Dennis McKenna on the "Stoned Ape" Theory and DMT-Reaction & Analysis

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So I want you to imagine for a second that
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you've just managed to score a reservation at like the
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most exclusive, highly anticipated Michelin star restaurant in the city.
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Oh man, Okay, one of those places with a massive
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waiting list.
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Yeah exactly. You've been waiting for literally months. You are
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anticipating just the absolute culmination of culinary art.
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You know, right, like a ten tasting menu or something totally.
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So you sit down at the table, you tuck the
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crisp white linen napkin into your collar, and the waiter
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approaches with this gleaming heavy.
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Silver close the big metal dome thing.
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Yeah, the big dome, and you're bracing yourself for a
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masterpiece of molecular gastronomy. And then the waiter lifts the
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dome with this massive flourish and sitting there right in
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the center of this huge, pristine porcelain plate is just
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a tiny, crumpled, sticky note.
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Wait, just a note, just a note, And let me
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guess that note doesn't even have a recipe or menu
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written on it.
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Nope, it just says preparing to cook that is it.
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No food, no ingredients, just the announcement that a meal
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was theoretically supposed to happen here at some specific point
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in space and time. You are sitting there with all
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your digestive enzymes ready to go, and you are handed
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a piece of administrative metadata.
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I mean, that is just the ultimate subversion of expectation, right.
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You arrived completely prepared to consume the product of immense labor,
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and instead you are just handed an acknowledgment of your
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own anticipation. It forces you to look at the the
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process of delivery rather than the object you came.
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To receive exactly, and that perfectly sets up what we
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are doing today. Welcome to another deep dive. This deep
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dive is uniquely tailored for your curious mind, and our goal,
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as always is to extract the biggest aha moments from
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the sources you provide us.
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Which is usually a pretty straightforward process.
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Usually yeah, but today we have a highly unusual mission.
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You gave us a source file, and look, I know
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exactly what you wanted from it. You handed us a
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lit pointing to the Amazon music directory for the Joe
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Rogan Experience episode two ninety eight featuring Dennis McKenna.
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Oh, the Dennis McKenna episode. That is a heavy one.
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It really is.
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You wanted the dense, mind bending stuff. You wanted the
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deep dive into ethnopharmacology, the stone dape theory, ayahuasca, plant medicines,
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the evolution of human consciousness.
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You wanted the whole package.
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And I mean it is an incredibly rich topic. That
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specific twenty twelve conversation covers just a massive amount of
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intellectual and scientific ground.
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It's legendary in those circles.
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It really is. It bridges the gap between like rigorous
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botanical chemistry and the deeply subjective frontiers of shamanism. McKenna's
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research into DMT and psychedelic substances is well, it's foundational.
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It is, or rather it would be, because here is
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the catch.
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We have a very.
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Strict rule on this show, right, the golden rule.
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Golden rule. We never add outside information that is not
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explicitly present in your provided sources. We don't hallucinate facts,
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we don't bring in our own outside notes or personal biases,
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and we absolutely do not summarize podcasts we haven't been
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given the transcript for.
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We analyze the exact text you submitted to the letter,
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nothing more and nothing less.
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And the stark, completely unbending reality of the source text
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you provided. Is that the only actual content within the
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excerpt is the url itself and the phrase quote hashtag
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tag tash tag tag tuning in.
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Yeah, we received the envelope and we received a two
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word greeting formatted in markedown exactly the letter itself. The
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hours of audio detailing the Amazonian rainforest and human evolution
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is just completely missing.
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So because of our strict rules, we cannot discuss Dennis
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McKenna today. We literally can't. We cannot discuss plant medicine
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or human consciousness. Instead, we are going to do something
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I think is arguably even more fascinating.
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I agree.
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We are doing a microscopic, highly analytical, and frankly obsessive,
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deep dive on the exact text provided. We are going
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to look at the architecture of nothingness. Okay, let's unpack this.
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I am fully on board for this. I mean, even
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in the complete absence of the expected audio data, the metadata,
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the digital footprint left behind by this broken link, it
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tells a profound story.
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A story about what exactly.
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About how we structure, route, and interact with information in
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the twenty first century. We're essentially doing archaeology on an empty.
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Warehouse archaeology on an empty warehouse. I love that. So
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before we can even look at those two words tuning in,
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we have to look at the digital envelope. They arrived
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in the URL itself, the address, right, the address, because
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in the modern digital age, the address is often drastically
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more complicated than the destination. Let's look at the raw
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string provided it's https dot music dot Amazon dot com,
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forward slash podcasts, and then it gets crazy.
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Yeah, that is where the architecture really shows itself.
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Right, So after podcasts, there's a string f F eight
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thirteen DC two two D twelve four to forty two
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worths f bb f F fifty two f s seven
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seven one six ninety eight b three. Then episodes, and
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then another string thirty five b ting non one one
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six forty four bf nine five zero sevens seven b
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zero two six seven five zero one finy, and finally
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the Joe Rogan Experience two ninety eight.
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Dennis McKenna.
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This is the structural blueprint of a alphanumeric soup.
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It really is.
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It looks like a cat walked across the keyboard.
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But it's not random typing.
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Right.
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This is the structural blueprint of a global digital library.
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It starts with the standard protocol and domain the https
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dot music dot Amazon dot com.
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Right, the part we all recognize exactly.
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This tells the browser to establish a secure encrypted connection
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using tls KILEZ transport layer security. It's essentially negotiating a
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digital handshake with a specific server farm owned by Amazon.
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It's saying, hey, let's talk securely, okay.
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So that gets us in the front door of the building,
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and from there we get into the routing. The path
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specifies podcasts. So we were walking down the digital aisle
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in Amazon's library to the podcast section, right, but immediately
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after that we hit our first real architectural artifact. That
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first crazy string, the FF eight thirteen DC two one.
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It's thirty six characters, letters and numbers separated by four hyphens.
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What exactly is that?
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That is a UUID, a universally unique.
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Identifier universally unique identifier.
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Specifically based on the formatting the thirty two hexed essimble
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digits displayed in five groups, we are looking at a
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version four UUID.
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We see these strings constantly, like when we copy and
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paste links from Spotify or Amazon or wherever, but most
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people never stop to ask why they use them instead
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of just a simple database system.
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What do you mean by a simple database system?
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Like, why not just label it podcast number one, podcast
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number two, podcast number three? Amazon is indexing millions of podcasts. Sure,
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but computers are great accounting sequentially. It seems so much
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easier to just count up.
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Well, computers are great at counting sequentially when there's only
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one computer doing accounting. Oh, I see, But consider the
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sheer scale of Amazon's infrastructure. They aren't running off a
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single database in some guy's basement. They utilize distributed systems
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spread across thousands of data centers globally.
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Right.
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They have servers in Tokyo, Frankfurt, Virginia, everywhere exactly.
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So if you use a sequential integer system what we
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call an auto incrementing primary key, you introduce a massive.
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Bottleneck because every single server has to check in with
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a central master database. Like, Hey, I'm uploading a new
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podcast from a user in Tokyo, what number.
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Are we on?
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Precisely? And if a server in Frankfort is trying to
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upload podcast at the exact same millisecond and they both
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get told your podcast number one thousand and one, you
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get a database collision.
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Yikes, So two completely different shows end up with the
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same ID number.
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Yes, the system crashes or it overwrites data because two
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entirely different entities share the exact same address. The delay
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introduced by constantly checking a central authority just to ensure
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sequential uniqueness is totally fatal to a hyper scaled system
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like amazons it.
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Which is grind to a halt.
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Exactly so, to eliminate that central bottleneck, computer scientists shifted
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to UUIDs. A Version four uuide relies entirely on pseudorandom number.
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Generation, so it doesn't check a master list at all.
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Nope, it just rolls an impossibly large set of dice,
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and because the pool of possible combinations is so unimaginably vast,
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the system mathematically guarantees that two servers will never independently
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generate the same string.
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Okay, when you say unimaginably vast, how big are we talking?
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The total number of possible Version four uiids is two
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to the power of one hundred and twenty two.
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Oh wow.
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Yeah, that is roughly five point three times ten to
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the thirty sixth the power or written out five point
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three endcillion undecillion.
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I don't think I ever even heard that word used
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in a sentence before. Let's contextualize that math, because the
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human brain is just not equipped to process in number
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with thirty six zeros. It's really not if you generated
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one billion uui is every single second for a century,
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the probability of generating a single duplicate a collision is
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still statistically indistinguishable from zero. Right, It's on par with
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the probability of a meteorite hitting you while you are
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simultaneously winning the lottery.
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What's fascinating here is how this string acts as the
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mathematical soul of the object that.
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Identifies mathematical soul.
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Yeah, that first UID, the FFA thirteen one is the cosmic,
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mathematically unique identifier for the Joe Rogan experience as a
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whole entity within Amazon's massive.
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Database, just the show itself.
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Right, regardless of whether the show changes its title, updates
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its cover art, or switches hosting providers, the underlying architecture
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maps it permanently to that specific thirty six character string.
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But the URL doesn't stop there.
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The rabbit hole goes deeper, oh much deeper, because after
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that show level UID, we hit episodes and then an
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entirely different UAID the thirty five BC nine one. They
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run the entire algorithmic gauntlet a second time to define
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the specific container for episode two ninety eight.
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Exactly, the show u UID is the building, and the
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episode u UID is this specific room inside that.
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Building that makes perfect sense, and just like.
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The show, this specific episode needs to exist without any
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ambiguity in database holding billions of discrete audio files. The
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database doesn't care about Dennis McKenna. It doesn't care about
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ethnopharmacology or the Stone Dape theory, or the cultural impact
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of the conversation.
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It doesn't know what a psychedelic even is.
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Now the machine only recognizes that specific alphanumeric.
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String, which brings me to a major structural pushback on
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this entire system. Looking at this source text where we
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have this incredibly robust, mathematically perfect URL, but the actual
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content is entirely missing, it just feels wildly inefficient inefficient.
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How I don't mean inefficient in terms of database architecture,
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obviously e itties are brilliant, but I mean in terms
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of resource allocation. It's like we are building an eight
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lane interstate highway that leads exclusively to an empty, rusted
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mail box.
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It's a great way to put it. The infrastructure of
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delivery is entirely intact, but the cargo has vanished.
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Yes, think about the computational cost of resolving this deadlink.
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To serve us this error page or this blank tuning
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in state, my browser had to perform a DNS lookup.
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It had to establish a TLS handshake with an Amazon server.
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It had to encrypt the request right.
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Amazon's load balancers had to route that request to a
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specific server cluster. A back end application had to parse
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those two massive uuis, query a huge distributed database, run
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an indexing search through five point three undecillient possible slots,
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realize the audiophilism there, form at the empty response, and
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send it back to me.
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Send it back via TCPIP packet switching across undersea cables
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and local ISP nodes all the way to your device exactly.
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The energy costs the sheer electricity and silicon involved just
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to deliver a void is staggering. We are burning coal
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and spinning turbines to confidently state that nothing is there.
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It is the paradox of modern digital infrastructure. In the
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physical analog world, the effort required to locate a piece
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of information was generally proportional to the size of the
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information itself. What do you mean, well, think about it.
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Finding a specific sentence in a massive, thick encyclopiece took
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physical effort. Finding a single flyer on a boltin board
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took two seconds. The address was simple, and the payload
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was the primary physical mass.
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Oh, I see, the heavier the book, the harder it
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is to find the page.
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Right. But in the digital age we have completely inverted that.
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The infrastructure required to simply point to a location, the
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routing protocols, the BGP tables, the zero collision database algorithms.
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It often requires immensely more computational power than the data
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it points to. Wow, we have built an intricate global
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fortress whose primary function is frequently just to protect a vacuum.
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That is wild.
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And we try to hide that cold, machine logic vacuum
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from the user, don't we? We absolutely do, because at
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the very end of the URL, after the HTTPS, after
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the routing, after the two massive mathematically generated UUIDs, we
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finally get something built for human eyeballs.
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The Joe Rogan Experience two ninety eight Dennis McKenna.
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Right, what do web developers call that?
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Part that's called the slug.
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The slug it sounds so gross, but it's just an appendage.
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Really.
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The machine doesn't need it at all. Amazon's database query
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has already been perfectly resolved by the uueds. If you
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deleted the slug entirely from the link, the server would
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still rout you to the exact same empty room.
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It's completely redundant for the server, So.
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Why include it? Why add another fifty characters of text
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to an already bloated URL.
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Because the slug is a translation layer between machine logic
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and human psychology in web development. The slug is the
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part of a URL that identifies a particular page in
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an easy to read form right.
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It uses real English words.
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Exactly, and it serves two primary functions. First, search engine
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optimization crawlers from Google or Bing use the slug to
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contextually categorize the link, so.
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Google knows it's about Joe Rogan and Dennis McKenna yep.
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But more importantly, it functions as a trust marker for
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the human user.
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Like a courtesy sign on the door.
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Exactly. The machine needs the ueids to route the database
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query efficiently without errors. The human user needs the slug
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to feel confident there in the right place before they click.
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Because humans don't read hex codes.
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Right, If a friend texts you a link that is
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just an IP address followed by a thirty six character
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hexadesimal string, you hesitate.
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Oh, I'm definitely not clicking that. It looks like malware.
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It looks like I'm going to get a virus exactly.
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It looks suspicious. But if it ends in words, you recognize,
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you trust the destination. The slug masks the mechanical reality
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of the Internet with semantic meaning.
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It is the digital equivalent of a matroid smiling at
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you before leading you to that empty Michelin star table.
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We talked about perfect analogy. It's pure presentation, which brings
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us to.
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The actual payload. We received the absolute only human readable
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text provided in our source excerpt. Let's look at the
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literal text provided by the listener hashtag tech check tac
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tech tag tuning in.
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We really have to analyze the formatting before we analyze
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the semantis. Here those six hash marks preceding the text.
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Right. The hash is so in the context of digital
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text formattings, specifically markdown, which is the underlying architecture of
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much of the readable web. The hash symbol denotes a header.
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Yep. John Gruber created markdown years ago to simplify HTML formatting,
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and it's everywhere now. So.
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One hash is an H one, right, the main title
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of a page. It's loud, it's bold, it demands your attention.
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Two hashes is an H two a subtitle, and it
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steps down incrementally all the way to six hashes.
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And H six, which is the smallest possible structural header
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in the HTML document object model.
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It is the typographic equivalent of a whisper. It is
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the platform formatting the text to be as unobtrusive as
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possible while still technically maintaining structural hierarchy.
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It's not standard body text, right, It's an announcement, but
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one delivered out of the corner of the mouth, like
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a marginalia note in the digital architecture marginalien note.
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I like that, and the specific words they chose to
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format as a whisper are tuning in.
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This is where the language choice becomes super important.
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Here's where it gets really interesting. Let's really look at
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that phrase. They're dealing with an on demand packet switched
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streaming audio platform hosted by Amazon literally one of the
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largest tech conglomerates on.
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Earth serving data at the speed of light.
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Right, the audio file, had it existed, is sitting inert
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on a solid state drive in a server farm. And
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yet the phrase they choose to display when preparing the
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audio is tuning in. That is a deeply legacy, heavily
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analog concept.
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It is a textbook example of a skeomorph.
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A skewomorph. Can you define that for the listener?
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Sure?
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A skewomorph is a derivative object that retines non functional
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ornamental design cues from structures that were inherent to the original.
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Give me an example.
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A classic example is the shutter click sound your smartphone.
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Camera makes ooh like the cuck sound.
350
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Exactly. There is no mechanical shutter snapping shut in your iPhone.
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It's just a digital sensor capturing light. But the digital
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file plays the audio of a mechanical analog camera to
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signal completion to the user.
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Or like the save icon on modern software, it's still
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a three point five inch floppy disc.
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Yes, even though an entire generation of computer users has
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never physically held a floppy disk in their hands, they
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just know that the square icon means save.
359
00:17:09.799 --> 00:17:12.480
That makes total sense. So the phrase tuning in is
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a semantic skewomorph it is.
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And to understand why it's so out of place here,
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we have to look at the physics of actual radio broadcasting.
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Right going back to the twentieth century.
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When you tuned in analog radio, you were physically rotating
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a variable capacitor. You were altering the capacitance in an
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electrical circuit.
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You were physically moving pieces of metal closer together or
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further apart.
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Right exactly. You were adjusting the surface area to match
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the resonant frequency of a specific electromagnetic radio wave that
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was literally broadcasting through the physical air around you.
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It was a tangible analog act of aligning your receiver's
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hardware with the universe's ambient electromagnetic frequencies.
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It was a hunt. You had to physically reach through
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the static.
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I remember doing that in old time cars. You would
377
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turn the dial, hear the hiss of cosmic microwave background radiation,
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the crackle of interference, the overlapping voices of different stations
379
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bleeding into each other.
380
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It was messy. It was continuous.
381
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You nudged the dial millimeters at a time until you
382
00:18:14.680 --> 00:18:18.200
perfectly tuned the circuit. And the signal locked and clear.
383
00:18:18.759 --> 00:18:22.119
It was a tactile relationship with a continuous flowing wave
384
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of energy.
385
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But on Amazon Music or any digital streaming platform utilizing
386
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the OSI network model, there is no frequency.
387
00:18:29.960 --> 00:18:31.039
Right, There's no wave in the air.
388
00:18:31.119 --> 00:18:33.880
There is no analog wave passing through the air that
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00:18:33.960 --> 00:18:37.200
your device is trying to resonate with. The digital file
390
00:18:37.279 --> 00:18:41.039
is resting statically. When you click play, your device sends
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a discrete binary HTTP request.
392
00:18:43.839 --> 00:18:45.920
To the server, and then the server responds yes.
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00:18:45.960 --> 00:18:48.920
It responds by breaking the audio file down into thousands
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of tiny independent digital packets of zeros and ones, setting
395
00:18:52.680 --> 00:18:56.880
them across the Internet via TCPIP protocols, and your device
396
00:18:56.960 --> 00:18:58.920
catches them and reassembles them in a buffer.
397
00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:03.119
So there is absolutely no no tuning involved in any physical, technical,
398
00:19:03.200 --> 00:19:04.359
or energetic.
399
00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:07.119
Sense, none whatsoever. It is discrete rather than continuous. It
400
00:19:07.160 --> 00:19:09.119
is on or off. You either have the packet or
401
00:19:09.160 --> 00:19:09.480
you don't.
402
00:19:09.720 --> 00:19:11.319
So why do they use the phrase, I mean, why
403
00:19:11.359 --> 00:19:14.839
not accurately reflect the system's architecture. Why not display a
404
00:19:14.880 --> 00:19:18.640
tiny H six header that says executing database query or
405
00:19:18.960 --> 00:19:23.440
buffering TCPIP packets or establishing TLS handshake.
406
00:19:23.839 --> 00:19:26.279
If we connect this to the bigger picture. It comes
407
00:19:26.319 --> 00:19:31.319
down to UIUX design philosophy, user interface, and user experience.
408
00:19:31.799 --> 00:19:35.200
The engineers at these massive tech companies understand that humans
409
00:19:35.200 --> 00:19:38.119
are psychological creatures, not purely logical ones.
410
00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:39.400
You need a little handholding.
411
00:19:39.480 --> 00:19:42.960
We require a psychological bridge between our historical media habits
412
00:19:43.160 --> 00:19:49.400
and our current technological reality. Buffering TCPIP packets sounds clinical, sterile,
413
00:19:49.440 --> 00:19:51.680
and slightly alarming to a non technical user.
414
00:19:51.880 --> 00:19:54.359
It reminds the user of the cold, hard machinery of
415
00:19:54.400 --> 00:19:54.920
the Internet.
416
00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:57.160
It sounds like an error message exactly.
417
00:19:57.200 --> 00:19:59.599
It pierces the illusion of magic. It reminds you that
418
00:19:59.640 --> 00:20:01.839
you are looking at a glowing rectangle of glass and
419
00:20:01.880 --> 00:20:04.400
silicon begging a server in a cold room in Virginia
420
00:20:04.519 --> 00:20:05.319
to send you a file.
421
00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:06.640
It takes the romance out of it.
422
00:20:06.759 --> 00:20:10.240
Tuning in, on the other hand, maintains the illusion of broadcasting.
423
00:20:10.559 --> 00:20:12.079
It romanticizes the network.
424
00:20:11.880 --> 00:20:14.640
Latency AH latency, the lag.
425
00:20:14.720 --> 00:20:17.680
Right when you click a podcast link. There is inevitably
426
00:20:17.680 --> 00:20:20.480
a slight delay, perhaps a few hundred milliseconds, perhaps a
427
00:20:20.480 --> 00:20:23.240
second or two if the network is congested. The application
428
00:20:23.319 --> 00:20:26.720
have to resolve those complex uuads we analyzed initiate to
429
00:20:26.799 --> 00:20:29.640
handshake and wait for the first packets of audio to
430
00:20:29.799 --> 00:20:31.559
arrive and fill the local.
431
00:20:31.279 --> 00:20:34.000
Buffer, and if the screen just goes blank during that time.
432
00:20:34.079 --> 00:20:37.400
If the screen remains entirely blank during this latency period,
433
00:20:37.720 --> 00:20:41.519
the user experiences immediate friction. They assume the application is
434
00:20:41.559 --> 00:20:43.880
frozen or their Internet connection has dropped.
435
00:20:43.960 --> 00:20:45.799
They start tapping the screen aggressively.
436
00:20:45.960 --> 00:20:50.440
Exactly so, tuning in acts as a digital pacifier.
437
00:20:49.880 --> 00:20:52.079
A digital pacifier wow.
438
00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:56.880
It manages cognitive dissonance by utilizing a skewomorphic phrase tied
439
00:20:56.920 --> 00:21:00.759
to analog radio. The platform reframes a technical delay, which
440
00:21:00.799 --> 00:21:04.799
is server latency, as a necessary romanticized ritual, which is
441
00:21:04.880 --> 00:21:05.680
tuning the dial.
442
00:21:06.039 --> 00:21:09.359
It signifies a transitionary state. It shifts the user from
443
00:21:09.400 --> 00:21:12.640
an active, frantic searching mode, where their dopamine system is
444
00:21:12.720 --> 00:21:15.759
highly engaged in scrolling and clicking menus, into a passive,
445
00:21:15.799 --> 00:21:17.680
receptive listening mode.
446
00:21:17.519 --> 00:21:19.920
Just like the lights dimming at a theater or an
447
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:22.640
orchestra tuning their instruments before a symphony begins.
448
00:21:23.000 --> 00:21:25.559
It is the platform's way of telling the user to
449
00:21:25.599 --> 00:21:30.000
prepare their cognitive workspace for the transfer of knowledge. It's
450
00:21:30.160 --> 00:21:33.119
managing human impatience by invoking nostalgia.
451
00:21:33.519 --> 00:21:34.720
That's a perfect summary.
452
00:21:34.839 --> 00:21:37.759
But I have to push back on this entirely, especially
453
00:21:37.799 --> 00:21:40.440
in the context of the exact source excerpt we are
454
00:21:40.440 --> 00:21:41.400
analyzing today.
455
00:21:41.519 --> 00:21:42.920
Why is that because the.
456
00:21:42.839 --> 00:21:46.200
Source cuts off immediately after tuning in? Oh right, the
457
00:21:46.240 --> 00:21:49.519
text just ends. We never receive the audio packets, We
458
00:21:49.599 --> 00:21:52.240
never get to hear Joe Rogan and Dennis McKenna discuss
459
00:21:52.319 --> 00:21:56.799
plant medicine or DMT. The signal never actually arrives. So
460
00:21:57.000 --> 00:22:00.960
philosophically and psychologically speaking, if the experience terminates at the
461
00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:05.200
phrase tuning in, we are functionally trapped in that transitional
462
00:22:05.279 --> 00:22:06.079
state forever.
463
00:22:06.319 --> 00:22:08.440
It is purgatory by way of a loading screen.
464
00:22:08.599 --> 00:22:11.519
Yes, think about the physical analogy of the radio again.
465
00:22:11.559 --> 00:22:14.039
It's like having an old analog dial and you are
466
00:22:14.160 --> 00:22:17.640
endlessly desperately spinning it. You hear the static you're leaning in.
467
00:22:17.759 --> 00:22:21.200
Your cognitive workspace is completely cleared. The lights in the
468
00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:21.680
theater have.
469
00:22:21.799 --> 00:22:23.720
Dimmed, but the curtain never rises.
470
00:22:23.880 --> 00:22:27.240
The curtain never rises. You are fully prepared to listen,
471
00:22:27.680 --> 00:22:30.960
but you are perpetually denied the actual signal. You are
472
00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:34.039
just spinning the dial in the void. What does that
473
00:22:34.119 --> 00:22:37.000
do to a user? What happens to a human mind
474
00:22:37.039 --> 00:22:40.720
that is constantly prompted to tune in, but never actually
475
00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:42.000
receives the broadcast.
476
00:22:42.240 --> 00:22:45.759
You are touching on the core existential dread of modern
477
00:22:45.839 --> 00:22:50.799
digital consumption. It's heavy, right, it is Psychologically Anticipation without
478
00:22:50.839 --> 00:22:55.759
resolution leads to severe cognitive fatigue. The human brain releases
479
00:22:55.799 --> 00:22:58.680
dopamine not just when we receive a reward, but during
480
00:22:58.720 --> 00:23:00.240
the anticipation of a reward.
481
00:23:00.319 --> 00:23:02.480
The expectation is half the high exactly.
482
00:23:02.839 --> 00:23:05.799
In this scenario, the reward is information. It's the prospect
483
00:23:05.880 --> 00:23:09.119
of learning something profound about human evolution from Dennis McKenna.
484
00:23:09.680 --> 00:23:11.960
The user sees the slug in the URL, their brain
485
00:23:12.079 --> 00:23:15.839
recognizes the topic, and the dopamine system activates, driving them
486
00:23:15.839 --> 00:23:16.319
to click the.
487
00:23:16.240 --> 00:23:19.240
Link and then the phrase tuning in spikes that dopamine
488
00:23:19.279 --> 00:23:22.240
even further, signaling that the reward is imminent. The brain
489
00:23:22.319 --> 00:23:25.720
is actively leaning forward, preparing to process complex data.
490
00:23:25.759 --> 00:23:28.599
But when the signal fails to arrive, when the link
491
00:23:28.680 --> 00:23:32.000
is dead or the excerpt ends abruptly like ours did,
492
00:23:32.279 --> 00:23:34.680
the reward loop is left completely open.
493
00:23:34.640 --> 00:23:37.200
And the brain doesn't like open loops, not at all.
494
00:23:37.440 --> 00:23:42.880
In behavioral psychology, unclosed loops create acute cognitive dissonance. The
495
00:23:42.880 --> 00:23:46.240
brain expended the neurochemical energy to prepare for a cognitive
496
00:23:46.319 --> 00:23:49.880
load that never materialized. It creates a micro frustration.
497
00:23:50.279 --> 00:23:53.759
It's the digital equivalent of a phantom itch. You're scratching
498
00:23:53.799 --> 00:23:56.480
at a user interface that promises a world of audio
499
00:23:56.720 --> 00:23:58.960
but delivers only structural.
500
00:23:58.400 --> 00:24:01.559
Silence, and this microfrustration come pounds over time.
501
00:24:01.839 --> 00:24:04.640
Frankly, this isn't just an isolated incident with this one
502
00:24:04.759 --> 00:24:08.880
specific broken link. This mirrors the macro reality of how
503
00:24:08.920 --> 00:24:11.440
we consume the Internet every single day. Oh so we
504
00:24:11.480 --> 00:24:12.960
are constantly caught in this loop.
505
00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:13.480
Think about it.
506
00:24:13.640 --> 00:24:16.000
We click a headline on social media. The page says
507
00:24:16.079 --> 00:24:19.480
loading or tuning in. We glance at the first paragraph
508
00:24:19.480 --> 00:24:23.079
of the article, realize it requires actual cognitive effort to read,
509
00:24:23.480 --> 00:24:25.920
and we immediately click away back to our feed.
510
00:24:26.039 --> 00:24:27.240
We self aboard the payload.
511
00:24:27.519 --> 00:24:31.279
Yes, we are permanently suspended in a state of preparing
512
00:24:31.319 --> 00:24:34.279
to consume, but rarely sitting through the entire meal.
513
00:24:34.759 --> 00:24:38.039
We have become addicted to the prolog. The transition state
514
00:24:38.079 --> 00:24:41.519
itself has become our primary mode of digital existence.
515
00:24:41.720 --> 00:24:42.720
That is so true.
516
00:24:42.759 --> 00:24:46.720
If you track user behavior on modern platforms, people spend
517
00:24:46.880 --> 00:24:51.440
exponentially more time navigating the architecture, scrolling the endless menus,
518
00:24:51.559 --> 00:24:55.039
parsing the slugs, anticipating the content, wading through the loading
519
00:24:55.079 --> 00:24:58.519
screens than they do actually dwelling within the content itself.
520
00:24:58.759 --> 00:25:01.880
The act of tuning in literally replaced the act of listening.
521
00:25:02.119 --> 00:25:05.880
It has the meta experience of finding the content is
522
00:25:05.920 --> 00:25:08.720
more engaging to our modern brains than the content itself.
523
00:25:08.839 --> 00:25:11.200
So what does this all mean? We started this deep
524
00:25:11.240 --> 00:25:13.440
dive with a source file that seemed like a cruel joke,
525
00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:17.720
a massive URL and two whispered words, completely devoid of
526
00:25:17.720 --> 00:25:21.640
the deep, mind bending conversation about psychedelics and shamanism we
527
00:25:21.640 --> 00:25:22.359
were expecting.
528
00:25:22.559 --> 00:25:24.440
We thought we were getting a masterclass on the stone
529
00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:25.480
dape theory right.
530
00:25:25.880 --> 00:25:28.240
But because we adhere strictly to the reality of the
531
00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:31.039
text provided, we were forced to look at something much
532
00:25:31.079 --> 00:25:36.480
smaller but universally applicable. We explored the staggering digital architecture
533
00:25:36.519 --> 00:25:38.319
required just to host a ghost.
534
00:25:38.519 --> 00:25:42.000
We broke down the euids, the mathematics of collision prevention,
535
00:25:42.359 --> 00:25:46.880
the distributed databases, and the massive computational effort required just
536
00:25:46.920 --> 00:25:48.519
to point a browser at an empty room.
537
00:25:48.839 --> 00:25:51.960
We examine the anatomy of the URL as a structural artifact.
538
00:25:52.519 --> 00:25:54.839
We highlighted how the machine logic of the Internet is
539
00:25:54.920 --> 00:26:00.160
carefully masked behind human readable slugs, translating hexodescimal mathematics to
540
00:26:00.200 --> 00:26:01.880
approachable semantics, and.
541
00:26:01.799 --> 00:26:05.759
We unpacked the deeply analog psychological legacy behind the phrase
542
00:26:06.319 --> 00:26:09.680
tuning in. We looked at the physics of radio waves
543
00:26:09.680 --> 00:26:13.680
and variable capacitors and contrasted them with the discrete, packet
544
00:26:13.720 --> 00:26:15.519
switched reality of TCPIP.
545
00:26:15.839 --> 00:26:18.960
We discovered that the phrase is a skewomorphic bridge. It's
546
00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:22.720
purposefully designed by UI engineers to manage our impatients, mitigate
547
00:26:22.799 --> 00:26:26.240
cognitive dissonance during latency, and dress up the cold reality
548
00:26:26.279 --> 00:26:30.400
of data transfer in the warm, nostalgic language of terrestrial radio.
549
00:26:30.599 --> 00:26:34.400
It's all a carefully constructed theater to keep us engaged exactly.
550
00:26:34.799 --> 00:26:38.200
And you know, listener, in a world of absolute information overload,
551
00:26:38.200 --> 00:26:42.440
where we are bombarded by high definition content every waking millisecond,
552
00:26:43.160 --> 00:26:46.279
maybe there is a strange hidden value in the empty
553
00:26:46.279 --> 00:26:47.279
plate we receive.
554
00:26:47.079 --> 00:26:49.839
Today, a silver lining to the broken link. Yeah.
555
00:26:50.279 --> 00:26:54.640
Sometimes, acknowledging your readiness to learn the pure, unfulfilled act
556
00:26:54.720 --> 00:26:57.839
of simply tuning in without the immediate gratification of the
557
00:26:57.880 --> 00:27:01.559
payload is a valuable moment of pause in itself. We
558
00:27:01.640 --> 00:27:04.480
didn't get the dense scientific breakdown today. We didn't get
559
00:27:04.519 --> 00:27:07.640
the ethnopharmacology, but we got a moment to stop and
560
00:27:07.720 --> 00:27:10.799
examine the invisible machinery that runs our modern lives.
561
00:27:10.880 --> 00:27:12.759
We gotta look at the frame instead of the painting.
562
00:27:12.960 --> 00:27:14.240
This raises an important question.
563
00:27:14.279 --> 00:27:15.559
Wait, no, I stole your line.
564
00:27:15.720 --> 00:27:19.119
Hi, you did, But seriously, this raises an important.
565
00:27:18.799 --> 00:27:20.200
Question, where do we go from here?
566
00:27:20.519 --> 00:27:24.359
Well, if you spend your day constantly navigating these hypercomplex
567
00:27:24.400 --> 00:27:27.920
routing protocols, reading the URL slugs, anticipating the reward loose
568
00:27:28.119 --> 00:27:30.480
and looking at the tiny H six loading screens that
569
00:27:30.519 --> 00:27:33.680
whisper tuning in, but you never actually sit still long
570
00:27:33.759 --> 00:27:36.960
enough to receive the signal and process the data. Are
571
00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:40.599
you consuming the media or is the media platform quietly
572
00:27:40.640 --> 00:27:42.200
perfectly consuming your time?
573
00:27:42.480 --> 00:27:42.839
Oh?
574
00:27:42.920 --> 00:27:46.720
Man, the Michelin starwaiter lifts the silver dome, but the
575
00:27:46.720 --> 00:27:49.720
plate is entirely empty, and you're still sitting there, napkin
576
00:27:49.720 --> 00:27:52.720
tucked in, waiting. Well, the clock ticks away. Think about
577
00:27:52.720 --> 00:27:54.640
that next time you find yourself staring at a loading bar,
578
00:27:54.759 --> 00:27:57.839
endlessly spinning the dial in the void until next time, listener,
579
00:27:58.160 --> 00:27:59.599
keep questioning the architecture,