The Logoharp - Tuning the Future

0:00 So what I do when I record is I like basically put the microphone a little bit away from Shawn.

0:10 And we found that, that that tends to get better recordings. I didn't want this to baffle his sound. Do you want Travis thinking maybe we should just keep it on the side? Yeah. There we go. Okay. Well, I think it's like, you know, Shawn's allowed us. Then probably next me and then third you. So, like, sort of.

0:26 You get your own, like, general direction to be better. It'll work. We have enough experience now. After, we'll work out where it's like when we do pass a pedestrian and we're actually walking or not in the studio. Right? Is again, another running joke. Keep people guessing on whether or not we're in the studio using sound effects, or we really do walk.

0:45 Yep. Anyway, so when we walk together, if he's to my right, I'll hold the microphone in my left hand for the side. I keep it at the hip in my way to keep it that. Yeah. Keep it. Dallas. Right. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And, So, anyway, we've known each other for now, I guess, over a decade, and.

1:04 Oh, it's been about 20 years now. Yeah. And, we lost touch for a while because there's a strange. Should we tell the story? Sure. Yeah. Do you mind? No. A little a little intimate. He actually had a, a really, fiancé. At one point, Sean and, she was intercepting his messages and not allowing him to, speak to certain people for just arbitrary, no real reason.

1:30 He didn't. And I did know she didn't know me from anybody else. And so, like, I'm like, Sean, you know, my friend, what's what's up? Why aren't you talking to me? You just didn't like him. Yeah. Did I do something wrong? And, she had somebody, he had somebody actually, like, literally intercepting messages. And what was this for a couple of years, maybe.

1:47 Yeah. And so I was like, every occasionally just be like, man, I really miss Sean and, you know, and would send him a message and then it would just go nowhere because, I mean, we would spend he would have these a great party is 30, 40, 50 people. And, you know, I, I was, showing up to those a lot.

2:04 And then I guess what, these three years, we didn't really talk. Yeah. And so, for obvious reasons, that relationship ran its course. Yeah. And, so that's pass. And then we reconnected and we started doing this not long, you know, after that. And it's been great now for this for several years. Great. It's a neat backstory. And then you and I met like probably a decade or so ago.

2:25 It had to be a decade ago. And we're, you know, a little more than a decade ago. Yeah. And, we're like these acquaintances. And then, all of a sudden, on my social media, up comes this name that I was familiar with, with the with this, kind of like, tag line and saying, hey, I just wrote a book.

2:43 And, so of course I'm like, oh, I know that name. Click. No way. She wrote the book that she talked about, like literally a decade ago. And, okay, purchase, you know, Amazon and, a couple days later. No, there it is. And then from day one, like, open it up, I think it was like 24 hours from there.

2:59 Books read because you can't put it down. Yeah, obviously. And he's he's talking to me about and he's like, you know, we should have her on the podcast. We should do something. And we were up all right. It's it's kind of goofy, but we used I as a consultant of sorts and said, what should we do on our podcast to increase reach?

3:19 What should we do, you know, to have this make an impact? It said the only thing wrong with your podcast is it needs guest. Yeah. More guest. Yes. No. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. More guest. Yes. All right. Yeah. So I was like, okay, but if we have guests on the podcast, we have to like obviously be selected. So.

3:36 Right. So he was pushing for you and I was like, well, why not? I got to get the book. But yeah. So, once you, once you, you know, get into the story, there's, it's clear that this is like fiction, nonfiction wrapped in fiction type thing. And, it's it's very obvious that, you know, there's a profound intellect behind it and it's, you know, prophetic.

3:58 It's got all kinds of layers. I know you not, you know, really well, but well enough to know there's like we said earlier, there's a bit of autobiography there at the beginning. And, just this unique life and unique vision went into creating a piece of nonfiction that's I usually read just I usually read nonfiction. I don't usually read fiction myself.

4:19 And, so I know when I read nonfiction, I can spot it. I know what nonfiction looks like. And so this book is really cool because it combines like sci fi, you know, cyberpunk type stuff with this, like visionary model, extreme intellect. I don't really give full bio all this to put that on the website, but, you know, obviously, you know, ridiculously hyper educated and dramatic experience in life.

4:44 I mean, wildly traumatic experience of like and it's it's all there in the pages and, you know, the we should tell them with what the name of the book is, the logo harp. The logo harp. A cyborg novel of China and America in the year 2121. That's correct. Okay, so the logo we know, I heard ultimately I can read up the explanation of, of the actual logo harp.

5:10 So it's logos. Oh, well, who better to say than you? Right. So explain the title, please. Okay. Well, I originally I wanted to call it America two, but that had been taken many, many times by other writers. And I decided the subtitle originally was The Logo harp and, but I thought of originally was that is logo comes from logos, which is, a Greek term.

5:42 It's in the Bible. Right? It's a a term about the flow or the flux of the universe. It's also considered the divine order of the universe, the divine principle. But the philosopher Heraclitus, who was my favorite of all the process philosophers, and he was Greek. I mean, he was pre-Socratic. He came up with the logos and gave an explanation of that.

6:10 The only thing that is really constant in the universe is change, and it that registered with me, and I thought about a heroine who heard voices. She had a receptor on the top of her head that was shaped like a harp, and but she could hear everything from satellites and extra planetary signals to people arguing on the street that she had an almost unlimited bandwidth and suddenly logos.

6:45 I didn't think Logos harp would work as a title, because too many people. That's two pointy headed intellectual, and I liked logo because people understand what a logo is and suddenly the idea of a logo was there was another, there was a subtext, which is that is that it was, in a sense a manufactured or branded car, that it was designed to pick up signals, but also to transmit in 104 human languages and a few extra terrestrial ones too.

7:21 Nice. But also because she had to package things and brand them for, in this particular case, the Chinese government, more than the American, which we call American, which means beautiful crown. It's the name she's the whole world is changed by the time in 100 years. America is a subsidiary of China. It's a suzerainty. It's really a trading protectorate of China.

7:51 It's lost its international status. I think some of that is happening now. Yet with technology and so suddenly the idea of the logos with the logo and the hark to me, it came together and I knew it was not going to be an easy title. I mean, I knew it, but I wanted her to be half human, half cyborg.

8:13 I wanted her to be a transplant because I think in the future, if we all want to live longer, we're going to be made of replacement parts. And this and in her particular case, she's wired to receive this receptor. So her brain grows to double the normal size. And that was and that's good and bad. She also describes it as worms invading her regular cognition that that there is so much information coming into her.

8:43 She has an AI interface so that AI is also filtering, but basically she's overloaded so she hears costs ringing in her ears. She can turn down the volume a little bit, but she can't really escape, so never fails that. Yeah. So that's that was part of the reason I created that name, the logo, which I think is so cool that that description really sounds like 2025 to most of us nowadays.

9:12 Right, with the information coming in from all angles. And I think people that are emotionally intelligent and have like a high cognition, high intuition and are highly like kind of emotionally intelligent, are even ever increasingly overwhelmed. Whose days? Right. Because to a degree is a kind of intuition based heart that's built into a lot of people that are highly emotionally intelligent.

9:32 Trying to navigate 2025 is no easy endeavor, especially for young people. And from my, you know, experiences of what I've seen. So that there, again, I think is to a degree, yeah, the implant and the, you know, all that kind of stuff. The technology idea here is a little bit, you know, definitely sci fi, but the reality that the net effect of it is pretty, you know, germane to 2025 experience.

9:55 So I could see a cut up of that. Yeah. The something else that's germane to it, as you alluded to, Ariel, is there a geopolitical situation and how America is losing its influence, is losing its credibility on the world stage? And who is subsuming them? Who is subsuming them? Who is taking over? China is stepping in in a lot of ways where we once dominated China is saying, we'll take care of that.

10:21 We we will be the leader in this arena. We will, you know, and so Belt and Road Initiative, yes, a long road initiative. Yeah. The the ability to replace our supply lines to other countries because we are, we're, we're in this kind of duck duck and cover. We want to get an isolationist policy right now, for all intents and purposes, and a comfort mask of propaganda.

10:51 American exceptionalism, you know, is definitely in place for a lot of people. This illusion that America is so great. But, you know, we really consist of a bunch of rich people and a bunch of third world, third world counties, as I call them, like the Americas, profoundly, you know, poor in many ways. If you look at our infrastructure, it's awful compared to Singapore, Japan, China, China, even.

11:15 I was amazed when I, when I moved to China in 2011 to take a job, I was with the International College. Beijing was just after I got my doctorate and I needed a job, and they asked me to teach there. So when I arrived at Beijing International Airport, I it was gorgeous. It was amazing. And it is so funny to drive on some of their roads, which were perfect.

11:41 I mean, I didn't drive myself, but I had friends who were driving me. We would just go out and, you know, go to some countryside thing or we we drove to Mongolia. It was kind of weird. We drove from north of Beijing. I had friends who were opera singers and artists, and they had their own independent little, house and farm, and they lived half the year in the north and half the year in Guangdong, in canton area, because the weather was better down there.

12:11 It was as frigid and weird as in Beijing. But I was amazed at how good the infrastructure was. And all the brand new, skyscrapers and everything. They still had squat toilets, but they had a few modern western ones. But the squat and toilets were almost ubiquitous in China. And of course, there was a big, big difference between the people in the country and the 400 million who lived in cities, the people who were living in cities.

12:37 By and large, if they were not migrants and treated like crap, the way we treat our migrants like they had no benefits, there's a there's a certain kind of qualification you have to get to move to a city. And the ones it's called the I believe it's called a hukou. And I remember that there were whole kinds of ghettos where, you know, migrants lived and where it was very dangerous.

13:06 Some parts you were told not to go there. This was in Beijing, just right across the streets where we lived at the university and, now we have the same situation here, except that a whole lot of our people are not they're not criminals. They're just migrants. Yeah. Anyway, so and we relegated that to serious. But no, no, no, we it's it's absolutely on brand with what we talk about.

13:31 And you know the intersection of, you know, society and technology and, and I mean, yeah, people were being relegated to the less desirable parts of the city, the ghettos, though, you know, with areas where you have food deserts, where you have less access to resources, you know, all of these things, the income inequality, our country has gotten so bad.

13:53 That is definitely something we talk about a lot. Naomi, the heroine of her novel, is attracted to China because it is the seat of power, and she wants a real career as a journalist in your nomenclature, in the book, it's the Mother country, Mother country two core in Chinese, which means mother country. And, yeah, I mean, I, I think that some Americans may be upset by reading something that positions China as dominant, too.

14:21 It's almost as though we want to hide, just kind of hide our. But the fact is that this is what's happening. And the current trend in our country politically is to not only is to not only shut shut out that reality, but is to go in the opposite direction, to go back 80 years until the 50s, and it doesn't exist anymore, and it will never exist again.

14:44 The country is a polyglot of ethnics and that is good to change. Always going to have lots of different colored people here. Yes. And, anyone who wants to go back to white supremacy is in the minority and in the wrong that the, the whole thing of like, you know, this seat of power changing and, you know, really you don't you just have to look at some data.

15:09 I think to I kind of come to that conclusion if we just get outside the mask of American exceptionalism, like I said, when there you go. You know, it's like the if you can get out from under that propaganda, which is profound. But if you can get out from under it and just kind of take a look, especially if you know how to read data, you know, with almost every indicator that I've ever been exposed to or see some one direction is that, you know, we're we're we're waning.

15:32 We're waning here in the United States, across the board in so many different metrics. And, you know, the book I don't think is, dystopian really either. It's just this is where the power is moving. And so, of course, Naomi lines herself up with that. Why wouldn't you? Especially if, you know, you see the writing on the wall and in this case, you know, have a have an embedded device that lets you feel and see everything, you know, you're going to be even more in tune to that.

15:55 But I want to know, why was it a harp and not an antenna?

16:00 I like to be like a lot of there's a lot of music in this. She hears stentorian sounds. She hears cellos, she hears drum clacks. She hears, the concerto, they all these kinds of harps. Because basically, she's naive. She believes in the future. She believes she's doing something good by creating this harmonious future. In her broadcast. Sure, she's hearing both government instructions and these other strange signals from the sources she can't identify.

16:34 And her kindness and her ability to hear. It's almost like hearing the music of the spheres. You know, it's back to the Greeks again. So a lot of Greek references in this. But that was the reason I first of all there are a lot of harps in in China. There are many different kinds of parts. But to me this was not I mean, I describe her antennae, but the but she actually has the ability.

17:05 There are peg boards in it. There are there are tuners. She's able to modulate some of those signals and plus a yeah. So stand right. And she hears beautiful things too. And you know when she falls, she falls in love with three people in this. Them one two men and one woman. And it's all platonic after a certain point because she's designed, she's been re-engineered so she's not.

17:34 So there's no drive for that. Not supposedly sexual. And besides cyborgs only have 1 or 2 genders. I re okay. And then yeah we're fine. So she, you know, she hears beautiful music as part of this.

17:53 Her clicked in kind of musical spheres. And so she, she wants to believe that harmony. Remember that. Oh and I didn't happen. Somebody just blew up the next house. The we had an earthquake here once, and the whole house shook. I thought it was a bird strike, but it was a not just after an earthquake. Wow.

18:14 Remember, we're here first. She wants to. She she's part. She discovers this harmonious recycling system, which is a kind of end of life viral ecstasy that older people are given the option to enjoy for ten days before they're terminated. That's, I guess, the sci fi part of it. Well, we say gets a of it. So when we say get the ten days, yeah, they get the ten days of going to places they, they really wanted to go.

18:45 And then anything in their life they didn't get to live. Exactly. The children that they lost, the lover that they never that they couldn't reunite with. I mean, there's all that kind of wishful thinking and that comes from my life, too. I mean, I, I thought to myself, how can I make her kind of make her still be appealing to human audience?

19:06 She's not just a robot, right? Yeah. I think she like the way the character plays on my mind when I read the book. She's, like, more appealing than a typical, you know, human person that, you know, like, she sings sounds sexy in the, you know, real like I the vision I get of her is like, you know, really that way is it's oriented that way.

19:25 Like she's like sexy in that, like, you know, first of all, physique. She's, you know, really have a great physique and all this kind of stuff. But also she is she's ringmaster, you know, the classroom. That's the work. She's she's made tall. She's had diamond fiber joints installed. She has, you mentioned the highlights in her hair.

19:48 Oh, that the eyes. But she's also I mean, she's also given radiation. So for life span is only half of a normal human. She. Which adds to her mystique. I think like that there's a degree of, like, you know, that that adds to it because it's almost like there's this ephemeral. Yeah, definitely. And the, the the intellect, I mean, there's a term is that come into my mind.

20:10 I was I wish it would, but there's a term of people that are, attracted to intellect. I forgot it, but, you know, I'll, I'll remember his, boy, there's a, there's a, there's a type of, intimacy or desire that someone has that comes from an intellectual perspective. So people that, like infatuated, you know, other people, not just of intrigue and interest, but also, like, sexually attracted due to, intellect, you know, do, do, do due to high intellectual ism.

20:37 And so there's like decision. So we say it out loud or a Sabio sexual. Yeah. Sabio sexual. Right. So there's this label. Yeah I like that. Yeah. So so so she oozes with this like you know it's there I mean it's the full package because not only is you have the high emotional intelligence. She's tuned into everything and you know knows how to she knows how to navigate this.

20:59 The vast stores of knowledge, if not all of it. She also, like, has direct access to intuition that most people wish they you know. Yeah. And so there's like that whole intellectual ism and then there's like this remastered that's a perfect word, like like body. It's like she comes across as like highly sensual. It's I mean, as a male, you know, reading it.

21:17 That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to make her beautiful in a, in an approachable way, even if she became part robotic because the struggle in hers between what is left of her conscience, because they ablate her nerves. So she is, you know, the 7 billion nerves. More than half are gone. And so supposedly she's not supposed to be.

21:44 She's not, she isn't supposed to feel the way humans feel. But over time, what happens is it starts to creep back. Then, of that, some of those nerves regenerate her conscience. The memory of her parents. Neurons grow millimeters a year. Right. And her parents are very important to her because they taught her certain lessons that she's supposed to forget about.

22:09 And in our age, where, I mean, certainly in the media, you don't see a whole lot of you don't see a lot of choice between right or wrong anymore. You just pretty much see people adapting and being more out and more and more outrageous and more and more self-centered and more and more survivalist, because that's what's required in our.

22:32 And I wanted that one piece of her to make a choice. And in the end, she makes that choice. I don't want to get no, no, it's okay away that don't give away the end. Yeah, yeah. Don't don't give away your differentiator here. But, this novel, I mean, it really plays at the boundaries between technology, power and identity, as you were saying.

22:52 It blurs them into this chillingly plausible future. I mean, you know, ultimately, one thing I really wanted to say about it was after reading this book, I'm left with what feels like a hopeful call to action. I mean, you were saying you thought it was more dystopian, but both Chris and I got hope out of it to seek truth, a deeper understanding of the machinations of our own time.

23:16 How does it work? Why does it work that way? And how do you really change it? Yeah, I don't think it's dystopian at all. Yeah, I know that's weird, but maybe that's why it's been this categorized you. You know, I know it's been very hard to describe what exactly this is, is, is science fiction. Is it really a kind of extension of current, certain current social?

23:41 And, I mean, the humanity is, is like there and it's restored almost through, you know, process. It's not it's not, you know, it's was like kind of lost to in this transformation. But then that transformation inevitably restored. Yeah. This humanity. Right. Or anything it fuzed it with something greater. It enabled it, it increased it, it further emboldened her.

24:03 You know, her. Yeah. And so that that's like, you know, there's no real moral to the story here per se, but like to indeed I think that's like jumps off the pages for me right in the despite the technological layers, if technology reveals truths and then inevitably right, the, the the humanity is revealed through the truth. Right of of our, our human nature is then kind of exposed through this hyper technology.

24:28 No, that's that's not a dystopian future. That's, that's actually like a utopia to to an extent, this idea that a hyper expression of technology would bring us back to our humanity. Right. Well, there's a certain rebellion in this, but it's very personal. It's not like masses of people, you know, taking arms or anything, but she is miserable. Zombie mass rebellion in the end, right?

24:50 No, no, don't don't say too much. We don't want to say too much. What? No, what she does. You want to know by the book, right? I want you to buy the book. Yeah. Yeah, but there's a certain I remember when I saw a, a documentary on Al-Jazeera, which was trashed when we were in Iraq and Afghanistan.

25:13 My, Robert McNamara, you know, our former war secretary who never went to my friend, used to call him a chicken hawk because he never went to war himself. He was good at sending people, sending young people out there. But there was a kind of, in the Al-Jazeera coverage of the war, you know, the one commentator said, I want people to wake up.

25:41 I want people to wake up and see the real world out there. And I think that was the big part of Naomi's character. She wanted people, but she didn't get that at the beginning. The whole thing took a long time for her to a series of events and love affairs. Yeah, both platonic and not, a visit to Harbin.

26:02 I don't know how many of your readers know about the International Ice Festival, but it is phenomenal and it is one of the greatest in the world. And I have been there. I was there in two that I deliberately went back to China in 2016 so I could see the harm in Ice Fest. Wow. And some of the descriptions in there are very real.

26:19 They were based on my time there. I went back to see some old friends too, and I was wondering from your point of view, which was the most interesting character you or was it Naomi, or was it Marco, or was it Jan's? Who was it? Oh, Mark, it was kind of boring to me, like Naomi, but I think is undoubtedly the most interesting component.

26:39 I mean, for me. And what it was. Yeah. Jumped off. You know, of course, Naomi was central. But I liked the counterpoint of Marco being the architect. And I like how his view on what do you what he was building his harmonious recycling program. War changed, how it transformed and how he had some growth. Because at first he kind of came across as a close minded jackass.

27:11 If I met. Yeah, it's a view based on a real character. It comes across as literally user too. Like he's consuming. Yeah, he's a consuming person. Yeah. He siphons off Naomi's energy and and, time and kind of her. Yeah. There's there's another like, wrinkle. I think that's really interesting is that this, transhumanism kind of idea, the idea that we are, like, converging into something different, that is not really clearly defined yet, but this idea that, external devices will be embedded.

27:43 I mean, the the data is clear on this, like over the last couple of decades, the number of medically implantable devices is just through the rife. And it's hard to, like, really find somebody now, that doesn't themselves or doesn't know somebody, especially as they age, that doesn't have some type of, you know, implanted device or, you know, intervention.

28:02 Everything from a stent to a replacement hip to a cochlear implants or you name it, right, is becoming more and more common for us to have, you know, integrated devices into our ourselves. Sure. And so there's a bizarre kind of like school of thought is that, you know, if you have medically implanted devices, are you as human, you know, and, at what point you kind of, you know, become nonhuman anymore when when you keep, you know, replacing the parts, if you will, with these, you know, synthetics or, you know, hybrid components, you know, when do you kind of there's like, what, the Ship of Theseus or whatever, you know, you replace every board, you

28:34 know, and then you know, what? Point is still the same ship is it, is it still the same Shannon? Right. You know, in for humanity, where does that kind of stop? Like how many parts do you have to have that are not, you know, organically human to where you're no longer a human. And, and I don't think there's really a line.

28:49 Yeah, yeah. And there's a simplification of Aristotle and thought where at some point I'm hairy, man becomes not hairy. If you remove enough hair and you know, and then that's it's I think I'll this whole line is an oversimplification. I think this whole demarcation of human non-human, why not embrace the blend like Naomi does? Why not use it to further create?

29:14 I mean, I remember, like being in high school and this there was this video where this guy had had a fully artificial heart. It was one of one of the newer, really. And, they had asked him, like really close to coming out of surgery, you know, questions about himself. And, basically the questions were along the line of, you know, are you still the same person?

29:32 And, you know, he's saying, yeah, I, you know, 100% I'm exactly the way I was when I before surgery and I'm same person, same thoughts, dreams and visions or so and so forth. Obviously, I have the same, you know, and, I, I think, you know, I'm leading to something here and, so, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a touchstone here for you as well.

29:52 You, you mentioned earlier about, you know, young childhood for you going through something and, and so that's right. I had one surgery when I was seven years old, and it was long ago, before the technology was quite good. And, they stopped my heart for about seven hours. So I had I've had dreams of that those seven hours.

30:18 It's. You are descended into a kind of. I don't know, another region. Death. Limbo. But I've had dreams since then of getting carved up because I was, And, you know, my chest was split open and, you know, I have a big scar still, but it's faded, of course, and but it let me live.

30:41 And that was part of the inspiration for, creating a, a human who becomes transhuman, as you describe it. And, the other part of it I wanted to discuss with you was this idea of reverse journalism, because she becomes what is known, what she describes as a reverse journalist, which is not the same. It's not quite the same as a reverse engineer, but the idea is she re-architect both the past to create a future, I should say, the past and the present, to create a future of acceptable memories which but basically what she's doing is she's writing the future, and then it happens the way she scripts it.

31:25 And this is what is, I believe is happening in our media, that we are becoming so intense. I'm creating an agenda, mostly along party lines that we're not writing the present tense, we're not stepping back and being Huntley Brinkley and trying to just report the facts. We're what we're doing is we're spinning, we're leaving things out. We're cherry picking the facts.

31:53 We're outright lying, we're exaggerating, we're propagandizing. So her line between reverse journalism and propaganda is very small. But she says there's always a grain of truth in what I write or broadcast that, that she's trying to make the masses accept this future that they doubt or deny. Okay? At first they don't believe it. And then it comes to her.

32:20 So, you know, she even describes the actors who take their places to enact the script. And even though there are lots of twists and turns in it, she describes Kim Jong un from, from, from Korea, North Korea, and how he got his, uncle, his China loving uncle executed. But he didn't, even though she predicts that this happens.

32:48 Yeah. Where she she references a prediction to this happens. It didn't happen exactly as, as it was originally described, but eventually it. What did happen? It was a it was a dog and pony show. And eventually he got torn to pieces because that's what Kim Jong IL, London. And I think unfortunately, that I think that's the central idea of the book.

33:12 Actually, reverse journalism is what's happening now. I mean, it sounds weird, but it's like we turn things around. We it's it's it's in reverse. He she's not really reporting the past. She uses the past as a springboard to create the future. Yeah. And it's the future that is provided by the state. Mostly this. Yes. And she has some leeway.

33:39 But what that made me think of is pretty much the counterpoint to it that, like Noam Chomsky pretty much says, nobody's going to pour truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself. And yeah, that's kind of what's happening here. Hey, what's getting poured into your brain is not truly what's getting is it? What's what?

34:01 The buffet before you of ideas is not truth. The things that are easy to grab, you have to fight for truth. You have to seek it. You have to sometimes unearth it. And, you know, I think this book really describes that and shows you the process because she finds truth like it shows the danger to of like this, this control mechanic, the this control mechanic is, is, you know, very dangerous, and, and so and so ripe for abuse.

34:32 You know, it's it's impossible not to be abused. It's so potent. Right? So, like, you're basically architecting the, the, the present and the future, you know, through this complex array that, you know, I don't want to say I think that's too revealing because it gives away too much. Like, I don't want to you give away what you feel like you're giving away.

34:51 Well, I've already given away too much. The Tokyo you know, I once described describing as the Tokyo rose of the 22nd century. China is out there. Yeah, she's. She is. She believes in the grains of truth that she is able to extract from her. Now, also, there's an algorithmic component to this, you know, she evaluates all the scenarios of political behavior and social behavior in crowds.

35:18 And then she chooses the one that is the will produce them the best outcome of them. The most likely outcome statistic face. And there's no really there's no leeway for the X factor in this because it's just math, right? It's just probabilities. And she has just described it as probable outcomes, not walk ons. And there's no such thing as random events, only the truth of probable I know some truth or probable outcomes.

35:41 And then, you know, when we resonate that across our lives, we can see a lot of that. You know, if you have enough data, you can do some really strong predictions, very accurate, especially like social data and stuff like that. If you have access to the type, like for example, social media information and people's purchase history and lifestyle choices and those kind of stuff.

35:58 If you have all this information and you start putting that into profiles and analyzing it, you can make some pretty strong, accurate predictions about the outcome or the trajectory of someone's life. Yeah. In fact, a lot of people see ads for stuff come up through their social media feed and whatnot, and they're like, why would I ever want that?

36:13 Let me to reveal that maybe, you know, they're going to need that medication soon, right? Or, you know, and so forth. You know, there's lots of scenarios like that. And that's just with the current data. So you can imagine in the future where, you know, the data is even more flowing, more potent, more accurate, more robust, more robust, you know, more available to you, to only the people who will either find it or are in a position to access it.

36:36 Well, yeah, they're trying to create a priesthood who can only access the data, you know, and they're doing that through, say, Peter Tills. I'm probably gonna pronounce it wrong, but Palantir and other Alan Turing. That's right. You're right. Other firms that are trying to aggregate and coalesce all of this data, you know, much along the lines of, you know, parallels what happens in the story and what happens in the local half is really parallel to this kind of ambition.

37:06 To me, it's it's to me it's like this, this power and this information, you know, coupled with blind ambition can really be, you know, disruptive to, you know, humanity as a whole, like really very much so, because the level of control and manipulation and power is, is, you know, ridiculously strong. It's beyond what most people, you know, have natural, training against AI offenses.

37:28 Again, I was going to ask you why Americans today seem to be more gullible and more willing, on average, to absorb media lies and propaganda rather than being a little bit more, shall we say? Inquisitive and wanting to research many different sides of something, I see this huge. I mean, I was we were talking about the MAGA people for, for you listening to these people complaining about Epstein, and, you know, the fact that Trump won't release these files like this massive betrayal us because they're just dying to have a conspiracy because it fits into whatever.

38:12 And he gave them this conspiracy. He he fed them with it. And now they claim they they claim it. It is part of their DNA. And they need it. But why you guys maybe understand this better. I have seen a decline. I, I don't I don't want to sound arrogant about this at all, but I grew up in Long Island in New York, and my parents were very well-educated.

38:35 So they made us read, you know, we watched some TV, but you read a lot and my parents were actors. So that also played into some of the theatricals of this book. But I had the impression that the, the level of education is certainly in New York with the Regents exams, and everything was very, very high in general, public education was really important.

39:01 Now North Carolina is 49th in it used to be very high in the South. It is now 49th in federal funding per student, and it is 43rd in teacher pay. That's an abomination. And I get the feeling that most of this middle part of the country, I'm not sure if it's the middle of the South or it's just people who never went to college.

39:28 But even if they go to college, there's this narrowing of curiosity and this need to absorb bullshit, and I don't understand it. So please help me with this. I mean, all I know is it happens. I have an opinion. Okay? It right. I'd like to know you, and, you know, Chris Yeo. Feel free to jump in or whatever, but my, opinion on this is, in essence, is it's a coming together of things.

39:58 It's an, you know, I use this word too much, but it's confluence of disparate, intimate equality. You know, it's it's definitely income inequality. It's definitely education, the quality thereof. It's definitely, media propaganda, which is knowing which is channelized and growing worse. Social media is is, like you said, channelized and people people have gotten to the point where they want to be part of it.

40:32 We've always wanted to be part of a tribe, but now it's let me. Everything is polarized. You have to make a binary choice. Most of the time it's am I this or am I that there isn't? No one is willing to acknowledge the gray and I only. Misery is where reality is. Yes, I represent, you know, in progress is in the taboos.

40:53 Progress is in those things we're afraid to explore or talk about. We we need to be jumping into that gray. We need to be exploring it, pushing its boundaries, looking at it. But I think that's what it is, that this is the easy thing. I belong to this tribe. I consume this information because I'm part of this tribe.

41:12 But that's my I've been completely overwhelmed, completely poisoned, physically and mentally poisoned. Our food supplies beyond toxic. Especially if you're poor. If you're poor, your access to food is, you know, are very limited. And then the quality of that food and the, toxicity of it is absolutely like you're being perpetually poisoned. And then intellectually, the always on internet and constantly, you know, short form video, low attention span, you know, quick hit dopamine cycles.

41:40 Crap is just clearly massive amounts of disinformation that's flowing through those channels. And so if that's the diet we're consuming both intellectually and physically, that's our intake inputs, if you will, it's a natural conclusion that you'd be susceptible then to, you know, these propaganda, simple tropes, you know, quirky little memes would, would then invite you in and rope you in because you don't no longer have the, you know, health capacity and capacity to, you know, desire really anything else.

42:14 It's the only thing that really can resonate with you and easy to climb onto and understand, like a simple, you know, motto or a trope or a propaganda type. Slugger. So it's alluring. People enter that channel because they're so overwhelmed. The level of tech over complexity in modern society is so vast. And so what you see is that not people are trying to navigate that complexity, especially the spaces between, but just regress as a consumer endpoint and just consume.

42:37 If you look at, you know, the time that people spend on their phones and on average it's astronomical and it's only getting worse. Each younger generation spends more and more time consuming content, and that delivery mechanism for information is clearly demonstrated as being the most riddled with myths and disinformation. It's not about what it's not about at all the quality or the, you know, anything.

42:57 It's all about just what will get people's attention. What will people stay focused on, pay attention to. And right now that's a cycle of, you know, mis and disinformation stream coming through a series of short play videos, staggered and and specifically aligned with an algorithm to do that exact thing, which is to get your attention the most, because that attention translates into economic advantage for the people that control that stream.

43:20 And so the the moneyed interests polluting all these different channels is, is creating this effect, in my opinion, of of that that you're describing this naivete, this ability to be gullible because it's so overwhelming and the mind and the body are so sick. Right. Combine that that just to say, I'm on this team and I'm waving this flag is simple.

43:41 It's the simple, basic, primal tribalism that everyone just has naturally built into them. And if you don't have the education or the defense mechanisms to protect yourself from the tribalism, you'll fall right in line. And then when you pick that particular camp, that becomes part of that identity, which now enables you and empowers you like you've never felt before.

43:58 So it's like that person that doesn't have a family, doesn't have many avenues for opportunity, finds themselves in a game. Yep. Because the environment just pushes you there because it's at least it's something. It's some form of certainty and some people along and you have security. You have belonging, security, family. Now you're part of a team. And even if that team is just filled with toxicity and, you know, on every level, it doesn't matter.

44:19 You're still part of a team. And especially if that team is then shown to be winning now, now you're winning, you know, vicariously by Kerry. So let's I think that's what continue this after we otherwise I don't want the dinner table. I did want to say one thing. Okay. Ultimately Dr.. Novels exploration of truth, myths and disinformation questions what it means to be human and resonates powerfully with the things we were talking about media literacy and AI ethics, all of these things.

44:48 So really, I feel like every bit of this discussion that we just had about the why your novel explores that. So I just wanted to put that out. Thank you, I and I and I did it as much through rewriting and intuition as I did through direct cognition, direct, even though I have a there's a lot of science in there, and there's a lot of philosophy in there to integrate it all together as a cross-cultural experience, which I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about.

45:20 You know, the people in China not thinking what we are. I think there's been some difference there they are. They are rising. We had this feeling in the 50s and 60s, got it. And then we had our assassinations, and then we had stagflation and Richard Nixon and 70s. Things started to fall apart. And it's been a long time.

45:42 It's really not just recent, but anyway, we can talk about that later. All right. Do you want