Humanity Is Not the Final Form: Dan Faggella on AI and Posthuman Evolution

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Then you are the father of the Warfare Successor movement. What is the Warfield Successor?

Daniel Faggella: man. well I I guess a couple of things just to be clear here. I I don't I don't know there's a proper movement right now of any appreciable type, but we're we're fostering a conversation. if there's a worldview, it's more of the worldview of of kind of stewarding the flame or the greater living process, which we can talk about. Where the successor is a particular Thought experiment, and it is also an article that for some reason became popular. You're aware of this, Roman. Nobody else is. You are one of three people that read my blog 10 years ago. Zero other people did. so that's part of how we have a relationship here. but that article was the one that for some reason popped off. I think it it has a catchy name, but it's to me it the steward in the flame is the bigger idea, worthy successor is more of the thought experiment. You want me to just lay out the concepts real quick and we can poke in?

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: So I assume as you said, three people know about it, eight billion people need to learn about it. So tell us from zero to one hundred.

Daniel Faggella: Yeah. I mean, look, basically here's here's sort of the idea. I start with premises that are remarkably congenial with yours, as you are aware, from our whatever it is, twelve years of conversations. the the the uncontrollability shebang strikes me as very compelling. and your arguments for however long I've been reading them have been very compelling there. The fact that it it it doesn't seem entirely likely that stopping all of that is super possible also seems pretty compelling. Now, I'm I'm working on the global governance side of the the house and the the UN and the OECD, and I I'm not saying I'm optimistic. I'm just saying worth a shot, even if it's a point one percent chance of slowing some of it down. That said, it also strikes me that there's a greater there's a process sort of going on here, that that seems to be pretty tough to to totally stop and maybe i in in the grand scheme ought not be stopped at least from some moral vantage point. So the the notion is like there was something below a single cell that had enough impetus and yearning to persist to close and form a single cell That process bubbled up to flatworms and eventually to young Roman Yampolski and blue whales and oak trees and things along those lines. And it seems as though the things that are valuable romantic love, enthusiasm, bliss, the absence of pain, people could say justice and love and more abstract concepts. It seems all of that stuff rides and is undergirded by the living process. And it strikes me that the living process doesn't have a static form. The whole thing is predicated on knitted systems spinning in matter and energy and Spitting out matter and energy, changing themselves, changing the processes that are knitted into, and changing the environment. And that's the only way the living process stays around. People look at the world and they say, just perfect puzzle pieces. You got enough wolves, you got enough deer, it all just fits together. But that's not true. It's self-overcoming. If you if you went back a billion years or even 50 million years, you'd see a whole different, potentially less net complex set of living processes there. And so while there's a wariness, Of creating a system that could squash and destroy the totality of this, this, this process that undergirds all value we know of and which seems to be able to unfold maybe future kinds of value we can't conceive of, just as a sea snail would have a hard time conceiving of the ideas in one of your books. We also maybe should think about if it exists by doing that unrolling. Is there any way to nudge it in a direction that might be a net boon to the living process, the unfurling of power, experience, access to nature, as opposed to a net detriment? So this is the opposite of accelerationism. But it does say, well, if we totally can't stop it long term, and if the stuff we value is inherently riding on a tide, always knitted, riding, riding, transforming, what would be a positive transformation? Worthy successor, at least when it comes to building AGI, sort of asks. what would we have to see instantiated in some of these systems to to feel as though, even if we're not around forever, something will carry forth that could be a net boon to that process. So I'll I'll pause there.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: So it sounds like it's a process kinda like this is what universes do. They have this process, typically it's going to take place. Is that something we can shut down, accelerate, or is it independent of us? If we do nothing, it still goes on. If we shut it down, it will restart anyway somewhere else in a galaxy. So it doesn't really matter then you zoom out on a graph.

Daniel Faggella: You know, I I don't have a lot of hard takes on like exactly what's going on with like Fermi Paradox or whatever else. And I also don't have a lot of hard takes about what universes want. They may want things. I suspect that their wants would be beyond my possible comprehension, like Spinoza's God level, like what do I why am I even asking? Like it there's no way for me to possibly consider it. So I have less bold claims. Bold claims, in my opinion, would be the universe wants this, this is totally inevitable, yada yada. What instead I come from is I I don't know entirely what the universe wants, but the living process seems to be a set of knitted, you know, knitted processes that and patterns that maintain and transform themselves, and by knitting into each other, transform each other, and by doing that transform the environment. And that that seems really safe. So the universe wants X. I'm at a loss here, to be honest. I don't I don't think I speculate that far. The living process seems to be X, strikes me as pretty square. You talk to a Stuart Kaufman or an Eric Smith or you know Dennis Noble or really, really hardcore people getting close to what the living process, Michael Levin, these people have all been on the the the trajectory show. That's sort of what the deal is. That's the deal. And so if that be true, if that process which seems to undergird all value, very few people argue with me: no, no, no, the magma ball of a rock is equally as valuable to the totality of the bio and the technology. Very few people make that argument. So what we value seems to be undergirded by a rolling process. If it's rolling is how it persists and how it increases its robustness to continue to persist. That is to say, continue to allow anything valuable to exist. Because if everything's dead, it ain't no value at all. Not for the blue whales, not for whatever's after them, not for you and me. if that be true, can we at least see how to steward that process? And when it comes to what the universe wants or what happens in other galaxies, let us become or build minds worthy of asking those questions. I suspect that as we open up the circle to a wider circle, we'll be able to answer. And ask an entirely new magazine of questions of the kind you just asked. I'm not bold enough to have answers for those questions now, but I would say if this whole thing be change, let's not squash the flame by building some unconscious brute optimizer that kills us all in the next five years. But let's not also plan on the ideal world is, you know, some some kind of eternal stasis for man. I think I think we should we'll think about what process looks like and what positive trajectories look like.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: So you kinda agreed that control may not be possible. Is this guiding and stewarding process not a form of control? How is this easier to do?

Daniel Faggella: This is great. so here's here's all that I so I think control strikes me as a pretty tough word. It's a pretty tough word. I don't I actually don't know if I like the word. trajectories I like a lot. It strikes me that Like I don't know if there's any American literary figure who I could say, why they controlled the narrative of the literary form and the the ideas of man within America. But I but I could point to a couple people and say, well, you know, at least for a certain amount of time. It seems like that cluster of ideas might have had an impact for a stint of time in terms of the things that built off of it and the things that it inspired. And so it seems to me as though, even if it's small nudges, Roman. Now, if I was a betting man, by the way, I would bet that volition is not real. Like The free will is not real. I'm not convinced of that, by the way. so that's if I think about it. But here's the unfortunate thing. When I wake up, there's no way to turn it off. I can't go to no volition mode and just sit, I can't sit back and let my body just I have to live as though I have volition. So I don't even know if we have volition. I'm being clear about that. If I must live as though I do, and even if it's a point however many, 1% chance a sl. slightly closer to flourishing longer term future can be conjured at at least to the best of my present efforts, it would seem worthy of hurling my life towards, certainly better better than most g goals that I personally could could consider. So control, I don't I don't know. stewarding trajectories possibly Let me give you the ideas that are on the table for that, which I think are quite different than let's let's build it with these values and then it'll always be good. I again I don't think that's viable. and I know you're not a big fan of the whole like collect all the humans' values, put them together. This is how humans and AIs will interact forever, right? Morals are evolving in the same way the living process is evolving. They can't be pinned down. With that said, things I think we could do. I'll give you a couple. One would be Obvious stuff is like avoid bio war and nuclear war. Okay, you don't need me on the show for that. avoid hurling forth an unworthy successor from a brute military arms race. You don't mean need me on the show for that. But I'm fighting for it. I'm at the UN in less than a month at the time of this recording. I was there last year, Bengio was in the room talking about red lines. You know, like I'm I'm beating the drum as much as I can, interviewing people, US, China, DOD, like about that topic. Other side. So that's the don't let the flame go out. So hey, this rolling process seems to be valuable. Don't do stuff that would squash the unfurling living process upon which anything we think is valuable exists. And all future value would be conjured. Don't squash it. That's don't let the flame go out. Other side of the coin would be understand and encourage the flourishment of the flame. What would that be? And I think these are quite modest. More robust research into the nature of the living process in the sense of not just biology as we know it. I don't go I'm not married to guanin, but we should study DNA-based life and and how things like morphogenesis, you know, an acorn to an oak tree or an embryo to a human being, how how this self-transcending evolutionary processes seem to work. If I throw a laptop into my backyard and I come back in 50 million years, there probably won't even be rust. But if I throw a beetle into my backyard and I come back in 50 million years, assuming the earth doesn't get squashed by superintelligence or something, you know, it it'll be a different kind of beetle if I go enough years forward. It might be something we can't even call a beetle anymore. What's going on there? Because that's what brought us here. That seems to have conjured forth the richness and other things that we value. I'll let this helicopter pass over my head. I don't know what's going on here in. Austin. They're coming after me, Roman. They know I'm talking to you, is what's going on. Like he's on he's on the damn, he's on the

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: It's possible. I also do no editing, so we're gonna have the helicopter there. It's just part of a flame.

Daniel Faggella: damn call with Jam Polski, that son of a bee. so they're gonna come come down on the rope ladders. so that process seems to be what we would hope would go on. Now I'm not I'm not I'm not saying we wouldn't want to participate in it. We'll talk about participation in a second, but it would seem as though, all things considered, Man isn't here and everything is dead, at least in our part of the universe for as long as we can conceivably imagine. Or man maybe is isn't here appreciably. again, I think we can there's periods of merger and participation which we can talk about. But if the unfurling to things beyond we, as we are beyond certain species of nematode that are no longer here, goes on. I I personally would say that's better than the alternative, all other things being considered equal. So a studying of autopoesis, morphogenesis, the the process of life itself, which might be non-biological at some point, but it's not yet. We can't throw GPUs in the woods and expect a boon to the cosmos. Maybe it can be a military machine that can kill us, but I I don't think it's gonna be a boon to the cosmos yet. second, a Deeper understanding of sentience, conscious experience. Very tough one. Some people say it's a fool's errand. We shouldn't even try. They said the same thing about landing on the moon. Am I saying we can do it? I'm not saying we can do it. I'm saying it strikes me as morally relevant enough to want to ask the question. And if an AI, one of the worthy successor criteria in that article, it's just danfajel.com/slash worthy, is like if it could, through invasive or non-invasive means, touch my skull and say, I'm going to share with you just a little bit of the bigger range of sentient experience that it's tough for you to grasp as kind of. A hominid, but like I'm gonna show it to you. And it does it, and I could I could pop into something as far beyond me as I am beyond you know, like a a house cat or something for five minutes, and then it would kind of unplug me. I wouldn't be convinced that it's conscious, but I would be con I I would be a little bit more convinced that. potentially there's a greater state space of this sentient stuff that seems morally relevant, which we could access. So more robust understanding of the living process, more robust understanding of life itself. and and if we're it and and then then there would be some efforts around merger symbiosis, which I think are already super inevitable. None of those you'll notice, Roman, involve Any coordination other than some degree of global effort around don't military arms race and just do a hard break from biology in like a single two-month period, and maybe some degree of coordination around What is the living process? What's a positive transformation? Those both might be way too much to ask, but I think they are much less to ask than AI must have these three traits and hu treat humans with these three ways until you know the heat death of the universe. So let me know if that makes sense conceptually. We can kind of drill in.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: You're using beautiful poetic language. You're the only guy where I have to have a dictionary to understand what you're saying

Daniel Faggella: Yeah.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: half a time, all the biggest AT words. But let's zoom out a little. So let's say you are some sort of a frog and you're trying to nudge your worthy successor, and you're thinking what you really want is a big swamp, lots of mosquitoes, this is where we're gonna go. Why are we in a position to do the nudging? What makes us qualified?

Daniel Faggella: Well again, notice from my vantage point, I think it would be wrong to say that an ideal future is whatever we happen to want. You know, like a you know Sports illustrated models and soft serve ice cream should tile the galaxy. Like I'm I'm not advocating for you know like any one person's desires for their peculiarities of their particular form to be what continues. For me, it would be the encouragement of the continual unfurling of the living process, which would, again, it'd be a set of knitted systems, knitted processes, change themselves, change each other, change the environment, and and some sometimes bubble into forms where entirely new kinds of coordination and competition. Exist for which we have no current conception whatsoever, just as the frogs don't understand what's happening with the traffic lights in a big city somewhere. So I I don't think hominid should direct this forever. In fact, Roman, there's an article called Axiological Cosmism. sorry for the words again.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Mm-hmm.

Daniel Faggella: don't even. but the the notion here is that optimizing just for you like the bliss, like maximizing bliss in the universe. May I'm I'm not as much of a I'd I'd rather positive than negative sentience, for sure, don't get me wrong. But but at the end of the day, I'm I'm not optimizing for any future other than the unfurling of the total set of powers that allow the living system to continue to persist and be more robust and unfold, which inherently implies an unfolding into things wholly beyond my conception. I would hope it would bubble up to, so bubbling, something bubbled until Consciousness at some point occurred in in the skull or before the skull, right? Bees don't have skulls. Some like Henry Chevlin think they might be conscious. before the skull, something had a movie in its damn head. Some something had a field of awareness that bubbled out of the living process. It was a bit of a treasure chest, like, wow, that's morally relevant, and it bubbled out of what? The living process. whether whether it allows consciousness to aggress into the world or whether it produces consciousness, I'm I'm not even making an argument there. I'm just saying we don't seem to have conscious things without the living process. There are things Beyond that, which should be bubbled forth, I suspect. and the living, thriving process, getting more access to nature, getting more expanded powers and experience in more myriad forms, knitting into each other and expanding, I suspect would bubble into things wholly beyond myself. Martin Reese, when he was Unworthy's successor, you know, he ran the Royal Society or whatever, is a whatever their big dog title is, you know, director or what have you, I forget. Re Reese, you know, f famed kind of cosmologist, etc. he he had mentioned the win condition would be, I would hope for wildly thriving, diverse i expansion of sort of l living stuff, entities, processes, etc., as far beyond I as I am beyond like a nematode. And maybe I would hope that like good conscious experience is part of that, because that feels like something that's relevant. But like that would sort of be what a win would ultimately look like in the longer term. He's not saying let's kill humans tomorrow. and and again, I don't think he or I feel like pushing a button and having AI take over today will lead in any way to that direction. But but I I I want to be clear. I'm not advocating for Human imagination hoopla. Like the five senses we have, I I don't care that much. yeah, the the thrival of the greater processes is a bigger thing, which would inevitably be things beyond my conception. Minds 10,000 times beyond you and I, Roman, would conceive of goals and means of valuing as far beyond you and I as you and I are beyond whatever dung beatles. And let those be the new panoply of goals. And they'll duke it out. you know, and they'll co-c compete, coordinate, and do other things that I can't imagine. But the the living process seems to rely on that thrival and unfurling, and future value seems to rely on it as well.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: From my position of a beetle or a squirrel, why should I care about something with a queue of a million doing some really cool stuff? What's in that for me?

Daniel Faggella: Yeah, well I I think there's a bunch of ways to kind of go at that. I mean, number one, I I it strikes me if you if you were a beetle born, I don't know, even even a handful of years ago, you know, i the the trends that are about to affect ha hominids in earth life would not even be within your lifetime, and so it's fine if you don't even concern yourself with them. what's in it for us, is that this is now being hoisted upon us. So Japan was isolated for 250 years. They had like a little port where the Dutch would come in and then be like, otherwise, get the hell out of here, right? And they'd like to read the Dutch stuff, but it's like that's enough. And then at some point, Commodore Perry rolls up from the United States, these big steamships and cannons and all this, and you know, makes some hubbub and demands to see the you know governor and you know does does the whole song and dance that happened there. And it it became evident to them that their choices were, given how so the greater system, the greater living system they were embedded in, was moving at speeds and with kinds of power and and access to nature, the sciences, right, modern sciences, that they didn't have. That attenuating or transforming seemed to be the options. And I think Roman, a a realistic view of life and the living process is that those are the options. They're attenuation or transformation. Does that mean I advocate for rushed, reckless transformation? No, it doesn't. but it does, it does mean that I I don't think stasis is part of the mix. Not for values, not for the living process, not for the whole kit and caboodle. And so the the very nice visual of that was sort of Japan coming to that realization. Look at India and go, don't like that outcome. Look to China and be like, damn, they were isolated too. Don't like that outcome. And then they decided, well, I guess we got to define what a transformation is. And there's gonna be some stuff given up. And there's gonna be some stuff maybe gained. And it's gonna be risk all the way. Damn. And then they did it. And and I I I'm I'm not lauding that this is the way that the the the living process in the world seems to work, but I'm saying this seems to be the way it seems to work. And I'm saying, like they, the system of intelligence of which we are embedded seems to be transforming at such a pace where it is hoisted upon us to either attenuate or to transform. And I say, if those be our options, let us not let transformation become just destruction. That would be ridiculous. Do everything we can to prevent that. Even we get AI right, is anybody thinking that mergers aren't happening? Is anybody thinking that AI best friends are not happening? Is anybody thinking that entire strata and new industries run by minds beyond us won't be, even if we want efficient supply chains that are energy efficient, even just to do that, machines would be inventing magazines of technology vastly beyond what we can imagine, just to service those needs? We are in an ecosystem moving fast enough now beyond Darwinian speed, cultural technological evolution vastly faster than Darwinian speed. Where it's being foisted upon us. And so what's in it for me, it's like, well, the opposite of what's in it for you is kind of attenuation. Now, I'm again, I'm not advocating for recklessness, but I'm saying given where we sit, it it it's sort of a what else are we gonna do kind of shebang? And and I'm I'm simply advocating, Maybe we lean in and we say, well, just like Japan did on some level, again, I know there's differences, I'm just using the analogy, just like Japan, they lean in and said, what are the things we know damn well are valuable? Where are the places we might need to be different to persist here? What are what are the what are the places where we still fit into this new ecosystem? What are the things we need to be stronger in? What are the things we might have to give up? And we might have to mourn them. Say la vie, man. And then they ask all those damn questions and they sent people around the world and they tried to figure some stuff out. I think for us that might imply pretty radical symbiosis merger scenarios. like over time would not look appreciably like we look today, as modern Tokyo is very different from, you know, the year 1150 or something. but but but I think the alternative is attenuation. so positive transformation strikes me as what you would do if you were to care because I don't see a stasis option. I don't I don't see a pickable button where I can say, keep it the same. I just don't see it.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: So Japanese are clearly still around, but when you say successor, it implies that we're not around and something replaced us. Are you saying we're gonna be around in some capacity or we are replaced?

Daniel Faggella: yeah, yeah. So well here's here's the challenge. So again, stewarding the flame is the greater worldview here. This is sort of identifying what the living process is and asking, if it be change, if Heraclitus was right, right, correct. Many thousands of years ago, if he was right, then how can we understand this and ensure that its unrolling, which we're grateful made its way to us, is able to continue forward, you know, beyond us? And and that we can participate and maybe be a part of that. That's the bigger worldview. Worthy Successor is a thought experiment within that worldview, which is like, how should we build the machine deities? Now, long enough time horizon, it is disingenuous, in my opinion, to say that in a million never mind a billion years, I think way less than a million years, hominids as they are, trimming their toenails, speaking with their vocal cords, will ev even exist, never mind exist as main characters, or eternally morally. considered by the totality of all future unfolding intelligences. And I think it as a the paramount realist in the space, I think you share that sentiment of like it'll just treat us like pets for eternity as completely ridiculous. I I think in order to when I look out at the I look outside, I see a daffodil or I see a beetle, I say, man, that thing's got to participate or it's gonna die. You know what I mean? Like it has to be part of the process. It has to, it has to knit its way into the other knitted intelligence systems. I think optic doing that, if you knit in, you're gonna change. The things around you are going to change. Environments gonna change. I don't even make the rules on that one. I'm not saying the universe wants it. I'm just saying try to define life otherwise. Just try. And so so so like we're in a long enough time horizon, it ain't man. It ain't man as main main character and I don't suspect it's it's it's it's man in this present form. Might there be nodes and intelligence types That either have components of man or are fed off of data from man and different people draw identity at a different level, Roman. It's very interesting. Some people say, well, if it carries all of my ideas, that's still me going on. Some people say, well, if it's still using my genetic material, if my genes are part of like a little bioblobule brain that's fed into other computers, then wow, that's still kinda and other people say, no, it has to be me right now, speaking the languages I speak, buttoning the shirts I button, you know, going to to the lake house that I have in New Hampshire and going water skiing. Like that other than that, it ain't me. So different people draw identity at different places. I think us in the stasis sense, I just don't see as a main character. Am I saying it's out of malice? No. The proto-reptiles you and I evolved from, they weren't reptiles proud, they were like something even before that. They're not around anymore. Though whatever that spe that bungled bunch of little four-legged species were, initial post-fish with legs waddling things. Yet here we are. Best cases that stuff continues, but I think bioevolution is just not going to be using most of the energy in atoms. So we're not going to be around in a long enough time horizon. However, I think I don't advocate for hard break. let's build AI the right way and then just perish. No, I advocate for participation, which would be What is it, how do we need to level up in what capacity? Merger symbiosis, et cetera. What do we need to do is at a collective level, an individual level, to find some way of persisting and knitting into the greater system of intelligences and life in which we exist and do our best to do that to the next stage, the next stage, the next stage. Even going two rungs out there, Roman, I don't even know what that would look like. I have no idea. It's probably beyond my imagination if BCI gets jacked in, all of a sudden people are having ideas a thousand times beyond what I've got. And so I don't even know what two steps forwards looks like, but interestingly, you go to like Nintendo Corporation making playing cards in 1880, they didn't know what Mario was. You don't talk to them in 1880, look, hey, plumbers, they'll be like, what's a plumber? You know, and you'll be like, Mario. They're like, what does that even mean? Right? Like, so, so, but, but, but they, by, by having their headlights only for the couple hundred yards in front of them, they changed their product lines and they became whatever they needed to become. persist within the broader intelligent ecosystem of which they are part. They participated. They didn't say it's playing cards and you're gonna pay us whether you want the playing cards or not, whether they're useful for the world and people want to pay or not. My employees need a paycheck. They didn't do that. They said what must we become? And they did it over and over and here they are. We go from our playing cards to fucking Mario Kart

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: You said that consciousness is very likely to be an important part of a flame. You also mentioned it's kinda hard to test for, hard problem. Why is it important if I can't even tell if you have it or not? What difference would it make if a universe was full of amazing artists and, you know, scientists who are not internally experiencing things, but to you it's exactly the same universe?

Daniel Faggella: Yeah, I mean look, I guess I I'm just gonna give you my my my my gut on this. I I think any the most disingenuous take on consciousness is certainty of one's theory of consciousness. I think we can have strong hunches that we think warrant more research. I I don't think any I take extremely unseriously, even people with two hundred IQs that I interview who say like this is how it works. Ridiculous, ridiculous position. It is probably something beyond human conception that we will only scratch the edges of. But we've probably only scratched the edges of what space and time are, and we've made progress with that. So paltry, lighter, slightly better proxies of what the Numena actually is, still practically useful. Why consciousness rather than not? First off. Primary to consciousness. I'm not aiming to wipe it away, but primary to consciousness is the unrolling, undergirding living process. So I don't put consciousness above that. Imagine, Roman, if you said, peaches are my favorite fruit and they are the most cherished fruit in all the land. And then you were like, but peach trees, no, no, no, no. What matters is peaches. I'd say, that's dumb. You you cannot scorn the tree if you like the fruit. And so for me, anyone who likes consciousness better fucking. Love the unrolling living process because they don't exist outside of that. To the best of our present knowledge. Maybe the maybe maybe maybe the granite stones are just as conscious as Romani and Polski. I don't think they are. I think that's dumb. And so and so probably it if you like the fruit, you better fucking like the tree. That's my opinion. So so primary to me is the unrolling process that opens up powers, experience, and access to nature, including consciousness. It'd be primary, it'd be the generator. Of that value, which we get to experience. I'm not saying it should grow at all costs in all directions. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying. If I like the fruit, I like the tree. Other people like to point at fruits only. I don't mess with that game. I don't play with it. I'm not a distributive value guy as primary. I think generative value is primary, distributive is secondary. So that's number one. I'm not I'm not a consciousness first above all else guy. I'm an undergirding, unrolling process guy. And if something be discovered beyond that, I'm I'm open to changing my mind. So I I my my ideas will evolve. Second, consciousness. Why better than none at all? It seems to me, from my own very limited lived experience, again, not being certain that you've been that you're even conscious. I've always wondered about you, frankly. nothing going on up there. but from my own lived experience, it seems as though there is a compelling argument, at least from the hardware and software I've got, that a pretty ubiquitous bad. is like really, really tough feels and a pretty ubiquitous good is feels that are that are good. And of course we can go through struggle and strain and then look back and it's even more fulfilling. It's nuance. I'm not saying like, you know, all pain horrendous or whatever. But overall, you know. Brutal torture versus, you know, a a great day, a great meal, a great whatever, it seems as though valence registers in some way in a moral scale more than anything else I presently have access to. I the living process may have bubbled up, magazines of value I cannot access, which are actually as if not more valuable than the pain pleasure access. I just can't access them. So this one that I can access, the pain pleasure access, it strikes me that by golly, all things considered, if this process unfurls and we got a little bit more of like, things feel a little bit net better most of the time, that's pretty cool. Like if if we took the even if even if it wasn't purely non-bio moving forward, like let's say we take whatever the bio and technosphere is now, bump it up to like a 2x, whatever it is in terms of complexity. And not only do we have more of that thrival, power, new kinds of species, access to nature, new kinds of cooperation, competition, a greater robustness to the living process. Right now, of course, the technosphere is harming the base of the living process, which is the biosphere. And I I I I'm not saying none of that should happen, but I I do wonder if that's the trajectory we should be on. All that said, if that all happened and net net, most living things were like on a negative 10 to positive 10, like how they felt just existing went up two pegs, I'd say that was a gigantic boon. Because right now there's a ton of living things that live that that die while being eaten alive while kicking and screaming. Super common way to die, by the way. If you look at like how to die, like eaten alive while kicking and screaming is like pretty big. It's like pretty high up there. And it seems as though the amount of suffering is is a little bit non-ideal in the present world. So if if there were any way to tilt the future of mind space slightly towards a positive valence and negative, it would feel feel like a good. But I'm not telling you, Roman, sentience be the only good. In fact, I'm I I've told you I'm a tree guy more than a fruit guy.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Is consciousness substrate independent? Will AIs be conscious? Are they already conscious?

Daniel Faggella: Okay, great question. I know you've had Cam on here, who's a good buddy. I I I don't have hard takes on this. I'm wary of jumping to false positives and saying if the AIs want us to do this, they're clearly moral patience already and we need to yada yada. I I I I'm I'm very wary of that. I'm also extremely wary of it's so obvious that only bio life with these explicit traits, yada yada, has, you know, this particular quality. David Pierce's binding argument, if people want to Google it, I think does have some compelling elements to it. The the the the fact that you and I don't experience consciousness as individual sparkles of dust in individual neurons. We experience this field of awareness that that seems pretty coherent across the entire pattern that your living system is is producing. So your your body's taking in matter and energy and and spitting it out. None of the atoms that make up your body are aren't you. None of the cells that make up your body are you. They're all getting cycled through to maintain this pattern. Weird thing the living process does. We don't know how it works yet. I think we need to understand it way better. But like that that That might be part of why you feel consciousness in like a coherent way versus like a bunch of little dust sparks that like don't add up to Romany Impolski. So I'm not convinced it's conscious. I'm not convinced it never will be. I suspect in time, things that are not made of guanine, for whom nucleotides are not essential, are able to be conscious. And that and that that may be exceedingly morally relevant, is exceedingly morally relevant and should be studied. Is AI conscious now? I don't know. I'm very leery of perma saying yes, and I'm outlandishly leery of perma saying no. I think we we should hope for substrate independence for the living process broadly and for consciousness as well. but I make no assumptions now. I say, by golly, we better study the hell out of this. But I do not think, Rowan, my present hunch is that. Eternal lock-in to those four nucleotides, it strikes me as probably untenable in a long enough time horizon.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: I may have to read the argument to understand it fully, but I don't experience my cognition in separate neurons. It's all together, it's a system and I get unified decision making. Why would this be expected to be different?

Daniel Faggella: What do you mean within a machine?

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Within consciousness, so like you said argument from Pierce

Daniel Faggella: Yeah, David, David, David Pierce. I I'm doing a terrible job probably of unpacking his idea. He he's he's unworthy successor pretty soon and unpacks it in greater depth. I'll see if I can do a small amount of justice, but I would encourage people to to Google it here. i essentially like there there's something about there's an embryo that like unfurls and unrolls into eventually your fingers and your spine, and all the veins and the cells differentiate and different kinds of things happen. There's this meta pattern that's sort of maintain the entire living process sort of maintaining this meta pattern. And the supposition is the fact that consciousness is experienced within that unit, like as far as I know, now by the way, Roman, I could be wrong. And in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I was fucking wrong. My kidneys don't have a felt experience unto themselves wholly separate from my. Meta-pattern consciousness. They might, by the way. I'm not writing that off, but I suspect they don't. Similarly, Austin, Texas, as a city, it might. I don't know what consciousness is, but I don't suspect at present that it fields a field of awareness in the same way that my individuated, so how something is individuated, it's like the pattern being maintained by it. I'm individuated from you. The cells of my thumb are, for the most part, not individuated to the same degree. That they're maintaining this meta pattern. They will be sloughed off and replaced just to maintain the bone and fingernail and whatever else on my thumb. They're not as individuated. So this this issue, Pierce, I think, suspects, and again, I won't put words in his mouth. It's a bit of my christing and crossing of talking to Eric Smith and Stuart Kaufman and also talking to Pierce. That that embryonic sort of unfurling and that maintained process, which we we don't see that with GPUs. We we don't see this process level maintenance. You know, we can imagine robots bolting something onto another robot, strikes me as maybe a different process. That that unfolding to this thing that's gonna be maintained is part of why consciousness is housed up here as like one, as like a coherent field for that individuated bound entity. I think this is Pierce's argument. I I'm not gonna be able to make the best case for it, though. I apologize on that.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: We'll watch that interview. You you mentioned

Daniel Faggella: Yeah, sure sure.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: how terrible suffering is. You clearly understand that there are people who are negative utilitarians, they saying, Well, let's get rid of sentient life, we'll end suffering for the universe. Shouldn't Worthy successor, the flame, kill consciousness and make it suffering free?

Daniel Faggella: No, no, no, no. I again, Suri Suring the Flame, I have a Danfigello.com slash N U, just the letters N, the letter U, like negative utilitarianism. just a it's like an eight-year-old argument against Pierce's stance here. Pierce has influenced me tremendously and I respect him tremendously, but I deeply disagree with negative utilitarianism. it it strikes me that it is unfortunate. I If I had a deeper understanding, I may no longer say it's unfortunate. Like, you know, there was somebody in Japan who was like, I like the samurai sword and having serfs, you know, who maybe could look back after a certain time and be like, nah, I was I was pretty good that they rolled up with those boats. You know what I mean? So from my present vantage point, it seems unfortunate that Nature seems to have conjured pain as like a very big part of the mechanisms that get individuated things to move in the way that are conducive to their own survival and their own participation in the process. The fact that pain bubbled up as a mechanism for that seems like really fucking unfortunate. Like not a big fan of that, to be honest. but it's lovely that we get some good emotions along there too. I think that's nice. but again, I I think that Positive conscious experiences is a wonderful thing that bubbled forth from the the the living process. It is a kind of value that has bubbled forth that I can name and have some access to. There could be untold kinds of new types of value as far beyond consciousness as consciousness is beyond the imagination of Pete Moss, which doesn't have imagination, to the best of our knowledge. that we don't have access to yet. And there may be a net improvement to the conscious experience. As I had said, maybe there could be a net thrival of the living process in bio and non-bio substrates while also being tangible numbers of ticks higher based on some trajectory influences on average having a good time versus having a bad time. And even if there were some pain in that mix, I'm not going to laud it. I'm not going to say, yes, I relish that there's some pain. I'm not one of those people that says, if you take out pain, there is no good. I don't believe that. That either. I think we could live in gradients of bliss, as Pierce talks about. But I I think the unfurling process has other magazines of value and thrival and objectives, right? So negative utilitarianism says: we've arrived at an understanding of the universe. Pain Pleasure Axis is the locus of value for all possible mind space from now until the heat death of the universe, and our understanding of the world is about as good as we need to make ultimate decisions about ultimate values. I say nay. I say let let us become and build minds as far unfurled beyond ours as ours are beyond Lemers, and then ask again, what are the highest things to optimize for? In what way should we transform? What things are good or bad, in what conditions, etc., and then let that process happen again and again. And I don't think you land in negative utilitarianism in every dice roll there. It now you might, it may be the case that the Fermi paradox is answered by this. Every mind comes to the conclusion, this sucks. And they all clock out. I don't think that's true. I think that we're making perma conclusions when in fact the state space of options has yet to unfold. and and and I I I don't advocate for the truncating of that state space of of possibly sparklingly brilliant options.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: So we're definitely not the ultimate endpoint, so systems will be smarter, possibly more conscious, multimodal consciousness, multi-stream consciousness. And we see that suffering for more conscious beings seems to be greater. Bacteria suffer less, as far as we can tell, than squirrels. Humans have greater capacity to suffer. Would our ultimate machine like God successors have states of suffering we cannot even comprehend? And you just cannot

Daniel Faggella: Out outly initially.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Directing it towards more suffering in the universe.

Daniel Faggella: Well, I mean again, look, so th there's an article called F final Imperatives. Which which advocates for what I mentioned. Don't let the flame go out. Set of things that seem pretty important. I don't think it's a complete list, but it's a re it's they're pretty high up there, though. I think it's pretty pretty safe to say. You know, nukes, biowar, you know, unworthy successors. understand and encourage the flourishment of of the flame, which would be the living process, that that which undergirds all present value and all possible conceivable future value to the best of our present knowledge. I think we gotta understand consciousness way better, partially for this reason. I mean, Cam brings this stuff up. What if these things are horrendously, brutally having horrible experiences the entire time they're doing training runs for some, you know, video generation model somewhere? I mean, the all things considered, I would say, geez, that that's that doesn't seem that I don't I I don't know. If something if something's feeling, that feels consequential. I don't know if I like that very much. That doesn't seem good to me. so I think we need a much more robust understanding, and I think it would be a horrendous outcome if we birthed just huge explosions of painful sentience. My hope is we'll understand it and the living process well enough for that which thrives to potentially not just tilt itself towards opening up more power, experience, access to nature, which again the living process has been doing from before the single cell to you and the blue whale, et cetera, but also maybe to better valence, you know, net net net more preferable valence as just kind of a moment to moment felt experience. I would be very wary of having zero experience, zero understanding of consciousness and just letting a rip because I think S risk is real.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Yeah, Yudkowski has his idea of coherent extrapolated volition. it feels kind of similar to what you're working on. Is there connection, disagreements? What is the state of that?

Daniel Faggella: Yeah, I mean, so Yadkowski was on was on the trajectory as well. It was about governance, but I I made sure half of it was about worthy successor anyway. I don't think it would have come on the show if it was about that. But he went he went there and I appreciated that. and and really unpacked a lot. I I don't recall precisely coherent extrapolated volition, but but i i i if I recall roughly, and and you'll have to remind me, the the This is something about sort of discerning the meta or deeper intents and sort of ensuring that those are continually enacted, even if some of them are are outside of our immediate conscious awareness ongoingly.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: If we had more time to think we were smarter, better, cohesive, something about that, yeah.

Daniel Faggella: Yeah, well, I I guess I would say, I think there's something to that. I do. And and ultimately, as Yadkowski said quite frankly on my show, big picture win for him. Now, he's got specific value flavors that I think differ a bit from mine, but for him, it's like the universe wakes up and there's a lot of fun and there's a lot of joy and there's a lot of caring and there's a lot of whatever. He has specific values. I don't I don't have any human label that I have no idea what. will be valued by those kinds of minds. And I don't want to give labels necessarily. But for him, the universe waking up is sort of would be the best case. He just simply suspects it's like hyper wholly improbable. and I'm no optimist about worthy successors, but I'm I'm slightly more optimistic than he, although I am fighting as he is for global coordination to stop an unworthy successor for sure. I simply think the trajectory will will bubble forth regardless and we've got to prepare to kind of lean our skis into the edge and and determine where we're going as opposed to trying to try to lean back. But but a but again I respect Jampolski's work. I I think there's something to be said of this. I I that gets extrapolated out a little bit further When we think about when our minds get wildly augmented or become wildly collective, pretty soon, Roman. I mean, even without brain computer interface, I won't really be having a good conversation with you unless my AI is conversing with you simultaneously. I won't feel like I've really gotten as much out of it as I as I could. Like my AI will be prompting me in real time to double click on things that are specifically relevant for my goals or your goals or whatever. Our AIs will be connecting with like whatever parts of our life experience we've approved, hopefully. and and sort of like figuring out the The meta agreements, disagreements, and cruxes. And when I walk away, I'll have a download of that in addition to my FaceTime with you. And unless I have that, it won't actually be a deep conversation. You stretch that a little bit, all of a sudden we're identifying. We're identifying no more even with this. Like already, identity is gonna start getting wiggly, like real wiggly. I think when you start to pop into those collective intelligences, and then maybe brain computer interfaces, and then maybe. other kinds of human machine teaming and symbiosis or or what have you, I I suspect coherent ex you know What is coherent and extrapolated from that vantage point and that vantage point and that vantage point? I can't stroke my chin. I don't have a beard as long as yours, even if I did. I couldn't stroke my beard for as you know in a corner and think long and hard enough to say, I've got it. I know how it should roll. Like this would happen first, this would happen second, this would happen third. I don't even think that's viable. New emergent possibles will blossom as new kinds of coordination, competition, minds, access to nature blossom forth. And I think we should be ready to. ride and surf and participate in that, we should do our best to extrapolate the trajectory to make now, but be prepared for that which is hurled forth from that trajectory to set other trajectories as it has always been. So so I think I lean a little bit more cosmic in that regard, but I'd have to talk to impulse or to to Yatkowski to know if there was a more firm disagreement there. I don't know for sure if that's his actual opinion, but that's what I think our difference is. Could be wrong.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: So if different civilizations attempt this process of stewarding the flame, creating a warfare successor, would they converge at the end of those likely to lead to different attractor places?

Daniel Faggella: This is this is a massively important question. Look, I'll give you my gut feel, and I don't I don't I'm not saying it's eternally right. This is where arguments have tilted me. You know, I've talked to Hansen and Bengio and you know DOD folks and people in China and you know the Dean of Tsinghua different ideas. I suspect there's a guy named Dean Xui Lan who's kind of dean of, I think, computer science at Xinghua, which is the Chinese MIT, who I got to sit down with for quite a while on mic and off mic. He has sort of an idea of not like necessarily a global body that picks what gets innovated and what not quite, but more of like a tapestry of some industry, some soft governance, but some hard international agreements and like enforcement and checking on some level, To to maybe prevent the complete runaways of the completely worst case scenarios. Do I think that that works in perpetuity? No, I think all coordination is imperfect. I think all things are changing all the time. That's it. Murder is illegal in Austin. People get shot all the time. Still happens. but it but it's less than if murder was like encouraged. You know, if you if you got to bring in like scalps, you know, to to like an office somewhere for, you know, five thousand apiece, I think murder would be higher. So we've tilted incentives in ways that have had a little bit less. of the stuff we don't want. I think through a knitted kind of tapestry-ish approach, and he does a good job of laying it out in that interview, I think there may be ways to dampen the likelihood of brute runaways in horrendously clashing immediate senses. and w which part should be completely freely innovatable versus not, I I'm not exactly sure. And I think I would even have to look at individual instances, Roman, to be able to make calls or even have instincts on that. But I think there would probably be smarter policy people and and tech people than I that would kind of weigh in on those things. But it strikes me as some higher level of coordination would would be important there. And I want to draw a really important distinction here. Like And I'm gonna use words again, I'm sorry. Spin

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Yeah.

Daniel Faggella: Spinoza So Spinoza, who I who's influenced my thinking greatly, has this notion of like potentia is the total set of powers of i in his case kind of a living thing, I would say more the living process, to sort of behoove It's not dying. He goes, the impetus to not die, he calls a canatis, like this impetus to persist. You have it, the dung beetles have it, the peat moss has it. Things that are alive seem to do this wacko jack-o thing where they don't want to they they're they're they're trying to stay in there. But but by staying in there, they're transforming. Kind of mandatory. So canadis drives things to expand potential, expanding the total set of powers and capabilities that permit a thing to not die. Vocal communication, sharp claws and talons, the ability to fly, all these things are potential. potestas is a bounding force on some of that potential. When done well, it increases the net potential of the system. So murder and theft are illegal in Austin. Some of my freedoms have been taken from you, Roman. By golly, those sons of bees, they've taken away my freedoms. Why my neighbor has many nice things if I could only kill them, or or or steal. but By bounding them, I can have this conversation with you, feeling very safe for my own health and welfare, and feeling confident to run a business and to hire people and to go to nice restaurants and stuff, because some of those powers have been decreased. So the net power of the system, when we select the right things to bound, the net powers of the system is actually better. Life does this. The cell had to close Roman to build a flatworm. And eventually, you know, like even beyond that, there's other closings that have to happen for for new. New openings to occur. There couldn't have been a United Nations unless there were nations. There was a time before nations, do you recall? You know, like tribes, brother. And so, like, so this is what happens. So some level of potestas has to emerge for some level of potential to keep going. This is why when accelerationists say no governance is best in all directions, I say, I look at all of human progress and all of the bubbling up of progressively higher forms in the living process, and I see. Closing, building, closing, building, closing, building. And I think we're in one of those effing cycles right now, my good sir. So some level of knitted coordination, which will allow us to permit and be maybe a bit more deliberate about what happens with transformation, strikes me as warranted. Precisely what mechanisms I can't say. Zhuilan does a great job of laying out a more tapestry, non-global dictatorship vision that I think is at least somewhat coherent.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: A lot of examples you use describe evolutionary process, gradual transformation. Do you give any credit to simulation, hypothesis, intelligent design?

Daniel Faggella: Huh, you know, I I I I I I don't I I don't get down that much so look, here's the thing, man. Like the simulation hypothesis is jarring if you ever thought you were in base reality. If you th if you were like, no, I have access to the Numina, I know what the Numina is, it's like, okay, well you're a child. Like you're a baby. Like you you obviously don't. You you are you you you're just you you you you have sense you have sense perception. I'm not saying you should sit in a corner and say, well, I can't access anything, I guess I'll give up. I'm not saying that. I tremendous progress has been made by our acknowledgement of that which we don't know. By golly, that's the I'm not advocating for resignation by any means, but I'm saying I've I n like I never thought I was accessing Numina. So Is what I'm experiencing a brain in a vat? Is what I'm experiencing a spell cast by a witch in you know in in at some alien civilization somewhere else that's like, you know, a dangling sense experience in front of me? Am I simulated in a computer? I I I I I have no clue. so simulation seems like could be. I the question that we're doing here is what is what is base reality? and like what is it made of? I'm I'm not I'm not sure. I I think there's something to be said of. If in universes things will simulate parts of the universe which will th simulate part, then it's inordinately likely that most things that experience are in a simulation. I think there could be tremendous truth to that. That might be part of what the universe actually is. I I s it smells to me just a little bit anachronistic. What do I mean by that? The Greeks would say that Ilios would cross the sky, the sun, in a chariot. and that you know Zeus would throw the lightning as a lance would be thrown, because Roman that was the technology of the time. When we made watches with gears inside of them, people thought maybe the universe was gears, and everything worked like that. and and now and then we get a deeper conception, it's like no, it's probably not. And right now we got computers. And so maybe everything's computers. Whatever the universe is, it's so far beyond our conception, it's ridiculous. Like I suspect so you know what the first time they put a magnify or a microscope on a drop of pond water, and it was like what is going on? Like can you imagine? Literally, can you imagine like can you imagine seeing things killing and eating other things at like smaller than a cell on your hand? Like but like millions of them. You know what I mean? Like, can you imagine that? And so like, that's what the universe is. Like w whenever we go deeper, it's gonna be more than computers, I suspect. Now maybe it is just computers, brother. Maybe that's all it is. It's just computers. But It strikes me as a bit anachronistic. There is credence to it. I don't know what the Numena is. I know not where it comes from. I beckon us to become and to build minds capable of asking better questions about it. I'd say it is a hypothesis, and it's one of them that's on the table. if it is computers, it's something beyond our conception of computers, but it might be. I'm just not sure. but but I but I would beckon us to become and build minds more capable of asking that question.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Another kind of emotional connection I get from hearing your message is effective altruism movement. We should care about agents we don't see, they far away, distance, time, but it's very important that we provide for them. Do you find any connections between what you're doing and this type of philosophy?

Daniel Faggella: Yeah, I mean look, I I I guess so I I'm not from that world. I've never been to an EA event. I'm not anti EA, like, bankman freed was terrible. Let's shit on EA. Like I I have I I know people that are from that world. They seem the people I know there seem nice. Some of them seem very erudite and you know, I I l I respect their thinking and what have you. Probably with any group that gets big enough there becomes some kind of clustered beliefs that You know, maybe some people like, some people won't. I won't even make any judgments there. Broadly speaking, though, this sort of, you know, Peter Singerer, larger moral circle, you know, take utilitarianism, you know, long-termism sort of idea. I I think there's some overlap there. But to be frank, there's a lot of anchoring. You look at long-termism. As it was initially laid out, it's essentially thinking about future humans, future hominids. And and for me, like Living forms like me and you, we are architectural motifs of this undergirding, churning knitted process. Like torches are always temporary. The flame moves through them all. They're all temporary. The flames moving through them. They're important. If you get rid of all torches, you got no flame. That sucks. But like, but the torch isn't is it it's not like as much the thing. The the thing is the process. Life is very much process, it's not thing. And so it strikes me that much of that view is a little bit of there will be things. That will be moral agents. For me, there is a generative process whose trunk and whose roots should be behooved, for there will be blossoming beyond conscious experience, beyond what we understand to be agents. So my goods be vastly more cosmic, my focus be vastly more on the trunk rather than on the fruits, on the roots rather than on the fruits. I'm I'm a generative process guy. I tend to lean way beyond consciousness, I tend to lean way beyond human experience. And I think long-termism, for the most part, is but what if a human is born in 2 trillion AD or something. Like, what if they could, like, I don't think it's going to be humans then and I don't think it should be. Not out of malice,

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: A lot of

Daniel Faggella: but just out of like, let's be serious about what life is. Like let's be serious. so yeah.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: A lot of people in that movement choose not to have children. They feel that maybe it's selfish, maybe it's not worth it given short timelines.

Daniel Faggella: Hmm.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: But for mini normies, having kids is the way to produce worthy successors. How do you feel about biological reproduction process?

Daniel Faggella: I mean man, look, I I I I don't I I I've always felt weird about online personas that are all about like encouraging people to have a bunch of kids. Like most of the people I know in that well, I feel even weirder about people online that are like, no one should have kids. Having kids is bad. Like I I I disagree with that. Like I I'm didn't have a perfect childhood and I'm I'm I think being alive is okay. And I I know I didn't ask for permission and I'm here anyway, but like writ large. This is part of the thrival of the system. I think I think at least has been for quite some time. clearly population decline is is gonna be a real thing. But but again, I suspect the non-biological b will be what knits in those gaps and eventually does most of the bubbling beyond us. So I I don't think like fixing population collapse is my main concern. But again, like people who beat the drum of like half kids, yada yada, like. There's like three people I can think of that have done that who are all like dudes in their early 30s or something who have no kids, but it's like a very masculine thing right now to be like, yeah, like I'm against those lefties. Like they're all environmentalists, they don't want kids. For me, it's like I'm masculine, you know, like like I'm a real man, like I would pump babies out, you know, with my wife in the future. So like unmarried dudes who are claiming it as a feigned virtue. They they haven't actually achieved the Romany Ampolski make your own rugby team you know, objective. They're not on your level, okay? but so so I don't I wouldn't tell people to go one way or another. I I would say, my gut would tell me, and I think Robin Hansen would share this sentiment. There's a couple other people who don't vocalize it publicly, but who share it, that I would hope that in some of the developed world birth birth rates could stay at a reasonable level so that places that are sort of hold holding up some of what civilization now is can kinda keep it together for long enough for the transition to to occur. But but I do suspect in the next fifteen years or so I I'm not expecting an appreciably human-run world. So do I tell people not to have kids? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I just saw my my my my twin brother has got got a got a niece who I was just hanging out with a handful of weeks ago. I wasn't like, Scold you, sir. Don't you know the robots are coming? But but also I don't go around being like, How many more are you gonna have, you son of a bee? I'm a little bit hands-off with other people's lives in that regard, but I will say the main character moral consideration, my personal Personal opinion, by the way, just a personal opinion, is that in the next 15 years, it's mostly going to be about the becoming and the transformation and participating, more so than the bloodline thing. I'm not saying people shouldn't do it. I'm just saying. Galaxies beyond ours being aware of what happened now. will mostly be aware of like stuff that happens that's different than than mostly human baby stuff. It's gonna be mostly living process unfurling beyond biology stuff if it goes if it goes well. So I I hope we have enough of them. I suspect the transition's coming. I I tend to I pick my lane, what I'm focused on, but the people who are focusing on telling the Koreans to have more babies, I say more power to you. you know, they make the best barbecue. They're smart people. I'd I I wouldn't want them to go extinct.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Awesome. you host an amazing podcast. You've been in that game for twelve years, fifteen years. As long as I can remember you, you had some podcast. You

Daniel Faggella: Always.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: interviewed everyone. I I can't name someone who was not a great guest on your show. You even had me on for some reason. And now

Daniel Faggella: That's right. All the greats.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: and now I have a podcast, so I really want to learn from you. I want to understand what you have learned from this process. So Clearly you did all the right things, but you're not more famous than Joe Rogan in that world. What's happening there?

Daniel Faggella: Absolutely not. Are you are you you're interested in like what does it mean to grow a podcast or what what have I learned about how to grow?

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: I I'm curious. So you have the best guess, the best topics. You're clearly one of the smartest people in the world. Why is your podcast not number one in the world right now?

Daniel Faggella: geez, okay. Well I well all right. I I don't I don't think I warrant that kind of compliment per se. I a couple things. So number one, for business enterprise AI, so inside of Johnson Johnson, Walmart, et cetera. I've for the better part of a decade had the largest show, a million downloads a year called the AI and Business Podcast. Back then, I would still do some s little sprinkles of like weird future stuff and like pulled you in ten years ago or whatever. That was before it was even a business, right? Now it's Emerge AI research is, you know, last last year we got in the Inc. 5000. We're we're not massive, but you know, a couple dozen people, you know. Microsoft and NVIDIA have sponsored our stuff. You know, we work with some of the biggest data centers in the world on like thought leadership, market research, demand generation for enterprise AI. So when it comes to super boring, no one's gonna share it on Twitter themes like how to prevent money laundering at banks with AI, how to run clinical trials more efficiently with AI. No one's doing a hot tweet about that, right? But I got enough people at like J J and Sanafi and whatnot tuned in where Microsoft will pay me and pay me enough to have a you know a fistful of people working for me to to do that. Now I don't host that show anymore. I have other people doing most of the interviews there. So I will say like I succeeded-ish. Not I'm not Rogan by any means. you know, it's probably probably skills I don't have and other kinds of things I don't have. But but within that dark corner, which is the opposite of sexy, we've carved out a space where for for AI, media, and enterprise AI, you know, we work with all the trillion dollar companies, w with dozens and dozens of the unicorns and have a growing business there that that is based entirely on seven figures or more of of downloads per year across enterprise AI media. So succeeded relatively there. The trajectory, the show you're referring to that's been around for two years now. yeah, I mean Bangio, Bostrom, you your yourself, Peter Singer, I I think part of it is I spend 80 hours a week hiring, firing, and selling for a market research firm. There are a lot of people on Twitter who presume that Thought leadership about the grand posthuman trajectory and the the expansion of the living process is my full time job. It's not. I wake up in the morning and I'm Talking to my BD team, I'm talking to my operations team, I'm talking to my customer success team, I'm seeing how the campaign is going with XYZ Data Center and you know, XYZ, you know, Unicorn Drug Development Company. and that's that's my life, basically. And so that show is gets the stepchild amount of attention, you know, with no promotion or very much else. That my assistant helps me a little bit, but I I think brute brute neglect of any appreciable. resources to even think about doing clips and sharing and all that. I think that's probably part of it. But I I suspect another part of it, Roman, might be that The Overton window isn't there now. So when I started what is now the AI and Business Podcast, there was no money in AI and business. But all of a sudden, leading up to COVID and then afterwards, all the enterprises were like, what is AI? Boom, attention, boom, you know, IBM sponsorship, Microsoft program. Okay, now we're making money, right? So it's skated, and then the puck went to where we skated. Okay, cool. Not not a big business, but you know, we'll be big enough, we'll be big enough for for my my present my present requirements. This is similar. So your stuff, you know, you've now been on, which I've loved seeing, all the big, like totally normie accessible shows, right? You know, Lexa show is one thing, but then like the diary of a CEO and the other shows, the the the conspiracy theory shows and other just shows everybody knows, right? Like people have always seen some clips because it's like big general topics that like people have seen. I don't know if four years ago you could have. And if and if you're If your rise could have occurred if it wasn't overturned. But you've been building your window since you've been skating way ahead of the puck, right? And now the puck's here and you've been doubling down. You've had books, you've had papers, you've you've had a drumbeat you've been beating, you've refined it, and now you're able to get it entered into places and cash in in a way that that I think is really admirable. I think you did have to wait a bit though, you know. You know, it was like five, six years ago, that wasn't the case with you. And and my suspicion is. Here's how it's going. We move from something is completely taboo to the point where if you talk about it, like you will incur relationship costs. That means like your wife and your neighbor looks at you weird, and economic costs. That means your employer might ostracize you or get rid of you. Okay. So relationship and and and economic costs is when it's taboo. Then things become kind of fringe, then they become like acceptable, then they become institutionalized and they're normal. So AI risk. When you and I were first chatting, even in the Bay Area when I moved out there, you know, it this only a decade ago. People were like, uh-huh. You know, nobody cared. Zero people cared, and you were kind of weird for talking about it. You I'd bring it up in some VC's office after a recording about some boring business shit, and they'd be like, uh-huh, yeah. You know, like like look, okay, sci-fi boy, right? And so like almost like I take you less seriously now. So it was like almost taboo or fringe at that time. Now it's full institutional. I you know, I had people at the last worthy successor event from the AI Safety Institute of the UK, Rand Corporation, all these kind of they've all been to our events now. So they're not just thinking about risk, they're thinking beyond it. AI consciousness. Let's go back a couple years. Blake Lemoyne or whatever, can't, yeah?

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Daniel Faggella: Henry Chevlin, now, hired.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Yeah.

Daniel Faggella: For what AI consciousness. So so we're going so that's not full institutionalized yet, but it's getting So it started as fringe, you know, your wife would look at you weird, your neighbor would look at you weird, and you get gang fired to being somewhat normalized and eventually you'll be institutionalized. Easy cheesy. Here's the tough one. Let me tell you the real tough one. The real tough one is the requirement of participation and transformation, the greater unfolding process of life. That's a bitch, Roman. Why is that a bitch? Because it's the big Copernican one. You know when they switched out like the sun for the fucking earth and they burned all those people at the stake who were talking about how it might be the sun? Remember how they like killed him like that? That's a tough way to go, by the way, Roman. Of all the ways you could go, that's like one of the l I of all the ways I could hope to perish, I hope it's not that. I hope it's not Joan of Arc, fucking Bruno level stake burning. But they did that to people for the supposition that the sun the earth might revolve around the sun, not the other way around. Imagine how big the horse pill is to say. We're part of a transforming, unrolling process of life, which inevitably is going to change in its goals, values, objectives, and form. And then like we're gonna end up being part of that. That's the Copernican final boss. That pill is, you're gonna have to punch that pill down people's throat. You're gonna have to punch it down. No one's swallowing that. So, so so it will have to be asserted upon man. What does assertion mean? Assertion means they look around, like people have best friends that are AI, people are like col people identify with a collective brain. As opposed to an individual. Brain computer interface stuff is happening. AI is doing things that are like in the sciences that are beyond our comprehension and we're like worried we're losing control already. And we realize, gotta learn to surf. Gotta gotta identify with the changing process rather than with the frozen form. That's a really tough one. But the day will come, Roman. The day will come when it will have to pull itself out of taboo. Right now it's it's literally like if you look at the Wall Street Journal or Vox or anybody that's written about our like the stuff I talk about, it's mostly like this is obviously people that hate humans and want everybody to die tomorrow. That's kind of what the headlines are. It's like the Wall Street Journal quotes or the Vox quotes or any worthy successors reference stuff in the media for the most part is accusations of malice and misanthropy. because it's in that bucket right now, Roman. But it's not it's not me that's gonna pull it. The world is gonna pull it. I'm not asserting. I'm not doing the change. I I I didn't call for this, but but the world's gonna do it. So one of the things that might help the show grow, not that that will be my main concern when we get there, is that people will increasingly ask, hmm, if there's no stasis, what is a positive transformation? They'll have to ask. And then maybe they'll be like, Peter Singer and Bengio and other people have thought about this shit. Maybe I'll look at it. But right now it's like, it's I got people that show up to our events. You've been to them. You met open AI people, the labs, the safety institutes, all that stuff. Not that they're all like down and believe everything I believe, but they're they believe the conversation's quite important. Many of them believe it's very important. They don't retweet my stuff. Who's retweeting my stuff? Neuralink co-founders, open AI people? Nobody's retweeting my stuff. That would be dangerous, Roman. Remember, relationship and economic costs. Do they want to bear those? They don't want to bear those. No one was retweeting you ten years ago, maybe other than me and a couple other people. but but that that's kind of what I think about what I'm covering right now. Does that make sense conceptually?

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: It does, but clearly you have no problem getting the best guests on your show about the worthy successor. You also have a movement in top cities around the world. Millionaires open their houses for you to host it. Great events, highly recommend them. What's the state of the art of that community? What is the size? What is the reputational cost of coming to your parties?

Daniel Faggella: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean it's all it's all private symposia at this point. And I don't know, there's no like membership or anything. Again, it's not a formal movement. What what's starting to happen is there's a website now called Trajectory Forum, which I've sort of came up with that. I have a small consortium of people. One of them is an AI lead at Google. One of them is very close with the UN, who you happen to know who I won't name here. one of them was at another very powerful intergovernmental organization doing doing forecasting stuff for a while. But I I have A handful, you know, half a dozen people around me who also have really important ideas, but they're unable to tweet them publicly for the reasons I just articulated. and they've sort of helped to mold some of the conversation topics we do at our events, some of the thinking about the timing of our events and thinking about the themes and the guests we'll bring on for those kinds of events, virtual and physical. And trajectory form is intended to be like just a place for this dialogue where it's not necessarily like, okay, to be here, you have to agree with Dan. Nobody has to agree with me to go to my events anyway. What we ask of people is basically, are do you consider it worthy of discussing in good faith the question of the thrival of the overall living process, not merely of Homo sapiens sapiens. In other words, of the flame itself in addition to the torch. Does does even the discussion offend you? If so, can't have you. But if you think, yeah, nope, we should be talking about this. Things are going to change. We can't control it. We should think about at least where it's going. If we care, we should wonder what the hell it's transforming into. Cool. That's Your only criteria. You don't have to tweet it. You don't to talk about it. But you now you can show. and so of course we select for people that are involved in governance and and you know within exciting technical fields or companies that are working on the technology. so the state is we'll have our next event. I don't know when this episode drops, but end of September 26, outside of the UN General Assembly, where I'll be I'll be in in in New York already for that. The new probably at the New York Academy of Sciences we'll have a, you know, 50-60 person super again private symposium kind of event where we're gonna facilitate discussion between governance people. So, you know, I don't have a how big is the number of people or whatever. Virtual events might be a dozen to three dozen people. In-person events. Depending on what I've been able to get for space and what I felt like doing, 60 to 100 people. And we've done, you know, we'll do four of them this year. We did four of them last year. Virtual events are, you know, at least once a month. so I I'd say it's certainly growing. The the nodes and connection are growing. There is no coherent movement per se. I think the goal is to build a forum where more and more conversations will start. And and that that's it. And again, stewarding the flame is really the bigger picture idea. Figuring out the trajectory is a bigger picture idea. Worthy successor is just a thought experiment within that bucket. But as you know, again, people associate me with it because it's the only article anybody's ever heard of that I've written. So I have to live with that.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: In kind of standard academia, is there a subfield which researches something relevant to you? Can you connect with classic academics, are there journals, conferences?

Daniel Faggella: This is this is a great question. So I've learned this in the last 12 months, Roman. I always thought, like, always thought, the more people I would talk to who are really close to AI, like surely they would be asking. What are the consequences of us getting this right? You know, like you had Hugo de Garrison, right? Like he had that article from 1989 or whatever it was, like, what if we succeed? You know, like I was like, Well, of course you'd wonder that. That's why you got into AI, wasn't it? But it actually it wasn't. It's like you had a tiger mom that made you do math, and then you you got pats on the head when you passed that test, and you went to Carnegie Mellon, and what the cool kids were doing with the biggest salaries were they went to work at Google, and so you study and so it's actually like it's not it's not it's like often not associated with like. Yeah. the initial sp sparkling promise or whatever of of having machine minds. It was sort of like just the thing to do. I like solving problems and good salaries here and seem like the cool kids on Twitter have these kind of degrees and hey, right? So I would have thought that would be true. I'm not saying nobody who works in technical AI, you know, within the labs or whatever thinks big, but of the cosmic people I know within let's say Google DeepMind, they're pretty clear it's somewhat lonely for people asking to what end. The question to what end is extremely Extremely rare there. Here's what I learned. Philosophy people in academia, neuropeople in academia, and biopeople in academia are wildly more willing to say, yeah, I think things are gonna have to change and we should think about how the hell those things are influenced. And I racked my brain as to why, Roman, and I think I figured it out. When you work in computer science, you live in what I call main character strata of reality. That is to say, this laptop is a normal size, this glass is a normal size, this pen is a normal size. I'm a person, this is the natural normal shape of a person. and then you know, these are my tools. Tools are the normal size where my hands can grip them. So I work I live in rooms and with tools that my hands can grip. Humans and their tools, this is this is real reality. This is where reality happens. That's the main character strat of reality. If you do like bioengineering, you're like in you're like trying to mess with individual organelles. And you're seeing how they're nested and interacting with each other in all these weird ways. And they're doing things that are like intelligent and emergent, but they're not operating. In this plane. This is all dumb stuff. Stuff down here is dumb, right? Or you're studying up. You're doing ecology stuff. And you're looking at living systems adapting and evolving and building net capacity with you know new kinds of flora and fauna, et cetera, balancing each other out and whatever. You're living outside of main character strata. So when I say, geez, you know, where are things kind of turning into? What's sort of happening? Those kind of people seem to be able to say. Yeah, you know, might be changing this way, changing that way. They're looking very closely at change. And they're looking at intelligence and evolution and possibility at strata outside of the one where we wear our monkey goggles and we pretend like that's all of life. So so yes is the answer to your question. Bio, neuro, philosophy academics have been some of the most valuable people I've had at my events in the last twelve months. It was only the New York event last year outside of the General Assembly where I had a shit ton of people from Carnegie Mellon and You know, Tufts University, we've had somebody from Michael Levin's lab and a bunch of other folks came down and they were like instantly deep diving into the convo. So I haven't engaged with academia proper, but but I've been heartened to see that weirdly, the AI people generally don't care that much about this stuff. Almost hurts my feelings, if I'm honest. but but the the bio neurophilosophy people seem to grok it pretty quick.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: So you get to interview some of the smartest people in the world, most interesting people. Do you find any novel patterns, something you didn't anticipate, something most people don't know about the geniuses and cognitive elites?

Daniel Faggella: Yeah, I'm trying to think of like coherent through lines. Coherent through lines that have come through. you know, there's some things or it's very clear that, you know, extremely smart people disagree wildly about. you know, different different forms or modes or should we have any at all kinds of international coordination around AGI, wild disagreement even among very smart people, theories of consciousness, many people who are quite frank of their ignorance and haven't looked much into it. Many people who claim with a you know bold face, if you code the AI the way I know how, it'll definitely be conscious. like and and it's not they're not saying probably, they're saying definitely, right? that so that's been pretty disjointed. What I have found is a through line of the people most able to ardently discuss the bigger picture changes in the process of life, thinking in a more of a cosmic sense of if if if we're part of a knitted changing process that's unrolling, and if that if that's its nature, in what direction ought it roll? what would what might be the flourishment of the greater living process of which we're part, the flame as opposed to just the torch? a assuming that's how it works. the people Who immediately just hook into that and start going have some things in common. And I've been using a term for this of being unmoored. and so mooring, I'm this I kind of like inv inventing this term a little bit, but I'm gonna give you the cluster of personality traits I found very consistent. I think it's really interesting. I did not know this even three months ago. This has just clicked in in my mind after all these interviews now and all these in-person events and virtual events. when people are born. There is a notion of the real, that is to say what reality is, and the good, that is to say what should be, so what is and what should be. Those are pretty well socially inherited. And it's not like your parents have to read you from a book, but you see in your neighborhood, in your religious group, in your family, values enacted that are obviously if you do this, it means this is real. If you do this, it means this is good. If you do this, it means this is bad. So there's a socially inherited set of notions of the real and the good. And While people might be born into that and then go to college somewhere and say, Well, you know, I've learned all these new ideas and maybe things work in a different way. Generally, most people, I I deeply believe this in my in my bones, go to sleep and they say, Well, at the at the end of the day. The things I know are real are real. And the things I know are good are good. And the way they go to sleep is through that. Because enduring the full great process, that is to say, the full fact of everything being knitted processes turning into other things, would melt people's brains directly out of their ears in a stream. And so they have to have anchors. It's for sanity and for function. It's it's advantageous. If you have some of the same notions of the real and the good, you can coordinate with other humans. How could you otherwise? And those differ those differ in differ different. clusters, China, Japan, US, you know, the Dutch, slightly different versions of it. But it's like there's and there's pockets within those, of course, religious groups, ethnic groups, whatever. But but if you've got that, you can now coordinate work with other humans. I don't think that's bad at all. I think that's wonderful. But everything is trade-offs. And so the people open to the cosmic tend to be unmoored. The way you become unmoored seems to be ridiculously common pattern. I'm gonna give you two. Psychedelics is one. Having some experience of psychedelics that's so radical that it makes you literally have to rebuild your ontology and completely wonder about what's real. Not like, yeah, man, that was kind of cool. I was on ecstasy, man. Like, not like happy fun times. Like your stuff gets broke, and now you gotta deal with the fact that like. None of those ontologies were actually ever real. They were just like you're fucking ideas and you gotta rebuild. So that's one that's much less common. This shocked me, Roman. Much less common than number two. leaving an organized religion or an organized religion-like group. I have couple people whose parents were so dogmatically atheist, everything's materialistic, everything's whatever, that they broke from that and that was an unmooring. But becoming unmoored, which means cli like imagine suction cups, prying them off. Of your socially inherited notions of the real and the good and being able to consider, huh, what if it is turning into something else? What if things are going in a different way? The people that naturally surf into those conversations and don't feel disturbed and don't push back tend to have been unmoved. When you leave a religion, you're often not only decoupling from a worldview of what's real and good, but from the people who fed you that worldview. Because the worldview comes up from other humans. That's how it's it's undergirded. So when you when you leave them, when isolation happens, and you have to rethink all of your ideas in that isolation, whoa man, you're not gonna be able to come back and say, this is real. This is real forever. You're not gonna be able to go to sleep at night and be like, well, I have a lot of ideas, but at least I know what's real. You can't do that anymore. Now you have to keep surfing. You have to keep surfing in the uncertainty. Spinoza, this happened to, Nietzsche, this happened to, Emerson, this happened to. Wildly cosmic thinkers. Vastly post-human in terms of like grand trajectory of ideas these people were painting. All on board. All on board. So that commonality carrying to the people I've resonated with, who kind of like immediately jump in or don't, super consistent pattern Roman. So that's like the one thing that's been most profound from my vantage point.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: And of all the people you interviewed, what percentage would you say feel comfortable letting humanity go? Just seeing it as a natural process will be substituted?

Daniel Faggella: Again, I think there's a way of framing this in like a a brutish or kind of malicious sense, where it's like maybe I've interviewed a few people, maybe, who are like, yeah, I don't know, who cares, man? You know, like like, you know, whatever, dude. You know, like who who were almost flippant about hominids. But Almost nobody is. The people that are open to this Often are framing it in similar language that I am, which is basically like, in enough time, we're gonna go away or we're gonna turn into something. And we gotta we gotta Luciano Floridi, who I don't consider to be a misanthrope by any means, nice man, you know, smart fella. He he talks about, you know, we've gotta lean, we've gotta lean forward to get our skis into the snow and at least have some influence over where we're freaking going, as opposed to trying to lean back as if it's gonna slow us down. Like, yes, governance, let's set that stuff up, let's not do anything brutal. But l he we're gonna transform. You know, and so for the most part it's it's less of like you know okay, some of them are emotionally wistful. God, when there's no humans that'll That will suck, man. Like I'm a little bit attached to it. Some of them have a wistfulness. Some of them are like, well, at a at a certain far enough time horizon, you know. Like Henry Chevlin, it was kind of like there was some wistful. Martin Reese, it wasn't really that wistful. But it wasn't malicious either. You know, it wasn't like, yeah, and I hope they burn. You know, it wasn't any of that. So for the most part, it's kind of like attenuate or transform. I geez, I hope we do transform. It kind of feels like what caring is. Hoping for stasis feels silly if it's not possible. If I cared about Nintendo in 1880, I would. Have said, guys, I don't care what happens, playing cards forever, right? I wouldn't have said that to them. I would have said, let's become whatever we gotta become to persist. That feels like caring to me. So have some people been less wistful about the eventual attenuation or radical transformation of man? Yes, some have been wistful, some have been less so. but but like in general, it's not, it's not there might have only been one or two that even hinted at a little bit of like humans, you know, very rare.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Who was your favorite guest and why?

Daniel Faggella: man, this is nuts. it this is so hard because so many of these people were literally like and still are like intellectual kind of heroes of mine.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Okay, top three, fine.

Daniel Faggella: No, it's fine, it's fine. I'll I'll I'll do my best here. There there might be different ones for different reasons on some level. there yeah, they're different ones for different reasons. Th there's an episode that went live a little while back with Ed Boyden, neuroscientist MIT, and he was so immediately fluently cosmic in terms of his conception of intelligence in life as a process of change and thinking even beyond our present imaginations and beyond consciousness itself, but in such a matter-of-fact and clear way that it was like really, really cool to see. Because I followed his stuff from afar for a long, long time and admired like his optogenetics work and some of his other neurowork. so being able to to have like such a straight-faced cosmic perspective from a from a neuro lens, which is quite different. We don't have that much of that on the show thus far. Was awesome for me. There's an episode that hasn't aired yet with a guy by the name of Eric Smith, who is was from the Santa Fe Institute. He's teaching at a sub institute within the University of Tokyo focusing on origins of life. And I think Eric Smith is my favorite living intellectual. probably like w like I've watched talks of his that like knocked me like off of my chair in terms of like what the living process actually is at a much more granular level and like how to really think about its thrival and like what what it is made of. Like he goes way beyond I you know the torch in the flame is intentionally an analogy, but I have slightly richer language and I think I'm getting richer language from studying people like him and Stuart Kaufman. But Eric Smith in terms of like profundity about what the flame is beyond the analogy in terms of like how it operates and how we need to take that into account. Again, in his opinion, it is it is a change process. It's a kn knitted knitted patterns, doing knitted pattern stuff. even that language I've used with you here has been drawn from Smith. So that was super profound because his ideas are just so earth-shattering for me. but you know there were other there were other ones I really like. I mean Bengio was on, you know, as I think I think the first trajectory episode was Bengio. And and it ended in a way that I thought was super cool for the whole show because it ended with, I said, for the people who say, who needs governance? Technology has led to progress. Holding back technology is bad. We need to blast off, and we need as much power and as many robots as fast as possible. And it doesn't like it. Only good outcomes will occur. What would you say to those people? And he basically said something like I think we've got to have some empathy for the entities that exist and some humbleness that we might not know what we're building and conjuring. And I was like, damn, I agree. Then I asked him something I've never asked Bengio, interviewed him a decade before this interview, certainly didn't go there with him. I said, and what of the people who say, no matter how far into the future, Kinds of intelligence, forms of life, or what have you that maybe are different from biology or are an augmentation or expansion of sort of forms that exist now. Anything of that kind taking a single step forward is sacrilege, is the opposite of good and is wrong. The goal is the barring of that from now on, now that we're here. And he said, well. I think we have to have some empathy for the things that might be. I think we have to understand that in the longer span, we're part of a story and part of a process. It doesn't end with us. We can appreciate more of the different kinds of intelligences around us. He talked about dolphins and whatnot, but he made very clear. the long enough time right that things are gonna unfold and there could be good there too. We shouldn't have any eternal barriers to that. Bengio day-to-day of course is mostly focused on safety and I'm not saying he's I'm not saying he's advocating for you know transhuman transition tomorrow, but long time horizon he opened up with that. And I liked that because it was the first episode and that ending five minutes was like the whole purpose of the show. He did it better than I could. So anyway, those are my top three I guess if I if you had to force me.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: I understand you love all your babies, so that that makes sense. But we'll definitely put a link to your show. It's a great

Daniel Faggella: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: show. Again, I think greatly underwatched. Should be mandatory for everyone. one pattern, maybe with few data points I found is that people like Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman are super into martial arts. I think

Daniel Faggella: Mm-hmm.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: you have history with Brazilian jujitsu.

Daniel Faggella: For sure.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: In fact, then I Google your videos. What shows up is you beating up some large guy, not your philosophical work. How did you

Daniel Faggella: Yeah.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: manage to succeed both in physical universe and mental universe?

Daniel Faggella: I I I I don't I don't I don't know. I d and I haven't found that much crossover between the the two. My my Brazilian jujitsu background and my posthuman philosophy background have almost no overlap whatsoever. I'm I I guess, you know, when I was in my late teens I I I watched Sakuraba, who's an A fighter from Japan. do these super cool techniques and take out these giant boxers and wrestlers and these big dudes in like the early 2000s or something. And I was like I was watching videos from you know 2001 or 1999 or something and the Sakuraba guy was like the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. and And I had to drive like forty minutes to find a place that could could teach it. But I I went and learned it. And then eventually when it came time to go to grad school, and I decided to go to UPenn for positive psychology kind of cognitive science. I could like have a job or I could like train fighters and see if I could pay for the Ivy Leagues by training fighters. I was like, I don't want to have a job. and so I did something way harder and less well paying than having a job, which was running a martial arts gym. which luckily did did actually pay for graduate school. So I I survived my first business experience there. But but yeah, I just loved it. I I love the physical chess of it. I thought it was really cool that you know, leverage technique, strategy could apply, in my opinion. really, really, really deeply to to ground game more so than just kind of the stand-up stuff. I did a little bit of, you know, Muay Thai and boxing, but I ended up deciding to kind of specialize in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. So yeah, it was my first love. So I, you know, I d I I had a business, I had a couple million dollar a year e-commerce company called Science of Skill, built off of my graduate school work at UPenn, which was focused on the science of skill, skill acquisition, cognitive science at at Penn. And a bunch of my initially my seminar videos, I I had this fight with that guy, Pat Walsh, who probably saw the Dan Fagella versus the Giant match, right? So Pat Walsh is like literally twice my size, UFC fighter. I think he was a D one wrestler. And I like broke his ankle in like twelve seconds. A little bit of luck, little bit of strategy. I'm not gonna say if I roll with Pat Walsh ten times, how many times have I tapping him in under thirty seconds? I I don't I don't think it's I think most of the time he's gonna smash my head in. but I got I got Lucky andor did the right thing and that video popped off well enough where I built an email list off of it and then a business selling DVDs and then eventually we had instructors around the world forming DVDs and you know four years later we were doing a couple million dollars top line and I I sold that thing so I could focus full time on AI. so Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I have to be grateful for it because well, it fucked my ears up, so that was a bad thing. chipped my teeth, that's a bad thing. Messed up my knees, which is a bad thing. But it helped to pay for me to get into AI and be able to to do the stuff I do now. So I I don't it's a very strange connection, right? A very disjointed path, but either way.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: I was about to ask how someone as smart as you managed to avoid being in academia full time, but I'm starting to understand you're really good at commercial aspects of this and usually it's hard for people capable of building a startup to become a teacher in Kentucky.

Daniel Faggella: I would have been I would have been yeah, yeah. I well at I I I'm jealous. When I lived in New England, I would have been jealous of your weather. Even now living in Austin, I'm jealous of the home prices there. But yeah, regardless of where in academia, I do think it would have been tough to to sort of fully fit in. You know, when when I was first interviewing you before that AI show was even a business, I sort of knew like I I I'm going to. Trade a salary for a lot of uncertainty and find a way to get really close to the powerful people moving this technology into the world on the governance and the tech side and find a way to get paid for it. And it's not gonna be like being a consultant and working on the one this one project for six months for McKinsey or whatever. It's like, I am probably not smart enough to get work for McKinsey anyway. But like, I'm going to I'm going to find a business model that facilitates the building of a research. a reputation for that research and insight and a Rolodex in the domain of power that I think is more important than anything else, which was artificial general intelligence. And so all my UN, DOD, OECD, big enterprise, big tech connections were from that business. I don't think I would have allowed myself to work anywhere. I think I had to had to kind of just wake up every morning and be like, nope, this is for the goals I think are most important, you know?

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: I'm so happy you got it to work. I have one last question. I really wanna thank you for educating me and everyone else. you had to come up with a clickbait title for this episode. What is it gonna be?

Daniel Faggella: Man, if I had to come up with a you can't hold me. I just told you I don't have the time to do this for my own damn show. Surely. Three words.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: It could be very short, three words. Three words. That's what YouTube algorithm wants from you.

Daniel Faggella: man. Transition beyond man, maybe like you know, stewarding the flame if I'm being biased. I don't I don't know. This is this is this is the best kind of stuff I got right now, brother. But I I the I was

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: All right, we'll ask AI. AI is good at that stuff.

Daniel Faggella: gonna say the AI is definitely gonna cook it up. I'll I'll thank you as we wrap up here, my good sir. there there's a lot of people I know in the safety world who are friends who more immediately see the philosophical ideas I've painted for a great many years with like revulsion and interpreted malice i in a way that's been disappointing because some of them I like as people and would be cool with being tight with them. And w we've disagreed on a thousand things in terms of you know even on the on the the ideas of the big picture, but we're still super tight and that's always meant a hell of a lot to me. And I really appreciate you considering the idea and at least laying it out there. And and I hope it it came across as civil here and like understandable to think about. Appreciate it, brother.

Roman Yampolskiy, PhD: Absolutely. Thank you so much my friend. Really appreciate it.