the Copenhagen interpretation, which states that the act of measurement affects the system. Please. The Penrose interpretation, which suggests that the wave function collapse. Just to confirm, yes, you're in the right place. This is Skeptico. This is yet another movie club I'm playing for you. This is from Devs, a series on Netflix. This is really super duper mainstream, and like right off the bat, they are talking about the most fundamental issues of consciousness, AI, how robots are going to take over the world, which of course that's true, but also how robots may be creating a simulation that we're living in and all the rest of that shit that if you're into that stuff you better be into it. It's the biggest thing, right? And it's directly, directly relevant to this amazing interview I have coming up with Andrew Smart, who's written a book on all this. So back to the clip. I want to talk to you about the von Neumann-Wigner interpretation, which states that human consciousness is the key modifier in decoherence.  Katie, you're offering a lecture on von Neumann-Wigner.  Half of the people in this room are undergrads. They might actually believe what you're saying. There are many interesting conjectures within the fairy.  Okay, so there's like five different clips I could play for you from this upcoming interview with Andrew Smart, but I'm going to kind of confine it very narrowly in this introduction, even though we talk about all the really important shit like is Google the belly of the beast that has an unrelenting chokehold on our freedom and way of life as we know it. Is that quite directly in this as we do demonetization, but also, you know, social justice and search and the responsibility and scale, which is really the issue.  So they have a certain responsibility there that they're going to need some flexibility on handling. Even if they have to use Gestapo tactics to do it, I'm flavoring this. It's really a good interview. It's a fair balanced interview on a super appreciating respect. This guy, Andrew Smart, who you're going to hear from. But here's a clip and then we'll roll right into the interview. The idea is that will these AGI's will be just like human minds. They'll literally be minds. And so the thought about LSD was then, well, if it's basically indistinguishable from the human mind, it, you know, it's like how you would engineer a system that could be perturbed by LSD. What I think has been the core question here a lot of times, and I think is this question is skirted for the most part by the technology community. And that is, is it the Turing test or is it the metaphysical test? The question about consciousness is, is it somehow fundamental? Welcome to Skeptica where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I'm your host Alex Karris and I have a terrific guest for you today. His name is Andrew Smart. He's the author of a book from a few years ago, but certainly an important relevant book beyond zero and one machines, psychedelics and consciousness.  I have a broad yet deep background in science, engineering and technology. I specialize in the areas of brain imaging, neuro technology, human computer interaction, human factors, data visualization and statistical analysis. I'm primarily interested in the disciplinary intersections among cognitive science, computer science, artificial intelligence, anthropology, philosophy and human factors. Now, as impressive as that sounds, I would suggest that Andrew is being somewhat modest.  I mean, man, a lot of peer reviewed, very important papers and then certainly if you look him up on LinkedIn, I'm not going to go there, but I mean, he is, you know, very, very well positioned at Google worked at Twitter before that, you know, really belly of the beast kind of jobs honey, well as well, but we're going to talk all of that. So I'm very, very grateful that Andrew has joined us today to talk about this book and other stuff. Andrew, thanks for being here. No, thanks for having me on. I'm a little embarrassed by the introduction, but thanks. There is absolutely no way you should be. I really wish you would do more interviews. I'd love to hear more of that, but hey, well, I got a shot here. So I can't, I can't complain. So tell us, you know, let's start with the book Beyond Zero and One. Tell folks, you know, what they're going to find. Yeah, well, like you mentioned, the book is maybe five or six years old. It's hard to remember now in our weird, you know, time warp of COVID. So, yeah, you know, I've long had this interest in philosophy of mind and AI and had been following the debates about it ever since I was a student and, you know, like you mentioned, I've worked in cognitive science and then different, you know, brain imaging labs. And I was at the time when I started writing the book, I was working at Novartis, which is a big, big pharma company in Switzerland, but it's actually where LSD was first synthesized when, when it used to be called Sandos, where Albert Hoffman worked. And I, it turned out I was working for a time in the same building where Hoffman's lab used to be in the 1940s. Let me interject something to set this up because maybe I put you too much on the spot and did it.  Right. I mean, that, that is like, that, that is like one way to coach this, you know, this is the guy who's developing the strong AI robots, which we know are going to have a greater and greater, you know, tone it down a bit, a greater and greater influence on everything, whether it's law or whether you go see a therapist, a doctor, or whether you trade stocks or any of this stuff. We all understand that artificial intelligence is, so when you just mentioned two words, you said the controversy surrounding this, I just want to frame up and make sure everyone understands that this is like, but people are into this is like, like one of the most important issues, a lot bigger than a lot other. Yeah. OK, so go ahead, please continue because now we're back to the belly in the LSD. Thing is super, super genius, the way you weave that into the whole book. So go ahead. I'm sorry. Oh, sure. No, no. Yeah. No. Well, yeah, we can get to the my job at Google, which is actually. Not, I'm, you know, like I'm actually trying to constrain or or do some sort of risk assessments of those things that you just mentioned. But we can anyway, I so if people are familiar with the debates around AGI or what they call artificial general intelligence and super intelligence. And this is this is it's still definitely a debate in the field about, you know, you have a general purpose model that can do anything really. And because now the way machine learning is developed is they have specific tasks and they're not especially good in areas when you, you know, if you develop a thing that's supposed to detect a certain type of image and then you you use it in the real world, it often fails if it if it sees something that it's not used to in its in its distribution. But anyway, there there's been a long strand of of work on this question of super intelligence and AGI and human level artificial intelligence. And there's a there's a niche there of philosophers like David Chalmers, for example, who have been thinking about consciousness a lot and whether this AGI would be conscious like. And that that was the the interesting part to me was this and in the debates about AGI, consciousness is still quite taboo. Like people it's almost like a side issue that. Well, as you as you point out in the book and I forget the exact quote, but you said a lot of AI engineers question whether it's even relevant.  And it just kind of bit on my background. So I do have an AI background. So I was research associate at Arizona. And then I started an AI company, my path technologies. And we built these expert systems for Dupont and Texas instruments with this idea that we would, you know, somehow capture all the knowledge that these gold badgers had and, you know, preserve it and it didn't. And none of it worked very good, but I'm familiar with the thing. I'm familiar with the issues. And it was really I don't want to say it was crappy, but I mean, where AI is at now, you know, like AlphaGo. So like it's almost like you have to have seen the movie AlphaGo and know the whole thing to even kind of enter into this conversation. Because what it's doing is kind of catapulted us to another level. I mean, before that, it was big blue and can AI be the best chess player in the world. And now we're just we're just way, way past that, folks. And like those issues are like way in the distance. And what Andrew is at the cutting edge of is. OK, these things are really, really smart, you know, how smart could they possibly get? And you pose this question again, that kind of catapults us five steps beyond that. Can we build a robot that trips on acid? So you tell us how you jump three steps ahead and say, screw the the the Turing test. This is the acid Turing test. Well, I so and this is a weird like you were mentioning like a weird confluence of of things in my life where, you know, I had come from this sort of cognitive science AI background, where I was studying and working. And then I had I had moved to Basel and Switzerland to work at this company to work on on medical tech. And then, you know, on the tram one day, actually, I just I had been reading stuff.  You know, I had been reading a lot about psychedelics. I have my own. You know, I used I've explored psychedelics in my past. And and I had read Albert Hoffman's book and I found the whole history of of LSD super fascinating. And it's it's kind of a lost history, especially in mainstream culture. You know, it's it's a very underappreciated story. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because I think your insights in that or you're telling of that history is super important. And it's brilliant because it goes beyond psychedelic experience. Right. It changes the way we think about cognitive science and neuroscience. That that's really important. I hope can you share that? Well, yeah. And well, and so the, you know, so Albert Hoffman was this Swiss chemist and, you know, working at was what was then Sando and Basel.  He had been working with a series of different different derivatives of fungus and fungi and this, you know, that actually it's kind of a toxic thing if you if you get too much of it. But he and I think originally they were working on sort of respiratory. They thought this was good for respiratory issues.  So he had been working on this. And the story is that, you know, at some point he was had synthesized a bunch of these different compounds and the 25th one that that LSD 25 as it was called somehow in the lab one day he accidentally got some in his system.  But he had about an hour or two where he saw these vivid colors. He felt really strange. He had this strange episode. He initially thought maybe this was chloroform that he had accidentally ingested because they use that as a solvent. And but then he thought it was really odd. So he went home and then he's he's he said, well, maybe it is this stuff. This this lacergic acid, diethylamide. And so he planned a self experiment for that. So he went home and then he's like and so he then he synthesized some more. And he he thought he was just making this the tiniest dose that would do anything. He didn't even think this would do anything. And it turned out this is actually a pretty, you know, a pretty good, a pretty good dose. So he ate it. And then he had, you know, the famous then he tried to ride his bike home from the lab because he started like what's he really thought he was going to die. We're seeing devils and, you know, and he and he has, you know, he he writes that he he tried to ride his bike home. He had no memory of moving on his bike, but suddenly he was at his house. And anyway, he had this kind of, you know, the first acid trip. And that's why we call it an acid trip because he was, you know, the famous bicycle trip and actually every year in Basel, there's a on the on the date when this happened, there's a bicycle tour from around Basel to where you know that. Yeah, it's kind of a. But so he then he reported this to his superiors and they were all skeptical. And he was like, well, try some.  And yeah, that that that started a whole real serious drug development. You know, they did animal studies, they did human studies. It looked really promising for treating alcoholism, for treating depression. There were thousands and thousands of studies done in papers written. And then, you know, the what he and he really intended it to be a serious psych, you know, psychiatric treatment and he wanted to develop, you know. And so he was actually really dismayed with, you know, and he resented very much the hippie movement in the United States for and he resented Leary. For deep, you know what I mean, for under for undermining the seriousness of of the of the drug, like he didn't want it to be a party drug, which it kind of entered the culture in that way. And then it got banned and then research on it just completely stopped. And so anyway, that's it's terrific. Because I'll tell you, there's one other aspect of this that I learned from you. And I thought it was really just a great insight. What you point out is it opened up all these vistas in terms of even thinking about all the stuff that we now consider relevant. Sure. I mean, yeah. And as far as, you know, as reading the history of this. I think prior to LSD, people didn't really think that that what's going on chemically in your brain had anything to do with how you feel or how your behavior.  So then you had, you know, then in Prozac and Ritalin and that. And I think LSD was really kind of the entryway into more serious, I mean, people had known about, you know, of course, stimulants and things, but there really wasn't a good, a very advanced understanding of exactly what these different kinds of molecules are doing at the, you know, at the neural level. I mean, we still don't. We I think our understanding is quite crude, but like LSD was really kind of the gateway to like, oh, we can we can work on compounds that target specific brain, you know, neurotransmitters and change how people feel, change how they behave. And I think LSD was really and that's that's kind of a lost piece of medical history. Absolutely. Absolutely.  And then what your book traces is like, OK, so that's one gateway. And then AI and its power to kind of do stuff that we think is pretty smart, you know, and play chess and go with don't don't play online poker people. You're playing against robots. You're just going to get wiped out. But I kid, but I'm not really where you're going, then, is to say, OK, so in the way that these guys had their world blown about while there's this chemical neuro interaction that I don't even fricking understand. And I didn't understand consciousness to begin with, but now I don't understand it even more than you come along or AI comes along and says, yeah, you really don't understand consciousness. And then what you pose here, which is such an important question is again, I'll repeat it. Can we build a robot that trips on acid? And in the book, you say the Turing acid test. So talk about a little bit about Alan Turing because this really is still for a lot of people and it's going to be a very central part of this dialogue we're going to have today. You know, what is the Turing test? And is it really reasonable for you to push the Turing test to the LSD level? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's in this and part of the fun of writing a book like this is you can be very speculative and and thought to experiment to you with, you know what I mean? And it's it's I fully acknowledge it's a speculative argument. But I was I mean, what I was interested in was a lot of like. So, A, there's a lack of discussion of consciousness in the AGI world. That's like we're going to create these human level intelligences. And people are really and and to me and, you know, coming from a bit more of a human cognitive science background, philosophy mind, where consciousness is a central problem for a lot of thinkers. And there's this and, you know, what is the relationship between intelligence and consciousness? And so I was questioning, like, can you have a human level intelligence that's not conscious? I was I'm very I'm still very skeptical of that. Like I don't and and and so and even in neuroscience, we don't know what the relationship is between intelligence, whatever that is and consciousness, whatever that is. So I I wanted to take. But then I did want to take the the sort of strong AI thesis that were made that, you know, the idea is that will these AGIs will be just like human minds. They'll literally be minds. And and so the thought about LSD was then, well, if it's if it's basically indistinguishable from the human mind, it it must have it must have this other property of like, you must be able to alter it through these, you know, it was it's a leap and, you know, it's like how you would engineer a system that could be perturbed by LSD or like. And but this gets back to these debates in philosophy of mind about, you know, there's the functionalist thing where it's like the medium, if it's biological neurons or silicon based artificial neurons doesn't matter. It's what's important is what the way that they're set up and the algorithms that run that that's what is conscious. And then there's other thinkers are like, no, no, no, no, only biological systems can do this. And that and the AI people are like, no, no, no, biology is irrelevant. And so I was I thought LSD was a very interesting like way to like probe like probe that assumption of biology is irrelevant. It's like, can you have all the properties of human mind without this other property of like, you can you can you can give it LSD and and it'll it'll completely change the way your brain is operating for a while or maybe or maybe for a longer time. It's very exciting. It's a very imaginative way of kind of framing the problem. If I can go back, I just want to make sure that we don't lose everybody, you know, the Turing test was basically you know, as you were kind of alluding to there. It's like if I can fool you into thinking I'm intelligent, then I'm intelligent. And that that then becomes the standard throughout, you know. So if we're sitting across and we're doing a chat and you think I'm a human and I'm not, then I've passed the Turing test, you know, and then we keep extending that beyond and beyond. And as you point out, as you just pointed out, the thought exercises, though, they're going a lot of different directions, but where you took it with the acid thing or the LSD thing, I think really gets to what I think has been the core question here a lot of times. And I think is this question is skirted for the most part by the technology community. And that is, is it the Turing test or is it the metaphysical test? The question about consciousness is, is it somehow fundamental?  Consciousness is fundamental and matter, what you guys like are so interested in you AI guys are so interested in is a murder is somehow emerging as bad work is somehow coming out of consciousness. And now I have to add that this really needs to be something that we wrestle to the ground to because on this show, I mean, I got 200 shows exploring that. And I think the best way to explore that is through looking at some of the fundamental questions assumptions we've made about consciousness, start with, does consciousness survive death? So go look at the near death experience. Science, go look at University of Virginia and the reincarnation science, go look at all that, and you come back and go, okay, yeah, kind of pretty well case closed consciousness seems to survive bodily death. And that would definitely throw us in the metaphysical camp. So how do we even hold on to the materialist science consciousnesses and illusion? I mean, is that really viable from a philosophical standpoint, or not just philosophical, given the evidence we have? Yeah, that's, I mean, that's interesting. And I haven't thought too much about that. You know, in terms of those questions, it's definitely like in the book, I was, I was kind of trying to argue against the, the inherent dualist, I think, tone in a lot of the AI thing where, like consciousness can be embodied in any medium, or you know, if it's silicon, and I don't, and yeah, that's a, I don't know what I think about, you know, consciousness surviving death, and like, I'm, I'm ignore, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not, I don't have a strong. Let me ask you this question, though, about that, I'm going to persist on that a little bit further. Yeah. Isn't that the question? I mean, if we were going to not, but not the question, not like, Oh my God, I have to know if I, but from the standpoint of reducing it down to the kind of most parsimonious way to determine one or another. I mean, I think that's pretty, that's how I got there. I didn't start there with that question. I started with Psy and parapsychology and how do those guys at Princeton get that random number generator to swing a little bit more 5050 that way. And then I got to some point, I go, well, we'll scroll that. I mean, here's the more, here's the simplest question. Does consciousness survive death? If consciousness survives this bodily biological thing, well, then, you know, it kind of answers that question. So philosophically, doesn't a question kind of cut to the chase? Yeah. I mean, and it's true. I think you're, it's a great point because you, it kind of has to, if you imagine that you can do it in a machine, you know, it has to, you, you have to assume it does transcend the bio, like your biological brain. If, if, if it can be instantiated in a different, yeah. And so it's a very good point. And it's a, it's a very, it's an interest, you know, and I agree.  Exactly. Right.  The, the, the objects of scientific theories are, and, you know, I, I don't, I'm not, you know, but I would, I would definitely lean toward this, like, there's, there's some mind independent world, and science tells us something about it. That in the, in the vaguest, weakest form of that argument. But I, but I completely acknowledge that that's, that that's a metaphysics in itself, you know, where you say, science is about trying to understand the, the some, and, and I agree, like you were talking about the quantum thinkers and quantum physics or that it does throw all that into question, you know, where you can't really separate what you're observing from the act of observing. Like there's nothing. So, But I, I got to return to, I, because I think you've added a really, really important, like you said, thought experiment exercise with the acid thing. And I want to return to that. What is your final conclusion on that in terms of playing that game? Is there some future where some artificial intelligence could it pass the acid Turing test? Well, I, yeah. And I think this problem of people working, there's people, you know, that are interested in AGI and who are working on it, you know, and are, are, are really trying to create this a human level system that, that has human level intelligence. And I, you know, and again, this, this question of would that thing, would that thing, whatever it is, have subjective experience? Or what con some kind of, and I, you know, I definitely think a way to probe that would be to try to perturb it. The way, the way LSD perturbs our subjective experience, like it completely, you know, and, but there's, there's, there's a very difficult way. And this is what's very interesting to me is it's really hard to objectively verify that like you're tripping on acid.  Like you, you can, and then they can compare like a person who's not on, who's sober and, and you can get an idea of what's going on in the brain. But how this relates to the, the subjective experiences is still very, you know, you can rely, like they do these studies where they try to reliably correlate like this brain, this is happening in this brain region and this is what the subject reports are reporting. But, and so in a computer system, again, you'd have this same problem of the computer system might be claiming, it might be saying, hey, I'm conscious, don't hurt me.  Like, here's where I thought you were going with that when you started talking about the imaging stuff, because this is very kind of an interesting topic in the consciousness field, right? Is because they do that imaging stuff, that fMRI stuff and nut, I think is the guy's name in England who really kind of started it. David Nut, is that it? Yeah, David Nut. Well, what they found is very counterintuitive.   And what they find is the opposite. They find a reduced activity in all these areas, and it supports the notion, which I don't know how this fits into your model, is that, you know, this is kind of this transceiver, you know, the brain is a transceiver of consciousness, consciousness is vast, immense beyond we can describe. And we're somehow filtering it through this. So when you talk about perturbing the system, you know, the AI system that is now instantiated in this little bit of silicone, we still come back to the same question is that God is up there running consciousness and flowing it through all these things. What difference does it make? Right. So yeah, I see what you mean. Like, if if if consciousness is somehow a force in, you know, like a fundamental force or something that we are, you know, connecting to some, you know, via whatever or like, and then the psilocybin is in a is like allowing that more you mean to sort of explain the counter the counterintuitive thing about the the brain says, and like, I mean, I do I definitely think that there's that it's a little more nuanced because I think there's there's like in some of those studies you see there's specific regions that of the brain that reduce their activity in the according to these measures, but there are others that actually that are increasing and their and their connections are increasing. And these and these are more the perceptual sensory.  And again, this this is a very old philosophical debate about whether I mean, I think within mainstream neuroscience, it's it's generally accepted or assumed that the you know, the brain is its identity, it is it generates consciousness or, you know, but this is the people people, you know, they're like, what is it? Who's does it? Who's or what, you know, and this is this is a hard, a hard debate about like what the but there there definitely are floss. There's there are, you know, philosophers who talk about like the extended mind and like I don't really think it's much of a debate. If you really look at the frontier science, we're going to hold on to this materialism because as Richard Feynman famously said, you know, shut up and calculate. And he didn't really say it. But why not attribute to him? It's it fits him. And, you know, we've built this incredible, incredible, advanced scientifically based culture that we love and we should love because it brings us a lot of things that, you know, shut up and calculate model. So we don't want to throw that for practical reasons. We don't want to throw that away. But from if we're going to be honest about the science, like I say, I mean, near death experience science, let alone parapsychology blows it away. But then if you want to get into the more human reincarnation research, you know, after death communication, I just, you know, I interviewed this woman, Dr. Julie Baschel. She's still around at Winbridge Institute, PhD in pharmacology. She knows how to do controlled studies, you do controlled studies on whether mediums can reliably deliver information to people who are grieving and the data just comes through again and again, they can. We don't understand the mechanism. We don't understand what it means to be deceased and have consciousness that's deceased. But we do. It does. But then the follow on to her study that I find incredibly, incredibly relevant is that, hey, and if you lost a dog, you can communicate with that dog too in a way that's, again, in every way that we can measure it straight up, you know, doing science and science says if we can observe it, we can measure it. There's no taboo to say, well, you can't measure after death communication and science.  What are you observing? Measure it, control it, control it, control it. And at the end, so we don't really have an idea of and it interfaces with your world too. It's like, can silicone be conscious? Well, let's start with can your cat be conscious? Can your dog be conscious? Most people who've ever had an animal say, of course, I know it is. But there's a whole bunch of questions that get tied in here.  I think if you look, in fact, there was an interesting survey among physicists a few years ago who I think they tried to get at this question and ask them, you know, like, what about indeterminacy? What about randomness? What about, you know, entanglement and all these different interpretations of quantum theory?  You know, you got to paycheck. Yeah, you get a paycheck and like that's it. And we.  And and like there's some. There's a great book by Sabine Hosenfelder about it's called Lost in Math about how physics is so obsessed with beautiful equations that empirically we've like made no progress since the 70s. And because they're all obsessed with supersymmetry and like they but they can't find it, but they keep smashing particles and they're like, this has to be true. You know what I mean? That these because the equations are so beautiful, but but they just the the empirical support for a lot of the stuff is not there. What do you think about that? Because like I've had some awesome interviews with physicists.  And here's my mathematical model to prove it kind of thing, which is kind of an oxymoron in a way. But your field, I think to anyone who really is willing to go there is the most in your face counterargument to a lot of that myth of progress kind of stuff, which I hear, you know, we're not really progressing.  Google bought DeepMind a few years ago for a lot of money. And they use right.  And then I mean, there is this interesting dichotomy, I think where, you know, there's the famous story about Marvin Minsky, who was, you know, one of these early AI people from the 60s. And he he like assigned he assigned the problem of computer vision to like a summer intern.  And here we are, 56 years later, it's like, well, we're, we're, you know, we're closer. But like it's it's and so the problems that we thought were going to be really hard, like chess and go turn out to be easier than the like, than getting a robot to like open a car door. Like we there's I don't know if you follow these DARPA challenges or like, you know, I mean, you have these Boston Dynamics things with the dancing robots. But like, you still can't, you still there's no we're very far away from having a robot that you could say like, oh, go go to the fridge and get me a beer.  So like now, you know, just the stuff humans take for granted in terms of motion and moving around are like insanely difficult from robotics and and like, but then anyway, AlphaGo was Go is this very old game that's very complicated. It has a lot of dimensions and possible moves. And and everyone's like, oh, okay, chess is relatively simple. Actually, if you can just it's this combinatorial problem of all the rules and like, if you have this massive supercomputer, of course, it can churn through all the possible moves in milliseconds while a human can't you know, that was the explanation. And then they're like, but go. That's out, you know, no way because that's way to that's even more complicated than chess. The rules are fuzzy and like, but then yeah, they use what so DeepMind used what they call reinforcement learning, which is it's based on, you know, theories about how humans learn through reward function.  And this is like operant conditioning, be of skinner type stuff. And then when you combine that reinforcement learning idea with deep neural networks and you can get the machine to play millions and millions of games, then you can. So it turns out you can engineer a system that will beat, autonomously beat a human at go. And it's not it's not brute. It's not so it's so it's still a bit of a brute force approach, like I think the chess, the chess game is just brute forcing, just brute forcing all the possibilities and arriving at that, you know what I mean, before a human, a human can't brute force chess or go. It's all it's much more of an intuitive sense, but the but the computer systems you can brute force it to a degree and then use the reinforcement learning to get it the rest of the way. And what was you know, it was really interesting because Alpha go came up with moves that as far as anyone can tell a human no human has ever tried. And everyone was like, Oh my God, how did it? How did it do that? You know, and that's still kind of a interesting problem of like we don't really understand how it arrived at the winning moves when it when it beat Lee Sedol. So there's, you know, these systems do have these interesting properties. And like you mentioned, emergence before, you know, there's there's things that emerge out of these systems that are happening that we that even the engineers and the and the people who developed it didn't can't anticipate they're like, wow, that's it. That's crazy.  And so and that's the part that scares people, right? It scares people right away when you even mentioned B.F. Skinner as kind of a model for how you would program of self learning thing. And then when you scale that, you say, OK, so we got and then you could you force yourself to be comfortable with the idea that it's doing reward and punishment. You go, yeah, but then we just had it do it to itself. And it just ran millions and millions of trials on itself.  And then the other thing, you know, comment on this, too, that saw the alpha go, like you say, it generates thinking for lack of a better term that we couldn't really have anticipated. And then the humans look at the problem different and go, whoa, one of the things I learned from the computer is that I don't have to smash everybody at go. All I have to do is win by half a point. And that's, I mean, you know, less and this is an emerging area of research to where there's a few studies, I think on, you know, working with the machines. So the machines alone have faults and weaknesses and blind spots. Humans have faults and weaknesses and blind spots. And the idea would be when you when you work to get like without if you work together like a human alpha go system would just be completely unbeatable. And this is the thinking with diagnostics or like, let's not let's not say like, oh, radiologists are irrelevant now or obsolete because we have deep learning on CAT scans, you know, and and it's it's turned, you know, there's a lot of studies showing that there's a lot of weaknesses with automated diagnostic systems. But then like, let's let's have a human there. And like, let's use the the things that the human can't do, which is like shuffle through gazillions of data points and process all these images and look for patterns, but then, you know, complement that with the human ability to see still to use intuition and and judgment and like so, you know, social context and all of the things that we still don't know how to get a computer to understand.  Although, you know, all those things kind of break down because you say, well, that's clearly that's an intermediate step, right? I mean, and we've seen those steps before. So the which kind of gets to the belly of the beast questions that we really do have to talk about because, I mean, folks, again, I'm telling you that you don't know how awesome it is to have Andrew Smart with us today, because he is at the edge in his job at Google and his job at your Twitter before that, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these are really the cutting edge, the cutting cutting edge of these kind of questions, because you're now looking at it from a social, ethical, legal kind of perspective. And we can really, you know, put the boxing gloves on about that and have completely different opinions about where it's going. But we cannot disagree that that's where the action is. So frame up, you know, what you do, what you have done in the past, I think you have a little bit of a different job at Google now.   But it took decades of of manufacturers of companies and governments and regulators working together to make commercial flying safe enough where people are like, oh, yeah, I hop on a plane without even I don't even worry about it. But that behind the scenes, it's, you know, it's this very, very complicated, constant, vigilant type of safety practices that have been learned over decades. So just just for example. And so with AI and machine learning, it's a similar thing where we're in this rapid expansion of investment and everyone is like, this is amazing stuff. And we're going, you know, and now we're kind of coming to terms with like, there are downsides, there are risks. And we need we need to understand better how these systems, especially on a scale of of Google, you know, of Google, how do these things interact? How do these, you know, how are they influenced by society? How do they change society? And how do we prevent harm, basically, from these things? Or how do we govern the development of them? Responsibly, basically, that's, and again, these are terms these are hard to define and hard to let me frame it up and pin it down in one way. And it would be the freedom of speech, censorship, freedom of the press issue. So this is a fundamental, fundamental issue here. You got some people on one side saying, you know, these are platforms that we would consider throughout our lives as being freedom of the press, that somehow there is speech, free speech being done there, and that should not be inhibited in in some ways. And all this stuff gets very fuzzy. So if we just frame that as as the problem, then I felt what we should probably do further is help have you help us understand your problem from an AI standpoint. I mean, you're talking about lots and lots of data, content at a level that's unimaginable and lots of legitimate concerns, you know, you have illegal activity, you have activity that anyone would find morally reprehensible, you know, people trafficking kids are exploiting other people and stuff like that. So what am I missing in terms of framing kind of, okay, here's the issue, but then here's what people maybe don't appreciate about how hard that is for you as a, you know, as a Google guy. Yeah, well, I agree.  And like as like you mentioned, I used to work, I did work at Twitter for a year right after the election and when it was like, misinformation was suddenly, you know, like in what what is, you know, no, that really blindsided the tech industry. That would be highly, highly controversial, right? That mean that would be that is the belly of the beast.  So yeah, right, exactly.  And I think the scientific spirit would be like, yeah, everything you know is probably wrong and you should keep trying to prove yourself wrong, you know, and that's the infiniment, I think too, like you mentioned before, it would be a very strong proponent of like, you should be absolutely prepared at every moment to reject everything you think, you know, and and so given that, you know, I mean, give it and then there's debates about like, okay, so what counts as evidence and you can't interpret your evidence, unless you have some kind of theory about what you think evident good evidences and but anyway, sorry, that's no, no, no, that's that spot on. If I can, I'll kind of frame it in a more concrete way. Just so we're all talking about the same thing.  So let's say the day after that, our friends at Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter kind of independently announced that hey, we're really down with the president on this.  So the reason that thought experiment, here's the thing that kind of grabs me is 10 years ago, we'd all be like, you can't do that. You can't go Google. You can't do that, YouTube. You can't do that, which is Google, but Facebook, Twitter, you guys can't do that. And you especially can't kind of get together in some kind of organized way, even though you're saying it's not organized and do that. I mean, you can't do that. This is what we've always maintained is special about America and our freedom of press. So so I guess, I guess the pushback and I'm going to be the one pushing back is when I hear you talk about wokeness issues and social justice and all of that, I'm like, screw that, man. Stop censoring people or at least be transparent. Yeah, I mean, the transparency issue is something we we work a lot on and what the the thing is, is that the it's it's really an issue of like, and again, I'm not that in that position where I have insight into that. Totally fair. Yeah, yeah, I'm not putting you. You're not representing you're not carrying this whole thing. Yeah, I mean, of course, I have my own thoughts about it, but then I don't have. Yeah, I'm not like the sort of I think what the the policy issues are around like. Yeah, and it does, you know, there's this debate around should the companies be responsible for the content on the thing. And and the problem is that Google doesn't have or you to know they're not relative to the number of people using it. It's actually a very tiny workforce in terms of which is which is the idea because that's why these systems are scale you. The systems are scalable and they make a lot of money because they're so scalable. Well, this is also the AI issue. This is the AI issue, right? This is why you're automating. You can't automate these decisions. It's very, very hard. But you have to automate these. You have to you already are and you have to continue to.  You know what I mean? It's just even if you know, I don't even know if it's possible. If even if Google says, all right, we're investing in content moderation and we're going to hire. You'd have to hire literally, I don't know, millions of people. And so that there's the automation stage of it, which you you tried to monitor. But I mean, the whole like Google's, you know, the thing is like the idea is like, we want to serve everybody, you know, and I and how do you make this information accessible to everybody? But I agree it comes at this at this cost of how do you, you know, like if you if you take it to another, you know, if you do have an adversarial government or anyway, I agree. It's all it's really relative to your perspective, but like deliberately misleading people. What should you know?  And there's and there's lots of different legal regimes around the world that are far more restrictive than than we have. And I don't, you know, and there's there's always like I said before about this being a publisher versus this platform and like are are we if you find some something on that that has moved through the system? Does does do we have does Google have some kind of responsibility for what? And so I think the arguments from a lot of the sectors are like, yes, you need to take responsibility for a lot of this horrible crap that is on your platforms. And so the but then the question is, how do you balance that with? Yeah, like you're saying that free, like allowing an open and free internet where, you know, there there is a lot, you know, there is a lot of like difficult information and stuff to deal with. So I don't I'm sorry. I don't have a I wish I had a better I don't have a good answer to that. I mean, that's these are problems that are being worked on. I think that is the answer. And I mean, I think this is what we're trying to work out as a society, you know, and wrestle to the ground. And as you point out, they always have been the issues, you know, this freedom of the press issue. This has been around forever, ever since, you know, Benjamin Franklin was point, you know, pumping them out. And but and then it got to be, well, we have these three networks and, you know, what are their responsibilities? And it's only three networks. Then we had this explosion of cable news and it's then it morphed into something else where partisanship was OK. And now it's kind of morphing into something else. And I think we do have to acknowledge what you're what I think you really bring here. And so, again, grateful that you've, you know, are so open in talking about this. Like, one thing I really want to drive a stake in the ground is the problem, the problem which you frame up nicely, which is like, OK, dude, but trillions, trillions of requests. OK, so there ain't no easy answer here any way you cut it, you know.  So I don't want to kind of sound the alarm bells too much. But I got a friend of guys been on the show, Luke Redkowski, and he has a kind of semi popular website. It's called We Are Change. So he's a 9-11 guy, you know. 9-11 was an inside job and he's still there. He's not banned. A lot of the other guys say that are banned, but he's not banned. But what he was was demonetized and he was demonetized in 2015 before there was even such a word. And he just he just did videos on it. It was like, here's my video. Here's my here's all my videos. Here they are last month. Here they are now. They're demonetized. There's no explanation for why they're demonetized. There's no process. There's no guidelines. They're demonetized or go over on Twitter and they're shadow banned. Oh, your tweets, well, they're reaching one tenth of the audience than they used to. We don't admit that they do when someone goes in and forensically proves that. We just so. These I think the issue really I think the issue is is is to one is transparency.  And if you've, you know, not done it right, then I get to get paid. And then you have to, which is fair, you have to defend yourself from any legislation that would make it easier for me to do that. And then I have to try and do that. And that is I'm not trying to do that to be like adversarial with you. I'm just saying this is how business has always resolved, you know, these issues. If you think they're dumping chemicals into the love canal and it's killing your kids, well, then you sue them. And then Dow Chemical does everything they can to prevent people from prevailing. And then eventually the legal system kind of meanders to some space that we get. So I know I let a lot on the table there, but the transparency and then the financial responsibility, if it doesn't, you know, live up to our standards of what fairness is.  There's thousands of those cases, there's thousands of them. Yeah, or any of, I mean, cause I don't work in that, in that area, but like, I think there's a, you know, I think you do have to, and this is again, where the difficult part about the shared reality and like have some kind of standards for what you, and again, this is, it's a conundrum because like the scale and the size of Google is, and the idea is like to be able to serve, you know, serve everybody, but then coming up with like responsible, like what are the guidelines, what are the standards for what kind of things can live on the platform?  There's just stuff that's like, everyone be like, that's awful. But then I agree as you move into these different areas, it's really, I don't, I don't know how to draw the line, you know, do I think people have a right to publish work on conspiracy theories and like discuss these different things? Of course, I don't, I don't think that should be like, legally restricted. I don't, but then whether, you know, whether like a private company like Google has a responsibility, you know, if like, and again, people bring up, then it's this private company issue. It was like, if you want to use the services, like here's the terms. And these are, these are not, and I agree with the transparency, like, it's almost like you don't, it's like, you don't put, you don't put speed limit signs up and then you'd be like, you're speeding. You know what I mean? Like the, I agree with the rules have to be, but the rules are changing and it's trying to respond to these different. I mean, I'm definitely not a free speech absolutists in that sense. And I don't, but I don't, I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I was, I don't have, I don't have better answers than that. Well, as we move towards wrapping it up, let me ask you a question more relevant to your job. Yeah. You know, take this discussion we're having, what parts of it are particularly relevant, interesting, pressing and interesting to you?  It's really fantastic. And if you want to know how some of the thought leaders, I hate to use that term, but how some of the people who are really trying to wrestle these issues to the ground, how they're thinking in some of the novel ways that you wouldn't have anticipated, then pick up beyond zero and one machines, psychedelics and consciousness. But then, so Andrew. Yeah. I find interesting about this discussion we've been having relative to your job, because you do, I didn't mean to discount it, you do care about social issues. And you have an issue of, hey, let's make sure we're being fair there too. And you want to speak to how that relates to what you think you can do to make the world a better place with AI and these kinds of things. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm really interested in what people talk about as like these socio-technical systems. So it's not looking narrowly at technical failure in Google's machine learning things, but like more a holistic view of the interaction of our systems with society and what, and the issues you're talking about are super important too, but mainly what we're trying to do is understand sort of the, if you look at the uneek, you look at inequality for example, or the way society's structured and the way things run, there's all this data that is sampled from that social structure upon which these models are trained and then they're making predictions. People are taking that information sometimes and using it to do things which generates more data and it's kind of this feedback loop. And what we're trying to understand is how do we intervene so that we're not just blindly reproducing or recapitulating discrimination or unfair allocation of resources. Bring that down to a practical level that people might be able to kind of grasp. Well, I mean, I think you can look at, I mean, so just a real, I guess it's a pretty clear example to me where you have, so and take facial recognition software, which is in your phone to unlock it sometimes or like it's used in a lot of different domains. There's a lot of controversies about it, but one clear lesson from a lot of work that my colleagues and I do is like, you train these systems and you have a giant database of photographs and you feed these to the neural networks, they learn what a face looks like and then they can pretty accurately predict, oh, I see these pixels and I know that's Alex or with 89%, whatever, 90. So the problem was that these databases, these training data sets were mostly white people, mostly white men. So when you use these systems and they tend to be used more often on darker skin people for lots of reasons, they're like a chance and either they don't see the face, it's a wrong face, it's misrecognized and it's like everyone goes, well, what's going on here?  And it's these kinds of things in retrospect seem super obvious. Like, well, obviously you've got to train it on the diversity of faces that you'll ultimately use the system on. But these are not things that people had the force. And so what we're trying to develop is like, for these systems, like, are these things kind of representative of the people that will be interacting with this and will it work for them in the same way? The question of whether you should, I mean, there's this other question of like not using this at all, because it's inherently problematic and. No, we can't go backwards. We can't go backwards. It's a beautiful example. Yeah, so, and that's, but that kind of problem is rife through all machine learning, where you're training your models on this very narrow type of person and then using that to make predictions about different types of people and it doesn't work. Equally true in search, right? Equally true, same problem in search, same problem everywhere. So everywhere. Yeah, and it is, to me, it's this problem of scale.  So. Yeah, that's great. That's a great example, but it reminds me of the stop and frisk cases in New York. There were a lot of people, particularly in some minority communities that said, hey, the cops stop us a lot more than they stop other people on the street and they can frisk us. No, no, no, no, that doesn't happen. Well, when they actually get the data, yeah, they did. And it's twice as likely and less likely to actually find an infrared, you know, like a gun or stuff like that. So it's another form of data. It's only when you get the data and you go, ooh, wow, I guess the system has been systemically biased in a way. And so very, very excellent that you would point out, face recognition is a part of that because it's directly, it's perfect. So what's next?  Your book is super well written and you have another book as well. Do you have another one in the works? Are you gonna do that or just stay with your day job? My sort of, yeah, I mean, I'm a researcher, so I write papers now, you know, and on these kinds of issues and publish work. So that kind of takes up my writing. I mean, yeah, I don't have any, I don't have really a book. I'm interested in like pursuing more of these questions around, you know, yeah, like the technical systems and understanding complexity theory and things like that. But I, yeah, I'm always, yeah, of course I'm, I guess I'm a curious and easily distractible person. So I get interested in different things and then we're kind of obsessive. Well, yeah, I'm sure you, you know, and then, but yeah, my job, it keeps me very interested and busy for sure. Well, let's hope you remain just as curious as you've been. Our guest again has been Andrew Smart, the book you're gonna wanna check out Beyond Zero and One. Terrific having you on. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Thanks again to Andrew Smart for joining me today on Skeptico. One question I have from this interview. Why does AI seem to be blind to the metaphysical question of consciousness? Which as I kind of put forth in this interview is the only game in town. It's the only question to ask. And, you know, the next level on that question is, well, the spiritual question. And you have to wonder if that's why they don't answer part A is because they don't really wanna answer part B. So I mean, to break that down even further, I guess, so it isn't totally inside baseball.  And Andrew kind of threads the needle there a little bit, but at the end of the day, it's the only game in town. Consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain. That's where you gotta be if you're doing AI. You're doing AI at Google or Facebook or Twitter or more importantly, DARPA or NSA or wherever you're doing it. Anyways, so that's question number one, but then question number two is if consciousness is not an illusion, then what is the hierarchy of consciousness?  These are the real questions, but you wouldn't wanna talk about any of that stuff if you're doing AI. If your job was to just do a better AlphaGo machine learning and apply it to search and everything else that'll make billions and billions of dollars and drive up the stock price. I don't know how to Google stock, man. Drive it up, drive it up. Let me know your thoughts, skeptical form, come on over, play. Lots more to come. Stay with me for all of that. Until next time, take care. Bye for now.


22.53 into a headwind, the Jamaican junior record 22.505. Stunning, expected as world record in the juniors, late to the season. When I think of each word to describe Ubert, I have to, first of all, think of the word umber. Ubert was very, very humble. I have to look at my last interaction with him. It's from the Corporate Era Chams' last track and field meet. He was late on the first day and after the meet he called me and he said, Philip, I'm so, so sorry. He was so apologetic and I said, when I said everything is good, he said, thank you man. Ubert Lawrence, very good friend of mine. I worked with Ubert for the last 15 years, 15 to 20 years and I must say that's a great guy, understanding, special person, very humble and we're all going to miss him very dearly. So, Godspeed Ubert. Ubert is one of the best humans I've ever met in my life. Just an amazing guy. We've worked together from the Sydney Olympics and traveled the four Olympic Games together. Shared a lot of moments, shared a lot of time and yeah, just an amazing person and you know, see you in the next life Ubert. Respect. I met Ubert in 2010, coincidentally for the Olympic Games in the Caymans. If I had to describe him using a word starting with the letter E that I'd used to him, exuberant, exciting, he always conveyed this passion for track and field and made you feel like you were part of the event and that was a special gift that I think that he had. Ubert was regal and he was regal in every sense of the word. He was magnificent, he was impressive, he was dignified. Ubert Lawrence was not just outstanding at his work but he was a great human being. Ubert would always find the positive in things. He would always see the best in people. He would always be encouraging everyone else around him even when he wasn't at his best. He was a special individual and I think he's going to be missed in so many ways. One letter that comes to mind when I think about Ubert Lawrence is the letter T. Ubert used to take T's from me whenever at track meets and I used to also take T's from Ubert so we used to exchange T's a lot every weekend at track meets. So I'm definitely going to miss that because I honestly was looking forward to my T's at Gibson Relays this year. Yeah, Ubert will be...


section 19 of confessions volumes 5 and 6 this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Martin Giesen confessions volumes 5 and 6 by Jean Jacques Rousseau anonymously translated section 19 my impatience to arrive at Chambéry had made me use more diligence than I meant to do. I had sent a letter from Valence mentioning the day and hour I should arrive but I had gained half a day on this calculation which time I passed at Chaparion that I might arrive exactly at the time I mentioned. I wished to enjoy to its full extent the pleasure of seeing her and preferred deferring this happiness a little that expectancy might increase the value of it. This precaution had always succeeded hitherto my arrival had caused a little holiday. I expected no less this time and these preparations so dear to me would have been well worth the trouble of contriving them. I arrived then exactly at the hour and while at a considerable distance looked forward with an expectancy of seeing her on the road to meet me the beating of my heart increased as I drew near the house at length I arrived quite out of breath for I had left my shares in the town I see no one in the garden at the door or at the windows I am seized with terror fearful that some accident has happened I enter all is quiet the laborers are eating their luncheon in the kitchen and far from observing any preparation the servant seemed surprised to see me not knowing I was expected I go upstairs at length see her that dear friend so tenderly truly and entirely beloved I instantly ran towards her and threw myself at her feet ah child said she art thou returned then embracing me at the same time have you had a good journey how do you do this reception amused me for some moments I then asked whether she had received my letter she answered yes I should have thought not replied I and the information concluded there a young man was with her at this time I recollect it having seen him in the house before my departure but at present he seemed established there in short he was so I found my place already supplied this young man came from the country of vo his father named Vincent Reed was keeper of the prison or as he expressed himself captain of the castle of she on this son of the captain was a journeyman peruq maker and gained his living in that capacity when he first presented himself to madame de variance who received him kindly she did all comers particularly those from her own country he was a tall fair silly use well enough made with an unmeaning face and a mind of the same description speaking always like the bow in a comedy and mingling the manners and customs of his former situation with a long history of his gallantry and success naming according to his account not above half the Marchionesses who had favoured him and pretending never to have dressed the head of a pretty woman without having likewise decorated her husband's they foolish ignorant and insolent such was the worthy substitute taken in my absence and the companion offered me on my return if souls disengaged from their terrestrial bonds yet view from the bosom of eternal light what passes here below pardon dear and respectable shade that I show no more favour to your failings than my own but equally unveil both I ought and will be just to you as to myself but how much less will you lose by this resolution than I shall how much to your amiable and gentle disposition your inexhaustible goodness of heart your frankness and other amiable virtues compensate for your foibles if a subversion of reason alone can be called such you had errors but not vices your conduct was reprehensible but your heart was ever pure the newcomer had shown himself zealous and exact in all her little commissions which were ever numerous and he diligently overlooked the laborers as noisy and insolent as I was quiet and forbearing he was seen or rather heard at the plow in the hayloft woodhouse stable farm yard at the same instant he neglected the gardening this labor being too peaceful and moderate his chief pleasure was to load or drive the cart to saw or cleave wood he was never seen without a hatchet or pickaxe in his hand running knocking and hallowing with all his might I know not how many men's labor he performed but he certainly made noise enough for ten or a dozen at least all this bustle imposed on poor madam devarance she thought this young man a treasure and willing to attach him to herself employed the means she imagined necessary for that purpose not forgetting what she most depended on the surrender of her person those who have thus far read this work should be able to form some judgment of my heart its sentiments were the most constant and sincere particularly those which had brought me back to Chambéry what a sudden and complete overthrow was this to my whole being but to judge fully of this the reader must place himself for a moment in my situation I saw all the future felicity I had promised myself vanish in a moment all the charming ideas I had indulged so affectionately disappear entirely and I who even from childhood had not been able to consider my existence for a moment as separate from hers for the first time saw myself utterly alone this moment was dreadful and those that succeeded it were ever glue me I was yet young but the pleasing sentiments of enjoyment and hope which in live and youth were extinguished from that hour my existence seemed half annihilated I contemplated in advance the melancholy remains of an incipid life and if at any time an image of happiness glanced through my mind it was not that which appeared natural to me and I felt that even should I obtain it I must still be wretched I was so dull of apprehension and my confidence in her was so great that not withstanding the familiar tone of the newcomer which I looked on as an effect of the easy disposition of madame de vacances which rendered her free with everyone I never should have suspected his real situation had not she herself informed me of it but she hastened to make this a vowel with a freedom calculated to inflame me with resentment could my heart have turned to that point speaking of this connection as quite immaterial with respect to herself she reproached me with negligence in the care of the family and mentioned my frequent absence as though she had been in haste to supply my place ah said I my heart bursting with the most poignant grief what do you dare to inform me of is this the reward of an attachment like mine have you so many times preserved my life for the sole purpose of taking from me all that could render it desirable your infidelity will bring me to the grave but you will regret my loss she answered with a tranquility sufficient to distract me that I talked like a child that people did not die from such slight causes that our friendship need be no less sincere nor we any less intimate for that her tender attachment to me could neither diminish nor end but with herself in a word she gave me to understand that my happiness need not suffer any decrease from the good fortune of this new favorite never did the purity truth and force of my attachment to her appear more evident never did I feel the sincerity and honesty of my soul more forcibly than it's that moment I threw myself at her feet embracing her knees with torrents of tears no madam replied I with the most violent agitation I love you too much to disgrace you thus far and too truly to share you the regret that accompanied the first acquisition of your favours has continued to increase with my affection I cannot preserve them by so violent an augmentation of it you shall ever have my adoration be worthy of it to me that is more necessary than all you can bestow it is to you oh my dearest friend that I resign my rights it is to the union of our hearts that I sacrifice my pleasure rather would I perish a thousand times than thus degrade her I love I preserved this resolution with a constancy worthy I may say of the sentiment that gave it birth from this moment I saw this beloved woman but with the eyes of a real son it should be remarked here that this resolve did not meet her private approbation as I too well perceived yet she never employed the least art to make me renounce it either by insinuating proposals caresses or any of those means which women so well know how to employ without exposing themselves to violent censure and which seldom fail to succeed reduced to seek a fate independent of hers and not able to devise one I passed to the other extreme placing my happiness so absolutely in her that I became almost regardless of myself the ardent desire to see her happy at any rate absorbed all my affections it was in vain she endeavoured to separate her felicity from mine I felt I had a part in it spite of every impediment thus those virtues whose seeds in my heart begun to spring up with my misfortunes they had been cultivated by study and only waited the fermentation of adversity to become prolific the first fruit of this disinterested disposition was to put from my heart every sentiment of hatred and envy against him who had supplanted me I even sincerely wished to attach myself to this young man to form and educate him to make him sensible of his happiness and if possible render him worthy of it in a word to do for him what Anne had formerly done for me but the similarity of dispositions was wanting more insinuating and enlightened than an a I possessed neither his coolness fortitude nor commanding strength of character which I must have had in order to succeed neither did the young man possess those qualities which are nay found in me such as gentleness gratitude and above all the knowledge of a want of his instructions and an ardent desire to render them useful all these were wanting the person I wished to improve so in me nothing but an important chattering pedant while on the contrary he admired his own importance in the house measuring the services he thought he rendered by the noise he made and looking on his sores hatchets and pickaxes as infinitely more useful than all my old books and perhaps in this particular he might not be all together blamable but he gave himself a number of airs sufficient to make anyone die with laughter with the peasants he assumed the airs of a country gentleman presently he did as much with me and at length with madame de varance herself his name Vincent read did not appear noble enough he therefore changed it to that of monsieur de courtier and by the latter appellation he was known at Chambéry and in Boreen where he married at length this illustrious personage gave himself such airs of consequence that he was everything in the house and myself nothing when I had the misfortune to displease him he scolded madame de varance and a fear of exposing her to his brutality rendered me subservient to all his whims so that every time he cleaved wood an office which he performed with singular pride it was necessary I should be an idle spectator and admirer of his prowess this lad was not however of a bad disposition he loved madame de varance indeed it was impossible to do otherwise nor had he any aversion even to me and when he happened to be out of his airs would listen to our admonitions and frankly own he was a fool yet not withstanding these acknowledgments his follies continued in the same proportion his knowledge was so contracted and his inclination so mean that it was useless to reason and almost impossible to be pleased with him not content with the most charming woman he amused himself with an old red haired toothless waiting maid whose unwelcome service madame de varance had the patience to endure though it was absolutely disgusting I soon perceived this new inclination and was exasperated at it but I saw something else which affected me yet more and made a deeper impression on me than anything had hitherto done this was a visible coldness in the behavior of madame de varance towards me the privation I had imposed on myself and which she affected to approve is one of those affronts which women scarcely ever forgive take the most sensible the most philosophic female one the least attached to pleasure and slighting her favors if within your reach will be found the most unpardonable crime even though she may care nothing for the man this rule is certainly without exception since a sympathy so natural and ardent was impaired in her by an abstinence founded only on virtue attachment and esteem I no longer found with her that union of hearts which constituted all the happiness of mine she seldom sought me but when we had occasion to complain of this newcomer for when they were agreed I enjoyed but little of her confidence and at length was scarcely ever consulted in her affairs she seemed pleased indeed with my company but had I passed whole days without seeing her she would hardly have missed me end of section 19 recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmere Surrey section 20 of confessions volumes 5 and 6 this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Martin Geeson confessions volumes 5 and 6 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau anonymously translated section 20 insensibly I found myself desolate and alone in that house where I had formerly been the very soul where if I may so express myself I had enjoyed a double life and by degrees I accustomed myself to disregard everything that passed and even those who dwelt there to avoid continual mortifications I shut myself up with my books or else wept and sighed unnoticed in the woods this life soon became insupportable I felt that the presence of a woman so dear to me while estranged from her heart increased my unhappiness and was persuaded that ceasing to see her I should feel myself less cruelly separated I resolved therefore to quit the house mentioned it to her and she far from opposing my resolution approved it she had an acquaintance at Grenoble called madame de déban whose husband was on terms of friendship with Monsieur Mablis chief provost of Lyon Monsieur debban proposed my educating Monsieur Mablis children I accepted this offer and departed for Lyon without causing and almost without feeling the least regret at a separation the bear idea of which a few months before would have given both of us the most excruciating torments I had almost as much knowledge as was necessary for a tutor and flattered myself that my method would be unexceptionable but the year I passed at Monsieur Mablis was sufficient to undeceive me in that particular the natural gentleness of my disposition seemed calculated for the employment if hastiness had not been mingled with it while things went favorably and I saw the pains which I did not spare succeed I was an angel but a devil when they went contrary if my pupils did not understand me I was hasty and when they showed any symptoms of an untoward disposition I was so provoked that I could have killed them which behavior was not likely to render them either good or wise I had two under my care and they were a very different tempers Saint Marie who was between eight and nine years old had a good person and quicker prehension was giddy lively playful and mischievous but his mischief was ever good humor the younger one named Corniac appeared stupid and fretful was headstrong as a mule and seemed incapable of instruction it may be supposed that between both I did not want employment yet with patience and temper I might have succeeded but wanting both I did nothing worth mentioning and my pupils profited very little I could only make use of three means which are very weak and often pernicious with children namely sentiment reasoning passion I sometimes exerted myself so much with Saint Marie that I could not refrain from tears and wished to excite similar sensations in him as if it was reasonable to suppose a child could be susceptible to such emotions sometimes I exhausted myself in reasoning as if persuaded he could comprehend me and as he frequently formed very subtle arguments concluded he must be reasonable because he bid fair to be so good a logician the little corndillac was still more embarrassing for he neither understood answered nor was concerned at anything he was of an obstinacy beyond belief and was never happier than when he had succeeded in putting me in a rage then indeed he was the philosopher and I the child I was conscious of all my faults studied the tempers of my pupils and became acquainted with them but where was the use of seeing the evil without being able to apply a remedy my penetration was unavailing since it never prevented any mischief and everything I undertook failed because all I did to effect my designs was precisely what I ought not to have done I was not more fortunate in what had only reference to myself and in what concerned my pupils madame debaun in recommending me to her friend madame de mablie had requested her to form my manners and endeavor to give me an air of the world she took some pains on this account wishing to teach me how to do the honors of the house but I was so awkward bashful and stupid that she found it necessary to stop there this however did not prevent me from falling in love with her according to my usual custom I even behaved in such a manner that she could not avoid observing it but I never dust declare my passion and as the lady never seemed in a humor to make advances I soon became weary of my size and ogling being convinced they answered no manner of purpose I had quite lost my inclination for little thievery's while with madame de verrance indeed as everything belonged to me there was nothing to steal besides the elevated notions I had imbibed ought to have rendered me in future above such meanness and generally speaking they certainly did so but this rather proceeded for my having learned to conquer temptations than having succeeded in rooting out the propensity and I should even now greatly dread stealing as in my infancy where I yet subject to the same inclinations I had a poof of this at Monsieur Mablis when those surrounded by a number of little things that I could easily have pilfered and which appeared no temptation I took it into my head to covet some white arbois wine some glasses of which I had drunk at table and thought delicious it happened to be rather thick and as I fancied myself an excellent finer of wine I mentioned my skill and this was accordingly trusted to my care but in attempting to mend I spoiled it though to the site only for it remained equally agreeable to the taste profiting by this opportunity I furnished myself from time to time with a few bottles to drink in my own apartment but unluckily I could never drink without eating the difficulty lay therefore in procuring bread it was impossible to make a reserve of this article to have it brought by the footman was discovering myself and insulting the master of the house I could not bear to purchase it myself how could a fine gentleman with a sword at his side enter a baker's shop to buy a small loaf of bread it was utterly impossible at length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess who on being informed that the country people had no bread and applied then let them eat pastry yet even this resource was attended with a difficulty I sometimes went out alone for this very purpose running over the whole city and passing 30 pastry cook shops without daring to enter any one of them in the first place it was necessary there should be only one person in the shop and that person's physiognomy must be so encouraging as to give me confidence to pass the threshold but when once the dear little cake was procured and I shut up in my chamber with that and a bottle of wine taken cautiously from the bottom of a cupboard how much did I enjoy drinking my wine and reading a few pages of a novel for when I have no company I always wish to read while eating it seems a substitute for society and I dispatch alternately a page and a morsel it is indeed as if my book dined with me I was neither dissolute nor sottish never in my whole life having been intoxicated with liquor my little thefts were not very indiscreet yet they were discovered the bottles betrayed me and though no notice was taken of it I had no longer the management of the seller in all this must you Mabli conducted himself with prudence and politeness being really a very deserving man who under a manner as harsh as his employment concealed a real gentleness of disposition and uncommon goodness of heart he was judicious equitable and what would not be expected from an officer of the marriage shows very humane sensible of his indulgence I became greatly attached to him which made my stay at Leon longer than it would otherwise have been but at length disgusted with an employment which I was not calculated for and a situation of great confinement consequently disagreeable to me after a year's trial during which time I spared no pains to fulfill my engagement I determined to quit my pupils being convinced I should never succeed in educating them properly Monsieur Mabli saw this as clearly as myself though I am inclined to think he would never have dismissed me had I not spared him the trouble which was an excess of condescension in this particular that I certainly cannot justify what rendered my situation yet more insupportable was the comparison I was continually drawing between the life I now led and that which I had quitted the remembrance of my dear Charmet my garden trees fountain and orchard but above all the company of her who was born to give life and soul to every other enjoyment on calling to mind our pleasures and innocent life I was seized with such oppressions and heaviness of heart as deprived me of the power of performing anything as it should be a hundred times was I tempted instantly to set off on foot to my dear Madame de Vrance being persuaded that could I once more see her I should be content to die that moment in fine I could no longer resist the tender emotions which recalled me back to her whatever it might cost me I accused myself of not having been sufficiently patient complacent and kind concluding I might yet live happily with her on the terms of tender friendship and by showing more for her than I had hitherto done I formed the finest projects in the world burned to execute them left all renounced everything departed fled and arriving in all the transports of my early youth found myself once more at her feet alas I should have died there with joy had I found in her reception in her embrace or in her heart one quarter of what I had formerly found there and which I yet found the undiminished warmth of fearful illusions of transitory things how often does to Thou torment us in vain she received me with that excellence of heart which could only die with her but I sought the influence there which could never be recalled and had hardly been half an hour with her before I was once more convinced that my former happiness had vanished forever and that I was in the same melancholy situation which I had been obliged to fly from yet without being able to accuse any person with my unhappiness for courtee really was not to blame appearing to see my return with more pleasure than dissatisfaction but how could I bear to be a secondary person with her to whom I had been everything and who could never cease being such to me how could I live an alien in that house where I had been the child the sight of every object that had been witnessed to my former happiness rendered the comparison yet more distressing I should have suffered less in any other habitation for this incessantly recalled such pleasing remembrances that it was irritating the recollection of my loss consumed with vain regrets given up to the most gloomy melancholy I resumed the custom of remaining alone except at meals shut up with my books I sought to give some useful diversion to my ideas and feeling the imminent danger of want which I had so long dreaded I sought means to prepare for and receive it when madame de verran's should have no other resource I had placed her household on a footing not to become worse but since my departure everything had been altered he who now managed her affairs was a spendthrift and wished to make a great appearance such as keeping a good horse with elegant trappings loved to appear gay in the eyes of the neighbors and was perpetually undertaking something he did not understand her pension was taken up in advance her rent was in arrears debts of every kind continued to accumulate I could plainly foresee that her pension would be seized and perhaps suppressed in short I expected nothing but ruin and misfortune and the moment appeared to approach so rapidly that I already felt all its horrors my closet was my only amusement and after a tedious search for remedies for the sufferings of my mind I determined to seek some against the evil of distressing circumstances which I daily expected would fall upon us and returning to my old Chimera's behold me once more building castles in the air to relieve this dear friend from the cruel extremities into which I saw her ready to fall I did not believe myself wise enough to shine in the Republic of letters or to stand any chance of making a fortune by that means a new idea therefore inspired me with that confidence which the mediocrity of my talents could not impart in ceasing to teach music I had not abandoned the thoughts of it on the contrary I had studied the theory sufficiently to consider myself well informed on the subject when reflecting on the trouble it had cost me to read music and the great difficulty I yet experienced in singing at sight I began to think the fault might as well arise from the manner of noting as from my own dullness being sensible it was an art which most people find difficult to understand by examining the formation of the signs I was convinced they were frequently very ill devised I had before thought of my marking the gamut by figures to prevent the trouble of having lines to draw on noting the plainest air but had been stopped by the difficulty of the octaves and by the distinction of measure and quantity this idea returned again to my mind and on a careful revision of it I found the difficulties by no means insurmountable I pursued it successfully and was at length able to note any music whatever by figures with the greatest exactitude and simplicity from this moment I supposed my fortune made and in the ardour of sharing it with her to whom I owed everything thought only of going to Paris not doubting that on presenting my project to the Academy it would be adopted with rapture I had brought some money from Leon I augmented this stock by the sale of my books and in the course of a fortnight my resolution was both formed and executed in short full of the magnificent ideas it had inspired and which were common to me on every occasion I departed from Savoy with my new system of music as I had formally done from Turin with my Heron fountain such have been the errors and faults of my youth I have related the history of them with a fidelity which my heart approves if my riper years were dignified with some virtues I should have related them with the same frankness it was my intention to have done this but I must forego this pleasing task and stop here time which renders justice to the characters of most men may withdraw the veil and should my memory reach posterity they may one day discover what I had to say they will then understand why I am now silent end of volume six recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmere Surrey end of confessions volumes five and six by Jean-Jacques Rousseau anonymously translated


Hello everybody, welcome to my channel, it's Eva from Bohemian Crafting here again. Today I would like to share with you my new journal, this mini-journal. I hope you will like to have a look through to this creation. It's first in my new craft room, but before I will do that, I already took the video about this journal and I will put those two videos together. And because I'm saying that for a long time I haven't created writing journal. It's not true, I totally forgot that I made that Bridgeton inspired. And I have to share with you something. I've been lucky, very lucky. I found on eBay this very old ledger book and I have to show you why I bought it because it was like it's kinda incredible. I'm gonna pick it out and hope you will see the name on there. There is Wittingham and Cole, the name of the printer who made this book. And it's also the name I used for that Bridgeton inspired collection. So I had to share this one with you because I couldn't believe that, oh my god, I will have one of these books from them. And it's kinda, I do have few old ledger books and I love them so much. This one, it's First which has Pratchman paper. These are like copies of, it's actually called Order Book. You will see that probably in the mirroring. So it's Order Book and these are orders, you know, those copies of orders and it's Pratchman paper. This is brand new for me in my ledger books collection. So I'm very happy I got this book. I'm totally amazed by this book.  I hope you will enjoy it, have a wonderful day and that rest you will see. So this is journal what I have created with my Patreon's tutorial for this journal. It's now on my Patreon including all kind of scannered book pages and all kind of ephemeras. Also collection with these papers will be on my Etsy, all links will be down below. And this journal, it's opening this way. It has like sliding frame cover but because it's kind of full, it doesn't sit properly right now. It was sitting before I added all those ephemeras and envelopes. So let's have a look. I wanted to create something simple like my first journal so it has only two signatures. It has a few pockets, there's pocket here with some, with this, it's like a guest check and some insert like note card. It has pocket here and pocket here and for this journal I have created loads of these layouts, like decorative pages from the other side, it's journaling space and I just try to create few of these clusters like decoration. And I've got here this journaling space and here we've got this tag or insert card and then I've got here I think four envelopes with journaling space like this, it's small opening card and again I have created some kind of clusters on the top, like decoration. And all these envelopes I created myself, so it's pocket here, I used few stencils, here we've got tag and here is envelope with tag and here is another dot layer and space for journaling. Here we've got pocket, the tutorial for this pocket and for the tag inside will be here on the YouTube, so I've got this and I've got more of these packs and pockets in this journal, then I've got here this pocket and two papers for writing and from other side we've got this tag and again envelope space for writing, this is that photo slide and this one it's empty, I've got also two with the acetate piece and post acetate piece, so some notes can be at inside or maybe photography can be at inside, so this is proper writing journal, I didn't make writing journals for a long time so I wanted to make writing journal as my first journal, my new craft space and again this envelope with tag inside, another layout, writing space under, here big writing space, this is just small tag, maybe for some small notes, here we've got another pocket and it's also pocket from this side, so it's like double pocket and again small layout and I've got here a few of these frames and I should put inside some mini tags, I do have here these frames so I'm gonna slide it in like my mini tag, this way so you can see and I used few stencils to decorate this here another paper with that cluster layout and here we've got that photo slot, slide slot, I don't remember the name of these, again envelope and pocket from here as well from this side and here we've got another one so I'm just gonna slide it in I think the other way, yeah that's it, again that envelope with tag inside, here we've got large pocket here and then it's pocket behind and here I've got another large space for journaling and we've got another this slider and another paper for journaling and another paper for journaling, in this pocket I've got three different two envelopes and this slider, I don't remember the name of that, here is another envelope and journaling space and I really did enjoy this journal, I'm just sad I didn't make a bigger spine and here this is from my country, this is from Czech Republic actually, it's giant flower and we've got one frame here and another envelope with tag, just gonna show you, I'm not sure if I said that, I have used embossing powders on these tags and I did embossing effect here on the bottom and here that number and I did it on each of these mini tags, the embossing effect not exactly same but very similar and I did enjoy it, you know when I was tidy up my room I didn't use embossing powders for a long time and they came to my hands and I was tidy up my room, so now it's kind of you know fresh memory refresh net no fresh memory now, so I know what I've got in my stuff and I'm planning to use everything what I've got, so as you can see it's not complicated, it doesn't have some complicated openings but I hope it looks good, I hope it's interesting even it doesn't have too much complicated things, I try to decorate it a little bit here and there to make it beautiful and I really did enjoy this, that was so much fun and these are as well actually okay and I'm missing one card, okay I've got here this one, maybe it will be too big, I'm gonna give it try nearly, uh-huh here is another one, look at me I lost somewhere these mini cards okay and again the pocket here and pocket behind and again envelope with some opening the journaling cards and another envelope with tuck inside, I do love these negatives from from flower pictures they are in the collection for this journal as well and here is last pocket with that opening card, so this is my simple kind of botanical journal, I do love that cover and if it will be not loaded this way the closing of that cover is much more easy but it's just you know slide spot here so hold that slide spot, slide that cover and hide it with this handmade closure ribbon so this is my sharing for today, I know it's not big journal but I was you know in that creative mood I'm gonna create something small, so this is my sharing for today, I hope you did enjoy it, there will be tutorial for these tags with embossing powder and for that envelope for these tags and if you want to create this journal or the cover like I created it's on my Patreon now all links will be down below, thank you so so much for visiting me today, have a wonderful day, take care about yourself and I will see you next time, bye