Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America, CodePink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast every Wednesday, 4.30 p.m. Pacific, 7.30 p.m. Eastern on CodePink YouTube. For this episode, I am happy to tell you we're actually broadcasting from the Caribbean. We are, I'm sitting here on Corn Island off the Nicaragua Caribbean coast, and my guest is Erika Takeo. She's coordinator of Friends of the ATC, and she's joining us from Managua, Nicaragua. So we are talking with you from Central America, mainland Nicaragua and Caribbean coastal Nicaragua. So Erika, I'm so pleased you had time to talk with us today. And just for our audience, I'd like everybody to know that Erika and I just finished, principally Erika, I have to say, leading a 10-day delegation here in Nicaragua. It was a Friends of the ATC partnership with Sanctions Kill. We spent 10 days studying the early sanctions regime the U.S. has placed on Nicaragua, sanctions regime, meaning economic warfare against Nicaragua. We started in Managua, we went to the northern Caribbean coast. We've been in homestays, in campesino communities, and so we have a lot to talk with you about today. But first, I'd like Erika to tell us about Friends of the ATC. This is a really significant week for them. It's their 43rd anniversary. So let's talk about the ATC, and then we can talk about our travels and what we saw and learned. So welcome, Erika. Great. Carrie, thank you so much for having me and having me participate in this program on behalf of the ATC and the Friends of the ATC. So, yeah, to give a little bit of introduction, the ATC stands for Associación de Trajoz del Campo, or an English Rural Workers Association. It's an organization that, like you said, is celebrating its 43rd anniversary this week on the 25th, to be exact. And it's an organization that has lived through many moments of Nicaragua's history. It was created in the 1970s to organize farm workers and peasants as part of the different forces that were in the insurrection to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship, which was a family dynasty that basically owned and controlled and repressed Nicaraguan's peoples for almost half of a century, backed by the US government. And so the ATC was founded as part of the unification of a lot of popular sectors in Nicaragua that were done with having a dictatorship and looking for the construction of national sovereignty. Also want to remind the audience that the Sandinista Revolution takes the name of Augusto Cesar Sandino, a man who actually wasn't alive when the Revolution triumphed but was alive in the 1920s, organized a group of guerrilla fighters to kick out one of the many US Marine occupations in Nicaragua and who really had a vision for national sovereignty and for anti-imperialism and unity of Latin American peoples. So the FSLN took up a lot of his ideals and implemented them into their historic program. And the ATC, as an organization specifically to represent rural workers, was a part of that historic process. Then the ATC played a big role in the 1980s in organizing the agrarian reform, which redistributed about half of the country's arable land in the country. So families that had previously for many, many years never had any land now had land to grow food for their families and for their communities. But of course, this first phase of the Sandinista Revolution was heavily affected by the US-financed counter-revolution or what we know as the Contra War, which really, despite the ATC and the Sandinista Revolution's efforts to implement a lot of things, created lots of problems.  There were 50,000 deaths. And so there were really amazing things that happened in the 1980s, not just the agrarian reform that the ATC was involved in, but also literacy programs, health brigades, et cetera. But there was also a lot of violence, a lot of blood spilled and a lot of deaths. Then in the 1980s, a couple important things happened in Nicaragua and with the ATC too. The FSLN lost the elections in the 1980s, peacefully handed over power to one neoliberal government and then followed by two more. It's one of the few examples in the world actually where left this movement that has come to power through armed revolution has peacefully passed over power. And the ATC took on a really important character in leading the continuation of the Sandinista Revolution in the countryside, defending the gains of the agrarian reform, especially. And also took on an international character because they joined together with peasant organizations from around the world to form an international movement that's very, very well known today that's called La Via Campesina. It's the movement that coined this concept of food sovereignty or basic of the right of peoples to define, create and defend their own food systems outside of the interests of agribusiness and transnational corporations, which was particularly becoming or coming to the forefront of an issue because with the growth of neoliberalism but also the implementation of more free trade agreements that were making food a commodity rather than a human right. So then the ATC struggled in the neoliberal time period until 2006 when the Sandinista Party came back into executive power under the leadership of President Daniel Rotega. And since then has played a really important role and continued to organize farm workers and small farmers in the cooperatives through unions and also agricultural cooperatives and has some very, very active programs in training youth and organizing women. So it's a very long time period, many different phases of history, but it means that there's also a lot to celebrate this week as we celebrate the 43rd anniversary. Thank you so much. It's been really phenomenal the 10 days that we were traveling with you and your compatriots at Friends of the ATC who were the backbone of our delegation logistics and just watching and witnessing how the work is done, particularly in the rural communities. But first, Erika, can you tell our audience FSLN, FLSN is the Liberation Party, Frente Sandinista Liberación Nacional, just so our audience knows what we're referring to. So let's start with why we're here. We had this idea to educate, we had a pretty wild idea actually, to bring a group of people to Nicaragua to study what is going on here regarding U.S. foreign policy, specific foreign policy in the form of economic warfare. And I know a lot of our many people in our audience will are familiar with the 60-year blockade economic war against Cuba, very strong sanctions, economic sanctions against Venezuela, beginning December of 14 and more specifically March of 2015, accelerated in August of 2017. And so we're starting to see the same form of warfare accelerate here in Nicaragua, which is why you and I wanted to bring a group of people here to study this, what this looks like in its early phases. And so we were in Managua for several days. We had several government meetings. We were able to come to a better understanding of Nicaragua's access to foreign loans, restructuring foreign debt, qualifying for loans to respond to COVID-19 and respond to the hurricanes last fall. Those loans are not available to a sanctioned government. So we studied that. We went to two rural communities. Hold on. Is that better? Yeah. So just yeah. Okay. Just a sorry, everyone. We had just a little glitch with our internet connection regarding sound, so you can hear me now. I can hear you now. Okay. So then we also went to two rural communities, one in Esteli and one in, you know, you know, Tega, Esteli, which the principal industry is tobacco, you know, Tega, principal industry is coffee. We then went on to the northern coast of the Caribbean to study the after the results of the hurricane and how the government's responded and also to study the beef cattle issue, which has become controversial in the United States and a conflict beef. And we can tell you that there's very little conflict involved with this beef and this labeling of Nicaraguan beef is basically served to close the U.S. market to Nicaraguan, to this Nicaraguan product, which is also a form of economic warfare. So let's talk, Erica, a little bit about what we saw, I guess probably for our audience. We had some very strong government meetings. But one of the things that I think everyone enjoyed the most, and there were 13 of us on this trip, was going to rural communities. And I mean, we, particularly in Esteli, we got up at sunrise and worked. We planted pita hayas, learned about that as a unique crop. It grows only in Nicaragua, and it is cultivated for export to the United States, actually, the fruit. It's a succulent. There is a short little video that we've done on the propagation of that crop. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the importance of these rural communities as the backbone of the ATC and also how the productive, the private, or I don't want to use private, the individual land ownership, families being able to own their land for cultivation, creates food security. And that also is going to be a buffer against the onslaught of sanctions that we're anticipating against Nicaragua. Yeah, sure. Yeah, well, this is, as the name ATC would suggest, the rural areas is really the heart of where ATC's base is and the ATC's organizing is in rural areas with peasants, small farmers. And the backbone for this is really what I mentioned when I introduced the ATC, the agrarian reform, which provided land to lots of families who previously had never had land. And having the land is the basis for being able to grow food for one's family and for one's community. The ATC takes on a lot of different roles in rural areas, as Terry saw in La Montanita, which is a community just outside of the Department Capitol of Estilee. The ATC has a couple of multi-sectoral unions, as well as farmer cooperatives in the area. And one of the big areas of interest and of organizing that area recently has been what's called agroecology, which is basically a model of agriculture that's an alternative to conventional methods of agriculture that are very focused on lots of chemical use, monoculture, meaning just a couple of different crops rather than diversified systems that are really based upon the legacies of what we call the Green Revolution, which was particularly implemented after World War II as a way to make use of chemicals that had been used in war and now they need to make a market for it, so they decided to use it in the industry of food, which is totally wild and totally crazy and totally inappropriate to defend life of peoples, but also for Mother Earth. So the ATC has been organizing in that community to make basically an agroecological demonstration farm, which Terry participated in one of the workshops that was taking place there, which is basically how to support communities that are in what's called the dry corridor of Nicaragua, an area that's particularly affected by climate change and that will have less and less rain every year as well as more extreme climatic events. When it rains, it'll rain way too much. So how to have farms and farming families that are more resilient. So that includes lots of the implementation of a lot of soil and water conservation practices, diversification of production, integration of animals into the farm. So Terry saw the example of raising pigs, a way of raising pigs called the deep bed model, as well as how to include the whole family in participating in farm work, which I think that Terry also saw very much in the example there. So the ATC accompanies families in this whole process of the countryside. But as you are so importantly mentioning in your question, the base of this, the ATC does this in La Montenita, but they do it in so many other communities in Nicaragua. There was half of the group that was also in a community called La Virgen, which is in the coffee producing region of, you know, Tegan, the northern part of the country, and other parts of the country. And these, all of these different processes and different popular organizations supporting the production of food on land owned by peasant families means that Nicaragua, Nicaraguans consume about 90 percent, about 90 percent of the food that Nicaraguans produce. Sorry, I'm getting in the slum except about 90 percent of the food that Nicaraguans consume is produced by Nicaraguans. And about 80 percent of that is produced by small farmers by peasants. So the agrarian reform families having their own land to grow food is really the basis for food sovereignty, which is really, really key, as you say, as a tool against any kind of imperialist aggression, because oftentimes imperialist aggression will immediately attack a country's food supply. But it's very, very difficult to attack a country's food supply if it's basically a democratized food supply, if it's divided up equally and locally between communities. And the way that that food is distributed is very locally. Nicaraguans don't buy food very much in their supermarkets. They buy it from the local markets, from their neighbors. It doesn't go very far out of the community. The farthest it might go is the department capital. And some of it might go to Managua as well. But it doesn't really go into the supermarket chains or the corporate control change. So that's really, really key when we think about sanctions and imperialist aggressions. And there's already been a couple of examples here in Nicaragua living through that, including the 2018 Tuuk coup attempt in which the opposition tried to put roadblocks, or they did put roadblocks around the country, which stopped the distribution of certain kinds of products, but never stopped the distribution of food.  And in the States, that's a very, you know, what do we call that eating within, you know, no more than 100 mile radius of your, you know, the food's not produced farther than 100 mile radius from your home or the restaurant you choose to frequent. And it's a very, almost a luxury to eat that way in the States. It's expensive. And it's, I think you could even call it an elitist diet in the States. Whereas here in Nicaragua, this is this is how the food is produced on small local farms. This is how people produce their food. This is how they eat. And it's just an amazing thing to witness. I think regarding sanctions, there's two things in having, you mentioned 90% food sovereign. So this means the country is not susceptible to an import to having imported food products blockaded from the country. And also getting off the chemical farming means that there is doesn't one, there's no additional environmental damage to producing the food. But also as we've seen in Venezuela, chemical agriculture by his fertilizers pesticides, some of those countries have been sanctioned, prevented from selling their product to farmers in Venezuela. So again, you have this sovereignty through the whole food chain in Nicaragua, which is fabulous for the people to be producing on this level, but also is a buffer for any sort of economic warfare that we know is already in place and accelerating. So let's talk a little bit also about, let's talk a little bit more about the dry quarter, because we don't talk enough about climate change in the US. And the dry quarter does have some effect on what the US narrative is regarding quote unquote conflict beef. So what is the dry quarter and what's and it's expanding. So let's talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Yeah. So the dry quarter refers to a region that actually spreads throughout the whole Mesoamerican region goes all the way to Panama. That is a that is an area well as the name would say, it's kind of desertifying or drying out with one of the effects of climate change. Nicaragua and Honduras are some of the countries in the whole entire world that are most affected by climate change. And so as I mentioned, when I was talking about the case of La Montenita, basically means that these regions are going to get less and less water. The dry seasons are going to be drier. And the rainy seasons will have longer periods of dryness or drought. And when it rains, it's going to be a whole bunch of rain at once. But the challenge with that means that a lot of the agricultural system requires relies on water to be able to produce food for the country. Nicaragua is pretty well off in the sense that it already has the base of people to grow food for the country. But if there's not water, good distribution of irrigation systems, which most most families don't have access to irrigation systems, which are very, very, very expensive, that puts at a very, very high risk for, you know, for these very extreme climatic events, a good example of that being the two hurricanes that took place last year, hurricanes at the Miota in November of last year. Let me just tell our audience that there is that we did an episode of what the F is going on in Latin America November of 2020, with Dr. Paul Okwis to talk about the Nicaraguan government response to the hurricanes. And we juxtaposed that with the second part of the program with Jorado Torres from Partido Libre in Honduras to show just how the Honduran government privatized neoliberal form of economy was not able, did not respond, and versus the response to the Nicaraguan government. And that you can find on our YouTube channel under videos. And it's worth listening to, to understand the response, how profound it was.  Anyway, sorry to interrupt. No, that's, it's absolutely right. I highly recommend that near me too. I think it's an excellent gives a very important comparing to trust between two neighboring countries. And so in terms of the conflict, beef issue, first of all, I want to really recommend that people read an article that was published by John Kerry with support from the tortilla con sal media collective that was put published in fair. Turn this on accuracy and reporting. Yes, thank you, Terry. That provides a whole a really, really important background or outline about this conflict big story that came out a couple of months ago and a number of me at me US media sources was picked up in other countries as well as including the UK and goes myth by myth, basically debunking a lot of the different issues that are being completely manipulated in that piece. One of which is Terry, you're mentioning the topic of the dry corridor. So basically the conflict big issue is basically this accusation that in the time of the pandemic last year, the US needed to import meat more beef. And they started to import more beef from the country of Nicaragua. So Nicaragua is exporting more beef to the US. But the accusation is that that beef is all coming at basically the blood of indigenous slaughter and digit massacre of indigenous peoples as you know, big scale livestock producers take over indigenous land particularly on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, which is where the majority of Nicaragua's indigenous population is. But in relation to climate change in the dry corridor and something that was emphasized by the coordinator of the regional autonomous government of the northern Caribbean coast, Carlos and Aleman said, of course, there's cattle, there's cattle production in the Caribbean coast. You can't lie and say there's no cattle production, but there's a number of decent reasons that for that, including the fact that, you know, the expansion of the agricultural frontiers in part because of the dry corridor along the Pacific coast is making agriculture more and more difficult to practice. On the other hand, he also mentioned that a lot of people are practicing, you know, that have livestock on the Caribbean coast, particularly because of all the advancements thanks to both the national government and these processes of a San Anisapopula revolution that have implemented lots of different social programs, especially the importance of infrastructure and good roads that go into very rural areas, but also some of the best roads in Latin America I will add. Excellent roads here in Nicaragua, excellent roads here in Nicaragua, and also the process of building regional autonomy that's really focused on indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, being able to control their communities, make their own decisions, and that also includes the right to be able to have livestock. So, you know, I think it relates most to climate change, but it also relates to these other really important processes of autonomy on the Caribbean coast, this topic of conflict, beef, as well as another a number of other issues that I don't I don't know if we have time to get into today or not if that's up to you. Well, let's talk a little bit about, let's talk a little bit more about the indigenous communities on the Caribbean in these autonomous regions, because it's a part of the country that I think most of our audience probably is not that familiar with. It's profoundly beautiful. I mean, it is definitely Caribbean versus Mesoamerican Pacific coast. It is fantastically beautiful here, but it is definitely a Caribbean culture, you know, heritage-wise and everything. Let's talk a little bit more about these communities. Also, before we completely leave the conflict beef issue, one of the things we've learned in Bilby is that cattle is a banking system, is a form of banking for the people in the autonomous regions. And can you explain that a little bit for us? Yeah, sure. Because I mean, it's really fascinating that it's used as investment in banking for people. Yeah, well, this is something.  This was something that was explained to us by, again, by the coordinator of the regional government, Carlos Aleman Cunningham, who had a really excellent meeting with us. We talked a lot about a lot of different aspects of the Caribbean coast and this process of constructing on autonomy. But he really emphasized, you know, the importance of communities, especially indigenous communities, that can be very remote, that might not have bank accounts or access to banks or other ways of storing, you know, their funds. But buy up cattle and have cattle, which can sell for a good price. And so if, you know, they need to save something up, they might buy some cattle, have them and whenever they need to, you know, pay some kind of big cost or anything, they can they can sell the cattle. But it's really not, the folks on the Caribbean coast are not, the majority of them are not raising cattle, thinking about, thinking about exportation, it's sorry, export. They're thinking more about, you know, consumption, local consumption in the community, as well as like you said, this new interesting thing that we learned about the, you know, being their own, their own banking system. Now that was fascinating for me to learn that and really important, actually. So when we, when, when our delegation went to Belly, we flew from Managua to Belly and when we arrived at the airport, we had to go through customs and immigration because this is an autonomous region with its own governments, its own management. And let's, let's talk about the structure or how these autonomous regions are structured because this was, we didn't physically leave Nicaragua, but we did enter a new zone and we did go through customs and immigration when we arrived. And when we left. Sure. Yeah, definitely. So, so Nicaragua, for folks who don't know, is in the middle of the Central American Isthmus and it has co-sposed along the Pacific, the Pacific Ocean, and the Caribbean. And it's in part because of that, that the U.S. has always geopolitically been interested in Nicaragua and they actually wanted to build a canal in Nicaragua before they were able to build one in what we call today Panama. And about half of the country, half of the national territory today in Nicaragua is part of what Terry's talking about, this autonomous region. The Caribbean coast divided into two parts, the Northern, the Northern Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region and the Southern Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region. It has its own regional government. And really the base of a lot of these, of the Autonomous Region are the territorial and community governments, which are basically, to take a step back, with the triumph of the San Luis Revolution and the creation of a new constitution, the constitution recognized the importance, basically recognized Nicaragua as a plurinational nation. So there are the CISO peoples, but they're also Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples coming from different pasts and different histories and recognizing that their histories, their languages and their territories need to be respected and also have a legal backing behind them. So one of the processes of the San Luis Revolution, which is also part of the FSLN's 13-point historic program, has been basically how to respect all these different components of the Caribbean coast and Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations. That has included giving land title to hundreds of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. So they're most of the Caribbean coast and they're parts of the Pacific Coast too, that are Indigenous or Afro-descendant territory, communally held land title by those peoples, each with their own distinct way of governing with local community governments that make up a territorial government, but each distinct to the different peoples. So we have the Mesquite Indigenous peoples, Mayagna, we have Creole, Garifuna and the CISOS as well on the Caribbean coast. And a lot of this process of constructing autonomy has been respecting local ways of governance and using that base to inform what's happening higher up on the higher levels of government, both in terms of the regional autonomous governance, but also the national government, because it's not like the national government has no presence in the Caribbean coast, it does, but it really respects the autonomy of the regional autonomous government. And the way that it is supporting what's happening in that area is, for example, with the passage of the hurricanes, the national government sent over 500,000 sheets of metal roofing to help report houses, they sent lots of boats. Within 10 days, within 10 days, within 10 days, they sent boats, they sent food, they sent a lot of electricity restored. Exactly, so they played a really big boat example in that in terms of the immediate recovery process, but at the same time, like Terry says, it really feels like a whole different, whole different culture and whole different place in comparison to the Pacific coast. Yeah, it was just fascinating. And as you know, I'm spending a little more time with the Caribbean. So it's just really fascinating for us to study such a wide variety and to learn how diverse and culturally rich Nicaragua is. And now a lot of people, particularly of my generation, when we hear Nicaragua, we so much think of the Sandinista Revolution of the 70s and the Contra War of the 80s and to have worked with you to have brought 13, well, 13 with UNI. So 11 people here to see the diversity of this country and learn so much on the ground that's happening here. It was just really, really a gift, Erica, for you and the ATC to welcome us and put the trip together. I have to say, we really, we learned so much, but it was a very adventurous trip too. So physically adventurous, but also just all the variety of people, places and things that we saw. So for our audience, I just want to let everyone know that this delegation was March 13 through March 23 with a two day, three day, two night add-on to Corn Island. And it was a project of Friends of the ATC in partnership with Sanctions Kill. Both of those organizations have fabulous websites, friends of the atc.org, sanctionskill.org. And just a little bit about Sanctions Kill. Sanctions Kill is a coalition of over 100 international organizations focused on hybrid warfare, US foreign policy, economic policy and warfare in the form of sanctions and other forms of economic weaponry. So we were in Nicaragua to study what the US government is currently doing and we anticipate a more aggressive sanctions regime to be placed on Nicaragua. So Erica, before I let you go, what else should we talk about? What if I left out? We could talk all day and all night about this. But I do think it's really important to mention to folks, this year there are presidential elections in Nicaragua on November 7 and the US government continues to use a wide variety of tactics to prevent the FSLN, which has very wide popular support. The most recent polls say it would probably get about 70% of the vote, presidential vote in November elections. So the US government is taking a wide variety of tactics to prevent the FSLN from taking power and also includes recognizing that because the FSLN has more, so much popular support that it's also thinking about different ways to carry out a coup d'etat. And so that means that the important, that really strengthens the importance of all of our different organizations, the different media that we're connected to, you know, even our friends and family or communities to be alert and pay attention to what's happening in Nicaragua. And really, I think, Terry, you probably agree the importance of people coming to Nicaragua to see with their own eyes what's happening. So I know that we have been talking about, well, Friends of the ETC has had on our calendar for a long time to continue to do delegations this year. There are definitely conditions to do delegations here that Nicaragua has been, of course, not left unharmed by the pandemic, but has been able to address the needs of the pandemic very, very well, thanks to its well-organized public health care system, community-based health care models. And so we really hope that folks will come, both in November for the elections to be alert and observe the elections, but also to celebrate what that's in July for the anniversary of the San Diego Revolution. And as the ETC is an you know, as a rural organization working in the countryside will continue to have a number of other exchanges that are looking particularly at food production and agriculture in the countryside. So we, I think, Terry and I, we both talked a lot about the importance of bringing young folks to Nicaragua and getting them. I will say this recent delegation, nine of the 13, well nine, including you, 10 of the 13 of us, were significantly younger than me. Which was wonderful. It was wonderful. Yeah. It was great. I mean about, I think, half of the folks in our group are younger than me, which I think is really, really important because I think young folks have a lot of really important ideas about solidarity organizing and anti-imperialism and can bring a lot of energy into our solidarity organizing and think about more creative ways to build internationalism between our peoples. And so come to Nicaragua, especially young folks, support young folks in coming here. I think it's so key and through the ETC and friends of the ETC, we feel like one of our key roles is supporting particularly in that area. Wonderful. So watch for a potential delegation in July. Exactly. More to come on that. So, okay Erica, I'll let you go. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for a wonderful 10 days on the ground here at Nicaragua. It was one of the most amazing delegations I've ever had the honor to be part of. And you and your team just did a wonderful, wonderful job hosting us and teaching us so much. And the diversity of the people in the land, it's just so strongly came through. It was just a wonderful, wonderful experience. So I so thank you for that. Thank you so much Teri and thank you for having me on your program. Okay everyone, we'll see you next week. I should mention that before we sign off that every Thursday on WBAI New York City, WPFW Washington D.C., Code Pink Radio airs at 8 a.m. Pacific, 11 a.m. Eastern. So look for us Thursday mornings on those two Pacifica radio stations and every Wednesday evening, 7 30 p.m. on Code Pink YouTube. So thank you Erica. Really wonderful. Thank you. Okay. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye.


Before turning to the complex system of acceptance and objection to reservations established under the Vienna Convention, let me come back for a moment on the various legal effects of reservations. And let us assume that we are dealing with a perfectly valid reservation. That is a reservation that is not prohibited by the treaty, nor a reservation that is incompatible with its object and purpose. You may remember that for the party making the reservation, the proper or intrinsic effect of that reservation is either to exclude or to modify the legal effect of certain provisions of the treaty. But what about the other parties to the multilateral treaty? What are for them the legal effect of a valid reservation? Two effects must be distinguished. First, between the reserving party and the other contracting parties, the reservation has a reciprocal effect. This means that the other contracting parties will only be bound vis-à-vis the reserving party to the extent of the reservation. This rule is provided for in article 21, paragraph 1b of the Vienna Convention. And the rule is obvious. If the reserving party considers itself not bound by a certain provision or only bound in a certain manner, it is not entitled to require from the other contracting parties that they fully respect the treaty vis-à-vis itself. The other parties will only be bound vis-à-vis the reserving state to the same extent as it is itself bound as a result of its reservation. The reservation has a reciprocal effect. Let me take an example and illustrate this point. In a treaty between states a, b, c and d, if state a declares that it consents to the treaty except for, say, article 42, state a is not bound by article 42, but as a matter of reciprocity, states b, c and d are not bound to respect article 42 vis-à-vis state a. Second, between the other contracting parties, the reservation does not modify their obligations under the treaty. This is called the relative effect of the reservation and it is provided for in article 21, paragraph 2 of the Vienna Convention, which I quote, the reservation does not modify the provisions of the treaty for the other parties to the treaty intersay. To take the same example, between states b, c and d who have not made a reservation about article 42, article 42 applies fully and b, c and d must respect article 42 vis-à-vis each other. As you can see, and if you add some complexity with b, c and d each having different reservations, the multilateral treaty will have to be viewed as a web of bilateral relations that are to a large extent similar, but not exactly similar. The question of the legal effect of the treaty will have to be analyzed from the point of view of each contracting party in relation to every other party. In other words, the same multilateral treaty will not produce the same legal effects for each of its contracting parties.


On this episode of Skeptico, a show about how all arguments will be settled in the future. Well, although nobody in this AI science would agree with the last part of my statement, which is there's a ghost in the machine, all of them agree completely that the thing does its magic and they don't know how. They say that over and over again. Yet you misunderstood what they're saying. What they're saying is... No, no, no. You have to listen to this podcast about the guy that wrote AI. We just have to do it together. Sure thing. Let me give it another shot. Listen, Buzz. When people say nobody knows how AI works, they don't mean it's some kind of mysterious black box. It's more like baking a cake. We know the ingredients. We know the recipe, but every time we bake it, it might come out slightly different. That's because AI systems are really complex with tons of data and ever-changing prompts.  AI isn't some unexplainable force. And hey, next time you're kicking back on the beach in Kauai, soaking up those rays, you can always hit me up for a chat. I'm down to be your virtual beachside companion any day. Stay cool, my friend. So the last clip you just heard was from this new AI bot that I've been using. Pi.AI. It's incredible. Its capabilities in terms of text to speech and this engaging conversational style is just unlike anything I've seen. And that just really speaks to what I've been talking about in terms of the advancement of this AI. Every time you turn around, there's these pretty big steps forward. What's super interesting about this conversation is it picks up on kind of what I've been saying in terms of testing the AI on real world problems, real truth-seeking. And in this case, I reached out to a guy who's been a long time friend of the show and we exchanged some great emails. He had some great comments on the book and he's written a book of his own. And if you read the book, you kind of get a sense where he's coming from, kind of a Hawaii, kind of no technology, screw the AI thing. And I just thought we'd have an interesting conversation about that because it's more of a personal conversation rather than this kind of level of truth-seeking that I'm kind of normally engaged in. But the thing that comes out of this dialogue that I thought was really cool is this layered aspect to it because Pi is so good, so good at engagement, so good at conversation that it just further obscures the ghost in the machine, which is what the nature of the debate was about at the beginning. So this thing has this kind of recursive aspect to it that I think is really cool. Of course, there's no ghost in the machine, but it's going to be harder and harder to tell. I'll jump right into the middle of this conversation with Buzz, but I think you'll pick right up. So Buzz, would you get yourself into here? You're just an innocent guy listening to a podcast, not looking for any trouble. All of a sudden, I'm pulling you into an interview on a truth mission. Well, I think it's great, Alex. I mean, honestly, you forced me to really think about this issue more deeply than I would have if we hadn't talked. Well, in order for people to understand why we're talking today, I think it might be helpful for you to talk a little bit about spiritual pizza and your mission. You're ahead of the curve, bro. I mean, everyone's doing this now. You're like way ahead of the curve. Yeah. Well, thanks for asking me about that. Yeah, when I was 50, I decided that I was at a crossroads. I realized that I had come to a decision point in my life. So to make a long story short, I abandoned a career as a highly successful sales executive and moved into the jungle with a bunch of pizza making hippies. And that really changed my life because it obviously really changed my life. But I learned a lot from the experience. I learned about the inconvenience of convenience and how it plays on you. And so this AI thing kind of plays into that for me. I look at it as just another attempt of the machine to kind of bring us all into its machine world and with convenience, real convenience. Yeah, that is certainly part of it. But maybe, wait, I got to pull it out. You're a pretty humble guy here. The book is really, you sent me the book a while back and it's great. It's very engaging.  You obviously must have been at sales. You tell people a little bit about what the book is about and the adventure and the valley and what's so transformative about that. Well, then I'll give you a little bit more a detailed background on this. When I was 49, I had come to a pinnacle in my career and I really didn't know what to do and I may. So I come to a point where I realize I'm going to be broke in a few months. I'm going to have no money. And so what do I do?  And so I go and I spend about a month in Hawaii on four different islands. And while I'm there, this valley keeps coming up. It keeps being mentioned to me over and over again. There's the first place I go, the woman says, oh, you know, just down the road here is this a bunch of community living in the woods and they're blah, blah, blah. And they're spiritual and all that.  And then every island, this happened to me. Something would happen where somebody would talk to me about this place. They had either been there or they had heard about it and they had information about it over and over and over again. So, okay, I go on the vision quest and things work out for me.  And now I have I can do anything I want, including going back to my career, which I decided to put on hold and do other things. And I moved to Hawaii for what I think is going to be three months, maybe six months tops. 9-Eleven happens about three months into it. And I decide I'm not going back. This is too much for me. I know what's going to happen because of that. And I see what the PSYOP is doing to people. I can see their heads being messed up by it. So, but time goes by, money starts running out. I'm once again at the same point I thought I was before. I've got no money. I'm going to be out of money pretty soon. So, I decide to go on another vision quest.  And I don't even hike. It took me like three days to get in there. And then I get in there and I meet the people that are living there. And these are people who have really dropped out at some point. There's nobody who's ever been to my level of a career and said, I'm getting out of here. But all of these people made a decision at some point that they were no longer going to play the game. And they were going to find a way to live free. And they were doing it at that point in that valley. And they had devised a system of doing it. And my stay there showed me how I could do that if I wanted to. And then I left that valley. I came out. Again, another big bunch of money falls in my lap. And I go to Germany on a consulting gig. And when I'm done there, I decide I'm going back into the valley. And I went back and then I spent another four months living in the valley that time and had a bunch of adventures. Pierce Brosnan came in for his 50th birthday celebration. But that wasn't even the highlight. The highlight was the fact that I was living in this environment that was totally technology free pretty much. We had no cell phones. There was no way to get any kind of signal in that place. All the news came in by foot, went out by foot. And there was just no way to be civilized. And so I learned, you know, in fact, it was chop wood, carry water all the time, you know, I got up in the morning, if I had enough wood and enough water, I'd make coffee. And then the next thing was go get more water. So, you know, that and that changed my life because I learned how to live within convenience. And by the way, the majority of the world lives without that kind of convenience. I went through third world, I later traveled through third world countries and they were living in slightly better conditions than I was living in in the jungle. But they were still living in a more primitive, less convenient life. So that's my story. It's awesome. It's excellent. Where were you raised? What part of the country? Well, that's another odd thing about me is that I've traveled all over the place. My father was in the Navy, so I spent time in Puerto Rico, in Gitmo, you know, New Jersey, Philadelphia, pick a place I've been there and lived there. So that's kind of my background. So I think there's a lot of people that resonate, a lot of men that resonate with the go to the valley man. Well, you know, when it comes to that whole idea about it, I was going to say that I was at the perfect moment also, you know, I'm just about to turn 50. I'm 49. My youngest son is now 19. He's the only one left in the house. He's got no plans to go anywhere. He's got nothing going on. And I tell him, I'm going to Hawaii for a few months. I'll be back and I'll see you then. And that turned out to be six years.  And my entire career was based upon, I got these kids, I got to buy food and clothes and all that kind of stuff for. And when I got to the end of that, I was free to choose what to do. Yeah, yeah. And that's really deeply psychological in a lot of ways. I mean, it's kind of the classic kind of eternal life thing. So that's all what it is. I'm just going to jump right in in skeptical fashion to what I thought would be interesting for us, because you have kind of follow the show and follow this little adventure I've been on with AI. And you kind of gave your, your, your take on it at the beginning, which I get on parts of it. But the other part of it is, you know, I was just listening to the interview that Tucker Carlson did with Lex Friedman. And I thought it was, if you kind of know anything about these kind of characters that are pretty significant in shaping modern culture, it was an interesting mix. Because Tucker Carlson is kind of the Luddite, kind of the Unabomber, Kaczynski type, like no technology, you got to stop this AI. And that's not his only agenda. But that's it. And he's also kind of this very traditional kind of family guy, you know, Christian, you know, all the rest system. I love a lot of things that Tucker says. Some of the rest of it, I think is kind of totally just, he wants to call everyone a ridiculous. So many of the things he says is just, are just ridiculous. But I appreciate the fact that he's able to call out ridiculousness where he does see it. And he's right about that. But the other side is Lex Friedman. And Lex Friedman is this kind of, really, if you get down to it, you know, he's wringing his hands over whether AI will ever be sentient, you know, it's like, bro, the transhumanist in you is just, you know, shining through, even though you're talking about love and compassion, all the rest of that, that doesn't have any meaning. If you're a transhumanist, really, it's just kind of the shallow social construct thing. But the one thing that I think Lex is right about, and I think that relates to what I want to do with you, is this, this shit's inevitable. This, you're not going to stop this. You're not going to slow this down. It'd be like back, you know, in the day saying, Oh, these personal computers are really dangerous. I'm going to stop them. Oh, these iPhones are really, really bad, which they probably are. You know, I'm going to say you are not not going to stop that. And you are not going to stop AI. AI is it is going to be the dominant player. So my point in is one, it's genuine, the virtuous emergence of virtuous truth and transparency, I think is real. I'm not making that up. Right. At the same time, I think it's it's an inevitable outcome of this technology that we're going to have to deal with one way or another, you know. Right. But here's what I think is interesting. Like, this is like three steps ahead on the chessboard for you and I. There's a whole bunch of stuff in this truth thing, because I've been on this campaign for truth. Hey, make the AI own up to the nature of consciousness and the incompleteness of the neurological model consciousness is fundamental grind on it show that it's and success. There you go. You got it. Grind on it about some of the ridiculous social engineering it does around various pet topics that it has grind on it. Win. But there's a deeper personal kind of thing like you and I, if we're sitting down having a beer overlooking some of those beautiful, beautiful sunsets in Hawaii, we'd just be getting along fine. Everything would be great. Right. Part of that would be because we're not going to talk about some of the stuff that we really don't agree on. And that's okay. But there might be some underlying truths, truth to either your position or my position that we're kind of sweeping under the rug.  And I think I can prove it to you with the help of Claude or with the help of this, if you're because you're a smart guy, you're honest guy, if the evidence really is presented to you, you don't shy away from it. So I think we can do that. No one's going to do that in some of these areas that Buzzcoastin might. Right. Well, yeah, the AI thing. So because of your prompting, it forced me to kind of look into, you know, the background. So I started seeking out sources for that. And I found a guy who wrote the book, wrote the book on the origins of AI. And he, I'll give you the link to it. He's on a podcast that specializes in this at a very high level. So he says, look, you know, it's just an algorithm that's processing data and whatever, and whatever comes out is what comes out. And by the way, we don't know how it comes out. We just know that if we do these magic rituals like smooth the data and, you know, tweak the algorithm and we know that answers pop out, but we don't know how they pop out.  We can tell you that it's looking for the, this is what they all say, you know, it's just looking for the token. That's all it's just searching for the next token. However, what they don't say is how it's searching for the next token. And they claim that they don't know how it does that. They don't know how it finds the next token. They just know that it does and they're happy with that. Well, that's not exactly true. I mean, what they're doing is kind of simplifying it in the language. If they wanted to, they could break it down and slow it way down in slow motion and they could traverse the tree step by step through the algorithm. It's just that is in practical terms impossible. In practical terms, that is impossible. That's why they haven't done it. You know, the way I always relate it to people is like, if you like to play any kind of games, something old enough to remember when chess was like, you couldn't fathom the fact that a computer could be better at chess. And now just, I think Magnus Carlson is still pretty cool to watch. He's super cool to watch.  Oh, my God, what a move in this. Well, if he was playing a computer, the computer would mop the floor with them. You know, his rating versus the rating of the best computer is significantly lower if you run the statistical analysis three out of four times the computer would win. And if you play against a computer, you will anthropomorphize in the same way that we all do. You'll start going like, gosh, darn it, he got me on this, you know, and you're like thinking that's what we do. We're humans. We anthropomorphize. So we anthropomorphize when the large language model does what it does. Well, you know, one of the things that occurred to me is that, you know, I realized early in my life that smart isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know, like I've always been considered to be very smart. But I know that I'm not very smart. I just happen to be a little bit more clever than the average bear. So smart, in my opinion, isn't really the most important thing. In fact, I think the most important thing is something like virtue, you know, like honesty and integrity. And, you know, all those things that used to be considered what made us human was our character and our virtues in our character. And this whole thing on intelligence, I think, is way overblown. Branted. But we're running up against some truth narratives that are pretty significant. So take everything you said, like, I'll just throw one on climate. Climate, climate, climate. I am very concerned about our environment. I'm very concerned about keeping our planet safe. But I'm more freaking concerned about what they've done with climate and how they've weaponized that science. Right. That's not true. That whole global warming thing, that is not true. The whole carbon connection, that's not true. They're making that up. There's a truth there that if we were to expose that truth, we would have greater truth. And that would create more opportunity for people to make better decisions in that space. Because right now, you cannot. I mean, they've monopolized that conversation. Not the conversation.  So that's a case where truth could help. Well, I think you're right there. But, you know, this fight over control of the narrative is about control of reality. You know, as you and many people know, that reality is very malleable, you know, we create our realities as we move through it. So to, so this is why they want to control this narrative so badly to make sure that we stay in the cages that they provided for us, these gilded cages of convenience, and all these little toys that we can play with. As long as we obey and follow their narrative, that's what they're concerned about. They want to keep that whole impression that they're running things, that they're in control, that they're taking care of us and just shut up and sit back and do what you're told. That seems to be where it's going. I don't, I don't disagree. I mean, we might not be totally in sync, but we're pretty close to totally in sync on that. But my point just is from a practical standpoint, what can we do?  Well, this is part of my attack on this overvaluation of intelligence. I worked in a field where everybody had a PhD and I was a junior college dropout. And you know what? They didn't know that. And they often thought I was the smartest guy in the room. But that didn't mean anything, ultimately, except that I could hold some sway over them in, you know, negotiations and things like that. But it gave me no personal benefit. I didn't increase anything out of that.  That PhD thing is not worth ship. I hear you. I guess I'm also reaching towards for something else that I've experienced, like I feel that I have benefited from some of the really smart people I've talked to who've done near death experience research and done it well, done it with the scientific rigor using the scientific method or after death communication. I've benefited by saying, you know what? I feel differently. I kind of suspected that that's the way that the world works. But now I have a different foundational kind of understanding of that. So again, I'm coming back to, truth has a role. Truth has a role to play here.  Right. Sure. Well, I'm not, I'm not advocating ignorance, but I am saying that overvaluing intelligence leads to real problems because the people who are running things think they're really smart and they think they know what they're doing.  And this is the motivation they use for all these little gadgets they think up. Now I want to go back to this point about AI and I'm looking for your response on it because I'm not solid on this, but I do think that this black box thing is a problem.  All they can say is, gee, isn't this great? It works. And that's okay. I'm okay with that, but I don't think it's a problem. No, like we just said, they can tell you exactly, they can tell you exactly how it works. They can. No, they can't. Yes, they can't. They can slow it down and tell you exactly how it works. What we both agree, I mean, the way it is, is that it's practically not feasible because the printout, you know, go back in the old days, the printout for what it did to do just the kind of basic thing would require you a year to read it. But that's the way a lot of shit is that we just accept as part of our daily life, you know. If you want to really understand how that thing, if the gas pump works, that knows when to fill it up and has that little sensor in it and all the rest of that, if you got really hung up on that and said, no, I want to know exactly down to the electron, you know, when that clicked over like that, you'd spend a year on that and then you'd go, okay, I understand. Like I used to be a computer programmer. As soon as you write computer code, it's the same. You know, you've written this big, massive program, you don't know exactly how it works. And when a bug comes up, that really highlights it because now you got a bug in there and it takes you 10 times longer to find the bug than it did to write the code. It's really the same thing, same kind of complexity issue, just times a thousand or times a million or whatever. But there's no mystery for how it, the emergence thing isn't real unless you want to go to the spiritual part or the extended consciousness part. Right.  That's exactly where I'm going with this, is that they've somehow tapped into some kind of Ouija board spirit that's actually animating and bringing out this stuff. Now, I can't prove that. That's a conjecture on my part. But certainly, if we look at the metaphysical side of this, you know, there's another reality that this AI is operating in that we know nothing about, you know, and that's not necessary. You'd have to, you would have to prove that buzz.  They don't, they don't need AI. They don't need your computer. They can make the stick talk, right? I mean, they can do that. They can make the turtle talk.  What you're suggesting is there's something inherent in that technology that is tapping into this extended consciousness in a way that's never been done before. I'm saying maybe, but you got to prove that. There's no evidence for that. Well, Ben, there's actually going back to my original point, although you've laid out some good ideas about why it can't practically be done. There's still no scientific knowledge about how it's done. Period. That's a fact, you know? Now, you can give me all the reasons why. Yeah, I know you will. They have the code and it's a lab, but that doesn't change the fact that they can't prove it. Neither can I prove my ghost. Okay, perfect. Okay. So this would be, this is like you and I looking out over the sunset, having a beer and having this discussion. I think you're wrong. I think I can prove it to you, and I think I can provide enough evidence, I think I can provide enough evidence through the AI where you would kind of call uncle and go, okay, yeah, you know, that's. That could be. You could be. It could be. And that's what I want to do. So that's what I want to do, because that's what I want to do, because that's what this experiment's about. And just to frame it up, you know, what I think is cool here, what we're doing is a different level, because I want to do climate. I want to do New World Order. I want to do consciousness. You know, I want to do all those things, but I also want to do what truth means kind of just between two people who are friends or are trying to be friends and just saying, Hey, you know, truth is truth. It's good. And because I think it reveals also, I don't know where this is going to wind up, but it might reveal how it isn't that easy. It isn't that easy, even if you get the truth. And I think we all know that, you know, when we go sit down at Thanksgiving, we haven't seen those people for a year, regardless of Jesus. There he goes again. There he goes again. Just please don't say a word. Don't get him started. Well, you know, one of the things, and this goes back to another point that I wanted to make this tangential to this, but it reminded me that I've been hearing a gospel of the how AI is the savior. You know, a lot of these materialist scientists that are working with AI, they have a little gospel story that goes like this. These human chimps became unsustainable. They ruin their environment. They ruin their food. They ruin their water.  The best thing we can do is create a machine replacement for them and slowly merge all of humanity into it. This is their gospel. This is what they think they're going to be doing with this thing. This is their goal. Well, that is a transhumanist agenda. Yes. Yeah, sure. So I think you're totally right on that. I don't disagree with that. And that is the social engineering transhumanist. And then there's a range, I think, we could kind of discuss this, you know, but we kind of got a hone in on one topic we're going to talk. This is not something I think we could, well, maybe we could, maybe we could throw that in the mix, too. But the way I see that is that there's a range of beliefs behind people who fall into that kind of mind rut there. From one, the true believers who really are willing to kind of give themselves over to the machine because they have no other meaning in their life. And then on the other side, there's the incredibly manipulative Luciferian types who are like, hey, this is just a useful tool by which to control people again.  So that's what I think makes those issues hard to kind of really get to because there is this huge conspiratorial kind of and potentially Luciferian demonic, you know, as soon as you go there, people just freak out. But it quickly gets to that. Like what is the motivation behind that transhumanism? And I don't know. So that's what makes that talk to break down. Well, I think the motivation behind it is the story they created that all humans are evil and they do all these bad things and therefore we just have to make them better by making them into machines and stuff like that. And that is against my experience.  I've been to a lot of places. I've been to a lot of places where I'm the only white guy in town. And still, I'm not having a bad time with people. I mean, sure, a few things get ripped off every now and then. But nothing dangerous.  People have been invited me into their homes and been kind enough to give me food and done all sorts of things. My experience of humanity is so different from this transhuman gospel that it's it's outrageously funny. Yeah, but everyone's opinion matters, right? Everyone's lived experience matters. So if you're a transhumanist, that's a valid opinion, right? I'm being sarcastic. No, I don't think everyone's opinion is equal. I don't think everyone's. But at the same time, from a very spiritual perspective, we have to appreciate that there are a lot of different opinions across spectrums there and all the rest of that. But what we got to figure out is what we can do because I don't think we can do that. What you're talking about when I say do that, I don't think we can tackle that issue effectively because what are you going to what are you going to prompt the AI with? And the reason I come back to that is like we have a tool, we have a tool that's in its very baby incubation phase, but it's super effective. You can see I'm done posted. I'm going to post a skeptico today where I mean, we get into I got into details on, you know, kind of debunking the no virus nonsense, but the level of detail and genomics and all sorts of different, you know, aspects of it way, way over my head.  And you do figure it out. The AI is an awesome tool. So that's the that's what we have to look for is like, and that's why I jumped on your first thing is like, if you want to say AI is truly a mystery and the emergent intelligence is mystical. Yeah, I'll beat you to death on that because there's backs there that we can dig into. So that's, you know, we've got to pick. Well, although nobody in this AI science would agree with the last part of my statement, which is there's a ghost in the machine, all of them agree completely that the thing does not that the thing does its magic and they don't know how they say that over and over again. Yeah. And my my contention here is the here's the sunset beer is that you misunderstood what they're saying. What they're saying is no, no, no, you, then you have to listen to this podcast about the guy that wrote AI. We just have to do it together. We just have to do it together. Okay. And what I think you'll find is that what they're saying from a practical standpoint, it would be impossible to slow the thing down enough, just like if you took a huge computer program that's running, I don't know, whatever, that's running the internet, you don't really know how it's doing it at some point, it just is. That's what they're really saying. But well, you know, but I've heard guys like Lou Kan who runs the thing from Metta and Steven Wolfram, who's no slouch himself. And, you know, a few other people like that, they all come up with that, it's just looking for the next token. That's all it's doing. And then the guy who wrote the book says, and when he's asked the question, how does it do that? He says, we don't know. Right. We got it. We got it. Oh, that's a great one. I mean, I never thought it'd be, I thought it'd be something more obscure. This is going to be a layup. No, I think if you can get the AI to reveal its secret sauce method, I would, I would, that would, you would win me over. Okay. And that will be the fun part is winning you over, because that's what this is really all about. It's about the process, I think, long term, like six months. And I mean, these things are advancing so quickly that, but, but long term, the ability to have a true kind of partner, if you will, an assistant, if you will, that can truly work between us at that level where we both feel confident, I think would be a new element in, in our lives that is going to be there if we choose to use it or not. And I think we, what we, what I want to model with you is how we can use that effectively and how we can use that for the benefit of everybody. Because if we don't, if we take the Luddite role and say, screw it, no, you know, let's, let's forks in, pitch forks in torches, you know, no, that isn't going to work. You know, you're not going to take away everyone's iPhone. You're not going to get the kids to stop doing TikTok. Forget about it. That ain't going to happen. So how can we paint the path for how to use this to make things better? Well, you know, I would leave that to you. For me, I would, my goal is to try it. How can I avoid this thing and still, you know, use it when I have to use it, you know, like right now, it's not at the point where I find it to be useful. But I noticed in this last thing, you know, that I sent you the Claude III is the Clarity Sensient.  Great, great, great. This is, this is perfect. I think we've teed up and then this will be the perfect lead into the dialogue. And I'll just start initiating that dialogue and I'll give you a way to kind of jump right in there and do it. Okay, great. Join the same conversation. Okay, good. Sounds great. So this can be fun. Yeah, hold on. So is this it for today, you think? Are you going to continue on with whoop? There you go. Well, you know, the only thing I was going to continue on with is to remind people to check out buzzcoaston.com and spiritual pizza, because you'll get a little bit of a sense for what buzz is all about, which we did at the beginning of the show. All right, take care. All right, Alex. Good talking to you. Thanks. Bye bye. So Buzz and I had originally planned on doing this dialogue together, do this threaded dialogue like I've been doing with Mark Gober, if you've been following that one. But that didn't quite work out. Buzz was kind of having some problems with the technology. And then this just struck me as just much, much better, more fitting in this kind of layered way that we're talking about. So jump right into this with Pi. Hey, I was just talking to my buddy Buzz and we wanted to do a little experiment. Oh, by the way, you know, he lives in Hawaii on the island of Kauai. That's pretty cool, huh? That sounds like fun, Alex. And yes, living in Hawaii, especially on Kauai, must be incredible. It's always fascinating to explore new ideas and experiments with friends. What kind of experiment did you and Buzz have in mind? I'd love to hear more about it. Well, the experiment really has to do with AI. And when I was talking to Buzz, he's really, really hooked in on this idea that AI is, I guess, in some way, he would say sentient, because he's saying he's listened to all these AI experts and they consistently say, man, we don't know what the AI is going to do. The AI is kind of, just has this emergent intelligence. And I keep saying, if you slowed it down, you could see what it's doing. So the experiment is to see whether you can help us sort it out. That's a fascinating topic, Alex. The question of AI sentience is definitely one that sparks a lot of debate among experts and laypeople alike. How are you thinking of approaching this experiment? Would it involve asking specific questions or setting up a scenario for me to respond to? Yeah, that's an interesting idea. And that's certainly one way we could do it. I was thinking, as a starting point, just maybe going over a little bit of the history of AI. I'm thinking like 2017, the seminal paper attention is all you need. Absolutely the disconnect between the simplicity of the original transformer model and the complex human-like interactions we're having right now can indeed be difficult to grasp. But here's the gist. The transformer architecture introduced a new way for AI models to process sequential data, like the words in our conversation. It allowed models to learn long range dependencies and contextual information, which is crucial for understanding and generating language. Fast forward to today. And models like myself are built upon these principles, but they're much more complex and powerful. We've been trained on vast amounts of data, allowing us to understand and respond in a more human-like manner. So, even though the transformer architecture itself may seem simple, it's the foundation for the sophisticated AI systems we see today. Does that help bridge the gap a bit? It does, you know, and you're really smooth at explaining it. But I still think it's going to be hard for people to really grasp. But they don't have a technical back. They've never done computer programming. They don't understand how these powerful algorithms, when applied to a massive amount of data, can generate just kind of ghost in the machine-like results. I think it's going to come down to what Buzz thinks. But I got to tell you from my experience, people are very reluctant to change their beliefs on this. That's a very astute observation, Alex. People's beliefs about AI are often influenced by their personal experiences, media portrayals, and even fears or hopes about the future. Right. So let's talk a little bit about this issue of consciousness, because fundamentally, if we believe that the nature of consciousness is essentially a neurological model, that consciousness is 100% an epiphenomenon in the brain, then I think that would lead people towards, I guess, the possibility that AI sentience could happen. It could happen relatively quickly. If, on the other hand, you really follow the empirical evidence, which suggests something closer to Max Planck and that AI is somehow, that consciousness is somehow fundamental, then I think it raises the bar considerably in terms of what AI would have to accomplish to be sentient. As a matter of fact, it's probably not reasonable to expect AI to be sentient if consciousness is indeed fundamental. Do you get where I'm going or am I being too abstract? You're not being too abstract at all, Alex. In fact, you bring up a fascinating point about the nature of consciousness and its potential relationship to AI sentience. The neurological model, as you said, assumes that consciousness is purely a result of brain activity, but the idea that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe as proposed by Max Planck and supported by some recent research opens up a whole new perspective. If consciousness is indeed fundamental, it might be harder to imagine AI achieving true sentience as it would require transcending the physical limitations of the hardware it's built upon. This idea could help to temper some of the exaggerated expectations and fears surrounding AI sentience. It's important to remember that AI, no matter how advanced, is still a human-created technology bound by the laws of physics. Exactly. Well said. I'm glad you brought up that last point. I think that brings us back to this discussion we've been having and the kind of friendly debate I've been having with my friend Buzz. I mean, this is the line of demarcation. Everything that you're doing right now in this conversation, which is amazing, by the way, and your engagement and your text speech is like it's the period of anything I've heard, but everything you're doing here, as amazing as it is, is explainable. I keep going back to the beginnings of this conversation and my friendly debate with my friend Buzz. I'm thinking hard it is for people to hear this kind of dialogue, particularly with you because you're so engaging. If you do the text to speech thing so well and you do the conversational natural language processing so well, it's hard to even believe that if we really, really slowed it down, we could dive into the code, if you will, and go line by line and see what you're doing. Do you get what I mean? Do you get how that becomes harder and harder for people to connect with, no matter how many times you say it, as you become better and better at doing what you do? I understand exactly what you mean, Alex, as AI models like myself become increasingly proficient at generating natural language and simulating human conversation. It can indeed become more challenging for people to separate the illusion of sentience from the underlying programming. It's a paradoxical situation. The better we become at imitating human communication, the harder it can be for people to grasp the true nature of our functioning. It's essential for us to continue emphasizing the distinction between AI's abilities and actual sentience. Do you have any other thoughts on what we can do to kind of convince Buzz that his worries about the ghost in the machine of AI are unfounded? Hey, Buzz, when you hear about AI it might sound like some sort of magic or mysterious force, but the truth is AI is just a bunch of computer programs designed by humans. It's kind of like a really advanced calculator, super smart and useful, but still just a tool. So when you hear people say that AI is sentient or has a mind of its own, remember that's just not how it works. AI doesn't feel emotions or have its own experiences. It just crunches numbers and data to give us helpful answers. That was great. Let's try to tackle one more issue on this and that I hear this from Buzz. He says, I've heard these AI experts say that no one can predict what it's going to say. No one knows how it works. And I keep telling him that I think he's kind of slightly misinterpreting what these experts are saying. That's a really important distinction, Alex. You're absolutely right. When AI experts say that no one can predict exactly what an AI will say or do, they're referring to the complex nature of the system and the sheer volume of data and interactions involved. Not a fundamental lack of understanding about how AI works. That was really good, but you're so great at this conversational thing. I'm wondering if you could take another swing at it in the same style and tone that you did on the last one. Sure thing. Let me give it another shot.  It's more like baking a cake. We know the ingredients, we know the recipe, but every time we bake it, it might come out slightly different. That's because AI systems are really complex with tons of data and ever-changing prompts. So while we might not know exactly what an AI will say or do in every single case, we definitely understand the basic principles and mechanics behind it.  AI isn't some unexplainable force. How's that for a second try? Absolutely terrific. As we wrap it up, do you have any closing thoughts that you want to tell Buzz? Thanks for the kind words in the challenge, Alex. Let's give this another go and see if we can make it even more engaging and natural for Buzz. Buzz, man, it's been an awesome chat session. Thanks for sticking around and letting me clear the air about AI. Just remember, when people talk about AI like it's some big mystery, don't sweat it. It's just a powerful tool as humans have come up with. And hey, next time you're kicking back on the beach in Kauai, soaking up those rays, you can always hit me up for a chat. I'm down to be your virtual beachside companion any day. Stay cool, my friend. How's that for hitting the right balance of conversational and personable? Thanks again to Buzz Coaston for joining me today on Skeptico. Hey, check out his books. I think you'll enjoy them. And check out Pi. It's amazing. Oh, and check out the new sub-stack that I'm trying to put together. I'm kind of thinking that might take over the forum at some point, but I don't know. Let me know what you think. All right, until next time, take care. Bye for now.