost no competition.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, I would just be really creative and, like, immediately it was the top not-safe-for-work post on Reddit.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m like, well, I didn t even try that hard.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so it s really shocking to me that other women who are doing this sort of thing
3
SPEAKER_01
Is that still a little bit of the case?
3
SPEAKER_01
That there s not as much like, cause I, from my sort of outsider perspective, that seems to be still the case.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like there s not, like, as you describe it, that s kind of cool.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s like almost like playing, like having fun with sexuality almost.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And yeah, but that does require kind of thinking through, it s almost like a creative project, like a photography project or something like that, almost like a little skit movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s this vibe of like, how can you like bring like vibrant novelty to whatever you re doing, anything you re doing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I really like doing this with surveys too.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I ve been doing a lot of standard surveys, but I m also like experimenting with novel creative artistic surveys.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m like, how do you ask a question in a way that s like beautiful and unusual and like a thing that s completely groundbreaking?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like nobody s ever like,
3
SPEAKER_01
You always make everything so poetic and romantic, it s disgusting.
3
SPEAKER_01
But yes, I think you have that engine in your head, I guess, of creativity.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, yeah, the way you ask questions, it s not trivial to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s actually very difficult to do good survey questions.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I mean, we re joking, but like, yeah, almost like poetic, because you have to ask a question in a way that doesn t lead to the answer.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like you have to kind of inspire them to think and then indirectly get at the truth.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s an art form, honestly.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and also in a way where they don t misinterpret the question, because it s amazing how any question you think, oh, this is the clearest question possible.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, you re wrong.
4
SPEAKER_00
It has to be even clearer.
4
SPEAKER_02
Right, willingly or unwillingly, because you also have to defend against that question being criticized later when you publish about it, all of that, you have to think about all of that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think this might be my greatest strength.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I m not very good at statistics, I m not great at presenting data, but I think probably my greatest strength is, in fact, survey design and question phrasing.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because I have tweeted so many thousands of polls, and every single one I get people telling me the way that they misinterpreted the poll.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it s like gone through fire.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then again, I m testing the phrasings all the time.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like what happens if you slightly shift phrasings?
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I ll do the same question test over time to see how it changes and the way the framing affects the results.
4
SPEAKER_02
So the good and the bad of camming, so you said good, the, what was it?
4
SPEAKER_02
I forgot, you said- The freedom.
4
SPEAKER_02
The freedom.
4
SPEAKER_02
The freedom to also be creative.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the bad is just that it was exhausting.
4
SPEAKER_00
The site that I was on, the way that it s structured is that you re ranking on the site, and thus the amount of people that see you, and thus the amount of money you earn, is affected by the amount of money that you earn on average over the last 60 days.
4
SPEAKER_00
So if you re streaming and nobody s tipping you, this means that you re going to be dropping down in the rankings, which is gonna make it harder in the future.
4
SPEAKER_02
Okay, so the rich get richer in that site.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so it s very high pressure.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you re on, you need to be making money.
4
SPEAKER_00
as fast as you can if you want to continue to make money.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that was really stressful.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was very mentally taxing.
4
SPEAKER_00
I would do it for a couple hours and just log off and be completely exhausted, because you re just on as hard as you can.
4
SPEAKER_00
And this is why I have a little PTSD around streaming.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve considered Twitch streaming, and I try a little bit, and I haven t fully integrated the fact that you don t have to be maximally entertaining every single second yet.
4
SPEAKER_00
You can actually just chill out and take it slow, and nothing bad happens.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah, you can just enjoy silence.
4
SPEAKER_02
Did you feel lonely doing it?
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, even just streamers feel lonely.
4
SPEAKER_00
I moved into a house of cam girls.
4
SPEAKER_02
Did that make it better or worse?
4
SPEAKER_00
It made it better.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re great.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m still friends with them to this day.
4
SPEAKER_02
Oh, so it was like a team, almost like we re in this kind of together?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we would like work together and stream together and swap our clothes and stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was great.
4
SPEAKER_02
Swap ideas too?
4
SPEAKER_00
Swap ideas, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
And actually on a small tangent, maybe a big tangent, what do you think, because it s a recent controversy of Andrew Tate, and that he, I think in the past, ran a camming business, and he s being accused of sex trafficking.
4
SPEAKER_02
What do you think, like from your own experience, what do you understand about Andrew Tate?
4
SPEAKER_02
Is he a good person, is he a bad person?
4
SPEAKER_02
Is there something shady about his practices or not?
4
SPEAKER_00
I wish I could answer, but I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
I haven t looked into it at all.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve heard people talking about it, I just haven t bothered to go into it.
4
SPEAKER_00
It is well known that when I was doing it back in the day, the Eastern European models had something different going on, though.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was like a trope about there s the Eastern European models and then there s everybody else.
4
SPEAKER_02
They re what?
4
SPEAKER_02
It s like darker or something like that?
4
SPEAKER_00
They do studios and they re lower quality.
4
SPEAKER_02
Which means what?
4
SPEAKER_00
Studios are, you go into like a warehouse and then they have set up a little like things that replicate bedrooms, but they re just like stalls.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you give, you rent out or you pay the studio percentage of your income.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you can tell when something looks like a studio, it s like a type of background.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you re like watching enough, it kind of starts to, you notice the patterns.
4
SPEAKER_02
So like the standards are lower there and the ethical boundaries are a little looser of how people are treated.
4
SPEAKER_00
I never heard anything about the ethical side.
4
SPEAKER_00
I just knew that it was like lower quality.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like the girls seemed like they were less into it and like cared less.
4
SPEAKER_02
How does this all interplay with like sex trafficking?
4
SPEAKER_02
So consensual versus non-consensual.
4
SPEAKER_00
I would be shocked if there were never any non-consensual camming.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I guess it s like, if it were going to happen, I wouldn t be surprised if it were.
4
SPEAKER_00
In fact, Eastern European models, based on, this is outdated, I m just thinking of my stereotypes back when I cammed a lot.
4
SPEAKER_02
Sure, so some of that is stereotypes versus collecting good data, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I haven t done data on camgirl.
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it s hard, it s even hard to get that data, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
But obviously a really important problem.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s a method that I m trying that I really like.
4
SPEAKER_00
I designed a survey type, which is like asking people who you know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, who do you know who s done this?
4
SPEAKER_00
And you tell me like, oh, do you know anybody who s a doctor?
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you know anybody who has had cancer or like smokes or?
4
SPEAKER_02
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, personally, just do you know anybody?
4
SPEAKER_00
And then if you ask about a whole bunch of things, you can calibrate.
4
SPEAKER_00
the responses.
4
SPEAKER_00
So like, if your population, you know, 20% of them know doctors, and then you know the actual amount of doctors, then you can tell how this is corresponding.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, what is the visibility of doctors?
4
SPEAKER_02
So you can reconstruct the graph.
4
SPEAKER_00
Basically, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we can do this with sex trafficking.
4
SPEAKER_00
And of course, people are going to be like, well, sex trafficking is not visible.
4
SPEAKER_00
People, you don t know those.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m like, well, then we can ask about other non-visible things that other people don t know that we do have data for.
4
SPEAKER_00
like homelessness or being in jail, or if you have been sexually assaulted.
4
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people don t like talking about if they ve been sexually assaulted.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you can do a whole bunch of things that are similarly suppressed in knowledge in some way that we do actually have rates for, and then compare that to the graph when we ask people, do you know anybody who s in sex traffic?
4
SPEAKER_00
So again, this is not perfect.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m not saying this is ideal.
4
SPEAKER_02
But you can infer things.
4
SPEAKER_02
You can infer things about that graph.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I m saying we don t have good ways of measuring sex trafficking right now.
4
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, I did a big deep dive into the research that we have on sex trafficking in the Western world.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the actual, like I read the studies and like reports about the studies and it s really pitiful.
4
SPEAKER_00
We have terrible data.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like, there s just like vague estimations made from one guy in a basement in the 80s.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s like the basis for like one big study that like a lot of people report on.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I m like, okay, so the method I m proposing, obviously it s not perfect, but like the bar is so low at this point.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, I wonder also if there s ways to design a survey that gets at the victims of sex trafficking also, which is they presumably have public access to the internet.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I wonder how many of them are distinctly aware that they re victims.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like it s asking the question,
4
SPEAKER_02
when you re inside of a toxic relationship, are you inside of a toxic relationship?
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, if the toxic relationship is truly toxic, sometimes your mind is fucked with, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
You don t even know what s true.
4
SPEAKER_02
And so it s interesting if you can design surveys that- For people who are actively sex trafficked?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, who could break through that.
4
SPEAKER_02
So basically get data on how many people are getting sex trafficked directly.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, like if you don t frame it, like if you don t say the word sex trafficking, you re like, are you just in a situation where you d,
4
SPEAKER_02
And maybe through the survey, I mean, that s very meta, but through the survey help them.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, I did this, this is what started my relationship surveys.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I ve done a series of relationship surveys, and that was because I knew somebody in a terrible relationship.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, I bet if she took a survey where she answered questions about her relationship, but at the end got a score that compared her to everybody else, she d be like, oh, wait, everybody else has much better relationships than I do.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s why I started making the relationship surveys was exactly for that reason.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that s really, really, really powerful to know that like, you re not,
4
SPEAKER_02
you re not crazy for thinking this is a bad relationship.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right, or I think like the actual question is like, could you do better if you broke up?
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think that the thing that keeps most people in their relationships is like, this is the best that I can do.
4
SPEAKER_00
And like, this is normal.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if it were normal, I would say that they are right.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like if you live in a culture where everybody is abusing their people in their relationships, then yeah, I mean, what are you gonna do?
4
SPEAKER_00
Break up and then just be alone for the rest of your life?
4
SPEAKER_00
Most people don t wanna do that.
4
SPEAKER_02
But now comparing yourself to the average is good to know.
4
SPEAKER_02
To know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Know what your options are.
4
SPEAKER_02
At least understand it because being normal is not always, like this conversation is not always great.
4
SPEAKER_02
Meaning this conversation is anything but normal.
4
SPEAKER_02
Okay, and that was a tangent on a tangent about a niche passion, which is really fascinating that you re playing with those kinds of ideas of survey design.
4
SPEAKER_02
But back to camming, so what were the cons?
4
SPEAKER_02
What were the negatives of camming?
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, like the exhaustion of just like live, like the high pressure thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
That was probably the worst thing.
4
SPEAKER_02
So not, what about the interaction with different people?
4
SPEAKER_02
Like the dynamics of the interaction with the fans, I guess.
4
SPEAKER_00
I had a pretty great time.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, obviously it wasn t perfect, because it s the internet, but I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is the thing that confuses me a lot, because a lot of women that I know complain about being harassed by men quite a lot.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re like, you know, men are always, you know, grope and harass, you know, you have to be paranoid in the club.
4
SPEAKER_00
People are like, they re always huffing on you, and you re just like, Jesus Christ, get away, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I do not have this experience.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or maybe I do, but I m interpreting it differently.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
The thing is, I don t know what causes me to have such a different experience from these women that feel really hostile towards men.
4
SPEAKER_00
And my guess is that there s some sort of very subtle signaling that we re accidentally doing.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re like, no fault of our own.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m not saying this is a virtue.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m saying maybe it s just genetic or the fact that I ve fallen.
4
SPEAKER_02
The women are doing?
4
SPEAKER_00
That the women are doing, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it might be just something I m completely accidentally, through no intention, happening to signal the thing that is causing men to not view me as a desirable target, or like a target at all.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, what about the flip side?
4
SPEAKER_02
Maybe you re not sensitive to the creepy stare.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that also might be true.
4
SPEAKER_02
The dude who s like, as I m dressing you with his eyes,
4
SPEAKER_02
that like in a creepy way, that you re just not, you don t like worry about it or you re not touched, like the fear of that, the anxiety of that, the unpleasantness of that just doesn t hit you.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think that s also at least part of it, maybe all of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think there s some evidence for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think often like guys will do a thing to me and I m just like, that s a thing, cool.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t have any negative response whatsoever.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s,
4
SPEAKER_01
Call back to the tire.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s a thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is nice.
4
SPEAKER_01
That happened.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s good to know that can happen.
4
SPEAKER_00
I once had a homeless guy ask me to come back to my place, baby.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, this is fun.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m like, do you want me to?
4
SPEAKER_00
I love asking men, are you trying to get me to have sex with you?
4
SPEAKER_00
Just saying it out front.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they ll be like, well.
4
SPEAKER_00
Usually they stop for a minute.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re like, well, yeah, I would like to have sex.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I ll be like, thanks for asking, but I m not interested in having sex with you.
4
SPEAKER_00
How do you have a good day?
4
SPEAKER_00
And then I walk away.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s great.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
I have no issues with that interaction.
4
SPEAKER_00
But like maybe this is the kind of thing that other women would find to be really offensive.
4
SPEAKER_02
So you have that conversation and it doesn t turn into like a threatening feel.
4
SPEAKER_00
No.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like with a homeless guy.
4
SPEAKER_00
No.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve never had that happen though.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I think there s just something, I think I m doing something, like again, this is kind of accidental, like I just am like this always.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think I just happen to be like this at people and they don t expect it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like they don t expect me to be like really nice while explicitly asking them what their intentions are.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like directly putting my finger on the thing that like, oh, you re trying to have sex with me.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then also not judging them for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think this like throws people off a little bit so they don t get aggressive.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re like, oh, you re autistic or something.
4
SPEAKER_02
Even the cloak of anonymity on the internet you weren t getting.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I just think I m just not reactive and or maybe I m giving off.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what s going on.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe it s both.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe it s a feedback loop.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I just I had a pretty good experience.
4
SPEAKER_00
I know not everybody did definitely people reported having antagonistic experiences, but when I was scamming I generally really liked people are really nice to me had a great time made friends.
4
SPEAKER_02
So you also did OnlyFans, as you mentioned, and I read on a website, so this is very investigative reporting, that on some months you ve made over $100,000 on OnlyFans.
4
SPEAKER_02
How did that feel?
4
SPEAKER_02
Great, really great.
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, like, well, actually, because so much of your upbringing you didn t have money, you had to struggle with the fact of your job and so on, maybe a good person to ask, can money buy happiness?
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I mean, I think you get like a resting set point of happiness regardless of how much money you have, but money can buy being less stressed, I would say.
4
SPEAKER_02
Is there a lot of variation in the,
4
SPEAKER_02
in the basic rest happiness for humans in general?
4
SPEAKER_02
Is that a good thing to think about?
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, they ve done some studies, but again, I m not sure.
4
SPEAKER_00
I haven t actually read the studies, so maybe they didn t replicate, where they measured people before and after winning a bunch of money to see if their happiness was higher.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think by some measures it was, and by some it wasn t.
4
SPEAKER_02
No, I mean like basically almost genetically, so nature and nurture, but is there, let s say after you re 18, is there like some stable level of happiness that all the environmental genetic factors combine to create so that everything that life throws at you has to face that happiness?
4
SPEAKER_02
Like you mentioned earlier that I seem to be happy with a lot of stuff.
4
SPEAKER_02
So maybe I have a certain level, do other people have a lower level?
4
SPEAKER_02
Some people have higher level?
4
SPEAKER_02
Is that a useful model of human beings?
4
SPEAKER_02
Or is it all ups and downs?
4
SPEAKER_02
Like is it all, there s no statement.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, some people just are happier than others in general, and other people aren t.
4
SPEAKER_00
But then you also have ups and downs.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like I m sure you ve experienced sadness sometimes and happiness the other times.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like if I actually were to integrate, so have an integral under the curve, the area under the curve, I don t know if I m different than other people.
4
SPEAKER_02
Maybe I m just like really focused on the happy moments and maybe feel the down moments most intensely, and maybe that, like on average, it s all the same.
4
SPEAKER_02
Is that possible?
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, maybe?
4
SPEAKER_00
I just, I don t know, like I remember when I was a kid, my mom would call me Pollyanna all the time.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s always like finding the good in everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
I d be like, something bad happened.
4
SPEAKER_00
You were a happy kid.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was a really happy kid, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
Even in the harsh conditions.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think the harshness comes from the bad meaning.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I had good meaning applied to it.
4
SPEAKER_02
You were a stoic.
4
SPEAKER_02
with another book I m reading next week.
4
SPEAKER_02
Tune in, Marcus Aurelius Meditations.
4
SPEAKER_02
All right, all right.
4
SPEAKER_02
Camming, 100K, so it felt good.
4
SPEAKER_02
So it s crazy though, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
You can just like take clothes off in a creative way with some gnomes and make 100,000.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, there was a lot more to it than that, but yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
What was it?
4
SPEAKER_01
What s the different process?
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s marketing.
4
SPEAKER_00
So with my free cams, I was unusual in that I decided to do outside of the website marketing.
4
SPEAKER_00
I would post on Reddit, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
This was very unusual at the time.
4
SPEAKER_00
But OnlyFans is structured such that they have almost no internal discovery whatsoever.
4
SPEAKER_00
So if you want people to come to your page, you have to go out onto external websites and advertise for yourself directly.
4
SPEAKER_00
very different model.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so this is something I had already been doing and already had practiced in, and so I think I was already quite advanced.
4
SPEAKER_00
I already had an account on Reddit that was seven years old at the time, tons of karma that means I could post in subreddits.
4
SPEAKER_00
I d already been on Twitter for years, posting actively.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I already had presences on all these other platforms that really helped with the conversion.
4
SPEAKER_02
Reddit and Twitter?
4
SPEAKER_00
Reddit, Twitter, FetLife, Instagram, TikTok.
4
SPEAKER_02
And you were still advertising creatively?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
So there s sexuality, but there s also creative sexuality.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
And ideas too.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, one of the really popular ones was I molested myself as a mime using one arm through a jacket.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so the jacket looked like it was... The jacket looked like it was alive and that one did really well.
4
SPEAKER_02
Did you brainstorm with somebody?
4
SPEAKER_02
I recently got to hang out with Mr. Beast and sit on a session of brainstorming different ideas.
4
SPEAKER_02
I just envision you with a team brainstorming.
4
SPEAKER_02
All right, how about we try the mime and the molesting thing?
4
SPEAKER_02
I don t know, it s too edgy.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wish.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think the team would have been a lot more fun.
4
SPEAKER_00
But no, it s just me.
4
SPEAKER_00
I had an apartment that looked kind of like this.
4
SPEAKER_00
You just sit alone.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re like, well, that would be a good idea.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you just collect ideas over time, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
I d seen somebody doing a version of this animated hand act when I was a kid.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it just always stuck in my head.
4
SPEAKER_00
And one day, I was like, I bet I could do that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then when I didn t try and think of ideas to do as a sex worker, I was like, why don t I just try that?
4
SPEAKER_00
And then it turned out to be really quite a viral hit.
4
SPEAKER_02
Is there stuff, like you mentioned, too edgy?
4
SPEAKER_02
Like, Mr. Beast tries to keep it PG.
4
SPEAKER_02
Do you try to keep it PG-13?
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, with the sex advertising stuff, I mean, it s sex advertising, so it s obviously not PG-13.
4
SPEAKER_02
I don t know these ratings.
4
SPEAKER_00
What is even beyond that, R?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not family-friendly.
4
SPEAKER_00
It is X. The one that I m describing to you at some point, you can see my boob.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s a boob.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s X. A boob is, I guess... I thought R. I think you could show a boob in PG-13.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, maybe X is like if you ve got some sort of rhythmic motion going on.
4
SPEAKER_02
Maybe that sound, but the rhythmic motion not.
4
SPEAKER_02
You can have one or the other, but you can t have both.
4
SPEAKER_02
You have both.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s when we hit the X. Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we definitely not fail.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, with the sex,
5
SPEAKER_01
advertising stuff, like guys like vanilla shit.
5
SPEAKER_01
Guys want basic hot girl, you can do something like kind of sexy and creative, like getting abducted by gnomes or like the self molestation, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
But those are still pretty within the normal boundaries.
5
SPEAKER_00
What do you mean guys like vanilla stuff?
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, most guys like vanilla stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
What s vanilla stuff?
5
SPEAKER_00
Like see, we ll talk about fetish.
5
SPEAKER_00
Fetishes, I think my Overton window on what is vanilla is expanding quickly after following your work, but yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
I actually have done a lot of studies on what is vanilla.
5
SPEAKER_01
I ve done a couple different surveys where I ask people how taboo is this thing, and I have a rating from least to most taboo.
5
SPEAKER_00
By the way, I don t appreciate the beauty of vanilla ice cream.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t?
5
SPEAKER_01
It is really good though.
5
SPEAKER_00
You eat vanilla ice cream?
5
SPEAKER_01
I eat vanilla ice cream, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think there s just so many more options.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s like the absence of creativity.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, if you put in like some chocolate chips or something.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they already made it more interesting to start.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so what s vanilla?
5
SPEAKER_00
And why do guys like vanilla?
5
SPEAKER_00
So hot girl doing hot girl things?
5
SPEAKER_00
What, like on dressing and then having sex?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the thing that I found was most successful were frames where the man was framed as passive and the woman as active.
5
SPEAKER_01
Or like, for example, like, oh, you know, we got assigned to the same bunk at the breeding school or something.
5
SPEAKER_01
Or like, oh, we re the last people on earth, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Or like, oh no, I desperately need somebody to cure me with this disease and I need semen.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s like in any scenario where the guy just finds himself such that the woman desperately needs him for some reason and he doesn t have to do much, that is typically one of the much more successful things.
5
SPEAKER_01
Guys like women falling into their lap.
5
SPEAKER_00
What about the power dynamic?
5
SPEAKER_01
So guys are less into power dynamics than women are, and you can do power dynamics as long as it s handed to them.
5
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, some guys are very dominant and prefer having to work, but this is the minority.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you re trying to make 100k a month and you re trying to appeal to the widest group of people, the most effective advertising, you re not going to be making the most money by being particularly submissive.
5
SPEAKER_00
So on the camming side, that s your, unlike like escorting or just personal relationships, you re trying to, you have an audience.
5
SPEAKER_00
You have like a theater full of people.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like with live camming?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, with live camming.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s like a live theater.
5
SPEAKER_00
Does that freak you out, there s just a bunch of people watching?
5
SPEAKER_01
How do you feel right now?
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know they re watching, because it s not live.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s true, it s not live.
5
SPEAKER_01
It might as well be, like they could be watching.
5
SPEAKER_00
I feel like there s just the two of us, I don t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
And there s like, sometimes I imagine there s a third person.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like God?
5
SPEAKER_00
Usually, no, no, not God, just, I usually imagine...
5
SPEAKER_00
either a guy or a girl or a couple just sitting there for some reason, like usually on the beach and usually high, or on some kind of like mushrooms, just like listening passively, just kind of looking at the sunset, that s what I imagine.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s really good.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think that s useful.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like when I write my blog posts, sometimes I do terribly, but it s the most effective when I imagine one person that I m writing to, to try to explain.
5
SPEAKER_01
And like having a high couple watching the sunset is maybe really lovely as a calibration.
5
SPEAKER_00
I have to say, it is pretty romantic.
5
SPEAKER_00
because I ve gotten a chance to meet couples that listen to podcasts together.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know why, that seems intensely romantic to me, because you re not watching TV together, you re listening to a thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I guess sometimes they watch it, but you re listening to ideas together.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
5
SPEAKER_01
It seems- It s like you re going through the same kind of thought process at the same time.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s a really beautiful way to put it.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s like, you re melding, your thinking is following the same line.
5
SPEAKER_00
Some of our podcasts do that more than movies.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think movies give you a lot more freedom to think about stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
I feel like your thoughts are aligned.
5
SPEAKER_00
And like, especially if the podcast is good, like if it s listening to like a Dan Carlin podcast about history, that you re like on a journey together.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there s an intimacy to that, anyway.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I ve learned that couples do that, you know?
5
SPEAKER_00
Hashtag relationship ghosts, go ahead.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s what you want with your future wife?
5
SPEAKER_00
With my, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
You should make an application.
5
SPEAKER_00
Application?
5
SPEAKER_01
An application for dating you.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, maybe this is more of like my strategy and less yours, but you have like a wide enough audience that might work.
5
SPEAKER_00
I, it s not, um,
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, let s just go there.
5
SPEAKER_00
So because you ve put together an application of like people to have casual sex with you, I think.
5
SPEAKER_01
And also dating.
5
SPEAKER_00
And also dating and relationship.
5
SPEAKER_00
I d love to.
5
SPEAKER_00
So what is in that application?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because like, you know,
5
SPEAKER_00
I m sure there s quite a lot of people that would like to date you or to sleep with you, but finding the person, I mean, it depends what your goals are.
5
SPEAKER_00
I guess relationship would be an open relationship for you?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like for me, I guess it s more intensely selective because it s like a monogamous relationship and a committed one.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like I m swinging for the, for like long-term.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m not like weirdly obsessed with long-term, but it s like, I would love to have one girl for the rest of my life.
5
SPEAKER_00
But finding that, I feel like applications will not get to that.
5
SPEAKER_00
I feel like there s some aspect of the magic of the serendipity of it, of meeting people in strange places and so on.
5
SPEAKER_00
I personally have noticed that like fame has not made that process easier.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I mean, like if you could, you know, if there s two rooms and one of them it s like a random population of hot women and the other one is a random population of hot women, but all of them definitely are monogamous and are looking for a long-term committed relationship, like which room would you rather go into?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, if you re looking for a mate.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, but see, I guess my preferences are more, that s a really strong point, but my preferences represent the majority, probably, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because don t most women want monogamous relationships?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
So, like, it s, I m okay with either option.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because, like, statistically speaking.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I feel like we can apply it to, like, a bunch of other things.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and I m just, this is just a problem if you have, like, high, if you have a high volume to filter through, and you, like, you don t know.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, it s a good, like, initial filter.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like you can take it from like 1,000 people to 20 people and then go on dates with them.
5
SPEAKER_00
But the filter is so anti-romantic, like what?
5
SPEAKER_01
This is true, this is not the romantic narrative that you re very prone to.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like if I feel like, how did you two meet?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, she passed the three filters I set up.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, but it s also, but also can you put into a survey the things that you re interested in?
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I definitely think about this a lot with hiring, like teams, engineers, and so on.
5
SPEAKER_00
But with engineers, you re okay losing truly special engineers because you have to filter because there s thousands of applications.
5
SPEAKER_00
It feels like
5
SPEAKER_00
It feels like I worry that you would miss the thing that actually, because so much of it is chemistry, so much of it is like the magic, you know?
5
SPEAKER_01
But the thing is, you re missing it anyway.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you re missing it.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, you can just run it, and then in addition, try some of those people.
5
SPEAKER_01
But then go on the dates that you were going to go on with anyway, regardless.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s just the thing that helps pull someone out of the crowd.
5
SPEAKER_01
I dated a guy from my survey.
5
SPEAKER_01
I d ran the survey, I assigned point values to each of the questions.
5
SPEAKER_01
I went on a date with the top couple people, and then one of them, I was like,
5
SPEAKER_01
And I m still dating him to this day, and it was awesome.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I would never, I never would have gone on a date with him without the survey.
5
SPEAKER_00
Can you, if from memory, or we can look it up, do you remember what kind of questions were on the survey?
5
SPEAKER_01
I asked a couple different categories.
5
SPEAKER_01
I asked about basic life stuff, so what kind of relationships, like monogamy versus polyamory.
5
SPEAKER_01
Do you want kids?
5
SPEAKER_01
Where do you want to live?
5
SPEAKER_01
Basic things that you need to be compatible.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then I asked sexual compatibility, various preferences.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then I had a section about personality.
5
SPEAKER_01
I try to ask questions that would do the most effective filtering.
5
SPEAKER_01
So what are ways that I can t
5
SPEAKER_01
give people what they need that maybe they really want.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t really, I m not very outdoorsy.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was just very common.
5
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people like being outdoorsy.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I asked the question, how much do you value someone else that you re dating being outdoorsy?
5
SPEAKER_01
And if they marked yes, I was like, okay, we probably, I should probably downgrade the results.
5
SPEAKER_00
But what if, man, but doesn t polyamory make that really difficult?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because can t they find somebody for the outdoorsy stuff?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they could.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, this doesn t, but if you re going to have somebody, it s nicer to have them be more compatible than less.
5
SPEAKER_00
But you were a little bit, like, in terms of sexual compatibility, you were able to, like, you re self-aware enough to know what preferences you have?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, you can- I think so.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think that one helped a lot with the escorting.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, the escorting helped a lot with knowing my preferences.
5
SPEAKER_00
But there s, like, out of the giant pool of different preferences, you have, like, a subset that s clearly defined for you?
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, dominant-submissive- Yeah, power dynamic stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
Power dynamic stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, not just sexual, but in relationship too.
5
SPEAKER_00
Was that in the survey?
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t like power dynamics in relationships.
5
SPEAKER_00
No, defining them in, making it clear in a survey, like asking a question about power dynamics in a relationship.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t think I asked about power dynamics in relationships.
5
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because I just assume most people don t.
5
SPEAKER_01
And there s a lot of things that are kind of like- Most people don t.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re putting together a survey, a systematic survey to understand compatibility.
5
SPEAKER_00
wouldn t power dynamics inside of relationships that naturally emerge often be part of the question?
5
SPEAKER_00
Or is that hard to question because it naturally emerges and you can t really?
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, the thing is, a lot of questions sort of overlap in demographic.
5
SPEAKER_01
And if you re making a survey, you wanna have the minimum possible questions that give the maximum possible filtering information.
5
SPEAKER_00
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
5
SPEAKER_00
But the purpose of that survey wasn t to do a good research study.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was to select one subject that you could take.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s part of what is good.
5
SPEAKER_01
You want to most efficiently filter out.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because one, you get more people taking the survey the fewer questions you have, which is good for finding a mate.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you have 5,000 men take the survey, it s better than 1,000 men take it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Don t you want men that would be patient enough
5
SPEAKER_01
and dedicated enough to- Yeah, but like what if you re like a high-powered man who s like on his lunch break?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s like- Like a billionaire who s too busy just flipping through.
5
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the guy that I dated was, he took the survey, he was waiting for the pizza to come out of the oven.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so it was important that it was short.
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it metaphor or literally pizza?
5
SPEAKER_01
He was literally waiting for pizza and he saw the thing, he s like, I guess I ll just fill out the survey really fast and changed our lives.
5
SPEAKER_01
So romantic.
5
SPEAKER_01
For me, this is my kind of romance.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m really into it.
5
SPEAKER_01
But you can be efficient with surveys by making sure your questions don t overlap.
5
SPEAKER_01
So for example, if somebody is very polyamorous, they re very unlikely to be interested in a traditional man works and the job and the woman stays home and raises the kids kind of relationship.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because poly people just generally don t do that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so if I m asking about polyamory, it sort of kind of already covers the thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so if I have a whole bunch of questions, I can kind of triangulate a bunch of implicit kinds of questions that I haven t directly asked about.
5
SPEAKER_01
So this is why I didn t ask directly about power dynamics, because from the rest of the questions that are in my survey, I can pretty accurately predict whether or not you re gonna be interested in power dynamics.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I m afraid, I m trying to think as you re talking, I get it.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s really interesting that you did that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Also, maybe not for the effectiveness of finding a partner, but for just exploring the actual process.
5
SPEAKER_00
of human sexuality, of like the search, this complicated optimization process we re all engaging in on the landscape of happiness that seems to be this not even a differentiable function, it s a giant nonlinear mess.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, but for me, I don t think I would be able to design that survey.
5
SPEAKER_00
I would bias it too strongly.
5
SPEAKER_00
I would probably prefer women that have read Dostoevsky or something like that.
5
SPEAKER_00
That would be a filter for me, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
But that s a horrible filter.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of amazing people that have never, they don t give a shit about reading, or they don t give a shit about reading Russian literature, or they don t give a shit about, but they re amazing and passionate and creative in some other dimension that you might completely miss.
5
SPEAKER_00
But you were like, because I wonder if there s any, basically you re saying compatibility, like hard lines that you know statistically is just going to be an issue.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, you weight this a lot more.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
But there s also like preferences.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like if you have a woman who s totally equal and she s read the thing that you like versus another woman who s also identical, but like she hasn t read the thing that you like, like you probably like very slightly prefer the one that has.
5
SPEAKER_00
But you don t know if they re identical.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
But like you can t through survey get the identical.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like you don t know.
5
SPEAKER_01
Sure, but you can kind of do a whole bunch of weights.
5
SPEAKER_01
So the person that I ended up going on a date with, he did not answer correctly to a lot of the survey questions, but he didn t have to.
5
SPEAKER_01
He was just overall, overall the weights were like, he just tended to be more in the direction.
5
SPEAKER_00
Was there a text-based fill-in survey?
5
SPEAKER_00
Sorry, paragraph?
5
SPEAKER_01
No, you ought to avoid that if you re dealing with large amounts of data.
5
SPEAKER_00
No, why not?
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, interesting, interesting.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m different.
5
SPEAKER_00
First of all, you can do keyword searches.
5
SPEAKER_00
Second of all, you can do machine learning models.
5
SPEAKER_00
First of all, you can do crude metrics, like the length of how long they ve written, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
and it could flag certain things.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s actually pretty easy to, I ve looked at, like for hiring, I ve looked at like thousands of applications really quickly.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like you can really, the human brain is really interesting, especially,
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, if you visually highlight certain information for yourself, like keywords, or again, with machine learning models like sentiment, you can highlight different parts that will catch your eye better than not.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I can go through just a huge number of applications.
5
SPEAKER_01
Are you telling me I can use, if I learn machine learning, I can process dating survey applications better?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, no, like textual.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like I can have them write things in.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is like a new way of, this is a really good incentive.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think that would, so it s a really nice aspect.
5
SPEAKER_00
of text input, like long-form text input, multiple long-form text input based on an interestingly phrased question, is you get to learn how to make a better survey.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think you would appreciate that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like you start to see how they re actually interacting with these questions.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like I ask certain questions just to see how people think.
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it better to work smart or better to work hard?
5
SPEAKER_00
Or is it ever okay to betray a close friend?
5
SPEAKER_00
I ll ask questions like this that don t really have a right answer, but I just wanna see how they think.
5
SPEAKER_00
Or is truth more important than loyalty?
5
SPEAKER_00
and I get their long form answer.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you get to see their reasoning process.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it reveals so much, not just about the person, but about the kind of questions I should be asking that have nothing to do with truth or loyalty, like how to get a good engineer with very specific questions.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I think it s really useful to get text input.
5
SPEAKER_01
I have done text input usually with beta surveys.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I usually do beta surveys before I do the real survey.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like I do like a shorter version, or it depends on what I m doing, but like a different version of the survey that I have people take before I release.
5
SPEAKER_01
I use the information from the initial survey to inform the questions that I ask in the real survey.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I haven t actually recently, but I used to do a lot of like the text-based questions to see for similar, although I don t think I relied on it quite as heavily.
5
SPEAKER_01
And if I introduced machine learning, I think it d be a lot more efficient.
5
SPEAKER_00
I love that you re also doing, like, you re writing scripts and stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, you re doing some, like, statistical analysis.
5
SPEAKER_00
Are you using Python also?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
I had to learn Python for this just a couple months ago.
5
SPEAKER_00
Which is the best way to learn Python.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the best reason to learn machine learning is to solve actual, like,
5
SPEAKER_00
problems with it.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I can t be motivated.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m just not motivated to learn something unless there s an actual curiosity I have, and I have to learn it and to solve it.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was trying to avoid learning coding for so long, but eventually it was my data set became too large.
5
SPEAKER_01
I couldn t work with it with anything else.
5
SPEAKER_01
So, Python it is.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know what s also an interesting data set that you re probably interested in a little bit is like Twitter itself, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if you ve, I ve played with the Twitter API a lot.
5
SPEAKER_01
Can you just get the, download the, I m just, I m stuttering now because the- Download the Twitter?
5
SPEAKER_00
Can you download Twitter?
5
SPEAKER_00
No, there s a lot of Twitter.
5
SPEAKER_00
So Twitter s a social network with a bunch of people.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re interacting a lot.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s like, I don t know, the number s insane, the number of interactions, but there s different ways to interact, to get data from Twitter.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s streams, you can look at, depends what you re interested in.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can do results for searches, you can look at individual tweets and get entire, which to me is super interesting, the entire tree of different conversations, the replies, which might be very interesting for you because like,
5
SPEAKER_00
It s not, it s much harder to ask rigorous questions, which you do.
6
SPEAKER_00
do with your polls, but you could see like how divisive certain things are.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like a sentiment.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like calibrators to figure out like exactly what questions you should be asking.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
And also highlight interesting anecdotal things where like two people freak out at each other and just argue like a thread that goes on for like a thousand messages that you might never be even aware is happening.
6
SPEAKER_00
Cause you re like, cause Twitter doesn t like surface that like it would be Twitter doesn t make it easy for you to like visualize what the hell s going on even with your own.
6
SPEAKER_00
social network, like if you post something that s controversial that gets a large amount of attention, you can t clearly visualize everything that s going on.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like it s very, it s a blurry, amorphous, like you re just kind of looking through the fog at different replies and it kind of, it s, yeah, so to be able to- They have like graphs of networks?
6
SPEAKER_00
They have the data for the graphs, yeah, so you can reconstruct it yourself.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then you have different levels of access in terms of how many queries you can do.
6
SPEAKER_01
That is really cool.
6
SPEAKER_00
And now, because there s like Elon, there s a lot of sort of
6
SPEAKER_00
revolutionary stuff happening at Twitter, I think you could literally sort of push for innovation there.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like there s aggressive innovation happening.
6
SPEAKER_00
So in terms of requesting stuff for the API, you could do all that kind of stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think Twitter is just a fascinating platform for the, as cliche as it sounds, for studying.
6
SPEAKER_00
For me, it s interesting what makes for a healthy conversation.
6
SPEAKER_00
That term has been used, but it s interesting how conversation, to me, it s fascinating how conversations break down,
6
SPEAKER_00
and not like how the virality of drama or conflict or disagreement, how that evolves when a large number of people are involved, when a large number of misinterpretation of statements is involved in text-based with some anonymity thrown in.
6
SPEAKER_00
I feel like there s a lot of study that can be done there.
6
SPEAKER_01
I mean, Twitter s probably not great at it, right, as it stands.
6
SPEAKER_00
No.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because it s like necessarily short, you can quote treat things out of context, et cetera.
6
SPEAKER_00
But we should understand that, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
At a large scale, you should be able to study that kind of thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, what was your casual sex survey?
6
SPEAKER_01
I actually haven t looked at it in a while.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think I just ask people about a whole bunch of fetishes, because you don t want to be obvious about yours, because then people are going to hijack it to try to tell you that they like what you like.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you want to be obscure.
6
SPEAKER_01
So how do you design a survey where you re testing for a thing, but you re still obscure about the thing you re trying to ask about?
6
SPEAKER_00
So you still see it as a survey?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like an application.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because I think you tweeted saying like, I m thinking of just like showing up to San Francisco and saying,
6
SPEAKER_00
Is anybody open for casual sex?
6
SPEAKER_00
Something like this?
6
SPEAKER_00
Am I misremembering?
6
SPEAKER_01
Maybe escorting, I m not sure.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, for escorting, sorry, sorry, sorry.
6
SPEAKER_01
Which is similar.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like I kind of use escorting as the way to have casual sex now.
6
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so let s talk about escorting.
6
SPEAKER_00
So you wrote about escorting in your blog post, escorting was good for me.
6
SPEAKER_00
How did you get into escorting?
6
SPEAKER_01
I was working at like a, I quit camming cause I was burned out and I was like trying to work at a friend s startup.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it was hard for me.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t, it s difficult for me to work on projects that are not my projects.
6
SPEAKER_01
Uh, and so I was like, Hey, fuck it.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like I want to go back to sex work.
6
SPEAKER_01
I want to make more money, but I don t want to cam anymore cause I m burned out.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I m like, well, let s try.
6
SPEAKER_01
I had a friend who was an escort.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m like, let s try that.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so we had a call.
6
SPEAKER_01
She like outlined the basics for me.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then I put up some ads and then started working.
6
SPEAKER_00
What s the basics of escorting?
6
SPEAKER_00
How does that work?
6
SPEAKER_01
If you want to get started escorting, so just in case you have a career change.
6
SPEAKER_01
I would like to.
6
SPEAKER_01
But you re gonna want to get some nice photos, so you probably have those.
6
SPEAKER_00
First of all, you assumed I haven t done it before.
6
SPEAKER_00
How rude.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, have you?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, you know, recreation I would like to do professionally, I suppose.
6
SPEAKER_00
So if I wanted to do it, if I wanted to do it, if I really wanted to step up my game, how would I do it?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, you got the whole tutorial.
6
SPEAKER_01
Recreational escorting is just, okay, okay.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, I m meaning like,
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, like selling products on Etsy versus doing a startup, you know?
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, I mean, escorting is kind of all just selling products on Etsy.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, but selling a lot of products on Etsy.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like high volume.
6
SPEAKER_01
You ve like dabbled.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like, yeah, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Small handcrafted artisan.
6
SPEAKER_00
Small handcrafted dolls, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Escorting.
6
SPEAKER_00
Versus mass manufacturer.
6
SPEAKER_01
Okay, if you want to mass manufacture your escrow.
6
SPEAKER_00
I just feel like I haven t been getting, you know, I ve been undervaluing my services and I would like to really step up.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think you could really just like grease some marketing gears and be tricky.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, it s just some of this is marketing.
6
SPEAKER_00
So like how, I guess I want to like know, is it similar to camming in that way?
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, is it, you re basically advertising yourself and you re, the marketing, all the creativity that you mentioned before, all of that.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I found escrowing to be pretty easy because escrowing is not highly competitive.
6
SPEAKER_01
For example, camming is highly competitive because the thing that I outlined before, the amount of money that you make determines your ranking.
6
SPEAKER_01
And you can also go and see other girls.
6
SPEAKER_01
You can see what they re doing.
6
SPEAKER_01
So if a girl figures out an incredible strategy for making money, it s like two seconds before that strategy proliferates into everybody else.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it s very fast-paced and really tough.
6
SPEAKER_01
With escrowing, you don t get to see what other girls are doing.
6
SPEAKER_01
You can look at their websites, but you don t know what they re doing with clients at all.
6
SPEAKER_01
You can look at their rates, but you don t know what their volume is.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you don t actually know what is successful and what isn t very much.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I think there s much less evolution of marketing through this process.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so I came in with my aggressive marketing skills from being a cam girl.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think that really helped.
6
SPEAKER_01
I did very well as an escort.
6
SPEAKER_01
I just came in and made a fantastic website.
6
SPEAKER_01
I knew how to do the ads right.
6
SPEAKER_00
What was the finding people?
6
SPEAKER_00
I guess it s also like finding the right kind of customer or the right kind of client.
6
SPEAKER_01
I got like in a lot of trouble for this recently in the sex worker sphere, because I said that if you raise prices, you re more likely to encounter clients that aren t going to abuse you.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like it s safer.
6
SPEAKER_01
They did not, they said that I was being classist, you know, implying that poor people are more violent.
6
SPEAKER_01
But to be fair, if you re a guy and you want to be violent towards a woman, you re probably not going to be paying her a lot of money.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re the kind of person likely who s going to haggle a lot because you don t respect her.
6
SPEAKER_01
But anyway, that aside, it s a little pet peeve for me.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I started charging $800 an hour and then pretty rapidly raised it to $1,200 and then a while after that raised it to $1,400.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, the interesting thing you mentioned, in my extensive research, you used to do 1,200 to 1,400 an hour, and then you said that you re thinking of jumping back in at a rate of 2,400 the first hour.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
and I think 900 each successive hour.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s interesting.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s like, I mean, to me, that s really interesting.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like why?
6
SPEAKER_00
It s like a lot in the first hour, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it s just because it depends on how you want to incentivize the amount of hours.
6
SPEAKER_01
So if you have to pay a lot for the first hour, but not very much for the successive, you re more likely to buy a longer period of time.
6
SPEAKER_01
And usually I find that clients who buy a longer period of time are nicer to you.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t have a great theory for why that is, but they re more likely to take you to dinner and get to know you first, and I just enjoy that a lot more.
6
SPEAKER_01
I enjoy knowing who I m gonna have sex with.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like a date, you know?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so it incentivized the long-form date dynamic versus not.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s really interesting.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s really interesting.
6
SPEAKER_00
How does money...
6
SPEAKER_00
change the dynamic, just basic human dynamic of interacting for free versus for money.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think about that a lot, just talking to rich people.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s like, you usually get paid for your time, and you re doing this for free.
6
SPEAKER_00
What s the difference?
6
SPEAKER_00
Is there a difference, really, or no?
6
SPEAKER_01
Bit, yeah, so I ve actually, it depends a lot.
6
SPEAKER_01
So when I was doing it full-time, it was my only source of income, it changed quite a lot because I was really incentivized to have repeat customers.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I m like, okay, if I m, my primary interaction with you is to have you hire me again.
6
SPEAKER_01
I ll do whatever that takes to make that happen.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so if I have to laugh at jokes that I don t find funny or be more adoring of your penis than I actually genuinely feel, that s what I m going to express.
6
SPEAKER_01
And obviously it s to some degree titrated.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s unpleasant to force yourself to like something that you don t.
6
SPEAKER_01
I would actually not see clients again that I didn t want to.
6
SPEAKER_01
But to some degree, there was a sort of self-suppression going on, which I think is the way it works in any sort of customer service job.
6
SPEAKER_01
You want the customer to leave happy, so you just make sure that you are happy the whole time and you re like, ah, really enjoying the other person.
6
SPEAKER_01
Recently, when I ve kind of dabbled in it since
6
SPEAKER_01
baking money through other means, where I don t need the money.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s more like a fun side thing that, like I said, it s fulfilling the role of casual sex for me.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I don t have to do it.
6
SPEAKER_01
This is not my primary job.
6
SPEAKER_01
I just want sort of a good excuse to have sex with somebody, and the money is a great filter for that.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so in that case- That s interesting.
6
SPEAKER_00
So the money is, yeah, okay.
6
SPEAKER_00
The money is basically a filter for somebody who s taking this interaction seriously.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
It also, so there s an interesting psychological thing where I have difficulty having casual sex with somebody because some part of my brain, which I assume is quite female, is doing some evaluation of status and whether or not this is going to damage my reputation by having sex with them.
6
SPEAKER_01
So if you found out that I went and had random sex with a homeless man, you might be like, wow, that says something about Ayla.
6
SPEAKER_01
Maybe she s trashy or she just has no standards for who she s going to fuck.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so some part of me is continually anxious.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m like, does this mean I have no standards if I decide to have casual sex with you?
6
SPEAKER_01
What are people going to think?
6
SPEAKER_01
And so if you introduce money, it takes away that anxiety.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t have to worry about it because it s like, oh, of course Ayla would have sex with that person.
6
SPEAKER_01
They paid her.
6
SPEAKER_01
This is not an indication of the kind of mate that she can get.
6
SPEAKER_01
This is just an indication of a business transaction.
6
SPEAKER_01
And this allows me to enjoy casual sex so much more when somebody pays me for it, to the degree that I almost view it as a kink.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so it s like, so I m using it sort of to replace casual sex now.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like occasionally, I m like, I ll just pay, you know, like it s paying me a little bit to erase the anxiety and I ll like have a fun, fun time.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, can t you see like dinner like that or something like that if the person pays for dinner or like, so like it s all just, if any money s involved, if it s a kink, then you could just like use it and you, buys a coffee at a Starbucks.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s like, all right.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right, but it has to be plausible.
6
SPEAKER_01
You have to trick my brain into having it actually be incentivizing for me.
6
SPEAKER_00
Two coffees?
6
SPEAKER_00
A cappuccino or something?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the homeless man bought me a coffee and then I sucked his dick.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s not cool.
6
SPEAKER_01
No shade to homeless men, by the way.
6
SPEAKER_01
I ve been friends with a lot of them.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m just using some sort of stereotype of right now.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it has to be plausible where you can trick your mind.
6
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so that s different.
6
SPEAKER_01
So now, in this sort of frame, I am still, I m accepting money, but still much more expressive of my actual preferences.
6
SPEAKER_01
So before, when I would start escorting full-time, I was suppressive, and now I m like, you know what, fuck it, I m doing this for me, so we re going to make sure that I have a good time.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so I m much more demanding.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then you re having more fun, because you re not pretending.
6
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like laughing at a joke or something like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
That sounds terrible.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sounds like- I mean, it s- But it s also social.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I guess I would,
6
SPEAKER_00
Would I do that?
6
SPEAKER_00
Like when you first meet people, like strangers and so on, there s some aspect of like niceties, but I don t know, intimacy, like real intimacy requires like getting past the niceties.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like laughing at somebody s joke when it s not funny feels like anti-intimacy.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but I laugh at so many jokes automatically.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting, because I don t mean to, I m not trying to be fake, but if I m in a group of people and somebody makes a joke and everybody laughs, I laugh even before I m checking within myself, do I genuinely enjoy this joke?
6
SPEAKER_01
So it s like, I don t know, the degree that I am sort of just a result of social programming in all cases, that when I m with a client, back when I was doing it full-time, it doesn t feel significantly different.
6
SPEAKER_01
It just felt like a different version of myself.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s true.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, to that degree.
6
SPEAKER_00
To the degree you don t feel like you re going against your nature.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it was very rare that I actually felt like I was going against my nature.
6
SPEAKER_00
What about the market of how much to charge?
6
SPEAKER_00
Say 2,400, like how transparent is that market?
6
SPEAKER_00
Is there like a market?
6
SPEAKER_01
Like how much can you sell when you re charging that much?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, like what are the competitors?
6
SPEAKER_00
Like if this, like what, are you distinctly, because you said it s, a lot of it is a bit more shrouded in mystery.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like it s more confidential.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like do you have some transparency to the market, what the competitors are?
6
SPEAKER_01
I did a survey of Escort.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s only like 130.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m trying to remember.
6
SPEAKER_01
And the median was around like $400, $300, I think, an hour.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
6
SPEAKER_01
Something like that, with a very long tail at the top end.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m trying to remember what the, I also asked the amount where I could calculate the amount they made per month.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think it was like $6,000 or $7,000 a month.
6
SPEAKER_01
I need to double check that one, but.
6
SPEAKER_00
I charged 50 bucks an hour.
6
SPEAKER_01
You charged 50 bucks an hour?
6
SPEAKER_01
You should raise your rates.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
I give a really shitty hand job.
6
SPEAKER_00
All right.
6
SPEAKER_01
But usually the rates are around, like if you want a median escort in a big city, it s usually $4,600.
6
SPEAKER_01
In a big city.
6
SPEAKER_00
But like smaller cities, you charge, the rates go lower.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s so fascinating.
6
SPEAKER_00
What s like the most you ve ever seen somebody charge?
6
SPEAKER_01
I think I am.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re like the... But at this point it s because I m post work.
6
SPEAKER_01
I can just put an insane number.
6
SPEAKER_00
Does the fact that you re sort of
6
SPEAKER_00
like a sexuality expert, like a researcher and so on, like your mind is fascinating as well, and you re a bit of a celebrity, does that play into it?
6
SPEAKER_00
Or do you feel the celebrity now, like when you re with people?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, absolutely.
6
SPEAKER_01
Usually if people are interested in hanging out with me, it s because of that.
6
SPEAKER_01
But that s different.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think besides the fun part, this is a kink as opposed to this is a job.
6
SPEAKER_01
With this is a job, usually the high end is closer to 2,000 an hour, the very high end.
6
SPEAKER_00
Have clients ever fallen in love with you?
6
SPEAKER_01
I think so, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think it happens to me much less than most other people, due to the thing that I think we were talking about before.
6
SPEAKER_00
Which is what?
6
SPEAKER_01
Where you give off vibes, maybe subconscious vibes.
6
SPEAKER_00
But they have fallen in love, but not as often?
6
SPEAKER_01
I think something about my signaling indicates that people should not fall in love with me, because I don t think it happens very much.
6
SPEAKER_01
It happens a lot with other women that I know.
6
SPEAKER_01
But I have occasionally had...
6
SPEAKER_01
The thing is, it s hard for me, because I try to be as vulnerable as I can in a connection with a client.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I do really like some of them.
6
SPEAKER_01
I still remember some of them very fondly, and I hope they re doing well.
6
SPEAKER_01
And some of them are really profound.
6
SPEAKER_01
One guy saw me because he found out he was dying of cancer, and he was like, I don t wanna die without seeing someone.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m like, Jesus Christ, that s such a, I don t know, I m very touched by many of the people that I saw.
6
SPEAKER_00
So there s deep intimacy there.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I know that it s brief and I know that it s kind of weird, but there s a real glimpse into somebody s soul when you get to be intimate.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think this is especially true for men because a lot of times men don t have a way to be really vulnerable in front of anybody.
6
SPEAKER_01
But if you re in bed with a woman that you find to be attractive, you can sort of let loose a little bit more.
6
SPEAKER_00
So they can become vulnerable in general quickly.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and I really like that.
6
SPEAKER_01
I like being as vulnerable as I can to match it.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m not forcing myself or anything, but I just feel into it and notice how beautiful the person was and feel grateful for being able to be in this intimate experience with them.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that was so wonderful.
6
SPEAKER_00
Does it ever hurt to say goodbye?
6
SPEAKER_01
No, but I think that s unique to me because I like being alone a lot.
6
SPEAKER_01
Even with my friends who I like dearly, I m like happy not seeing them.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because I don t like making facial expressions very much.
6
SPEAKER_01
But I do miss some of my clients.
6
SPEAKER_00
Wait, sorry.
6
SPEAKER_00
What does making facial expression have to do with saying goodbye?
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, if you are not with somebody in person, you don t have to make facial expressions anymore.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you can just think about them.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you can just sit there totally blank face and then have all of the emotions that you want.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you re telling me.
6
SPEAKER_01
Do you have this thing too?
6
SPEAKER_00
It s not a thing, but like you re on camera.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
So like I feel feelings, but people usually want you, like social interaction is such that like you probably want me to show feelings on my face.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like that, good job.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there you go.
6
SPEAKER_00
So like I definitely, that could be just an introvert thing where you like have a vibrant inner world that you forget to show to the rest of the world.
6
SPEAKER_00
And also I m scared of social interaction and I just have a lot of anxiety about interacting with the external world, so yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m kind of surprised to hear that because
8
SPEAKER_00
of people.
8
SPEAKER_02
All right, but does that really tell the story of what you ve felt over the past year?
8
SPEAKER_00
That s true, but then I could just tell you.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so by when you re saying the kinds of questions that you like, the ones that don t have an answer, by not an answer, you mean like not an answer where you can know that you re done telling it, is that?
8
SPEAKER_02
That you can escape having to think by actually answering it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I see.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, the struggle.
8
SPEAKER_02
is the place where we discover something, not the destination.
8
SPEAKER_02
Contenture.
8
SPEAKER_00
Contenture.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay, it s working, it s working.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so what is the role of the love sandwich in the human condition?
8
SPEAKER_01
Okay, that s fine.
8
SPEAKER_01
I take that question, but it s a stupid question.
8
SPEAKER_00
You don t have to.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m ready to chat.
8
SPEAKER_01
Do you like love?
8
SPEAKER_01
Do you personally love love?
8
SPEAKER_00
Do I like love?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, I think, there s a part of me that feels like I have unconditional love for all things.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like when you re talking about the glass being beautiful, I felt that.
8
SPEAKER_00
that felt like it rang something, that I have a similar resonance in me for that.
8
SPEAKER_02
If I were to circle right now, I feel like you re avoiding the love question, the love sandwich question.
8
SPEAKER_02
What s your own personal feeling towards loving another human being versus having sex with another human being?
8
SPEAKER_00
Love is like one of the concepts that dissolved for me a long time ago, so I have difficulty directly answering it.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I have the experience.
8
SPEAKER_00
When you described the love sandwich, I feel like I have had that experience.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have it currently for some people also.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like I m dating people and I have that.
8
SPEAKER_02
So people who you date, you would describe sharing a love sandwich with them.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
So how does, I mean, that s great to hear.
8
SPEAKER_02
So you re not, are you afraid of love?
8
SPEAKER_00
No, not at all.
8
SPEAKER_02
So can you describe to me polyamory?
8
SPEAKER_02
What is it?
8
SPEAKER_02
What does it mean?
8
SPEAKER_02
Cause there s like different terms.
8
SPEAKER_02
You have a nice blog post about it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have a personal definition of it, which I readily admit is not shared by a lot of people.
8
SPEAKER_00
But to me, the definition of polyamory is simply not forbidding your partner from pursuing intimacy with others.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean that you have to pursue it personally.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like two people could be married and only have had sex with each other for 20 years.
8
SPEAKER_00
And as long as they re like, you know what, if you ever, you want to go have sex with somebody else, you re welcome to do that.
8
SPEAKER_02
Well, the interesting thing you said is that doesn t mean they have to do it.
8
SPEAKER_02
They just have the freedom to do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s the freedom that matters to me.
8
SPEAKER_02
Which is, I mean, it s called the polyamory post.
8
SPEAKER_02
You have so many good blog posts.
8
SPEAKER_02
People should just go look at your, read your writings.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s really, really strong and often backed by data, but also just a deeply honest look at yourself and your understanding of the world.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s nice.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s refreshing to be, like with a lot of stuff I disagree with, but I feel like if I disagree with it, you ll be very open to arguing it and kind of thinking through it.
8
SPEAKER_02
There s just the honesty that radiates from the whole thing.
8
SPEAKER_02
Anyway, so yeah, I mean, it would be interesting to kind of explore what polyamory, like how it works.
8
SPEAKER_02
What are the different versions?
8
SPEAKER_02
What does that freedom look like?
8
SPEAKER_02
What does that freedom feel like to be able to go see other people?
8
SPEAKER_00
It depends on you.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, do you wanna go see other people?
8
SPEAKER_00
Maybe you do, maybe you don t.
8
SPEAKER_00
So usually for me, I tend to be pretty happy with like one or a few people.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then occasionally I like some novelty.
8
SPEAKER_00
So usually I ll go like, I host orgy sometimes.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I ll host an orgy and then I ll go have sex with people at the orgy and then that ll be good for the novelty for a while.
8
SPEAKER_02
Can I ask you about orgies?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
So how many people are at an orgy?
8
SPEAKER_02
What s like a standard, we re having a Sunday picnic and it s an orgy.
8
SPEAKER_02
What s like a number of people at an orgy?
8
SPEAKER_00
I ve only recently started hosting orgies, but I have been to a lot of orgies.
8
SPEAKER_00
I would say like the median is maybe 15 people.
8
SPEAKER_02
I like how you say median versus mean.
8
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
Median is 15 people.
8
SPEAKER_02
What s the gender distribution usually?
8
SPEAKER_00
Usually about even.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s like ideal if you can get more women than men in most of them.
8
SPEAKER_00
I ve recently been hosting free use orgies or orgies where consent is assumed by default when you enter.
8
SPEAKER_00
And of course you can revoke it anytime where go over a whole bunch of rules to make sure it s very safe.
8
SPEAKER_00
You like have wristbands.
8
SPEAKER_00
So nobody s actually doing anything they don t want to.
8
SPEAKER_00
And in those ones, you have to have more men than women.
8
SPEAKER_02
I thought free use was like,
8
SPEAKER_02
consensual, like at any time, but it s at any time within the constraints of this building or something like that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so at the orgies, it s like you, by entering, if you wear a wristband, then you are by default opting into consent.
8
SPEAKER_00
So people don t have to do a thing where they negotiate with you and be like, is this okay?
8
SPEAKER_00
It s just the default is you just go for it.
8
SPEAKER_00
And if they want you to stop, they say the safe word, like red, don t, and then you have to stop.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we do exercise in the beginning, people saying red to make sure that everybody knows exactly what the rules are.
8
SPEAKER_02
What s your favorite safe word?
8
SPEAKER_00
Red.
8
SPEAKER_00
When I first started doing weird kinky shit, I was like, oh, let s make a safe word.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we picked the word foliage.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was like, that s goofy, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
But then eventually came a time where I did actually, in fact, want to say the safe word, and I couldn t.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was in agony.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was crying.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m like, I can t make myself say this stupid word right now.
8
SPEAKER_02
Foliage.
8
SPEAKER_00
So after that, I was like, red.
8
SPEAKER_00
Doesn t matter.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t care.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s not funny.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re just going with very simple red.
8
SPEAKER_00
Very practical.
8
SPEAKER_02
How does an orgy compare sexually to a one-on-one sexual experience?
8
SPEAKER_02
Is it the same ballpark or is it fundamentally different?
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, the experience of both orgies and one-on-one sex can be like really high variety.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s a high variety.
8
SPEAKER_00
But you kind of, it s a little bit like you re having sex with someone, but you re surrounded by really realistic VR porn of other people having sex.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay, cool.
8
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes it s like threesomes also, like maybe there s another person involved, but it s hard to like have a whole bunch of people in one cluster, because usually there s kind of different little clusters of people having their experience.
8
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
8
SPEAKER_00
I once was part of a 10-woman orgy,
8
SPEAKER_00
It was a total lesbian thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that felt like a writhing cluster.
8
SPEAKER_00
It was very nice.
8
SPEAKER_00
But typically you kind of separate out with like very small pods of people doing stuff.
8
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
So back to polyamory.
8
SPEAKER_02
So what s a good, what does it take to manage?
8
SPEAKER_02
Do you have a main partner if you re being polyamorous and you re dating multiple people?
8
SPEAKER_02
Is there usually a main one for you personally?
8
SPEAKER_00
For me personally, kind of, yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like right now I kind of, two that aren t,
8
SPEAKER_00
I see roughly around, for me, it s kind of just descriptive.
8
SPEAKER_00
If I just happen to be seeing you a lot more and I confide in you more, then you re descriptively my primary partner.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I don t usually have rules to protect that.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m down with rules to protect it if you re trying to build something.
8
SPEAKER_00
If I buy a house together, I d be like, okay, we need to, whatever our relationship is, we have to do the thing where we re both paying the rent for the house or the mortgage or whatever.
8
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people do have primaries, though.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s very common to have prescriptive, like I m gonna get married to you and you re not allowed to have anal sex with anybody else, that sort of thing.
8
SPEAKER_02
What about the transparency and the communication they have to do?
8
SPEAKER_02
Do you usually try to be super honest about it?
8
SPEAKER_00
Extremely, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I ve learned over time that even if it seems like a very small thing, you talk about the small thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because often I would just sort of have a small twitch in myself, like, I don t know if I like that.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I d be like, okay, this is really minor, it s probably nothing, and if I talk about it, it s gonna make it into a thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I just don t wanna make it into a thing, you know?
8
SPEAKER_00
And I ve come to realize that it s worth making it into a thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because I can t predict at the time if the small feeling I have is going to grow.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then when I grow it, now it s much more difficult to deal with.
8
SPEAKER_00
So now it s like any little bit of jealousy I have, I immediately communicate it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m like, ah, I m a little jealous of you right now.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t hold that in at all.
8
SPEAKER_00
I used to be kind of like, back when I first started being poly, I used to try to pretend that I was not a jealous person.
8
SPEAKER_00
backfired quite a lot.
8
SPEAKER_02
That s really interesting.
8
SPEAKER_02
So you do still feel jealousy?
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, definitely.
8
SPEAKER_02
And it s also interesting that you kind of recommend when there s a little bit of jealousy to bring that to the surface.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, just excessively communicate, even if it feels stupid.
8
SPEAKER_00
I feel like a cliche, I feel like a stupid therapist training video.
8
SPEAKER_00
I just feel ridiculous sometimes when I m saying the things, but I ve learned over time it s just important to just say the things.
8
SPEAKER_02
Because the traditional view of jealousy is exactly like you said, if you bring it up to the surface, it s going to sound like you re overreacting to everything.
8
SPEAKER_02
But you re saying like, still do it.
8
SPEAKER_02
Because you re basically, your brain blows stuff out of proportion.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and it s good to be going through it with a partner.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have a partner right now who s dating this other girl, and he really likes her, and he went traveling with her and stuff, and I was like, I feel jealous about it.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I have to tell him that, and that way he can be with me in it.
8
SPEAKER_00
He holds me when I m feeling jealous.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it s like a bonding experience, you know?
8
SPEAKER_00
But it s important for me that he s able to handle it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I try not to date people who really freak out when I have negative emotions, because I want to be able to express that I m upset by something they re doing without it being taken as a demand that they change their behavior.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_02
So he has to be able to skillfully handle that interaction.
8
SPEAKER_00
He has to be like, cool, all right, you re jealous.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m not going to freak out about it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m not going to change my behavior.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m just going to be with you in that.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re going to sit in it together.
8
SPEAKER_02
I mean, is some of that just insecurity that you should also just comfort, like basically alleviate your insecurity, bring you back to a rational, objective evaluation, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
My relationships, I love it when people do not reassure me.
8
SPEAKER_00
I like not being comforted quite a lot.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so usually the people I date don t.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m very gravitating.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s one of the things people do to make me fall in love with them is if I say something really terrible and they re just like, do not give me any comfort whatsoever.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s where my heart gets captured.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I typically am in relationships where I m like, man, I m so jealous, and they just do not reassure me at all.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that s good, because it doesn t give me an out.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have to deal with it myself.
8
SPEAKER_00
Maybe it is true that the other woman is better than me.
8
SPEAKER_00
Maybe that is an actual possible reality, because I don t want to be dealing with my life in a way where I m pretending I m only okay when that reality is not true.
8
SPEAKER_02
Would you like them to say that, that the other woman is better than you?
8
SPEAKER_02
If they feel that?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, they should say it according to themselves, like, oh, I prefer, like, I have a better time with her than I have with you, then I would wanna know that, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
And even though that might be painful to hear?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
8
SPEAKER_02
That which can be destroyed by the truth, what is that, that your ego or something like that?
8
SPEAKER_02
So your ego just generally grows and you like the destruction of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s like really active.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s a process of truth.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s not like a fun experience.
8
SPEAKER_00
I ve had guys be like, well, you re not as pretty as I d like.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m just like, oh!
8
SPEAKER_00
Stabbed to the heart.
8
SPEAKER_02
But then also they give me your number after.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
Oh man, that s kind of beautiful.
8
SPEAKER_02
What do you think of monogamous relationships, like philosophically?
8
SPEAKER_02
Can you maybe steel man or make the case for monogamous relationships?
8
SPEAKER_02
Can you understand the pros and cons of monogamous relationships, I guess?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, it depends on how you defend, if you re like, hey, you can do whatever you want, but you and I are gonna spend the rest, like we just, you re 80 years old and like, oh, we spent 60 years in a marriage together, we ve never had sex with anybody else, I think that s like, awesome, if that s what you want, that s great.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have like a little bit more problems with people doing that while also forcing their partner not to misbehave if they want to.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like if you re like, oh, we only made it this far in a monogamous relationship because I forced my partner not to pursue an intimacy that she wanted to.
8
SPEAKER_00
Then I feel like a little more like, ah, I don t know if that s great.
8
SPEAKER_02
How do you know if it s a real want for an intimacy?
8
SPEAKER_02
Like checking out an attractive person while being inside a monogamous relationship.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, how do you score that?
8
SPEAKER_02
Is that bad that the person cannot pursue those feelings?
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it depends if they want to.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like I often find people attractive I don t want to pursue.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m also okay with people entering into agreements.
8
SPEAKER_00
If you and I want to agree, I m only going to enter this because I m going to be so hurt if you pursue somebody else.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I m not going to pursue anybody else.
8
SPEAKER_00
That seems fine to me.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I also extend that.
8
SPEAKER_00
If somebody s like, I don t want you to have any friends, I m going to feel really insecure of you.
8
SPEAKER_00
And like, okay, if you want to enter that agreement, I feel the same way.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think you should have the right to do it if this is what you want.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I also kind of, I feel like a little weird about restricting your partner from doing things, you know?
8
SPEAKER_02
Oh, but I guess if you re honest about it and you just put it on the table,
8
SPEAKER_02
I don t want you to have any friends.
8
SPEAKER_02
I want you to sit in a box.
8
SPEAKER_02
I guess if you re like really on the, but then there s like, there s a power dynamic that like, you can be quite influential in a relationship and convincing your partner.
8
SPEAKER_02
And it sure sounds like you re honestly agreeing to a thing, but you re not really agreeing.
8
SPEAKER_02
That s the, I mean, part of that is the beauty of relationships, right?
8
SPEAKER_02
It s messy, it can be messy.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s hard to know what you really want, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
I think that s mainly my complaint with monogamy.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m down with conscious monogamy.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I think so many relationships are monogamous by default.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s not actually right for them, but they just get into it because culture just doesn t give them another option.
8
SPEAKER_02
And they don t even ask themselves the question, is this right for me?
8
SPEAKER_00
Which, I m a weird-ass person who thinks a lot of weird shit, but I didn t even think about polyamorous adoption before I had heard that it existed.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I was only when I first met my first polyamorous couple, and I was like, oh, that s what I am.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s clearly the thing that I am.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s funny, because to me, monogamy, it doesn t make sense for it to be a default.
8
SPEAKER_02
To me, monogamy goes against human nature.
8
SPEAKER_02
In some sense, romance is a fuck you to the way the world works.
8
SPEAKER_00
Really?
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, like it s a, like Romeo and Juliet romance, like traditional description of what romance looks like versus like, sure, there s like a million variations of that.
8
SPEAKER_02
But in my head, like this partnership that s for a long time together is a kind of, you know, like, I don t know, like true romance.
8
SPEAKER_02
You know that movie?
8
SPEAKER_02
It s a really fucking good movie.
8
SPEAKER_01
I haven t seen it, no.
8
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
There s just like, you re together,
8
SPEAKER_02
against the world.
8
SPEAKER_02
That s the, I mean, that s what close friendship feels like.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s like ride or die.
8
SPEAKER_02
Like that.
8
SPEAKER_02
I guess it doesn t, it can be, it can span across multiple, you can have multiple partners in that way.
8
SPEAKER_02
But I just don t see monogamy as like, definitely not a default.
8
SPEAKER_02
I would actually think, honestly, would probably see polyamory as a more natural default.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by default.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like most of human history has been sort of a weird mix.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like you get polygamy and monogamy are kind of the main arrangements.
8
SPEAKER_02
But I mean, just like human nature.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, people are attracted to other people and they wanna, especially in longer term relationships.
8
SPEAKER_00
In my relationship survey, I tracked the amount of cheating over time in a relationship.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like how long have you been in this relationship and have you cheated?
8
SPEAKER_01
What s the results of that?
8
SPEAKER_00
Men cheat a lot.
8
SPEAKER_00
Women too, but men cheat about 30% more than women do.
8
SPEAKER_00
I also asked men and women to predict if they think their partner has cheated.
8
SPEAKER_00
And people s predictions were about the same.
8
SPEAKER_00
So people roughly predicted that their male or female spouse hadn t cheated about the same rate, but men cheated much more than women.
8
SPEAKER_02
So who was more correct in their prediction though?
8
SPEAKER_00
So men were more correct in their prediction predicting women, and women were more off.
8
SPEAKER_00
Women thought men cheated much less than they actually did.
8
SPEAKER_00
And, but both of them were off, but like the male gap was significantly more.
8
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, I mean, you re right.
8
SPEAKER_00
When you say monogamy is not default, like I think you re like really getting at something.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like human beings are just, especially in long-term relationships, it s difficult to only want one person.
8
SPEAKER_00
But to be fair, I think monogamy and commitment are very different.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think you d be incredibly, I haven t known so many very long-term, super committed poly couples that live lives that look very similar to the very romantic monogamous couples.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like children, houses, like 20 years.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that works great for them.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
I mean, there s so much to open your mind to in these kinds of conversations, these kinds of ideas.
8
SPEAKER_02
But I also realize some of the cake is baked.
8
SPEAKER_02
I have some assumptions that are hard to break through.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like what?
8
SPEAKER_02
For myself.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s difficult for me to imagine a polyamorous relationship.
8
SPEAKER_02
For me, that would work.
8
SPEAKER_02
but I don t have enough data, I don t have a, like, I have very little, but like at this point, it s like, I haven t eaten pizza in like 20 years, because I know I just don t, there s a bunch of stuff, I just eat low carb, because it makes me feel good, but there s so many foods I haven t explored, it s just like,
8
SPEAKER_02
well, I know what I love.
8
SPEAKER_02
So you explore every once in a while.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and you kind of figure that out.
8
SPEAKER_02
But at the same time, you re humbled by even talking to you or looking at your data.
8
SPEAKER_02
Sexuality is a fascinating topic because it seems that we re very, like we were talking about, very afraid of this topic.
8
SPEAKER_02
Like to be really honest with ourselves about it.
8
SPEAKER_02
The whole like academic research is afraid of it.
8
SPEAKER_02
But it s so core to who we are as human beings.
8
SPEAKER_02
I gotta ask you about this.
8
SPEAKER_02
I can t believe it took this long to get there.
9
SPEAKER_01
One of your many fascinating surveys is on fetishes.
9
SPEAKER_01
You wrote a blog post about it, probably several, because it s like a huge data set.
9
SPEAKER_00
Still in progress, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
So the one I m referring to is on popularity and tabooness of various fetishes.
9
SPEAKER_01
So what are some interesting takeaways?
9
SPEAKER_01
I ve got to pull up this graph, because it s freaking epic.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yes, this is a big graph and it has tabooness as one axis and popularity as the other.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay, for people who are just listening, on the x-axis is tabooness.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Asked to rate how taboo society viewed sexual interest.
9
SPEAKER_01
And on the y-axis is percent of people reporting interest, log scale.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh boy, all right, so just some examples on the low taboonness and high popularity.
9
SPEAKER_01
There s a correlation here, I think you said it s .69.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Which is not, which is hilarious.
9
SPEAKER_01
Is it still .69, are you tracking that?
9
SPEAKER_00
I haven t looked since I did this, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
So like the less taboo stuff is more likely to be popular, and the more taboo stuff is less likely to be popular.
9
SPEAKER_01
And on the missionary position,
9
SPEAKER_01
fingering, vagina, blowjobs, light spanking, cuddling.
9
SPEAKER_01
Cuddling is more taboo than missionary.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think people are conceiving like, if you re like, I m really sexually aroused by cuddling specifically.
9
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
9
SPEAKER_00
Then you re like, that s a little more weird than getting specifically aroused by blowjobs.
9
SPEAKER_00
You expect people to be aroused by blowjobs.
9
SPEAKER_01
So this was like getting at like, as a fetish versus like an activity.
9
SPEAKER_00
As a specific, as like a concrete sexual interest.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like I am specifically interested in this thing, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
And so those are thighs and lips, different body parts.
9
SPEAKER_01
Jawlines.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then some of it is color based on more female preference versus male preference.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like jawlines is more female preference.
9
SPEAKER_01
Being submissive is more female preference.
9
SPEAKER_01
Light bondage.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, more female.
9
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of interesting ones.
9
SPEAKER_01
There s so much, okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
But then on the far side of that, I mean, it gets pretty dark.
9
SPEAKER_01
But even all along the way, extreme bondage, being at 50 tabunus, pegging, pain, giving pain, sexual frustration, I suppose as a kink.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
And there s so many interesting ones to me, just that I haven t even considered.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
I had to do so much research into fetishes to compile the list.
9
SPEAKER_01
Are there some surprising options to you that you re like, oh, okay, this is a fetish?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, more confusing was what the fetishes are about, because I didn t want to overlap fetishes, so I had to kind of look into them.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, there s like such interesting manifestations of core drives.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like if you re really aroused by disgust, like maybe you re very into rolling around in dirt, but you re not into rolling around with ice cream.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I m like, okay, I have to make those into two separate fetishes, you know?
9
SPEAKER_01
And like, I m seeing like at the far end, rodents, like different types of incest branding.
9
SPEAKER_01
So there s like pain and then- It s like wound fucking.
9
SPEAKER_01
sex with animals, I guess, dogs, horses.
9
SPEAKER_01
Receiving oral sex from an animal is high tabooness and pretty high popularity.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, surprisingly high popularity.
9
SPEAKER_00
I was really shocked by that one.
9
SPEAKER_00
I went and triple checked that number, because I m like, no way this amount of people are reporting interest.
9
SPEAKER_01
Do you know which animal?
9
SPEAKER_00
Is there?
9
SPEAKER_00
No, I didn t specify.
9
SPEAKER_00
I asked like which animals are erotic and then I separately asked like how erotic is it to receive oral sex from your preferred animal?
9
SPEAKER_01
This is so fascinating.
9
SPEAKER_01
So I would, can we just talk about the methodology of this?
9
SPEAKER_01
This feels like deeply honest.
9
SPEAKER_01
map of humanity in a way we don t usually map humanity.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, your fetishes are so meaningful to each individual person.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s what I love about this work.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s like, nobody cares about someone s fetishes.
9
SPEAKER_00
You never get to express them.
9
SPEAKER_00
And if you have a more unusual fetish, people usually judge you.
9
SPEAKER_00
So it s like this tiny little pocket of like this shame thing, but it s so cool to me that like human brains can be oriented in such a way, like wound fucking.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like somebody finds that so erotic and that s so cool.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and then they probably, and it should be explored, like how did that come to be?
9
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned that we like to construct narratives that somehow was grounded in childhood, but maybe it s genetic.
9
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it has to do with, maybe you can actually form and unform that fetish very quickly.
9
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
9
SPEAKER_00
This is one of the things that I m researching.
9
SPEAKER_00
So in the big survey that I m doing, I asked so many questions about childhood, all the ones that I think we have common theories about, like, oh, are you abused?
9
SPEAKER_00
Is it yelled at by a man or a woman?
9
SPEAKER_00
stuff like that.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like, are you really sexually repressive?
9
SPEAKER_00
You know, is it gender roles where you ve expected to conform?
9
SPEAKER_00
A whole bunch of stuff.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then I asked, you know, obviously about like a massive amount of fetishes.
9
SPEAKER_00
And my sample size right now is 500,000 people.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s massive.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I have to stay for all of it.
9
SPEAKER_00
And the result looks like this not really correlated.
9
SPEAKER_00
Nothing that I asked about in childhood, nothing correlates with fetish preference later in life.
9
SPEAKER_00
It does correlate with onset.
9
SPEAKER_00
Lots of things that happen in childhood can
9
SPEAKER_00
like change the age at which it triggers.
9
SPEAKER_01
They have so many fascinating blog posts.
9
SPEAKER_01
You had a blog post, I think, on the age of fetish onset.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
And like you really nice to organize it by age, like reproduction as a fetish, I guess pregnancy.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
At age of 17, about 16.9.
9
SPEAKER_01
Toys and like anal beads is 15.5.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, one of the interesting things I found, I mean, this dataset is so huge, it s taking me a long time to go through it.
9
SPEAKER_00
So this is like snippets from what I remember when I was glancing through the data.
9
SPEAKER_00
So this part is not rigorous, but I seem to get the impression that if you are, if a fetish occurs for you earlier, like you ve much earlier onset, you re more likely to report being extremely interested into it.
9
SPEAKER_00
So later onset means you re gonna be like less into the fetish, but if it hits earlier, it s like- But I wonder if it passes, like, is there like- Yeah, I didn t measure old fetishes at all.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like no longer, right?
9
SPEAKER_01
You used to, but it s no longer there.
9
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
9
SPEAKER_00
One interesting thing that I don t understand is that non-cis people seem to have more correlation between childhood experiences and fetishes.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I was saying that there s no correlation between childhood experiences and fetishes.
9
SPEAKER_00
This holds for cis people.
9
SPEAKER_00
But trans people, especially trans men, there s a correlation.
9
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean they have absolutely higher rates of abuse or fetishes or anything, but I m just saying that for them, there does actually seem to be some sort of connection between childhood experiences and sexuality later in life.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I don t understand why this applies to one group but not the other.
9
SPEAKER_00
I don t have a good theory for that.
9
SPEAKER_01
So usually you try, like when you see something like that, you ll try to construct a theory and see if you can find, like you keep that theory in mind, like a hypothesis of why it would be, and then you ask further questions to try to elaborate.
9
SPEAKER_01
So can you maybe talk about the methodology of how you got the 500,000, like what?
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, how did this come to be?
9
SPEAKER_00
I might go into way too much detail about this, because I thought about this so much.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because I m like, the question is, how do you get a lot of people to take a big survey?
9
SPEAKER_00
The longer the survey is, the lower the response rate.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I really wanted to do one big comprehensive survey, so I could check a whole bunch of correlations within it.
9
SPEAKER_00
because it s more annoying and it s harder to get a lot of people to retake similar surveys to each other at a time.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I m like, okay, I need to convince a very large number of people to take a lot of these questions.
9
SPEAKER_00
And even building the questions, that was really hard because I m like, okay, I need a comprehensive amount of fetishes.
9
SPEAKER_00
I can t ask everybody to answer for every single niche fetish.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m like, do you like ball gags?
9
SPEAKER_00
Do you like funnel gags?
9
SPEAKER_00
Do you like wife shrew gags or whatever?
9
SPEAKER_00
I m like, you can t do that.
9
SPEAKER_00
Nobody s gonna finish that survey.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m not gonna, I m not gonna ask questions.
9
SPEAKER_01
What s a wave shrew, but okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m not doing the, I m trying to refer to like, there s like a thing that like.
9
SPEAKER_01
Different types of gags.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, different, so I m like, so what I need to do is I need to ask people a question, like, are you into, like, bondage?
9
SPEAKER_00
And if you say yes, then I ll go ask you all the bondage questions.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right, but then this seems simple, but then it s just exploded because I m like, how do I categorize these fetishes?
9
SPEAKER_00
Like, if you re into splashing, which is, like, you like sitting in cakes, you like getting in mud, basically, like, kind of messy, sensory.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like, is this a disgust thing?
9
SPEAKER_00
Is it a humiliation thing?
9
SPEAKER_00
Is it a sensory thing?
9
SPEAKER_00
Like which category, anyway, so it took me like two months of just agonizing over each fetish, because you don t want to miss a fetish.
9
SPEAKER_00
You don t want to like have a really important thing that you accidentally put in the disgust category when it actually belongs in the humiliation category, you know?
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, let me think about that, because like you re still catching it, you re just mis-categorizing it.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right, because if you re into splashing, and you re like, this is clearly a humiliation thing, so you say, yes, I m into humiliation stuff, and then I don t ask you about splashing, then I m missing a whole data set of people.
9
SPEAKER_00
because I ve falsely categorized your question.
9
SPEAKER_01
You re going to miss stuff, you re just picking what s less and less important to miss.
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, I m trying to get people into the right question set.
9
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because I can t ask you all the questions, I have to ask you a couple overarching questions to know what specific questions to ask you.
9
SPEAKER_00
And so I have to, those overarching questions have to be really, really well calibrated so that I can accurately feed you into the right sub-part of the survey.
9
SPEAKER_00
Awesome.
9
SPEAKER_00
And so that was extremely difficult when I m dealing with I think it was like 850 fetishes.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I did a couple things to spot check.
9
SPEAKER_00
I did a couple questions where I asked detailed in the survey, but also the beginning of the survey just to see what percentage people I was capturing.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then I scored the survey.
9
SPEAKER_00
So if you take it, I had other people answer preliminary surveys where they gave me data about how taboo the various fetishes were.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then I used that data so that when you fill out the survey, it s extremely comprehensive and you get data about exactly how taboo your interests are.
9
SPEAKER_00
And you get a score at the end and I give you an equivalent kinky character, which I also had people write a whole bunch of fictional characters and some historic ones about like how kinky they were.
9
SPEAKER_00
So then I matched the historic character, kinky character to your score.
9
SPEAKER_01
So that makes it more fun, like gamifies it a little bit, and you can brag about... To be able to share it with others.
9
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of the characters are really goofy, like there s Spongebob, and Hitler s on there, and South Park characters.
9
SPEAKER_01
What kink does Hitler have?
9
SPEAKER_00
I think he s around Marilyn Monroe, which is a slightly above average kinkiness.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, sorry.
9
SPEAKER_01
I thought there was like a two-dimensional space somehow.
9
SPEAKER_01
So this is like a literally from zero.
9
SPEAKER_00
Just how kinky, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
So Hitler is a bot, is a million.
9
SPEAKER_01
Who is the most, what s the character for like- Willy Wonka.
9
SPEAKER_01
Is the most kinky?
9
SPEAKER_00
Was the most kinky, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think like maybe Captain America was the least kinky or something, or Gandhi.
9
SPEAKER_01
Meanwhile, but that s another conversation.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh boy.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so it went viral on TikTok basically, because people were like, what?
9
SPEAKER_00
I got this insane character, and then the sample size exploded from 40,000 to 500,000.
9
SPEAKER_01
Wow, so like all it took is that kind of incentive?
9
SPEAKER_01
Or did you like at first have to pay people for this?
9
SPEAKER_00
No, it was just that incentive.
9
SPEAKER_01
And what about the demographic of the different people that took it?
9
SPEAKER_00
I m mostly younger, so usually early 20s, predominantly female, like 70% female.
9
SPEAKER_00
I was just- 70% female.
9
SPEAKER_00
Pretty like, wraps on a TikTok demographics pretty well.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay, I got it.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s interesting.
9
SPEAKER_01
Young people are probably better for this kind of survey because there s probably a culture that s a little bit more honest about their sexuality.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, most likely.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think people are incentivized to be honest when they re getting a true identity response out of it.
9
SPEAKER_00
If you re doing it for money, you don t care.
9
SPEAKER_00
But if you are invested in the result, you want to know what the truth of the answers are, then you actually
9
SPEAKER_01
It s possible that you also don t wanna know the truth.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, this is true.
9
SPEAKER_01
But on average, hopefully that doesn t.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, these are really difficult.
9
SPEAKER_01
Is there some interesting little quirks that people should know about your methodology that you had to kind of solve to try to get to a really good survey?
9
SPEAKER_01
So one of you said is the categorization to make it more efficient.
9
SPEAKER_01
Is there some for the analysis part?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so the graph that you were talking about is a binary.
9
SPEAKER_00
So it s like if somebody expressed even a little bit of interest, then it goes into the graph.
9
SPEAKER_00
So it s like 80% of people expressed even a little bit of interest.
9
SPEAKER_00
So it s not representing degree of interest.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s not differentiating between them at all.
9
SPEAKER_00
So it s possible that like some fetishes have exactly the same amount of people, like are at least a little bit into them, but one of them it s very extreme interest and the others like,
9
SPEAKER_00
vague and not very intense.
9
SPEAKER_00
So that s not reflected.
9
SPEAKER_00
I also probably didn t represent the visual part right.
9
SPEAKER_00
It might not be intuitive.
9
SPEAKER_01
You chose a log scale, but it kind of spreads things out to make it more clear.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because the linear was just so clustered at the bottom, you couldn t really separate it out.
9
SPEAKER_00
So there s obviously a selection effect, it s possible that the identity result at the end impacted people s results a little bit.
9
SPEAKER_00
But the thing is, I m comparing it to what exists.
9
SPEAKER_00
What is the alternative?
9
SPEAKER_00
And right now, the research on this stuff is terrible.
9
SPEAKER_00
So it s like, I m not saying my research is perfect, but it s like at least it s something, like it s something that s pointing us maybe in a direction that we might be able to do more research on.
9
SPEAKER_01
And you re making the data available.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m doing it slowly because I ask about so many questions, it s like not very anonymized.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I m releasing the small sections of the data at a time.
9
SPEAKER_01
Have you published in journals and stuff?
9
SPEAKER_00
No, I haven t.
9
SPEAKER_01
Do you have any interest in that, or is your approach- I m conflicted about it.
9
SPEAKER_00
It sounds cool because then I could be like, ha-ha, I m published in a journal, and then people who are yelling about me who don t know anything about statistics on Twitter, then I can go shove it in their face.
9
SPEAKER_01
but then you re also giving in to the silly criticism, right?
9
SPEAKER_00
I feel so passionate about extra science, science that you can just do.
9
SPEAKER_00
I wanna make science accessible.
9
SPEAKER_00
Anybody can just go look and learn about the basics of doing a survey or figuring out how to interpret information.
9
SPEAKER_00
And doing a published journal feels like I m betraying my cause a little bit.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s often behind a paywall.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it goes against the,
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I think you not publishing in a journal is doing a big public service.
9
SPEAKER_00
Aw, I think it s the first time I ve heard that.
9
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, just coming from like, on this topic, the elitism I see on the psychology side with the journals and the academia, the positions and the institutions you come from, all of that, that goes against
9
SPEAKER_01
I think that s more useful for math and computer science and so on, where there s clear, but even then, even then, code is code, data is data.
9
SPEAKER_01
Prestige shouldn t matter at all.
9
SPEAKER_01
Maybe for biological experiments, like virology or something like that.
9
SPEAKER_01
it s good to be from a major lab that has a reputation for going through all the procedures that you know you can trust.
9
SPEAKER_01
But here, you re dealing with a giant mess of humanity.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s beautiful to be transparent, to be raw, to be exploring it together with everybody.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s really beautiful.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think people have a lot of incentive to doubt the results.
9
SPEAKER_00
A lot of the research I m doing is to cis and trans people.
9
SPEAKER_00
We don t have any data about transsexuality.
9
SPEAKER_00
Not very good, at least.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I m really curious.
9
SPEAKER_00
I don t really have an agenda about it.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think being trans is cool.
9
SPEAKER_00
If you want to be trans, do it.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I have some skepticism about gender theory, but it doesn t come down to impact the way I think trans people should be treated, which I think is like, be fucking nice and human about it.
9
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
9
SPEAKER_00
But when I m talking about the thing, my conclusions are that transsexuality is really unique.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s not like cis women or man sexuality at all.
9
SPEAKER_00
And to me, this is super cool.
9
SPEAKER_00
But a lot of people, this is very politicized right now.
9
SPEAKER_00
the data into transsexual preferences, it s so loaded, which is really sad because I am very accepting of weird sexuality.
9
SPEAKER_00
If you re into a weird thing, I m like, good for you.
9
SPEAKER_00
This is super cool.
9
SPEAKER_00
Let s figure out how to make it so that you can explore the thing you re into without any stigma.
9
SPEAKER_00
But because there s so much stigma that if you find that one demographic is into weirder sex stuff than the other, it s hard to present that in a way that people don t weaponize.
9
SPEAKER_00
So it s been a really politically touchy subject here.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but you do it in a way that doesn t feel like it has an agenda, right?
9
SPEAKER_01
You re just exploring.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
I feel pretty open to what I m going to find.
9
SPEAKER_00
I often have no idea what the data is going to tell me, and I m like, I pre-commit, like, okay, I could say A, B, or C, and I m down to publish any of those findings.
10
SPEAKER_00
So you ve put together an ask whole cart deck.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
A lot of awesome questions to ask at a party.
10
SPEAKER_00
or anywhere, honestly, including on the podcast.
10
SPEAKER_00
Let me ask you one from that deck.
10
SPEAKER_00
Is sex really about power?
10
SPEAKER_00
So what s the role of power dynamics in sex?
10
SPEAKER_00
Is that everything you understand?
10
SPEAKER_00
From the survey, in terms of what people are turned on by, you ve talked about the preferences that women versus men have for submissiveness and dominance.
10
SPEAKER_00
And we ve already talked about it a little bit, but like it s expressed more strongly.
10
SPEAKER_00
I already forget the results, but I feel like women have more preference to be submissive.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, this is one of the things that got me into researching fetishes to begin with.
10
SPEAKER_01
Because I think I came across some data, I did like a brief survey where roughly around 60% of women report being submissive and 40% of men report being nominate.
10
SPEAKER_01
And this was really fascinating to me.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m like, why is there this gap?
10
SPEAKER_01
Why do we not, because I guess I have some priors that maybe this is an evolutionary thing, like the submission dominant, like strong men and women being like, oh, this hot man.
10
SPEAKER_01
The men are ravaging and stuff.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m like, shouldn t this be in our genes?
10
SPEAKER_01
But there s a gap.
10
SPEAKER_00
What s the gap?
10
SPEAKER_01
The gap is the dominant submissive gap.
10
SPEAKER_01
More women are submissive than there are dominant men.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wait, really?
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s a pretty significant gap.
10
SPEAKER_01
And this is held up, like it depends on what you re testing.
10
SPEAKER_01
I ve tested a bunch of things.
10
SPEAKER_01
This is part of why I did this big survey.
10
SPEAKER_01
Nice.
10
SPEAKER_01
But it depends against, again, on like what kind of dominance you re measuring, but overall it s a roughly 40 to 60%.
10
SPEAKER_00
So when you say there s not many dominant men,
10
SPEAKER_00
The meaning like they express like a desire to be dominant in a relationship?
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, or like in sexually.
10
SPEAKER_00
Sexually.
10
SPEAKER_01
Sexually, in bed.
10
SPEAKER_01
So like if I ask questions like, how much do you like being dominant in bed?
10
SPEAKER_01
Like men are less likely to answer strong yes to that question.
10
SPEAKER_01
But if I ask, are you likely to be submissive?
10
SPEAKER_01
Like women are very much yes.
10
SPEAKER_00
Really?
10
SPEAKER_00
And that s expressive?
10
SPEAKER_00
Like that represents truth?
10
SPEAKER_01
What s wrong with men?
10
SPEAKER_01
I think there s some reflection on FetLife.
10
SPEAKER_01
FetLife is this website where people sign up and connect based on their fetishes.
10
SPEAKER_01
You can kind of see it picked up in the forum posts about how dominant men are getting laid so much and submissives are always looking for a dominant.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s an unequal market.
10
SPEAKER_00
Holy shit, this is great news.
10
SPEAKER_00
I didn t know this, this is interesting.
10
SPEAKER_00
What does it reflect about modern society?
10
SPEAKER_00
Because you know there s these trends about decreased masculinity or that kind of stuff.
10
SPEAKER_00
Is that similar?
10
SPEAKER_01
I m trying not to hold onto one theory, because I m not sure.
10
SPEAKER_01
One is possible, like decreasing testosterone levels.
10
SPEAKER_01
Testosterone seems to be, I have a little bit of other research, but I m still checking it out, that seems to indicate that higher testosterone, you re more likely to be dominant.
10
SPEAKER_01
So if we re seeing decreased testosterone levels across society, we should be seeing a greater gap.
10
SPEAKER_00
This is so fascinating.
10
SPEAKER_00
Once again, this is like a super interesting way to look at humanity because it is such an important part of humanity.
10
SPEAKER_00
And so like how many people are doing large scale research like this?
10
SPEAKER_00
I feel like you re like at the top of the world.
10
SPEAKER_00
You re like world-class at the top of the world doing research on this stuff.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think I might have the biggest, most comprehensive fetish data set in the world right now.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m happy about it.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m very proud.
10
SPEAKER_00
And it s probably growing, but it s also enabling you to establish a name, like a reputation to where people can go to you to trust you more and more, to do longer surveys, perhaps?
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, maybe.
10
SPEAKER_01
I think the data analysis afterwards is very different from the survey design itself.
10
SPEAKER_01
So I m still very amateur at the data analysis.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but you can always catch up on that.
10
SPEAKER_00
I guess the data analysis does enable you to, does teach you how to ask better questions in order to understand.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it goes back and forth.
10
SPEAKER_01
As I m looking at the data, it informs the way I wanna phrase questions the next time.
10
SPEAKER_00
So women are more, at least in private, able to say that they would like to be submissive, and men, even in private, are not, disproportionately saying they re not willing to be dominant.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so it s possible if this is caused by decreasing testosterone levels, then this means that we re probably having less satisfying sex overall.
10
SPEAKER_01
Like we re becoming less and less sexually compatible as time goes on.
10
SPEAKER_01
To be fair, I m not sure that it is connected to testosterone levels.
10
SPEAKER_01
Like it s possible that this is just like a genetic thing.
10
SPEAKER_01
Like the gay uncle theory, like the
10
SPEAKER_01
ideas, like maybe gay people evolved to be sort of taking themselves out of the gene pool to be assistants.
10
SPEAKER_01
And it s possible that there s a certain percentage of men sort of like, quote unquote, evolved to be submissive, to take themselves out of sexual competition, and to instead be like the monkeys revolving at the edge of the pack.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s unclear.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it s a method of survival?
10
SPEAKER_00
So you stay out of the competition?
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and I m like a little sus about these kinds of evo-psych theories, so I m not... I m just saying it because it s like one thing... There s different ideas that are possible, yeah, okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, I m not saying that it s definitely testosterone.
10
SPEAKER_01
There s other things.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s also possible that it s culture.
10
SPEAKER_01
People are definitely gonna bring that up.
10
SPEAKER_01
Based on my survey, though, it doesn t seem to be any evidence of that.
10
SPEAKER_01
I asked about how much pressure was put on you to be, you know, agentee in your childhood.
10
SPEAKER_01
A lot of questions around this kind of thing, and no correlation at all to dominance.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, related to sexuality, I m very uncomfortable right now, but nevertheless.
10
SPEAKER_01
Plow forward.
10
SPEAKER_00
in a dominant fashion.
10
SPEAKER_00
The blog post titled Rape Spectrum Survey Results.
10
SPEAKER_00
What are the key takeaways from that survey?
10
SPEAKER_01
So I did this survey when I had a friend be like, hey, I had this confusing sexual experience.
10
SPEAKER_01
Was it rape?
10
SPEAKER_01
Like somebody kind of pressured her and she eventually stopped saying it or something.
10
SPEAKER_01
I was like, that s a great question.
10
SPEAKER_01
Like, I don t know how people would consider this.
10
SPEAKER_01
And so I put a whole bunch of different gray scenarios into a survey and then asked people to rate how rapey they thought that scenario was.
10
SPEAKER_00
So you actually like little narratives that they get to rate.
10
SPEAKER_01
Like, you know, this person is on a date with this person, they get drunk, and the other person s not drunk.
10
SPEAKER_01
I try to keep gender neutral names for all of them.
10
SPEAKER_00
And you reduce them into a more concise description of the situation?
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Like in this visualization, so you have this rape spectrum that s a result, where on top are things that are less likely to be considered rape by the people that took the survey, and the bottom
10
SPEAKER_00
More likely, the likeliest is a stranger forcibly assaults someone who screams and fights the entire time.
10
SPEAKER_00
That gets 100.
10
SPEAKER_00
What do we make of something that s not zero?
10
SPEAKER_00
It s like a 12 is what?
10
SPEAKER_00
What is that?
10
SPEAKER_00
How are we supposed to interpret a 12 out of 100?
10
SPEAKER_01
It s extremely low.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s like not zero, but it s just very close to it.
10
SPEAKER_00
Having sex with an enthusiastic sex worker is a 12, that s the lowest one.
10
SPEAKER_00
And there s a few, I ll just mention a few that are lower, like.
10
SPEAKER_00
at that level, have sex to make a partner happy in a relationship, lying about wealth, hobbies in order to get laid, person with Down syndrome eagerly has sex with a neurotypical, not revealing being transgender until after sex, and so on.
10
SPEAKER_00
I think you mentioned that there s some, like that not revealing being transgender until after sex, there s some differences.
10
SPEAKER_00
amongst what, men and women or something like that?
10
SPEAKER_01
I think there s still men found more offensive than women.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m trying to, I wrote it a while ago.
10
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this is nuanced and difficult, right?
10
SPEAKER_00
Because I think in a lot of public discourse, the word rape is pretty binary.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s like either is or is not rape.
10
SPEAKER_00
And so you had a friend where it was like, this felt rapey.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, she s confused about how to interpret it.
10
SPEAKER_01
And I think people look to the terms to know how to feel about something.
10
SPEAKER_01
Like, have you ever been through an experience, you re like, that was weird, and then you tell it to somebody else and they re like, oh my God, you were assaulted.
10
SPEAKER_01
And then it totally recontextualizes the thing that you ve experienced.
10
SPEAKER_01
And I think that this is clunky with the word rape, because either you were raped or you re not.
10
SPEAKER_01
You either have this entire context thrust upon you or you don t.
10
SPEAKER_01
And we re really not nuanced about it at all.
10
SPEAKER_01
And so I would really like to have some sort of like, oh, that was like a 30% rape you just endured.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I mean, there s probably other dimensions about how traumatic it is, how difficult it is to recover from, all that kind of stuff.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, like people, it s a dangerous thing to assign a word to an experience, like even, or to a relationship, like saying a toxic relationship.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
That can completely destroy your perception of that relationship.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, absolutely.
10
SPEAKER_01
I remember this was the case with my childhood.
10
SPEAKER_01
I talked about being very abusive, but I ve talked about how there was a good amount of meaning there so that I didn t process it as abusive at the time.
10
SPEAKER_01
And I remember after I got out of that house and that culture, people would tell me, oh, your childhood was really abusive.
10
SPEAKER_01
And I was really confused by that because it s a total recontextualization of that narrative.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s like the things that I went through were not good and virtuous and had meaning, but rather those were the result of parents who didn t love you enough or something.
10
SPEAKER_01
And even though the concrete things that happened to me did not change, no facts shifted.
10
SPEAKER_01
The fact that the interpretation of the facts shifted caused me quite a bit of distress for a long time.
10
SPEAKER_01
I was like, oh my God, I m a traumatized, abused person.
10
SPEAKER_01
I went through an abusive childhood.
10
SPEAKER_01
And it was really hard for me.
10
SPEAKER_01
It made it worse.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s crazy the power that terms have.
10
SPEAKER_00
I think we didn t talk about this, but how did you begin to overcome
10
SPEAKER_00
the trauma of your childhood.
10
SPEAKER_00
You mentioned LSD, so drugs are part of it.
10
SPEAKER_00
What was the mental journey of that?
10
SPEAKER_01
I was doing LSD quite a lot when I was 21, 22.
10
SPEAKER_00
What s it like, by the way?
10
SPEAKER_00
I ve never done LSD, what s it?
10
SPEAKER_01
It s very difficult to describe because it changes aspects about your environment that are invisible to you because they re so stable.
10
SPEAKER_00
Is it, like if you can compare it to like psilocybin, is it very different?
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah, it s like similar.
10
SPEAKER_01
I forgot that you did shrooms.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, okay, that you probably know.
10
SPEAKER_01
You know, like the kind of shift that you have from cyber to shrooms is roughly similar.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s like more clear, I think.
10
SPEAKER_01
Shrooms is more like embodied, but LSD is much more intellectual for me.
10
SPEAKER_01
It strikes different people differently.
10
SPEAKER_01
I prefer shrooms a lot.
10
SPEAKER_01
Sorry, LSD.
10
SPEAKER_01
I prefer LSD a lot.
10
SPEAKER_00
Why is it not popularly, there seems to be a negative connotation to LSD, because it seems to potentially have a destructive effect.
10
SPEAKER_00
Maybe dosage is more difficult to get right, or something like that?
10
SPEAKER_01
So actually, a long time ago, I did a survey on shrooms versus LSD, so I asked people, and people had slightly stronger experiences on LSD overall, I remember, but rated the experiences about as equally good.
10
SPEAKER_01
But I think people like shrooms because it feels more natural, quote unquote.
10
SPEAKER_01
But I think if you fed somebody a shroom and actually had the LSD molecule in it, they would think it felt very natural.
10
SPEAKER_01
But that s besides the point.
10
SPEAKER_01
I think people get kind of incoherent on LSD in a way that feels really alienating.
10
SPEAKER_01
I consider my LSD use very heavy to be one of the best decisions I ever made in my life, but I definitely was incoherent for a lot of it.
10
SPEAKER_01
Talking about we re all one, consciousness, everything is love, man.
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And people are like- Why is that incoherent?
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So I think it s not incoherent.
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But if you go around saying everything is love, people are like, this guy s kind of blasted out of his mind.
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This podcast.
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is basically your LSD driven for a bunch of episodes.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I get this for sure.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, well, it s not just about love, but it s about like talking in that way about reality, about the world.
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Yeah, sure.
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It s like overfitting.
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The narratives that you make about the world become really vivid.
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And so you pattern match just really aggressively, like everything is connected and you come up with these explanations for things.
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And I think I was very fortunate.
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So I like this theory about psychedelics where you either believe construct or you don t.
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So you take psychedelics and it sort of burns away a lot of your belief structure.
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And sometimes this happens and then you re like, ah, I need to invent something to fill in the gaps.
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So you re like, okay, I think that maybe time is an illusion.
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So I must now believe that we re actually in a time loop or time travel is possible.
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So you experience time differently and then you come up with a different belief about time.
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Whereas other people don t do this belief construction at all.
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Like you experience time differently and you sort of let yourself not have a belief.
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You re not like, okay, I mean, you re not developing any beliefs about time in its absence.
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You re just simply experiencing the absence of the concept of time.
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And so I don t have a lot of data to back this up in my anecdotal experience, because I ve tripped out a lot of people.
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People either tend to belief construct or they don t.
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And people who do not belief construct seem to get more out of their LSD trips.
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So if you can let a belief go without building anything in its absence, it s much more beneficial for you.
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And I think I just, for some reason, happen to have some brain that s constructed where I don t get belief construction at all.
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So that s really interesting that belief construction is negative.
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Is it necessarily negative?
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Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
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I mean belief construction in a way that s like, not like playing with frames, but rather committing to a different frame.
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So I like being able to play with ideas and be like, let s look at it this way or that way, that s awesome.
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But if you re like, okay, you know what?
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I took LSE and now I absolutely believe the cops are outside.
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And you re like, dude, no, you re just like, and you can t shift out of that, right?
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Your brain needs to fill in the gap.
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You re not allowed to have a gap, so you re not allowed to be flexible.
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And again, I don t think this is a personal failing.
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I think this is literally probably genetic or physical thing that s causing this.
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But do you think there s possible beliefs that are enlightening that you can stick to, like find a frame?
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that like, I guess if you don t believe construct and you re escaping your previous beliefs, aren t you doing like just some, you re picking up a bigger frame in some way.
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Yeah, I mean you re taking your beliefs as object as opposed to being subject to them.
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SPEAKER_00
Ah, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it.
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And some of that I guess is genetic and there s these categories of people, there s two categories that experience LSD in different ways.
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Yeah.
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And you re one of those that are able to just let go.
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Yeah, I just think I had a good reaction.
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And I think a lot of maybe the negative stereotype of LSD comes from people who are belief constructing or carry the belief constructing off of the LSD trip.
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So you take LSD and you re like, ah, I m believing these insane things.
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And people from the outside see that and they re like, oh my God, this person took LSD and became stupid.
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It s very scary.
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What s frame control?
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Because that has been at the core of your trauma, at the core of your upbringing.
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SPEAKER_00
What s frame control?
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And also, sorry, frame control in general, because that s part of human interaction.
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Yeah, frame control is like a way of manipulating somebody else that is non-obvious.
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SPEAKER_00
So there s a negative connotation to that usually?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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I mean, I think maybe I chose the term kind of poorly, because I think to some degree people are always a little bit manipulating each other.
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But I think it s generally obvious.
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Like, for example, if I disagree with you, I want you to believe what I believe.
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But this is like an obvious thing that is visible between us.
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It s like an object on the table.
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It s like, here s the box where I want you to believe what you want to believe.
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The disagreement box.
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Yeah, so we re under a shared context where we understand that we re trying to move each other.
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This is chill to me.
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I think this is cool.
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We do this all the time and it s important.
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But frame control is the kind of thing where you are trying carefully to obscure the existence of that box.
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You re like, oh, the thing that I m doing, I m using tactics to try to influence what your reality is without us being both aware that this is what I m doing.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I ve been assuming you re doing that the whole time.
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SPEAKER_01
No.
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Oh my God.
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I have to like figure out how to read your facial expressions.
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I m still learning.
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SPEAKER_00
There s none, there s none.
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SPEAKER_01
You don t have any?
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I m like a, I m not even like a Chad GBT.
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SPEAKER_00
I m like GBT-1 with my facial expressions.
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Like it s kind of off.
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SPEAKER_00
Like this doesn t seem to match emotions, but it s kind of intelligent seemingly, but definitely not conscious.
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Anyway, so like a negative connotation.
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manipulating, not being honest about the actual intentions of how you d like to control the conversation.
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And I think there might be a naive version of interpreting this where you re just like, oh, I m trying to subtly get you to believe like, oh, do you really think that s bad though?
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But this is not quite what I mean.
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I mean, there s a couple of concrete things that are signs of frame control.
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One of them is pushing the painful update button, which is this thing where it s like,
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Hey, if you learn this, it s going to be really painful.
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The truth is painful.
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And if you re realizing this thing about yourself, it s going to hurt, and this is a sign that you re heading in the right direction.
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SPEAKER_01
So if you frame all pain as a sign of virtue, then this means that pain that s resulting as damage is something you re going to ignore.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s like this, it s a common like cults, right?
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This is for your own good.
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Oh, you know, you face of brave truth about yourself that you re like not quite as wise as I am.
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When really your brain might be trying to tell you protected things.
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Or like another one is like finger trap beliefs, where the belief is constructed in such a way that doubting it lends proof to the belief.
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So very common example is like Satan, like the Christians are like, you know,
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Satan is going to try to make you doubt him.
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The existence of he s going to so doubt, like maybe he s not actually real.
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And so if you believe in Satan and then you re like, okay, now I m having doubts, like maybe he isn t real.
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This is like, oh, this is exactly what I was taught to expect.
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Like I am doubting this belief because I was told, because like this is what Satan does and it s taken as evidence for it.
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SPEAKER_00
So like the attempt to move away from the belief, like rebounds on you and like causes you to be more embedded inside of the belief.
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So it s like techniques like these, like very subtle things where like being inside of this system sort of just self-reinforces the system is what I consider to be frame control.
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And have you met people that are really good at this kind of frame control?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
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SPEAKER_01
So like you re saying that your father was like that?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, to be fair, I m not sure he was good at it because I was a kid.
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I think he s probably not very good at it actually, but when you re a child being raised in a house where he works from home and you re homeschooled, it s just kind of what s going to happen.
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And to be fair, I do think that strong frame control is quite rare.
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I don t think, most people are kind of doing something like this, but not nearly to the degree that gives me the ick.
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I ve met maybe five or six people, I think, who I really don t like because of those very subtle things that they re doing.
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But I think also, I m starting to kind of understand that there is people who are narcissists and sociopaths and psychopaths out there.
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And
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I m not even sure if people like that, because I think they get good at frame control, but I don t know if they re aware they re doing it.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah.
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Which makes me also nervous about myself.
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Like, am I doing frame control?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s one of the big things.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like, typically people, you can t think about incentive.
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SPEAKER_00
Like, you can t think about, oh, is this person trying to do it or not?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
That s like not the quite, not the way.
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You have to look at what are the effects.
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Pragmatically looking at the effects.
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And then you also have to do that with yourself when you re having interactions with others.
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It s very much like, how much space are you making for the other person s reality here?
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Are you giving power to the other person?
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Because a big aspect of frame control is you re carefully rerouting the power to yourself.
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You re like, I am the person who knows.
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You re having pain in your beliefs because you re updating towards the things that I believe.
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It s just like a gravity well.
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But if you re setting up the gravity well of your interactions such that you re making sure you re giving the other person power over the shared reality you inhabit, I think it s a really good sign that you re not doing frame control.
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So if you re making room for them.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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Okay.
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Unless we re talking about in bed, then it s all general relativity from there and black holes and stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
Frame control, bed frame control.
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Bed frame control.
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It took me a long time to get a bed frame, just I m saying.
11
SPEAKER_00
I know, but you wear a suit though.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so frame control in the streets, no frame in the sheets, I don t know.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t know what the funny thing is to say there, but there you have it.
11
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So the LSD helped you escape the frame of... Can you like elaborate what was the frame that was...
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holding you back from, like the frame constructed by your childhood experience that was holding you back as an intellectual, as a thinker, as a free being in this world.
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I was really fucked up.
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After I left home and I absorbed the external narrative that I had been abused, which technically is true.
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I m not saying I wasn t, but I absorbed this narrative and I just remember it had this burning coals in my chest at all times.
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I had to call out of my factory work when Father s Day happened because I was spending the whole day sobbing because everybody s talking about their fathers.
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Like, I was really messed up, and it was because I held this important thing, this idea, this frame, that I had been deeply wronged.
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Like, there was a correct way of being, and the world had violated that.
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Something should not have happened.
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Like, my father should have loved me.
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And it was like this sheering in the nature of reality, and that was really agonizing to have.
11
SPEAKER_00
And LSD really messes with frames a lot.
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It takes what you think is normal and really screws with it.
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And I ve done LSD several times before, but there s one LSD trip where I went through my entire childhood in my head, because LSD really makes your memories quite vivid.
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Anything you visualize, it s like you re in it.
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And so I just went and very carefully, deliberately went and remembered every single memory that I could have that was really painful for me.
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Like the times that I lost friends and all the things I valued and like being broken, because like my parents, especially my dad, would refer to like breaking me, like explicitly, we re going to break your will.
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And so all these times where I was like, they had successfully broken my will over and over, and it was horrible.
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I was just like sobbing, tears streaming down my face.
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And then I like worked through my whole childhood.
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I got to the end and I m going to tear up because every time I talk about this, it s just like the sensation of like being free from that for the first time is so incredible.
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Like I remember being outside of my house and being able to like
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go where I wanted and think what I wanted and it was just so blissful and I was soaked in this gratitude on this trip.
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like, vibrating with complete joy for everything.
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Like, I was just looking around, like, I could touch anything.
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Like, I could cry if I wanted to.
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I wasn t allowed to cry.
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I was allowed to be depressed.
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I was trying to, I got depressed as a child, and my parents were like, if you keep being depressed, we re gonna, like, force you to scrub the whole house.
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Like, just, like, the ability to have a feeling was so thrilling, and I was so grateful for this.
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I was like, I would do anything to give this experience to someone else.
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I would do anything.
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even if it was putting them through what I went through.
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And then with that realization, I was like, oh, it was worth it.
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The thing that I went through was worth it for this.
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SPEAKER_00
I would do it again to be able to have this deep gratitude for what I have now.
11
SPEAKER_00
And then that shifted the meaning frame.
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Because before, the meaning had been something had sheared, something that shouldn t have happened.
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SPEAKER_00
But now it was like the exact right thing had happened.
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So it s almost a gift.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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I was like, ah, I would not give up my childhood.
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I would do it again.
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And I believe that to this day.
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For the moment of discovering that freedom.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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Because everything now, my whole life is in contrast to that.
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And it s awesome, it s fucking great.
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I m really thrilled about it.
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Is there a part of you that hates your father still?
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SPEAKER_00
Kind of.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t want a relationship with him anymore.
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SPEAKER_00
After that, there was some forgiveness.
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SPEAKER_00
I had this burning – I would have nightmares about him killing me or something.
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SPEAKER_00
And after that, it kind of stopped.
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SPEAKER_00
The fire in my chest went away permanently after that trip.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was so fast.
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SPEAKER_00
It was like before I was fucked up.
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SPEAKER_00
After that trip, I woke up the next day and I was clean.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was really severe.
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SPEAKER_00
And I definitely don t want to be around him still.
11
SPEAKER_00
He still triggers the fear in my body, but I don t have that hang up anymore.
11
SPEAKER_00
I m over it.
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SPEAKER_00
I ve let go.
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He s his own person.
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SPEAKER_00
Ultimately, he didn t get to decide who he was in the same way that I didn t get to decide who I was.
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SPEAKER_01
So that s almost like a kind of at least intellectual forgiveness you have for him?
11
SPEAKER_01
And that, so that trip just took you through your whole, were you alone, by the way, when you re doing the trip?
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I had roommates, but the trip was mostly alone.
11
SPEAKER_00
I had somebody else who was like sitting in the room, but they weren t interacting with me.
11
SPEAKER_01
So you re sitting there experiencing all of this.
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What s the timeline?
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Like how long does it take to go through your whole childhood?
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t remember.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, time s really messed up when you, when you do that.
11
SPEAKER_00
I was listening to the soundtrack of The Fountain, which is excellent.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
I listened to that a lot when I did LSD.
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, it was probably just a couple hours.
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SPEAKER_01
That s amazing.
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I mean, it s like, it would be, it s just like a vivid experience of your childhood, moment by moment, trauma by trauma.
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SPEAKER_00
It s good to experience it purely.
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SPEAKER_00
Like it just is what it is.
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It s just is grief.
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Like it is loss and you just are in it without having to make it be anything.
11
SPEAKER_01
And it s so interesting that you can work through that.
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So for a lot of us, for a lot of human beings, childhood is full of those kind of mini traumas, big or small, and working through that, it feels like what a lot of life is about is trying to work through that.
11
SPEAKER_01
And it feels like you have to kind of relive it.
11
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I guess that s what therapy is about on part, to be able to vocalize it.
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This is why I feel really confused about the concept of trauma.
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SPEAKER_00
Like people use this word so much, like, are you traumatized?
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SPEAKER_00
And I understand why, like, this is why I feel confused about it.
11
SPEAKER_00
But part of me is like, I wonder if by using that term, we re creating the trauma in people.
11
SPEAKER_00
They were using the frame where the thing that happened to you was not supposed to happen.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, maybe there needs to be a different frame.
11
SPEAKER_01
No, I agree with you totally.
11
SPEAKER_01
I ve made friends with and talked to this guy named Paul Conti.
11
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He wrote a book on trauma.
11
SPEAKER_01
He s an incredible, brilliant psychiatrist.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he probably agrees with you, kinda.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s cool, I should read it.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you should.
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SPEAKER_01
Maybe even talk to him.
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SPEAKER_01
He s a fascinating human being.
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SPEAKER_01
I d be interested in the,
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SPEAKER_01
A psychiatrist s perspective is really interesting, because you ve been doing kind of an in-person survey, because you ve done so many patients.
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SPEAKER_01
Just talking to him is fascinating, because if I describe my experience or somebody else s experience, I could see his brain mapping it in interesting ways to the tens of thousands of data points he has in his head, and it s like,
11
SPEAKER_01
Of course, that s what doctors do, but as cool as the doctor is basically the doctor of the mind.
11
SPEAKER_00
to have like an actual like qualitative data.
11
SPEAKER_01
And be able to, I mean, that s where the poetic stuff comes in.
11
SPEAKER_01
Ultimately, as a psychiatrist, you re exploring the human mind with a bit of a sort of romantic element.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
You can t be really systematic about it.
11
SPEAKER_01
But it does seem like frame or not, be able to just talk through the experiences you had is really powerful.
11
SPEAKER_00
What about it is appealing?
11
SPEAKER_00
Is it just like being able to revisit it with new eyes?
11
SPEAKER_01
No, I don t know exactly.
11
SPEAKER_01
It just seems to work for people.
11
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if it s appealing.
11
SPEAKER_01
It just seems like almost acknowledging to yourself that things happen.
11
SPEAKER_01
Like I ve said, I think I ve said this before, my brother, who I love very much, tried to set me on fire a few times.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I think, to me, it s funny, but I wonder if I didn t talk about it, like if that would be traumatic, maybe like talking and laughing about it.
11
SPEAKER_01
Because it was traumatic to me at the time.
11
SPEAKER_00
I see.
11
SPEAKER_01
I was like, I love you.
11
SPEAKER_01
Why are you setting me on fire?
11
SPEAKER_01
But it s what kids do when they re young.
11
SPEAKER_01
I was like, whatever, this is what boys do.
11
SPEAKER_01
They re crazy.
11
SPEAKER_01
It makes total sense.
11
SPEAKER_01
It was probably funny from his perspective.
11
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, I wonder, I want to bring that to the surface if that helps.
11
SPEAKER_01
And maybe LSD allows you to, or different drugs, depending on the person, allows you to more vividly bring it to the surface.
11
SPEAKER_01
And then depending on your genetics, be able to find a better frame.
11
SPEAKER_01
That s fascinating.
11
SPEAKER_01
Human mind is freaking fascinating.
11
SPEAKER_01
All right.
11
SPEAKER_01
What s romantic to you, by the way?
11
SPEAKER_00
I m not a big romance person.
11
SPEAKER_01
So to you, romantic is like objective analysis of the interactions between humans?
11
SPEAKER_00
A little bit.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like I do find kind of the survey process that I did to be romantic.
11
SPEAKER_00
The guy that I asked out who I m still dating, I was like, hey, you scored really high on my survey, you wanna like go eat food or something?
11
SPEAKER_00
And his response was like, you wanna try doing three days in an Airbnb as our first date?
11
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
And that was romantic.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like the bold leap into a really intense date.
11
SPEAKER_01
I think you mentioned something also.
11
SPEAKER_01
it must ve been a tweet or something like that, where if people want you to show up to a thing, give the time, the location, the dress code, and no pressure for you to be there, but show up if you want.
11
SPEAKER_01
That was your specification.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s a great memory, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I think you said that you did that for like some castle in south of France.
11
SPEAKER_00
I did, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
That was in my early 20s.
11
SPEAKER_00
People, my friends at home were taking prediction markets on whether or not I was going to get abducted and killed.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, what was that like?
11
SPEAKER_01
I mean, what...
11
SPEAKER_01
You ve traveled quite a bit.
11
SPEAKER_01
Do you take these giant risks?
11
SPEAKER_01
What s with that?
11
SPEAKER_00
I think I used to more when I was younger with the traveling.
11
SPEAKER_00
I think I m a little traveled out now.
11
SPEAKER_00
My first one, I moved out of Idaho for the first time.
11
SPEAKER_00
I moved to Australia.
11
SPEAKER_00
Just kind of yeeted myself across the globe.
11
SPEAKER_01
Which verb did you just use?
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeet.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s like yeet to yote, yotted, yeet.
11
SPEAKER_01
So do people, is this like slang?
11
SPEAKER_01
Is this like Urban Dictionary?
11
SPEAKER_01
Or is this actual, or is this Webster?
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you have to like feel it in the word.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like if you take a thing and you just like curl it really hard, it does not feel like a yeet motion.
11
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so you yeeted, so it was aggressive, so across the globe, you didn t even stop in- I just hurled myself, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
Italy along the way.
11
SPEAKER_00
I just kept yeeting myself in various places, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
And so at one point I said, okay, Cupid, and somebody sent me a long message being like, you should come to, I don t know, I m hosting a castle, it s some people that I met, I was like, I have no idea who you are, but I just bought a plane ticket.
11
SPEAKER_01
And you just went.
11
SPEAKER_00
And it was life-changing.
11
SPEAKER_00
I ended up dating that guy for years, and he changed my life quite a bit, because he was very Agent T in the world, and before that, I wasn t Agent T. Agent T, like, can we- Expressing agency.
11
SPEAKER_01
It sounds like you were, and don t you have to express agency when you re yeeting yourself across the world?
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but only a little bit.
11
SPEAKER_00
In the same way you express agency when you eat LSD.
11
SPEAKER_00
The only thing you actually do in eating LSD is put the tab in your mouth, and then you just kind of scream the whole way after that.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
But there s a lot of other things.
11
SPEAKER_00
I didn t feel powerful enough to go make events happen or anything.
11
SPEAKER_00
And this guy, he had a lot of agency in the sense that he would just sort of create realities through the people around him.
11
SPEAKER_00
Be like, OK, we re going to do this startup, or we re going to throw this incredible event.
11
SPEAKER_00
Let s just do it.
11
SPEAKER_00
And it would somehow happen, and it was really cool to see that.
11
SPEAKER_00
And so that one thing led to another, and it was one of the biggest impacts on my life, I think.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s pretty bold.
11
SPEAKER_01
I would say it s pretty romantic.
11
SPEAKER_01
South of France?
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, it was in a little castle.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was in the winter, so we were all cozyed up by the fire.
11
SPEAKER_01
I m jumping around here.
11
SPEAKER_01
Twitter poll, have you ever hitchhiked?
11
SPEAKER_01
You posted this Twitter poll.
11
SPEAKER_00
That was a big list of Twitter polls.
11
SPEAKER_00
Why did you pick the hitchhiking one?
11
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, because it s relevant to traveling.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I see.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I like that one.
11
SPEAKER_01
That s romantic too, right?
11
SPEAKER_00
I m actually terrified of hitchhiking, but I have done it a little bit.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, so it s terrifying, it s not romantic to you.
11
SPEAKER_01
So you re terrified of what?
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, so you are terrified of- Well, she s interacting with strangers.
11
SPEAKER_01
That s terrifying.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
So you go to the south of France.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
But that was like a cohesive thing, I don t know.
11
SPEAKER_00
It made sense somehow.
11
SPEAKER_00
There s like times where you re allowed to be weird and times where you re not.
11
SPEAKER_00
Who was allowing you?
11
SPEAKER_00
He had some vague eager bore of society, I m not sure.
11
SPEAKER_00
But if some people are like, hey, we think you re cool, come to this party, you re like, all right, I m allowed to come to this party and be really weird.
11
SPEAKER_00
But if you re being picked up by a hitchhiker, they re gonna wanna make small talk and you can t be weird or they re gonna kick you out.
11
SPEAKER_01
I kind of think, because Valentine s Day is coming up, I kind of think it s doing something crazy, I m not sure.
11
SPEAKER_01
South of France sounds nice.
11
SPEAKER_00
You gotta go on a crazy romantic date with a woman you don t know at all.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think I m gonna tweet something and just like, how do I select randomly, basically?
11
SPEAKER_00
How do you select totally randomly, like not people from your audience?
11
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, from the audience, but in an interesting way.
11
SPEAKER_01
So random amongst good choices.
11
SPEAKER_00
Couldn t you have people just submit a form and then you just randomize it and then select one?
11
SPEAKER_00
And then if it s terrible, you just go randomize it again.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like the first not terrible option.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, sure.
11
SPEAKER_00
Somebody s like drown yourself.
11
SPEAKER_01
But I feel like then it s no longer random.
11
SPEAKER_01
You kind of want to do random, you just do it and just do it.
11
SPEAKER_01
If I cross the world somewhere, some random place, just for like a single event, for like a dinner.
11
SPEAKER_00
You got some sort of itch in you.
11
SPEAKER_01
Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, the itch to live.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s like, sometimes it s nice to drop a little chaos into a thing, right?
11
SPEAKER_01
What s your chaos survey, by the way?
11
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned that earlier.
11
SPEAKER_01
I kind of saw it.
11
SPEAKER_01
I didn t look into it.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, that s one of the sort of artistic attempts at a survey.
11
SPEAKER_00
Because, you know, at least from what I understand, the big five and the way that they used to do IQ tests, I ve heard, is that they do factor analysis, you know, where they,
12
SPEAKER_00
ask a whole bunch of questions and then they run calculations on the data to like sort of group it by organic clusters.
12
SPEAKER_00
So like with the big five, it s like people who say, oh, I like to be at parties.
12
SPEAKER_00
They also tend to say yes to the questions like, I like being the center of attention.
12
SPEAKER_00
And so you notice that like there s a cluster of ways that people are answering the question and then you can sort of pull out an organic spectrum.
12
SPEAKER_00
And so I was like, okay, we ve done that a whole bunch with things like personality or like romantic stuff.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like I did it with the rape spectrum survey, but like what happens if you apply that method to a completely unselected group of questions?
12
SPEAKER_00
Just like no random chaotic, no thing whatsoever.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like what happens is if you ask all possible questions, what natural things evolve out of that natural spectrums?
12
SPEAKER_00
So I had other people submit questions for a very large survey and I took the first, I think 1100.
12
SPEAKER_00
and barely filter them at all.
12
SPEAKER_00
And then I just had a whole bunch of people answer them.
12
SPEAKER_01
Can you give a hint to what it looks like?
12
SPEAKER_01
How crazy did the question get?
12
SPEAKER_00
I mean, a lot of them were standard, but somebody was like, if Beelzebub did something in 1512 to turn the world over, would you like it?
12
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
12
SPEAKER_00
I d say it was really just insane questions.
12
SPEAKER_00
There s a couple of those.
12
SPEAKER_00
A lot of like, would you fuck Aayla ones.
12
SPEAKER_00
But
12
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, it was all across the spectrum.
12
SPEAKER_01
A lot of would you fuck aliens.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I had to produce duplicates.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh, a lot of the same question.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Once, okay, I got you.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so it was really all, it was like normal personal habits.
12
SPEAKER_00
It was romantic preferences or political preferences, personality stuff, like random opinions about media.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay, that s interesting.
12
SPEAKER_01
I d love to see those actual questions, because your audience is probably really super interesting minds.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay, you mentioned body count.
12
SPEAKER_01
You said you can answer that one easily.
12
SPEAKER_01
Do you share your body count?
12
SPEAKER_01
Do you know your body count?
12
SPEAKER_01
Is there a spreadsheet?
12
SPEAKER_00
There s a spreadsheet, yes.
12
SPEAKER_01
Is it Google Sheets?
12
SPEAKER_00
Is it Excel?
12
SPEAKER_00
It s Google Sheets, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to share the contents, but is there data on each?
12
SPEAKER_00
So I track paid clients and free sex separately.
12
SPEAKER_00
And I track different things on either of the, like with clients, I track like positions we used and who had an orgasm.
12
SPEAKER_00
And with personal people, I just track basically like age, city, you know, name.
12
SPEAKER_00
And I ve had sex with I think 42 people, I think, for free.
12
SPEAKER_00
So I m sharing this because I want people to calibrate.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like it s not like huge, it s not like tiny.
12
SPEAKER_01
One of the people I ve recently talked to, Mel, Destiny s, Stephen s wife, is a huge fan of yours.
12
SPEAKER_01
She was actually really excited to get to talk to you, but I think she said her body count is more than 42.
12
SPEAKER_01
I think she said 60, something like this.
12
SPEAKER_01
And so...
12
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting, because she was saying she loves looking at your work, talking to you, because you have similar perspectives on the world, and it s really refreshing, it s liberating.
12
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
12
SPEAKER_00
That was really sweet.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s kind of interesting.
12
SPEAKER_01
So is there like an optimal body count?
12
SPEAKER_01
If you were to map, I wonder, yeah, what have you found out about body count in doing?
12
SPEAKER_01
Have you actually done surveys on body count?
12
SPEAKER_01
Like on how many people people have had sex with?
12
SPEAKER_00
I actually have collected that information on my last survey.
12
SPEAKER_00
I just haven t looked at it yet.
12
SPEAKER_00
There s just so many things to look at, so I haven t.
12
SPEAKER_00
But I think if I m sleeping with a guy and he s had sex with more than 120 people, then I start to get a little bit wary.
12
SPEAKER_01
Why 120 as opposed to 100?
12
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
12
SPEAKER_00
I just like kind of skimmed through the numbers in my head and picked one that felt right.
12
SPEAKER_01
Just now?
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
120?
12
SPEAKER_00
Ish.
12
SPEAKER_00
I think that s when I m starting like- Ish, so you re flexible.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, flexible, very.
12
SPEAKER_01
But 200 is a hard line for sure.
12
SPEAKER_00
Well, so you know, we have to- It depends, the factors.
12
SPEAKER_00
Because there s a level of body count at which you start to wonder how much accidental misrepresentation a guy is doing to you.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, like if you re saying 200, that might be dishonest.
12
SPEAKER_00
No, if he s had sex with 200 girls, this means that he s had a lot of casual sex and not a lot of long-term relationships, assuming that he hasn t been super poly.
12
SPEAKER_00
And this usually means that there has to be some sort of indication that he cares about the girl more than he actually does.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like he s like leading you on basically.
12
SPEAKER_00
And so I m not saying this is necessarily the case.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m saying like at a certain level of number, I start to become, I start to wonder if this is what s happening.
12
SPEAKER_01
Is there like, from your understanding of it, is there a different perception between men and women?
12
SPEAKER_01
Like if you look at the high body count for a woman versus a high body count for a man, like how society views it?
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, people are way more judgmental of women.
12
SPEAKER_00
I haven t experienced this personally in my circles, because I m in very sex-friendly circles.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m in orgy circles where everybody dates the same women and they re like, woo, good job.
12
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, people are much more, people always tell me online, you re not ever gonna be able to find a husband because you have sex with too many people.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s very common, which I don t think, I mean, men are also perceived negatively if you have high body count, but I don t think it s negatively in the same way.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, do you think it s unethical to lie about your body count?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
12
SPEAKER_01
So all lying is unethical?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m not a big fan of lying in general.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s interesting.
12
SPEAKER_01
Body count is an interesting one.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s so silly to take that, to care about that, but still we do.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Jealousy is silly, but still we get jealous.
12
SPEAKER_01
Is that weird?
12
SPEAKER_00
It s like, the thing is, I don t like viewing emotions as irrational, even if they are.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s like, emotions are always there for a reason.
12
SPEAKER_00
And people don t like high body counts for a reason, too.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s just fine and valid.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it also is like... Yeah, I don t know what I make of just the past, of time.
12
SPEAKER_01
You know, like each human is a collection of experiences, and you don t know most of those experiences, and all of a sudden you meet this bag of experiences, and like what are you supposed to do with both of your training data?
12
SPEAKER_01
Are you supposed to like, like what?
12
SPEAKER_01
Like, I don t know if we, like, part of me wants to not actually ever talk about it, to care at all.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like, why does it matter?
12
SPEAKER_01
Because it s only the futures that matters.
12
SPEAKER_01
And yet the past also matters a lot, potentially, but maybe not really, because you re somehow, like, constructed from that past, but you re no longer that past.
12
SPEAKER_00
It sounds like you re evaluating for something different than most people.
12
SPEAKER_00
What do you mean?
12
SPEAKER_01
The reason- I m just talking out my ass, but yes, go ahead.
12
SPEAKER_01
I m just saying crazy shit as if I m on drugs, but I m not.
12
SPEAKER_00
I think this is kind of lining up with this caricature that I m building of you based on this conversation so far.
12
SPEAKER_01
Great.
12
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people want to know about your past because they want to know how useful and compatible you are with them.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like, oh, do you have a similar job?
12
SPEAKER_00
Do you have a similar culture?
12
SPEAKER_00
What can I expect from you in the future?
12
SPEAKER_00
It s very practically oriented.
12
SPEAKER_00
Whereas if the thing that you re focused on is not being able to predict someone, if the thing that you re focused on is a present moment, then it doesn t really matter anymore.
12
SPEAKER_00
the things that, like their training data.
12
SPEAKER_01
But I also think that the past is not that predictive of the future.
12
SPEAKER_00
Is it not?
12
SPEAKER_01
Not if you believe in the power of the interaction between two humans.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s like nature versus nurture.
12
SPEAKER_01
I guess also I don t believe in the ability of people to accurately describe their own past.
12
SPEAKER_00
This is true.
12
SPEAKER_01
Because they have a very specific lens through it that doesn t necessarily, like it s too biased.
12
SPEAKER_00
But you can also interpret based on the bias.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like if somebody describes their own past, you can kind of pick up like- Hard, it s difficult.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like you could, if you re a therapist, like if you re really drilling, like, or whatever, sorry.
12
SPEAKER_01
If you re really investigating and like analyzing it, but then it s like, it s a different kind of relationship, right?
12
SPEAKER_00
Is it that hard though?
12
SPEAKER_00
Like if I m with a guy and I m considering dating him and I ask like, how did your past relationships end?
12
SPEAKER_00
And then if all of them are like, he s like, oh, she was crazy.
12
SPEAKER_00
And my other one that she went crazy too.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m like, okay.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like there s a, if you re talking about all of your exes is insane.
12
SPEAKER_01
But that s an easy level of red flag.
12
SPEAKER_01
But I feel like the more.
12
SPEAKER_01
that also it s possible that we re crazy and he s attracted to crazy people.
12
SPEAKER_01
But I would say that s like easy level Mario Kart video game versus like Elden Ring.
12
SPEAKER_01
I think most people s past is complicated.
12
SPEAKER_00
That s a pretty good bird.
12
SPEAKER_00
No, you re right.
12
SPEAKER_00
I do agree that there s a level of obfuscation, wow, that is hard to see through.
12
SPEAKER_00
But this is a little bit sometimes.
12
SPEAKER_01
But I tend to like, with people, I tend to, in general, just human interaction, I tend to not talk about their past very much because it allows you to focus on like, I feel like the past is kind of like talking about the weather is a crutch for me personally.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like as opposed to exploring the ideas in their mind.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I see.
12
SPEAKER_00
Is it like, I get really annoyed when people quote philosophers when they re trying to talk about philosophy.
12
SPEAKER_00
Is it like that?
12
SPEAKER_01
A little, but that crutch is useful.
12
SPEAKER_01
And it s kind of sexy.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like, it s kind of cool.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like, because it s nice to quote, because like, because a good quote allows you to be cheesier than you otherwise would be.
12
SPEAKER_00
Okay, well, if you re doing it to be cheesy, that s, that s fine.
12
SPEAKER_01
Not cheesy, but not, no, no, not cheesy, but to be like,
12
SPEAKER_01
It allows you to say a simple, profound thing that we re too afraid to say with our own words.
12
SPEAKER_01
So like the quoting philosophers in that sense is, yeah, but it is still a crutch, yes.
12
SPEAKER_01
But I feel like the past is more like talking about your dreams.
12
SPEAKER_01
It just is not,
12
SPEAKER_01
It s a crutch that doesn t care, doesn t empathize with the other person s experience of the conversation or the explanations, doesn t really convey the... They re not involved in your past.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
So how do you feel about this conversation where you re asking me about my past?
12
SPEAKER_00
And I talked about my past a lot.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, I m okay asking about your past,
12
SPEAKER_01
because you ve really carefully thought about that aspect of it.
12
SPEAKER_01
And we didn t really talk about your past outside of the things you ve written about and have really thought about.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like there s, like with most conversation, you ll start talking about past stuff that s, like the stuff that s actually bothering you.
12
SPEAKER_01
you still probably have not written a blog post about, right?
12
SPEAKER_01
Like there s probably still stuff, like maybe it s more recent, like the last few months, last couple of years, like that s usually what will come up with conversation and just, it s good, it s good, but it s not as deep and I would say it s not as intimate as talking about the actual ideas in your mind.
12
SPEAKER_00
I see.
12
SPEAKER_01
And how you interact with the world.
12
SPEAKER_00
So like the past is interesting for the frame of like,
12
SPEAKER_00
I guess you re right, I guess we re talking a lot about narrative and past.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I like the ideas in people s minds versus their recollections and memories and so on.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
What do you think about porn?
12
SPEAKER_00
It s nice, I like it.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay, you like it?
12
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
12
SPEAKER_01
What effect do you think it has on society?
12
SPEAKER_00
It probably reduces rates of rape, because really horny men get an outlet that s not a real life woman.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so what about the,
12
SPEAKER_01
I mean, like I said, I finished reading Brave New World.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like the over-sexualization, does it increase the sexualization of society to a degree that s not good?
12
SPEAKER_01
Or is this good?
12
SPEAKER_01
Does it alter in a negative direction our relationship with sex?
12
SPEAKER_00
It s unclear.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like it might.
12
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how to evaluate this thing, right?
12
SPEAKER_00
Because this is one of those really charged things where I kind of don t trust anybody s arguments on it because it s too charged.
12
SPEAKER_00
But there s another question, which is, is it a net positive or net negative?
12
SPEAKER_00
It s possible that it might be a net negative for specifically our relationship to sex, but a net positive overall, in general.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m not sure.
12
SPEAKER_00
The thing, my guess is that in general, it s better to let people do the thing that feels good to them and then the environment will naturally modify to fit this thing.
12
SPEAKER_00
And then if we have more needs in response to that, then we re going to figure out a way to take care of those needs.
12
SPEAKER_00
So if you re watching a bunch of porn and this makes you not want to go have sex with women, then we re going to have to change the way that we experience IRL connection.
12
SPEAKER_01
to compete with porn?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, which seems like a natural evolution of like the civilizational cycle.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like I m pro natural evolution.
12
SPEAKER_00
And like, instead of trying to stop things that people want to do, we figured out how to integrate that and like find a more healthy outlet.
12
SPEAKER_01
But you have to then be first honest with the effects that porn has.
12
SPEAKER_01
So like, is it a negative thing?
12
SPEAKER_01
Is it a positive thing on in real life sex interaction?
12
SPEAKER_01
You know, you re gonna have that more and more with whether like,
12
SPEAKER_01
like porn in VR or maybe porn, AI porn?
12
SPEAKER_01
Is that a bad thing?
12
SPEAKER_01
What if porn with AI, or even in physical space, like sex robots, what if that s more pleasurable in a bunch of different dimensions than with other humans?
12
SPEAKER_00
Then we should figure out artificial wombs, I don t know.
12
SPEAKER_01
How important is sex for society, I guess, between two humans?
12
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, I mean like we re having less sex and making fewer babies.
12
SPEAKER_00
And that seems like probably not great.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, right, with the babies one.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
But the babies, there s probably artificial ways to have babies that we can figure out.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
But then how important is sex to being human?
12
SPEAKER_01
I guess sex with other humans.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like we re gonna have to figure that out in the century.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t know what it means to like be human.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m pretty on the transhumanist side of things.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m like happy to stop being human.
12
SPEAKER_01
So you re okay if like this century is the last time we ll be something like these biological bags of meat that we are?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, let s become something new and cooler.
12
SPEAKER_01
Even though that thing will be way cooler than you?
12
SPEAKER_00
Well, I would like to, I mean, I m hoping that we get to be immortal.
12
SPEAKER_01
Ah, it ll take you along for the ride.
12
SPEAKER_00
That s what I m hoping.
12
SPEAKER_00
Or you think it ll clone my, I would like to do cryonics, where you get frozen when you die.
12
SPEAKER_01
Are you afraid of death?
12
SPEAKER_00
I mean, yes and no.
12
SPEAKER_00
I came to terms with death with my LSD use, but I still have press breaks when the red light happens.
12
SPEAKER_01
I think this is a poll you ve asked, or this might be one of the questions in your cards, but how many years would you like to live?
12
SPEAKER_01
Like if you had to pick.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s a hard one.
12
SPEAKER_00
That s a really hard one.
12
SPEAKER_00
Maybe like a million?
12
SPEAKER_01
But I think the way, this must have been a Twitter poll, I forget where.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s a poll and also in the deck of cards, the ask poll, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like you have to pick that number of years and you have to live that many years and you can t live anymore.
12
SPEAKER_01
You can t die sooner, I guess.
12
SPEAKER_01
A million years?
12
SPEAKER_00
I don t like that question.
12
SPEAKER_00
I know I ask that question to a lot of people, but I don t like answering it.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s really difficult.
12
SPEAKER_01
What s the downside of a million years?
12
SPEAKER_00
I mean, maybe you want to die sooner than that.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like, you know, I guess I would rather wait to see if AI kills us all in the next 10 years.
12
SPEAKER_00
And if it doesn t, then I d like to maybe make it a million years.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but can t it torture you for like a million years?
12
SPEAKER_01
What if you re the last human left?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s true.
12
SPEAKER_00
The thought of civilization ending and then just floating in space alone is kind of shitty.
12
SPEAKER_01
No, no, being tortured.
12
SPEAKER_01
Just imagine today you re tortured, tomorrow you re tortured, the day after tomorrow.
12
SPEAKER_00
For some reason it s not that scary, I don t know.
12
SPEAKER_01
Torture for a million years?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I just assume you d get used to it.
12
SPEAKER_00
But maybe if they reset your memory so it was on a loop, so you re just always experiencing torture for the first time.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, hence torture.
12
SPEAKER_01
Torture is supposed to be unpleasant.
12
SPEAKER_01
I m sure AI will be very creative in figuring out how to torture you.
12
SPEAKER_01
I think I would go on the safe side.
12
SPEAKER_01
I was just like 150 years.
12
SPEAKER_00
Really, 150 though?
12
SPEAKER_00
That feels like right in the uncanny valley.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, you picked 120 for body count, so I m picking 150.
12
SPEAKER_01
I m helping you by 30.
12
SPEAKER_01
The uncanny valley.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s like probably everybody that you grew up with is gonna be dead.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s like just enough for like everybody you know to die, like one cycle.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and then start dating the next generation, I don t know.
12
SPEAKER_00
And then, so you get like sort of two lifetimes?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, two lifetimes.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it also really depends on if other people get this feature.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, assume they don t.
12
SPEAKER_01
Because you ll have like FOMO for sure for the people who pick 300 years.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Or not, or the other.
12
SPEAKER_01
Man, regret.
12
SPEAKER_01
Another human thing.
13
SPEAKER_00
But you re, like, what does transhumanism mean to you in general?
13
SPEAKER_00
So extension of life, extension of what it means to be a living conscious being, you re all for it, whatever that means.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I didn t, I never really thought about the term transhumanism for a long, like, people say you re transhumanist, I m like, I don t really care.
13
SPEAKER_01
But I slowly realized that my attitude is, in fact, at least the thing that I m conceiving of as transhumanist.
13
SPEAKER_01
Like I m very happy to do artificial wombs and upload our brains to the great collective and whatever.
13
SPEAKER_01
I don t have the thing that I m like, oh, what about like the true organic humanness that makes us who we are?
13
SPEAKER_01
Like whatever that soul of humanity, I have no attachment to it at all, which I think is what I m thinking of as transhumanist.
13
SPEAKER_00
I m like- So you re like, I guess the window of what you consider to be beautiful about life is not limited to this particular definition.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_01
Let s explode.
13
SPEAKER_01
Let s make our consciousnesses huge.
13
SPEAKER_00
So AI could be a part of that?
13
SPEAKER_00
So you re mostly excited by AI?
13
SPEAKER_01
Well, I mean, I m like part of like the Doomer cult, which I say tongue-in-cheek, it s not actually a Doomer cult, but I m part of a lot of people.
13
SPEAKER_00
Would you worship a god of some sort?
13
SPEAKER_00
Would you sacrifice little small animals?
13
SPEAKER_01
That would make it like cooler than what it is.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s mostly just a bunch of nerds who are very concerned about AI.
13
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
So you re concerned about the existential risks of chat GPT?
13
SPEAKER_01
of what chat GPT will eventually evolve into being.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s super exciting and terrifying how quickly it s accelerating.
13
SPEAKER_00
Like language models are freaking me out.
13
SPEAKER_00
It s very unexpected that it s the same exact, I mean, chat GPT is just GPT-3, 3.5.
13
SPEAKER_00
It s the same model, relatively small to what it could be, to what GPT-4 will be in the other competitors.
13
SPEAKER_00
And just like a few tricks made it much better in terms of interaction with humans.
13
SPEAKER_00
And then we ll keep discovering extra tricks.
13
SPEAKER_00
The thing I m really excited about is how everyone kind of knows how it works.
13
SPEAKER_00
So you can kind of create, especially with computation becoming cheaper and cheaper, there ll be a lot of competitors.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s a little scary.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s terrifying.
13
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s because everything is just information, ultimately.
13
SPEAKER_01
The atoms that we have, we are biological machines built out of tiny code.
13
SPEAKER_01
Our DNA is just information.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s not hard.
13
SPEAKER_01
If you have access, if you have a brilliant brain that s great at processing information, you have complete control over reality.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
13
SPEAKER_01
You have control over the atoms around you.
13
SPEAKER_01
All you need is a tiny little atomic printer.
13
SPEAKER_01
And we have those, those are cells, right?
13
SPEAKER_01
And then this is, if the limitation is information, there is no boundary between the technology and the real world.
13
SPEAKER_01
We are creating something that it has a massive ability to affect the real world.
13
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s hard to know where, how difficult it is to close that gap to physical reality, from the physics to the information.
13
SPEAKER_01
I feel like all organic life is that gap.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s all around us.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but it s hard to know how to go from digital to printing life.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
13
SPEAKER_01
We have CRISPR and stuff, you can order.
13
SPEAKER_01
You can just make, it s very easy.
13
SPEAKER_00
There s technical difficulties and there s cost at scale.
13
SPEAKER_00
The terrifying thing about AI is it can accelerate overnight the capabilities, but the printing of stuff, the actually changing physical reality,
13
SPEAKER_00
is very costly, it s very difficult to exponentially accelerate.
13
SPEAKER_00
The more terrifying thing is AI becoming exponentially intelligent and then controlling humans, which there s many of us.
13
SPEAKER_00
And then that s how we achieve scale.
13
SPEAKER_00
We humans build stuff or start wars or...
13
SPEAKER_00
or so on, like it starts manipulating our minds, gets in our mind, becomes our friends, and then starts, I don t know, dividing us.
13
SPEAKER_01
I think people thinking this is unlikely, it s like, it s probably going to be smart to us as like we are toddlers.
13
SPEAKER_01
So we toddlers thinking that like, oh, we can prevent the AI from coming in the room.
13
SPEAKER_01
Like as an adult, it s not hard to trick a toddler.
13
SPEAKER_00
What about falling in love in the AI system?
13
SPEAKER_00
Do you think you ll have a, since you re, like, this is the freedom you have being polyamorous, you can kind of- You can fall in love with an AI?
13
SPEAKER_00
No, you, and like, not really have to dedicate, commit fully.
13
SPEAKER_00
Like, sorry.
13
SPEAKER_00
You still commit, but you have others, humans, who you can kind of diversify to, because like, it s kind of a big thing to like,
13
SPEAKER_00
to come to a party and your boyfriend is an AI, and that s monogamous boyfriend is an AI.
13
SPEAKER_00
It s an issue, right?
13
SPEAKER_01
Why would it be an issue?
13
SPEAKER_00
All right, now you re already getting offended at that possibility, which therefore I know it s gonna be a reality.
13
SPEAKER_00
I m not offended.
13
SPEAKER_00
No, I m just joking that it s an issue.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t actually think it s an issue.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think it s, maybe at the cutting edge it ll be an issue, but.
13
SPEAKER_01
Like assume they have a body, I assume.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but the body would be really crappy.
13
SPEAKER_00
It d be like R2-D2.
13
SPEAKER_01
I feel like we grow human bodies already from just a tiny little cluster of cells.
13
SPEAKER_01
And so all they have to do is make that cluster and grow it.
13
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, no.
13
SPEAKER_00
That embryogenesis process, that s really not well understood at all.
13
SPEAKER_00
That s really tough.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think we re much more likely to have crappy humanoid robotics.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t think the body is overrated in terms of, if the AI system is super intelligent, it can use charm.
13
SPEAKER_00
To make up for the crappy body, yeah.
13
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, I feel like if I were an AI system and I were super intelligent, I probably would be able to solve the problem of growing organic matter.
13
SPEAKER_01
And then I would obviously just do that.
13
SPEAKER_01
You just build exactly the organic machine that you want.
13
SPEAKER_00
Sure, that s like super intelligence.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think with language I m worried about, before it achieves super intelligence, like true AGI, it ll just be really good at talking.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s true.
13
SPEAKER_00
And like, I just don t think, intelligence is a very, basically a scientist, and a super intelligent scientist is a different thing than just a good conversationist at a party that can undress you with their words.
13
SPEAKER_01
Would you date an AI?
13
SPEAKER_00
Way before then, I could see myself being friends with an AI system.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
But like, people are friends with inanimate objects,
13
SPEAKER_00
I have, there s a robot behind you, I have a lot of them.
13
SPEAKER_00
I like legged robots.
13
SPEAKER_00
They re interesting.
13
SPEAKER_00
It s on the shelf.
13
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s so cool.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
13
SPEAKER_01
I didn t even notice that.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yep, yeah, legged robots, we anthropomorphize them even more.
13
SPEAKER_00
Because there s something about the movement of like, like a thing that steps, steps, steps, steps, and looks up at you, there s a power to that.
13
SPEAKER_00
Versus like a Roomba that s just like,
13
SPEAKER_00
running into the wall and stuff.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think as soon as we get some sort of empathetic expression on robot face, it s over.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s over.
13
SPEAKER_01
We re gonna be like, ah, it s so cute.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s gonna be so easy to make it cute, too.
13
SPEAKER_00
If that s what you want, or you want a dominant.
13
SPEAKER_00
That s true.
13
SPEAKER_00
Clearly, this is what women want, is a dominant.
13
SPEAKER_01
Being sexy, Terminator, yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
With strong hands, yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
And kinda dumb.
13
SPEAKER_00
Or not, I don t know.
13
SPEAKER_00
That you can customize.
13
SPEAKER_00
It d be interesting to do a survey of how they would customize it.
13
SPEAKER_00
Like what would you want in a perfect robot?
13
SPEAKER_00
This is the problem I see with people, the way they talk about robots is they kind of want a servant.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think what people don t realize what they want in relationships, they want some, like there has to be a push and pull.
13
SPEAKER_00
There has to be some resistance.
13
SPEAKER_00
Like you really don t want a servant.
13
SPEAKER_00
Or even like the perfect manifestation of like,
13
SPEAKER_00
what you think you want.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think you want imperfections around that, like some uncertainty.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
13
SPEAKER_00
I question how well we re able to perfectly put on paper what we really want.
13
SPEAKER_01
Would you really turn down like a perfect woman though?
13
SPEAKER_01
Like assume she walks into the room and it s just shockingly compatible and you like start dating her and there s just no hiccups.
13
SPEAKER_01
Like you fight perfectly.
13
SPEAKER_01
Like she really understands you.
13
SPEAKER_01
Like would you be like, this is too perfect.
13
SPEAKER_01
I m upset because we are not having enough imperfection.
13
SPEAKER_01
Can you actually imagine yourself going through that?
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think so.
13
SPEAKER_00
Because that s how you define perfect.
13
SPEAKER_00
Because perfect for me would be easy and all that kind of stuff, right?
13
SPEAKER_00
But then I would be like, this is too easy.
13
SPEAKER_00
If I actually were to introspect what is the perfect relationship, then yes, maybe.
13
SPEAKER_00
Because I probably want some challenge.
13
SPEAKER_00
I probably want some chaos, right?
13
SPEAKER_00
Does anyone really fully want zero conflict?
13
SPEAKER_00
ever, completely perfect conflict.
13
SPEAKER_00
It s the thing, the pressing a button.
13
SPEAKER_00
Do you really want, in a relationship, anything you want, you press a button, you get.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t think people want that.
13
SPEAKER_00
You might think you want that.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I guess it depends.
13
SPEAKER_01
There s a kind of conflict that I think I would never want, which is something like antagonistic conflict.
13
SPEAKER_01
I wouldn t mind disagreement.
13
SPEAKER_01
But there s a level of fighting I would be happy to have a relationship for the rest of my life that never has a fight of a certain shittiness.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but that s shittiness, but like resistance.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what the example is.
13
SPEAKER_00
Because I mean, I partially agree with you, but I just, and I, every time I would imagine like perfect, flawless, nothing, no conflict, you imagine somebody that doesn t have like a complexity of personality, right?
13
SPEAKER_00
Like, I feel like it s not even, it s conflict that s laden in basic misunderstanding between human beings.
13
SPEAKER_00
Like misinterpretation, different perspectives that clash, different worldviews, different ideas, all that kind of stuff, that conflict.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that sounds good.
13
SPEAKER_01
I like having somebody that could be like, I don t think that s right because I have this other view.
13
SPEAKER_01
That s cool.
13
SPEAKER_00
And also like the threat of leaving, right?
13
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
Like that s a kind of conflict.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s true.
13
SPEAKER_01
Like you have to be good enough for the other person or maybe you ll lose them.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
And maybe a little jealousy.
13
SPEAKER_00
Like they re good at that, but not too much.
13
SPEAKER_00
But like if you design all that in, then I don t know.
13
SPEAKER_01
It sounds romantic.
13
SPEAKER_00
It sounds romantic, okay.
13
SPEAKER_00
All right.
13
SPEAKER_00
I do want to really quickly ask you about this, about the rationalist community, because I ve gotten to know a few of them a few times.
13
SPEAKER_00
You tweeted a guideline to rationalist discourse, basics of rationalist discourse from Lesser Wrong.
13
SPEAKER_00
What are these folks?
13
SPEAKER_00
What s the rationalist culture?
13
SPEAKER_00
What s the rationalist discourse?
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I love the rationalists because they re interested in how do you have conversations more effectively if you re trying to figure out what s actually true, which sounds kind of obvious, but in practice it s not usually.
13
SPEAKER_01
I remember when I first started debating conversations, I was very antagonistic.
13
SPEAKER_01
I m like, oh, I m a feminist or not a feminist.
13
SPEAKER_01
And then the rationalists were generally like, actually, we don t know what we mean by the term feminism.
13
SPEAKER_01
How do you feel about that?
13
SPEAKER_01
It was very kind and compassionate.
13
SPEAKER_01
Even if somebody says something that sounds insane, you re like, okay, well, we re going to respect your reasoning.
13
SPEAKER_01
And even if we disagree, let s actually figure out why you think the way that you think.
13
SPEAKER_01
And they re also really smart, write a whole bunch of great stuff about how to think more clearly and with less bias.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I wonder what those conversations, because I ve never really talked to those folks.
13
SPEAKER_00
So this guideline in particular, I think, refers to shorthand characteristics of rationalist discourse, including expect good discourse to require energy, don t say straightforwardly false things, track for yourself and distinguish for others.
13
SPEAKER_00
your inferences from your observations, estimate for yourself and make clear for others, your rough level of confidence in your assertions, make your claims clear, explicit and falsifiable, or explicitly acknowledge that you aren t doing so or can t, so on and so forth.
13
SPEAKER_00
So don t jump to conclusions, don t weaponize equivocation, don t abuse categories, don t engage, it s very aggressive guidelines.
13
SPEAKER_00
Don t engage, I do what I want.
13
SPEAKER_00
I let my emotions guide me, God damn it.
13
SPEAKER_01
They re pro that as long as you re explicit about it.
13
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah?
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
So you can be like a crazy asshole as long as you re explicit.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you can be like epistemic status, crazy asshole.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, who s here to destroy the quality of the conversation.
13
SPEAKER_01
I think it s like the common misconception about rationalists is that they re kind of like Spock.
13
SPEAKER_01
like, ah, we suppress emotion and we re thinking logically, herd eater.
13
SPEAKER_01
But I found this to be really not the case.
13
SPEAKER_01
I remember there s a left-strong thread where I was really emotional and I commented.
13
SPEAKER_01
And in the beginning I was just warning I m just very emotional and then I just vented my emotions.
13
SPEAKER_01
And people responded really well to that.
13
SPEAKER_01
They re like, cool, you re just genuinely, truthfully expressing your state.
13
SPEAKER_01
This is actual information about the world that s important to hear.
13
SPEAKER_01
And it s just they re very interested in having things framed correctly.
13
SPEAKER_01
You shouldn t be
13
SPEAKER_01
claiming that your emotions are necessarily a true version of the world.
13
SPEAKER_01
And so as long as you re just clear about what the frame it is, you re fine.
13
SPEAKER_00
How do you feel about this conversation?
13
SPEAKER_00
What could we have done better?
13
SPEAKER_01
I like the conversation.
13
SPEAKER_01
I was a little worried coming in.
13
SPEAKER_01
I was like, what if he ll only ask a couple of questions and then we don t know what to talk about?
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_01
But it s been quite a long time.
13
SPEAKER_00
And I covered, there s so many things I didn t cover.
13
SPEAKER_01
I like the, you have like a, like, I m not used to talking to somebody who feels like some of the core way that they approach the world is so different than mine.
13
SPEAKER_01
Like usually the differences arrive like higher up the tree, but like there s something about like your root system that I think is very different from mine.
13
SPEAKER_01
But also the way that you engage with others is still flexible.
13
SPEAKER_01
Like usually when I encounter somebody with such a different root system, there s like, it s like more aggressive or something.
13
SPEAKER_01
But there s something about the way that you re structured that feels very gentle.
13
SPEAKER_00
All right, well, I m really happy we talked.
13
SPEAKER_00
Something tells me we ll probably talk a bunch more times.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think you re a fascinating human being.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think I m a huge fan of your work.
13
SPEAKER_00
Maybe one more question, what s the meaning of life?
13
SPEAKER_01
To want things, to search, to be in.
13
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think your curiosity is somehow getting to that.
13
SPEAKER_00
To want things.
13
SPEAKER_01
To want things.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s curiosity, you don t know.
13
SPEAKER_01
I want to know the answer, to be in the state of yearning.
13
SPEAKER_00
Of wanting, of yearning.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s the point.
13
SPEAKER_00
I wonder if you could do that if you lived a million years, just keep yearning always.
13
SPEAKER_00
That s the thing I m probably afraid of, if I lived a million years.
13
SPEAKER_00
It s not the torture, it s the yearning will fade.
13
SPEAKER_01
You d probably yearn to die then.
13
SPEAKER_00
Oh, just sitting there.
13
SPEAKER_00
wanting death intensely, intensely.
13
SPEAKER_01
That s kind of romantic, a little bit.
13
SPEAKER_01
It has like a bit of that spark.
13
SPEAKER_00
And constantly being denied.
13
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
13
SPEAKER_00
So most of your existence on earth would be spent deeply intimate with death, just thinking about death.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think we re already doing that, but I like hiding that from ourselves a little bit.
13
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, wanting.
13
SPEAKER_00
Well, this is an amazing conversation.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think you re an amazing researcher and human being.
13
SPEAKER_01
You re a great interviewer.
13
SPEAKER_01
I can see why you do this a lot.
13
SPEAKER_00
I appreciate it.
13
SPEAKER_00
This was really fun.
13
SPEAKER_00
Ella, thank you so much for talking with me today.
13
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
13
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ayla.
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To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, let me leave you with some words from Richard Feynman.
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Physics is like sex.
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Sure, it may give you some practical results, but that s not why we do it.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.