Full Transcript for Bubble Metaphysics

self-correcting. So there's a rationality to it, 69 00:04:45.860 --> 00:04:50.339 a calculating sort of rationality to it. And it's supposed 70 00:04:50.379 --> 00:04:54.379 to know, well, if it knows, we'll say, if it 71 00:04:54.459 --> 00:04:57.279 knows that there's a bubble, the bubble is supposed to 72 00:04:57.300 --> 00:05:01.120 be corrected because the bubble is a deviation. And you're 73 00:05:01.139 --> 00:05:07.709 supposed to have market incentives for things like betting against 74 00:05:08.069 --> 00:05:14.779 the bubble. What's weird, what's paradoxical is everybody knowing that 75 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:18.459 you're in a bubble. And this seems to be bubbles 76 00:05:18.860 --> 00:05:24.540 since the 2008 bubble. It seems to be every time 77 00:05:24.579 --> 00:05:29.490 a bubble comes around, people just announce, oh, hey, we're 78 00:05:29.519 --> 00:05:31.910 in a new bubble. Remember NFTs? Hey, we're in an 79 00:05:32.009 --> 00:05:35.689 NFT bubble. But no one's supposed to know that you're 80 00:05:35.709 --> 00:05:35.819 in a. 81 00:05:40.670 --> 00:05:42.449 That it's a bubble. It seems like it would be 82 00:05:42.500 --> 00:05:47.980 a contradiction because we should trust the totem market to 83 00:05:48.660 --> 00:05:54.310 manage itself. That's the whole point of the market. It 84 00:05:54.430 --> 00:05:57.870 will pick up its invisible boots with its invisible hands 85 00:05:58.110 --> 00:06:05.620 and decide rationally, hedge against itself if need be, but 86 00:06:05.750 --> 00:06:08.420 it's not supposed to know that it's in a bubble. 87 00:06:09.209 --> 00:06:11.689 This time, everybody knows we're in a bubble, all the 88 00:06:11.709 --> 00:06:13.610 way down to dumb people, all the way down to 89 00:06:13.649 --> 00:06:17.800 the plebs like me. Everyone goes, this is the bubble. 90 00:06:17.939 --> 00:06:20.480 And it might be the bubble, which would be the 91 00:06:20.519 --> 00:06:23.560 scariest thing of all. What to do but speculate in 92 00:06:23.600 --> 00:06:26.800 a world that is speculative. And what does the whole 93 00:06:26.860 --> 00:06:32.490 analogy of a bubble mean? Nothing ever happens. Nothing ever 94 00:06:32.579 --> 00:06:37.189 can happen again. in a bubble because the fate of everything, 95 00:06:37.250 --> 00:06:39.600 the fate of the bubble is only one thing. Bubbles 96 00:06:39.939 --> 00:06:43.879 only do one thing. The reason the analogy of a 97 00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:52.100 bubble is used for anything else is because they collapse. Now, 98 00:06:52.160 --> 00:07:00.990 bubbles are built by tension and internal, internal pressure, external pressure, 99 00:07:01.779 --> 00:07:05.160 And they're sort of the mediated middle between the inside 100 00:07:05.240 --> 00:07:08.620 pressure and outside pressure. And when one of them gets 101 00:07:08.660 --> 00:07:13.579 too much, then you have the end of the bubble. Now, 102 00:07:13.720 --> 00:07:19.430 any event, any value event, any event

that happens inside 103 00:07:19.730 --> 00:07:24.490 the bubble doesn't mean anything. It's going to be erased 104 00:07:24.529 --> 00:07:28.750 with the bubble being erased. So if you think of 105 00:07:28.889 --> 00:07:34.819 time inside the bubble, the bubble... time there's only one 106 00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:41.730 event that gives meaning to the bubble and that is 107 00:07:41.750 --> 00:07:47.990 the end of it this is like gambling no surprise 108 00:07:48.009 --> 00:07:52.500 this is exactly like gambling uh gambling which is now 109 00:07:52.569 --> 00:07:55.540 betting on uh i mean it's always always betting on 110 00:07:55.579 --> 00:08:00.579 an uncertain future outcome now we have gambling everywhere Nothing 111 00:08:00.800 --> 00:08:04.240 that happens up to the point where the bet is 112 00:08:04.300 --> 00:08:10.420 resolved has any meaning. The entire bubble reality of a 113 00:08:10.480 --> 00:08:16.050 bet ends once the bubble has popped, which is there 114 00:08:16.170 --> 00:08:20.290 is an outcome. And no surprise that gambling is, you know, 115 00:08:20.790 --> 00:08:23.930 one of the very few growth areas in the economy 116 00:08:24.069 --> 00:08:26.490 other than the big one, other than the big one 117 00:08:26.610 --> 00:08:30.620 that's causing the bubble. But if you trap a bunch 118 00:08:30.660 --> 00:08:33.600 of people in a bubble. When you trap a bunch 119 00:08:33.639 --> 00:08:36.840 of people and say everything that you do in here 120 00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:42.710 is meaningless. Everything that you do here has no value. 121 00:08:42.870 --> 00:08:47.610 Nothing you construct in here will last. Nothing has value 122 00:08:47.710 --> 00:08:51.370 except the end of the world. Turns out this gives 123 00:08:51.490 --> 00:08:57.299 people psychosis. Turns out that if you're in a bubble 124 00:08:57.340 --> 00:08:59.240 and everyone tells you there's no meaning in the bubble, 125 00:08:59.279 --> 00:09:03.460 people will invent meaning out of nothing. And that's what 126 00:09:04.340 --> 00:09:09.950 philosophy and religion and conspiracy theory all have in common, 127 00:09:10.149 --> 00:09:14.029 is they will look to disparate events that you are 128 00:09:14.070 --> 00:09:19.230 told are meaningless and to give them a common through line. 129 00:09:21.980 --> 00:09:25.820 And I love QAnon. If you know me, you know 130 00:09:25.860 --> 00:09:30.080 that I love QAnon. QAnon was a widespread attempt to 131 00:09:30.159 --> 00:09:34.440 recognize the bubble. The attempt to give meaning in the 132 00:09:34.500 --> 00:09:41.500 bubble to connect disparate events that wouldn't have seemed connected prior. 133 00:09:42.220 --> 00:09:47.059 And then we end up with holographic celebrities and ritual cults. 134 00:09:49.220 --> 00:09:52.779 The conspiracies weren't even that far off. But the meaning 135 00:09:52.879 --> 00:09:58.210 is over-indexed. When you tell people, hey, look at this. 136 00:09:58.350 --> 00:09:59.970

You see that edge? You see that horizon? 137 00:10:00.100 --> 00:10:00.299 There? 138 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:05.240 That's it. When that horizon gets here, everything gets wiped out. 139 00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:11.899 So you're going to be frantically building connections, which is 140 00:10:11.940 --> 00:10:17.990 kind of what a psychotic just makes connections that the 141 00:10:18.009 --> 00:10:22.309 people around them don't see. It's not even strictly speaking incorrect. 142 00:10:22.370 --> 00:10:27.970 It's just non-normative connection building. It's what the psychotic is doing. 143 00:10:28.210 --> 00:10:31.370 You see how Charlie's little tent, there's a perfect square. 144 00:10:31.389 --> 00:10:35.570 And as you can tell, it's 10 foot squared, 10 145 00:10:35.570 --> 00:10:39.169 foot all the way around on each square. And it's 146 00:10:39.210 --> 00:10:40.309 about nine foot tall. 147 00:10:40.850 --> 00:10:44.549 That's because it has to be for the projection to work. 148 00:10:44.669 --> 00:10:47.200 But the bubble... I don't know which one's bigger at 149 00:10:47.240 --> 00:10:49.940 this point. The bubble has been going on since the 70s. 150 00:10:50.399 --> 00:10:53.019 I'm sure you've seen all the graphs. Anything that goes 151 00:10:53.679 --> 00:10:57.649 with no negative feedback, this is how you maintain the 152 00:10:57.690 --> 00:11:01.230 surface of a bubble. You have an internal force that 153 00:11:01.269 --> 00:11:04.529 pushes out. You have the external force that pushes in. 154 00:11:04.990 --> 00:11:07.289 That's the air inside or the gas inside and the 155 00:11:07.389 --> 00:11:12.049 air outside. That's why bubbles make perfect. spheres because there's 156 00:11:12.230 --> 00:11:14.889 a a resolution of the two forces and they find 157 00:11:15.090 --> 00:11:21.970 balance things that go like this positive feedback loops these 158 00:11:22.190 --> 00:11:27.049 are their runaway their runaway um values runaway values are 159 00:11:27.090 --> 00:11:32.049 bad because they make things pop so if you take 160 00:11:32.309 --> 00:11:36.409 the largest economies well let's the largest economy in the 161 00:11:36.450 --> 00:11:39.879 world in the 70s something happens and all the graphs 162 00:11:39.909 --> 00:11:45.659 go bleep And basically you have all new value since 163 00:11:45.759 --> 00:11:54.080 then being created not by anything having been made, but 164 00:11:54.159 --> 00:11:59.269 value is created not out of nothing. That's a little 165 00:11:59.370 --> 00:12:03.370 overstating the point. But value is created since the 70s 166 00:12:03.809 --> 00:12:11.009 by revaluing. Revaluing land, refinancializing, privatizing things that weren't privatized, 167 00:12:12.570 --> 00:12:18.690 the explosion of equity, corporate equity. There's no necessity, there's 168 00:12:18.710 --> 00:12:23.090 no requirement to improve the product. You just improve the 169 00:12:23.210 --> 00:12:26.529 advertising of the product. There's no need to develop land 170 00:12:26.549 --> 00:12:29.809 when you can just revalue the land that you have. 171 00:12:30.210 --> 00:12:34.990 And that's all that growth is, basically. Since the 1970s, 172 00:12:35.590 --> 00:12:41.389 other people will do the producing. We'll just grow the economy. Now, 173 00:12:41.450 --> 00:12:47.389 growing the economy, producing value when nothing is being produced, 174 00:12:47.929 --> 00:12:52.590 I mean, definitionally, that's a bubble. Because if you're producing 175 00:12:52.649 --> 00:12:59.440 value without producing stuff, that means that one of the circuits, 176 00:12:59.779 --> 00:13:04.500 the internal or the external pressure is on a positive 177 00:13:04.539 --> 00:13:09.139 feedback loop. And positive feedback loops burst bubbles. So value 178 00:13:09.159 --> 00:13:15.370 goes up. and nothing's getting made, then that value will 179 00:13:15.409 --> 00:13:18.370 need to be corrected at some point. And that's what 180 00:13:19.990 --> 00:13:25.090 the bubble is, is revaluing slot machines in the casino 181 00:13:25.129 --> 00:13:31.000 instead of adding new slot machines or improving the technology 182 00:13:31.080 --> 00:13:33.960 of the slot machines. They're just saying that the slot 183 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:38.700 machine is worth more. Now this bubble, all of it, 184 00:13:40.669 --> 00:13:45.100 is analogy. Because when it comes to value, there's a 185 00:13:45.120 --> 00:13:49.139 lot more to value than just money. And that is 186 00:13:49.179 --> 00:13:57.399 where we need to get spiritual with it. Spirituality, don't worry. 187 00:13:57.500 --> 00:14:01.679 I know that you are a good little materialist, a 188 00:14:01.700 --> 00:14:09.429 devout materialist. But in the bubble, spirituality, a kind of spirituality, 189 00:14:09.450 --> 00:14:12.879 you can get away with it. because nothing that happens 190 00:14:12.940 --> 00:14:17.379 in there is really real anyway. You can speculate about 191 00:14:17.440 --> 00:14:21.710 speculation in the bubble because the moment that it pops, 192 00:14:22.570 --> 00:14:27.070 you get the great reset. So whether the pop, we 193 00:14:27.110 --> 00:14:31.710 don't know what the pop is. Everyone has a theory 194 00:14:31.769 --> 00:14:38.509 about the pop and its collapse or singularity that will 195 00:14:38.570 --> 00:14:43.029 rescue us from the bubble or a racially purified society 196 00:14:43.269 --> 00:14:48.299 or a class purified society. If you're living now, you 197 00:14:48.360 --> 00:14:55.840 can't live with the knowledge, with the paralyzing knowledge that 198 00:14:56.480 --> 00:15:02.669 it's a bubble because waiting is not living. So even 199 00:15:02.730 --> 00:15:04.730 if the end of the world is the end of 200 00:15:04.769 --> 00:15:09.669 the bubble... It's almost like even if this is a disaster, 201 00:15:10.389 --> 00:15:14.070 even if it's a montage of all the worst disaster 202 00:15:14.129 --> 00:15:18.269 movies

you've ever seen, at least something would happen. And 203 00:15:18.289 --> 00:15:20.870 you get to a point, you get to a point 204 00:15:20.990 --> 00:15:25.309 in the meaning bubble. You get to a point in 205 00:15:25.750 --> 00:15:30.289 the meaning inflation economy when you just want it to 206 00:15:30.350 --> 00:15:31.029 happen already. 207 00:15:31.129 --> 00:15:34.559 That's why we have cubes. The good guys with control 208 00:15:34.639 --> 00:15:38.340 over the NSA began the Q intelligence dissemination program to 209 00:15:38.399 --> 00:15:41.169 invoke an online grassroots movement that came to be called 210 00:15:41.870 --> 00:15:42.789 the Great Awakening. 211 00:15:43.570 --> 00:15:47.549 Which is, what the hell do we do? What the 212 00:15:47.590 --> 00:15:50.429 hell are we doing? Why are we doing it? And, 213 00:15:51.110 --> 00:15:53.639 you know, a response to that is the nihilism setting in. 214 00:15:54.090 --> 00:15:57.100 Another response is, well, we should just pray for the 215 00:15:57.120 --> 00:16:00.450 bubble to pop. We can't do anything to make it pop, 216 00:16:00.509 --> 00:16:02.250 but we'll just sit here and pray for it to pop. 217 00:16:02.309 --> 00:16:05.389 That's what's known as accelerationism because you don't have to 218 00:16:05.429 --> 00:16:08.629 do anything. This is where we move from how long 219 00:16:08.769 --> 00:16:13.299 is the bubble actually? Is the bubble the universe? Is 220 00:16:13.340 --> 00:16:17.820 the bubble my life seen from the point of view 221 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:22.990 of the universe? Is the bubble the economy since the 70s? 222 00:16:23.710 --> 00:16:27.950 Is the bubble... capitalism. And if it's capitalism, why stop there? 223 00:16:28.289 --> 00:16:34.350 Maybe the bubble is agricultural society, agricultural civilization. But the 224 00:16:34.470 --> 00:16:40.500 pain of not knowing when the thing that will inevitably 225 00:16:40.559 --> 00:16:45.519 happen will happen, that's a kind of, I mean, pain 226 00:16:45.580 --> 00:16:49.139 is one word for it. Pain is the way that's 227 00:16:49.179 --> 00:16:54.279 been described in the history of wisdom literature, that life 228 00:16:54.419 --> 00:16:58.539 is a kind of suffering and then it ends. And 229 00:16:59.110 --> 00:17:03.110 the waiting for God pain, the waiting for Godot pain 230 00:17:03.409 --> 00:17:08.809 is knowing that it will arrive and trying to give 231 00:17:09.750 --> 00:17:13.829 meaning to what happens prior to its arrival, even if 232 00:17:14.190 --> 00:17:17.250 the event arriving means that the whole thing has been 233 00:17:17.289 --> 00:17:23.730 wiped out. Now, put in these terms, The pain of 234 00:17:23.839 --> 00:17:28.279 our current moment. Some people's solution to the pain of 235 00:17:28.319 --> 00:17:33.319 the current moment is, well, we have Zoran, and we 236 00:17:33.359 --> 00:17:35.920 just need a Zoran in every city, and then he 237 00:17:35.960 --> 00:17:42.039 will usher in the classless society. I barely exaggerate. That 238 00:17:42.059 --> 00:17:48.759 seems to be the solution. And, you know, that's the 239 00:17:48.799 --> 00:17:52.539 most recent solution that I've heard. There are many others, though. 240 00:17:52.619 --> 00:17:55.740 You go back, you go back throughout the wisdom literature 241 00:17:56.359 --> 00:17:59.210 and you can say wisdom literature is one word for it. 242 00:18:00.500 --> 00:18:06.900 It's religious literature. It's philosophical literature. It's wisdom, wisdom, writings, teachings. 243 00:18:08.150 --> 00:18:10.390 And I hate when people say this, but it is 244 00:18:10.470 --> 00:18:16.150 kind of true that it all addresses this point. What 245 00:18:16.990 --> 00:18:24.500 to think inside the bubble knowing that the pop is imminent. 246 00:18:34.710 --> 00:18:38.369 I know our knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss the wisdom, 247 00:18:38.430 --> 00:18:43.230 because the wisdom comes out of futile class relations, and 248 00:18:43.250 --> 00:18:48.559 it tells you to ignore your material conditions. If the 249 00:18:48.599 --> 00:18:54.190 bubble's true... You should be at least taking your material 250 00:18:54.250 --> 00:18:57.910 conditions with a grain of salt anyway. Because philosophy, let's 251 00:18:57.930 --> 00:19:02.829 call it the wisdom. Because philosophy will get you confused 252 00:19:02.890 --> 00:19:06.150 with academic philosophy, which has nothing to do with wisdom anymore. 253 00:19:06.849 --> 00:19:11.279 And religion just sounds, there's the dimensions of religion, right? 254 00:19:11.319 --> 00:19:16.000 There's the social control is part of it. But then 255 00:19:16.019 --> 00:19:18.920 there's all the guys that are working in the back rooms. 256 00:19:19.160 --> 00:19:22.819 You know, you got like, You got the Desert Fathers 257 00:19:23.279 --> 00:19:29.900 as opposed to the Vatican. Or you got like the 258 00:19:29.960 --> 00:19:34.990 Sufi mystics compared to wherever the organized center of that 259 00:19:35.049 --> 00:19:39.630 thing is. And you got failed sons just becoming Buddhist 260 00:19:39.670 --> 00:19:42.049 priests because they don't got anything else to do. And 261 00:19:42.069 --> 00:19:48.150 then you got the practicing masters. So we call it 262 00:19:48.170 --> 00:19:49.970 the wisdom. I'm just going to call it the wisdom. 263 00:19:50.819 --> 00:19:54.460 And I do hate when people say, oh, whatever, Buddha 264 00:19:54.599 --> 00:19:57.859 and Jesus, and it's all the same thing. And I 265 00:19:57.900 --> 00:20:02.480 hate it because it reduces the differences. But there is 266 00:20:02.559 --> 00:20:06.880 some validity to it. There's validity in that they say, 267 00:20:06.900 --> 00:20:13.740 you suffer. But a lot of the suffering is of 268 00:20:13.789 --> 00:20:17.529 your own making. A lot of the suffering is because 269 00:20:18.450 --> 00:20:21.809 you're looking for meaning in a bubble, knowing that it's 270 00:20:21.849 -->

00:20:25.500 a bubble. Now that doesn't really make sense, does it? 271 00:20:25.690 --> 00:20:30.440 But the first realization is one of the temporality, the 272 00:20:30.619 --> 00:20:34.839 limited horizon of the bubble. And the first revelation says, okay, 273 00:20:34.880 --> 00:20:39.460 nothing I do matters. And the second revelation is exactly 274 00:20:39.519 --> 00:20:47.529 the same except with a different pitch. Nothing I do matters. Hmm. 275 00:20:52.250 --> 00:20:57.809 The bubble never changes in either of these revelations. But 276 00:20:57.869 --> 00:21:02.029 I have to say, the second one does help. Because 277 00:21:02.069 --> 00:21:04.589 if the only solution to the bubble is getting Zoran 278 00:21:04.630 --> 00:21:07.829 elected in every city, it seems like It seems like 279 00:21:07.849 --> 00:21:12.690 there could be more meaning to the world than that. 280 00:21:14.069 --> 00:21:17.210 And the punchline, every time one of these mystics comes 281 00:21:17.289 --> 00:21:25.509 back from their experience, is everything's connected. Now this is 282 00:21:25.549 --> 00:21:27.369 where we get a little bit spacey with it. A 283 00:21:27.390 --> 00:21:38.849 little woo with it. One of the benefits of capitalism 284 00:21:40.470 --> 00:21:47.779 is having turned everything sacred, profane, and everything solid into air. 285 00:21:49.940 --> 00:21:55.109 That gives you a new lease on meaning. Now, the 286 00:21:55.170 --> 00:21:59.430 typical response to having a new lease on meaning is 287 00:21:59.470 --> 00:22:03.849 people thinking that everything is meaningless. Well, everything can mean everything, 288 00:22:04.509 --> 00:22:08.789 so everything means nothing. let's party there's worse philosophies than 289 00:22:08.829 --> 00:22:15.430 that and people will say like sociologists will say things 290 00:22:15.490 --> 00:22:20.690 like capitalism has disenchanted the world that capitalism has destroyed 291 00:22:20.799 --> 00:22:24.700 all meaning i don't think that's true i think it 292 00:22:24.720 --> 00:22:30.500 has detached meaning from certain signs signs that were always 293 00:22:30.559 --> 00:22:33.140 held to be the signs that held up all the 294 00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:38.210 other signs like namely god You can build a lot 295 00:22:38.569 --> 00:22:43.259 with a sign like God because God implies all other signs, 296 00:22:43.779 --> 00:22:49.859 the source of creation. And there's not just God as 297 00:22:49.920 --> 00:22:56.740 a sign. There's history. And in history, you can have 298 00:22:56.869 --> 00:23:04.829 certain masters, master signs like tradition or heritage or family 299 00:23:04.910 --> 00:23:09.670 or race or nation. Then your position, what you can 300 00:23:09.710 --> 00:23:12.809 do with the rest of signs, what you can do 301 00:23:12.849 --> 00:23:19.009 with the rest of your creative ability depends on rebuilding 302 00:23:19.529 --> 00:23:25.400 or reestablishing or strengthening your family or

your nation or 303 00:23:25.440 --> 00:23:29.000 your race. So, you know, you can see in this 304 00:23:29.980 --> 00:23:32.740 way of describing what we do with meaning when we 305 00:23:32.779 --> 00:23:34.799 don't know if we got meaning for very much longer. 306 00:23:35.309 --> 00:23:38.349 you can see the right-wing response to the bubble, which is, 307 00:23:39.150 --> 00:23:45.990 we'll recreate versions of the past. And the left-wing response is, well, 308 00:23:46.269 --> 00:23:49.089 all of that was bad. There was no past. There 309 00:23:49.109 --> 00:23:54.759 was just superstition prior to 1848. And mostly, everything since 310 00:23:54.759 --> 00:23:58.700 1848 has been bad. But all of this struggle will 311 00:23:59.119 --> 00:24:04.259 have been worth it once the DSA... inevitably takes over 312 00:24:04.319 --> 00:24:07.059 the Democratic Party. And at that point, we can let 313 00:24:07.099 --> 00:24:10.589 capitalism down nice and easy. And I personally won't have 314 00:24:10.630 --> 00:24:14.210 to pay rent anymore. And Zoran Mamdani will wipe every 315 00:24:14.269 --> 00:24:18.609 tear from our eyes. Then we will usher in classless society. 316 00:24:18.670 --> 00:24:23.619 And everything we do now has value, has meaning in 317 00:24:23.799 --> 00:24:28.730 light of that bubble bursting. The city of God, will 318 00:24:28.769 --> 00:24:31.730 arrive on earth, and all of this will have made sense. 319 00:24:31.990 --> 00:24:36.890 All of the suffering we experienced temporarily will have made sense. Now, 320 00:24:36.930 --> 00:24:40.799 whether the bubble popping is heaven appearing or hell appearing, 321 00:24:41.539 --> 00:24:44.259 it does put an end to the tension, which is 322 00:24:44.319 --> 00:24:49.599 the source of bubble. Bubble is tension. A bubble is 323 00:24:49.619 --> 00:24:55.339 a temporary tension. This is a part of the mystics' story, 324 00:24:55.420 --> 00:24:58.240 is they They depart, they're on a trip, they go 325 00:24:58.279 --> 00:25:01.700 to the edge and they return. They come back with 326 00:25:01.740 --> 00:25:08.140 the wisdom. The wise man always returns with the message, 327 00:25:08.819 --> 00:25:12.079 the message of the truth. And often their truth is 328 00:25:12.200 --> 00:25:19.970 just something like banal, maybe, that we believe anyway. You 329 00:25:19.990 --> 00:25:23.289 don't even need all the spiritual weird dressing on top. 330 00:25:23.329 --> 00:25:29.259 They just say something like, everything is connected. Often it's 331 00:25:29.440 --> 00:25:33.009 everything is connected. And then after that message comes through, 332 00:25:34.069 --> 00:25:38.789 it's incorporated as, well, everything is connected through God. Everything 333 00:25:38.849 --> 00:25:46.569 is connected through history. Everything is connected through the coming future. 334 00:25:46.690 --> 00:25:51.750 And I have a secret about the coming future. And 335 00:25:51.789 --> 00:25:58.609 in that sense, the conspiracy theorists much of the history 336 00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:03.009 of the wisdom, including conspiracy theory, is based on that 337 00:26:03.450 --> 00:26:09.210 secret that the mystic, the wise man comes back with 338 00:26:09.269 --> 00:26:16.170 this secret that gives meaning to what will inevitably pop. 339 00:26:17.880 --> 00:26:23.339 Conspiracy theory is formally exactly the same as critical theory, 340 00:26:23.619 --> 00:26:26.339 as If you've ever heard me say, I've said it 341 00:26:27.319 --> 00:26:30.160 many times, it begins with the premise that everything is 342 00:26:30.200 --> 00:26:34.059 connected and that there's a secret to its connection. The 343 00:26:34.079 --> 00:26:38.980 critical theorist usually calls it capitalism. So everything can be 344 00:26:39.039 --> 00:26:43.660 negatively connected. It's like what the Gnostics believed. Everything is connected. 345 00:26:43.700 --> 00:26:47.640 It's all evil, except one thing out there. Or you 346 00:26:47.660 --> 00:26:54.230 can say everything's connected in like that everything is. is 347 00:26:54.549 --> 00:27:01.910 ultimately nothing. So we shouldn't be suffering. Suffering is a choice. 348 00:27:01.990 --> 00:27:05.809 Suffering is struggling to see the connection between all things 349 00:27:05.950 --> 00:27:10.470 when all things are connected through their internal hollowness. That's 350 00:27:10.509 --> 00:27:15.799 a very peaceable way of resolving the tension. And there's 351 00:27:15.819 --> 00:27:19.299 something we have to get over. It's that the wisdom 352 00:27:19.740 --> 00:27:23.559 sounds corny because we can already buy wisdom via products. 353 00:27:23.960 --> 00:27:26.519 You know, if the wisdom says, don't get too attached 354 00:27:26.539 --> 00:27:28.859 to things, don't get too attached to money because it 355 00:27:28.880 --> 00:27:33.240 won't last, whether it's Buddha saying that or St. Francis 356 00:27:33.319 --> 00:27:37.289 saying that to cultivate your inner peace, we can't hear 357 00:27:37.700 --> 00:27:41.220 when they say that because the ad for an investing 358 00:27:41.400 --> 00:27:44.009 app says exactly the same thing. It says, don't worry 359 00:27:44.029 --> 00:27:47.630 about money, go live your life, give us your money 360 00:27:48.009 --> 00:27:51.109 and we'll worry about it. So the market sells you 361 00:27:51.150 --> 00:27:56.039 capitalism and wisdom attached to it But it also perniciously 362 00:27:56.680 --> 00:28:01.710 sells you anti-capitalism and attaches wisdom to that too. So 363 00:28:02.589 --> 00:28:08.869 we're left needing something better than anti-capitalism if you want 364 00:28:08.910 --> 00:28:13.900 to avoid painful death. You can't be anti-capitalism, or at 365 00:28:14.039 --> 00:28:20.319 least just anti-capitalism, because you're signing up to be very disturbed. 366 00:28:21.619 --> 00:28:26.380 Capitalism is... more than one economic system from all the 367 00:28:26.460 --> 00:28:29.200

ones that you can choose from. Capitalism is reality itself, 368 00:28:29.359 --> 00:28:34.089 and you're being asked to deny it, actively deny it 369 00:28:34.150 --> 00:28:37.269 and struggle against it. And no one does that. No 370 00:28:37.309 --> 00:28:40.710 one can do that. They can pretend to. But the 371 00:28:40.809 --> 00:28:45.130 wisdom comes to some consensus on the solution here. The 372 00:28:45.170 --> 00:28:54.190 solution to the bubble is to die prior to your death. Now, 373 00:28:54.230 --> 00:28:59.750 is that possible? If you're in a bubble, maybe the 374 00:28:59.829 --> 00:29:03.250 truth of the matter is that outside the bubble, the 375 00:29:03.289 --> 00:29:07.339 surface is smooth. And you have a common insight in 376 00:29:07.380 --> 00:29:11.119 the wisdom from all the Greek philosophy, the Western philosophy, 377 00:29:11.140 --> 00:29:16.640 the Eastern philosophy. The Greek philosophy is like, I think 378 00:29:16.680 --> 00:29:22.539 it's all three, the skeptics and the Epicureans and the Stoics. Peronians, 379 00:29:22.740 --> 00:29:25.549 I think that's another word for the skeptics. All of 380 00:29:25.609 --> 00:29:31.809 them were trying to sell their product in the marketplace, basically. 381 00:29:32.890 --> 00:29:34.890 But it was the same product. They just had different 382 00:29:34.930 --> 00:29:39.970 methods to get it. But they all agreed because of price. 383 00:29:40.269 --> 00:29:43.460 the Greek sign system at the time, you know, Greek values, 384 00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:48.099 Athenian values. They all said, we got, we got the 385 00:29:48.180 --> 00:29:53.799 way to Ataraxia. Now I think, I don't have the 386 00:29:53.839 --> 00:29:58.069 etymology in front of me, but it's, uh, teraxia. So 387 00:29:58.089 --> 00:30:02.890 I'm going to think teraxia means something like perturbedness, unpeace. 388 00:30:04.099 --> 00:30:10.059 So ataraxia would be the negative, the opposite of unpeace. 389 00:30:10.319 --> 00:30:16.019 So undisturbedness, this is the way they described the goal state. 390 00:30:17.099 --> 00:30:27.990 The goal state is unperturbedness. And you have a Nirvana, 391 00:30:28.130 --> 00:30:32.750 nirvana is something like that. And nirvana and ataraxia as 392 00:30:32.809 --> 00:30:36.690 the goal of wisdom is to see that we're in 393 00:30:36.730 --> 00:30:39.089 a bubble. Now we have a strange reversal here where 394 00:30:39.109 --> 00:30:42.579 the market sees that we're in a bubble. And if 395 00:30:42.599 --> 00:30:45.700 you read the wisdom, the goal also seems to be 396 00:30:47.019 --> 00:30:51.200 to realize you're in a bubble. But when it comes 397 00:30:51.259 --> 00:30:56.019 to panicking over any one of the outcomes that is possible, 398 00:30:57.380 --> 00:31:00.809 With AI, no matter what AI does, if it goes 399 00:31:00.869 --> 00:31:03.690 out and mines asteroids and solves the problem of scarcity 400 00:31:03.710 --> 00:31:08.690 in the world, this will never solve the problem of meaning. 401 00:31:08.990 --> 00:31:11.750 And the meaning problem hasn't been solved. We've had our 402 00:31:11.789 --> 00:31:13.990 best minds on it. We've had our best minds on 403 00:31:14.130 --> 00:31:19.259 how do you make meaning in the bubble? How do 404 00:31:20.559 --> 00:31:22.660 you make meaning in the bubble if the end of 405 00:31:22.700 --> 00:31:27.700 the bubble is the only thing that's certain? And all 406 00:31:27.740 --> 00:31:33.599 the institutional religions, they all, of course, they're based on 407 00:31:33.640 --> 00:31:37.339 a revelation that is something like, oh, you know what, 408 00:31:37.380 --> 00:31:42.539 everything's connected. And then they become quite immediately something that's 409 00:31:42.599 --> 00:31:45.359 about power and social control. But all of them have 410 00:31:45.400 --> 00:31:49.519 their mystic departments too. All religions have their mystical departments. 411 00:31:50.420 --> 00:31:54.150 And they always say, no, we're looking for peace while 412 00:31:54.190 --> 00:31:57.880 we're alive. And often they're considered heretics for that. And 413 00:31:57.910 --> 00:32:01.180 not much has changed on that front because, well, let's 414 00:32:01.200 --> 00:32:04.559 put it this way. General rule. If you defend the 415 00:32:04.599 --> 00:32:08.640 bubble value, it demonstrates that you're afraid of losing status 416 00:32:08.779 --> 00:32:12.740 when it pops. So death is evil. But rejecting the 417 00:32:12.779 --> 00:32:15.579 bubble value also demonstrates that you have faith that you'll 418 00:32:15.599 --> 00:32:17.819 gain status when it pops and you want to be 419 00:32:17.859 --> 00:32:20.920 around to see it. So you also think death is evil. 420 00:32:21.680 --> 00:32:25.160 Symbolic death rejects both of these. It rejects both the 421 00:32:25.220 --> 00:32:28.910 bubble and the pop. So both sides agree that the 422 00:32:28.970 --> 00:32:35.630 third position is cope. I'm going to elaborate in another video, 423 00:32:35.779 --> 00:32:39.519 my cope. This is not the cope that works video. 424 00:32:40.180 --> 00:32:46.660 But understanding meaning is the cope. Because it's everywhere. There's 425 00:32:46.720 --> 00:32:51.309 more than could ever be understood. And that's a profound 426 00:32:51.369 --> 00:32:57.289 source of value. A value as if. from nothing irrespective 427 00:32:58.009 --> 00:33:02.630 of the bubble that we observe. And irrespective of that bubble, 428 00:33:03.069 --> 00:33:06.589 there remains a surface to which the bubble and any 429 00:33:06.630 --> 00:33:11.980 bubble will ultimately be reduced. The tension will be reduced. 430 00:33:12.559 --> 00:33:17.000 The disturbance will be reduced. And that surface isn't hidden. 431 00:33:17.480 --> 00:33:22.549 It's not a secret. It's just ignorable. It's humble. It 432 00:33:22.609 --> 00:33:26.809 disappears in vision of the pop that we're all focused on, 433 00:33:27.170 --> 00:33:31.910

but that pop hasn't happened. That pop doesn't exist, and 434 00:33:31.950 --> 00:33:36.309 yet it's the only imaginable horizon for, I'd say, the 435 00:33:36.349 --> 00:33:41.670 majority of people. But that's an unlivable condition. That's a 436 00:33:41.710 --> 00:33:45.599 psychotic condition. Psychosis has its merits, too. Don't get me wrong. 437 00:33:46.019 --> 00:33:52.099 Bubble capitalism makes psychosis reasonable because what else to do? 438 00:33:54.180 --> 00:33:58.220 Capitalism has showed its hand, which is one AI company 439 00:33:58.880 --> 00:34:03.000 paying another AI company to make AI generated ads for 440 00:34:03.200 --> 00:34:06.440 its AI generated agents who are paid because they can 441 00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:09.070 watch one billion ads in a minute. They can watch 442 00:34:09.090 --> 00:34:12.090 way more ads than a human can. So humans, humans 443 00:34:12.119 --> 00:34:16.429 be damned, will have bots watch bot ads in order 444 00:34:16.469 --> 00:34:21.369 to pay the electricity bill until it goes dark, until 445 00:34:21.389 --> 00:34:24.179 the whole thing dies. goes dark. And we've glimpsed it. 446 00:34:24.940 --> 00:34:27.860 Capitalism wants to get rid of this human shit. It 447 00:34:27.909 --> 00:34:32.690 wants to shed us, which is very awful for us. 448 00:34:33.710 --> 00:34:37.989 But it also need not affect us. We're surprised when 449 00:34:38.030 --> 00:34:41.230 it turns out everything is just a gambling event anyway. 450 00:34:42.289 --> 00:34:49.340 Don't be so old-fashioned. That is capitalism. Extinct the AI... 451 00:34:50.349 --> 00:34:53.670 extinct the human race sure that's that's that is being 452 00:34:53.730 --> 00:34:57.739 in a bubble and we're the bubble in that scenario 453 00:34:58.380 --> 00:35:02.320 but knowing you're in a bubble and being unable to 454 00:35:02.420 --> 00:35:09.320 do anything about it because the algorithm has taken over 455 00:35:10.300 --> 00:35:14.099 that's the situation we're in a preview now of the 456 00:35:14.119 --> 00:35:18.280 situation perhaps since the 70s we've been in the preview 457 00:35:19.500 --> 00:35:23.380 But the way out of that is still and will 458 00:35:23.699 --> 00:35:27.179 forever be what the chatbots don't have because they don't 459 00:35:28.340 --> 00:35:35.050 experience sense. The chatbots doesn't need anything to make sense 460 00:35:36.050 --> 00:35:42.590 for it. To me, that seems to be what our 461 00:35:42.670 --> 00:35:46.809 most important thing is. And because the world doesn't give 462 00:35:46.869 --> 00:35:49.309 the sense that we crave, we'll make it out of anything. 463 00:35:49.599 --> 00:35:52.320 We'll make it out of whatever's around us. We'll make 464 00:35:52.340 --> 00:35:54.800 it out of celebrities. We'll make it out of turning 465 00:35:55.079 --> 00:36:00.250 celebrities into holograms. The chatbots don't need that. They don't 466 00:36:00.309 --> 00:36:05.530 experience what Nagarjuna means when he

says everything is empty. 467 00:36:06.829 --> 00:36:09.079 And to be fair, I'm not sure that most people 468 00:36:09.380 --> 00:36:13.800 have pondered things in those terms either, but the experience 469 00:36:13.860 --> 00:36:16.480 is sitting under our face whenever we're willing to pay 470 00:36:16.539 --> 00:36:23.440 attention to it. the wisdom always inevitably produced writing mainly, 471 00:36:23.719 --> 00:36:27.099 but writing, otherwise we wouldn't be able to read it. 472 00:36:27.260 --> 00:36:29.739 All the, all the wisdom that did not produce writing, 473 00:36:30.050 --> 00:36:32.510 we don't have access to it. It may have existed, 474 00:36:33.010 --> 00:36:35.349 but all the writing that we experience, all the wisdom, sorry, 475 00:36:35.369 --> 00:36:42.730 that we experience is writing, poetry, art, gods, this interconnection 476 00:36:42.769 --> 00:36:46.110 of shit that we put on, we put in the dumpster. 477 00:36:46.159 --> 00:36:50.619 We don't, Who cares about art and poetry and gods 478 00:36:50.800 --> 00:36:56.320 these days? But then, no wonder we're so miserable. If 479 00:36:56.389 --> 00:37:02.670 the wisdom inevitably produces art, poetry, and gods, and we can't, 480 00:37:04.789 --> 00:37:09.099 then no wonder. No wonder you look at this shell, 481 00:37:09.159 --> 00:37:14.239 this transparent shell, and call that the end of the world. 482 00:37:15.940 --> 00:37:20.460 The ultimate value, this is me talking. The ultimate value, 483 00:37:20.699 --> 00:37:26.139 I think, as we'll see soon enough, and if you 484 00:37:26.179 --> 00:37:28.809 open a book, you know they already know it, that 485 00:37:30.030 --> 00:37:34.110 meaning is hidden everywhere. And it's not even well hidden. 486 00:37:34.329 --> 00:37:37.530 It just takes some time. It takes some discipline. It 487 00:37:37.570 --> 00:37:42.210 takes some work. And it's barely concealed. But you find 488 00:37:42.289 --> 00:37:45.880 one thing, shake off the dirt, You find it's connected 489 00:37:45.920 --> 00:37:49.500 to another thing, shake off the dirt. And that's boring. 490 00:37:49.559 --> 00:37:52.090 It's a lot more boring than having the algorithm drive 491 00:37:52.110 --> 00:37:55.889 you around through the most interesting things happening in the matrix. 492 00:37:55.949 --> 00:38:00.389 But if you're driving, it also drives you insane and slow. 493 00:38:01.170 --> 00:38:06.650 The slowness, the slowness of picking up the links of 494 00:38:06.769 --> 00:38:11.380 meaning that existed long before you were here and it'll 495 00:38:11.420 --> 00:38:15.619 exist long after you're gone. That can't drive you insane. 496 00:38:15.920 --> 00:38:21.119 That makes everything else seem insane. But sitting here waiting 497 00:38:21.159 --> 00:38:25.070 for the shoe to drop... Do you ever know where 498 00:38:25.110 --> 00:38:27.550 that saying comes from? Waiting for the shoe to drop. 499 00:38:27.829 --> 00:38:30.409 I looked it up because I was like, that's strange. 500 00:38:31.130 --> 00:38:36.269 Speaking of Mamdani socialism fixing the universe, the shoe to drop, 501 00:38:37.050 --> 00:38:39.309 turn of phrase, comes from New York where they had 502 00:38:39.349 --> 00:38:44.769 these shitty... apartment buildings, cheap materials. Uh, so you could 503 00:38:44.809 --> 00:38:49.280 hear everything your neighbor's doing. And I don't know, I 504 00:38:49.300 --> 00:38:51.429 don't know how New Yorkers take off their shoes, but 505 00:38:51.469 --> 00:38:55.820 apparently they just throw them into the wall and it 506 00:38:55.860 --> 00:38:58.079 makes a huge noise and they drop on the floor. 507 00:38:59.739 --> 00:39:02.480 When you're taking off your shoes enough for it to 508 00:39:02.519 --> 00:39:07.019 become like a popular turn of phrase that spreads throughout the, uh, 509 00:39:07.579 --> 00:39:12.940 Anglophone vocabulary. But yeah, shoe to drop is you hear 510 00:39:12.980 --> 00:39:16.929 them throw off one shoe, and then you're sitting there 511 00:39:16.969 --> 00:39:20.650 in bed waiting. There's nothing to do but wait. There's 512 00:39:20.690 --> 00:39:24.389 nothing to do but wait until the confirmation of the 513 00:39:24.409 --> 00:39:29.809 second event happens, which is the second shoe hits the ground. Mr. President, 514 00:39:29.869 --> 00:39:34.320 a shoe has hit the floor. It's a third New 515 00:39:34.360 --> 00:39:41.340 York reference for you. But enough. This was enough. This 516 00:39:41.400 --> 00:39:46.099 event happening in, I think, the very late 19th to 517 00:39:46.179 --> 00:39:49.420 20th century is waiting for the second shoe to of 518 00:39:49.460 --> 00:39:52.469 your upstairs neighbor who's coming home a little tipsy from 519 00:39:52.489 --> 00:39:54.289 the bar. You're trying to go to sleep, but you 520 00:39:54.329 --> 00:39:59.329 can't go to sleep. You can't find your peace until 521 00:39:59.349 --> 00:40:05.150 you hear that second g'dog, g'dog. So you're white knuckling. 522 00:40:05.230 --> 00:40:06.989 I don't know why this is so scary. Maybe it's 523 00:40:07.030 --> 00:40:12.880 really loud because it's cheap, hollow building materials. You're white 524 00:40:12.920 --> 00:40:16.900 knuckling the blanket waiting for something to hit. And then, 525 00:40:19.699 --> 00:40:23.880 It'll be time for peace. Yeah, I'll be damned if 526 00:40:23.920 --> 00:40:26.719 that don't describe living in the bubble. Waiting for the 527 00:40:26.760 --> 00:40:32.670 shoe to drop. Waiting for the bubble to pop.