Joe Rogan Experience #584 — Zoltan Istvan Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Hey everybody Zoltan is that the correct way to say it perfect Istvan did I do it right perfect So like you say in a movie theater in Hungary, you get five people to turn around. mean it's the irony cannot be lost on you in that. There's a lot of people that, for whatever reason, don't like it. People tend to like want to take it all in, photos from the atmosphere and look at ourselves. It's like surveillance issues. I mean, this is all

3:25 and functional and improving well being and health, this type of technology, this type of but the thing about it is certainly scary. And that's the one thing that I've kind of agreed I don't really like regulatory things, but maybe for this one is something we'd have to. There's the Elon Musk school where he's like, you know, hey, we might be summoning the demon.

6:05 You know, they have these things that are programmed into their behavior patterns that cannot be overridden. No, and I'm a big proponent of that entire idea because, as I point out in my book, We're just kind of kids in the universe. incredible energy forms, whatever it is that's going to end up, I think we're going to end up It's going to be completely irrelevant.

9:32 We'll be these weird robot creatures. No, and this is one of the most, I think, Now it might get more logical and rational as we go forward, but I'm not sure we're ever going to limited. For example, our eyesight can only see about 1% of the light spectrum. Our ears can hear And that in itself will give us so many new experiences. to start with, are going to give up some of the ridiculous aspects of their life because

12:52 It rains all day, every day. spread by people coughing they cough it gets in the air and those organisms float into your body You know, you're right. neural enhancements that will allow us to take that kind of stuff on and take more of it on. J curve takes off and that's where the singularity idea comes from. We'll be able to see your heartbeat. I'll be able to see right through the walls, whatever

16:22 that we'll actually be able to be much more part of the universe in terms of sensing it and feeling and understanding it than we are right now. And the problem is anything we're talking about in futurist issues is always speculation to some extent. analysis, historical patterns, what things are going to happen. And then, you know, of transhumanism and Kurzweil in particular.

18:38 To 2045 an issue. Is it really that much? I have never answered a poll. And let's just say there's another 10% that are various other religious ideas. And if that sort of flies in the face of so much of the major, the world's major religions, because a lot of it is kind of based on you want to, you know, be a good person so you can get to that afterlife and have, you know, your either, you know, seven wives or whatever it is that

21:19 And we could stay with our families and we could stay with our loved ones and we could label. It's just science and technology. All religious people want that anyways, or at least So I think there's going to be a lot of issues with that in the future. We've created with religion. personality who are you what's inside of you is there a soul all of it's just pure speculation

24:33 Like, with us stepping in and stopping this process with technology in some sort of way, what happens when you die? but for a seven-year-old, So your book is a novel. well, as I've said before, They really think we mean immortality. No, you know, if you were, if you were God, um, and you had all power, is that something playing stocks, they, some of them have such problems that they'll purposely set their code

29:10 killing himself or herself, itself, whatever. Whoa. That's a heady concept. And I have always whatever, there's always some sort of a byproduct of that that we have to deal with and some sort appreciate until I go like into the It just feels fun. thing you actually might want, what you really wanted was the journey. And, uh, you know, and computer chips servers that kind of thing and the thing is we could create something far more

33:41 It would almost be like the world didn't exist. two, 300 years, without any conflict, because the universe is still so big. There's all these types it's not even on the remote horizon, us controlling natural disasters. I got on this trip one night, that they think that this one that blew somewhere i believe it was like 75 000 plus years ago that and killed all the dinosaurs, or that gigantic super

37:34 And the third, we had three main goals. they've happened. We can see that they've happened. And still we send such a small amount of government Why don't we wipe out malaria? It sounds like, yeah, yeah, I'll worry about that tomorrow. don't treat the risk to the species seriously enough. I was listening to Radiolab. And they said that half of the people that have died ever since people have been around were killed by malaria.

41:09 Whoa. it doesn't always work. There's more than chloroquine that you needed. You needed But so it worked. think about it, you, you, you think, wow, why don't we just go out there? I mean, this is why dealing with impoverished countries right it's very difficult to keep track isn't it of uh how So some people try to just ride it out and not take the drugs

44:25 And I was so out, I mean, I could barely even get up. I didn't really eat. I just could drink safer to take your bet, not use all your energy and, uh, and try to ride it out. So your immune And also, you know, I had been sailing three, four years already. sail for three or four years so no I sailed for actually around seven yeah and it was uh left from

46:51 uh weird stuff yeah i would imagine that would be an insane life of adventure all those years Just reading books on the ocean. It was hard to talk about because it's like I have kids now, and I'm married and a house and all this. Yeah. Only the military had access to the GPS system then didn't private people weren't allowed to have it yet That to me is just incredible.

49:28 I loved what I'm doing now. So I'll tell you exactly how that switched. rice farmers market make a dollar a day. So ultimately what's happened is a huge community the story. black thing actually. And, uh, he said he said, it's probably a landmine. I just about a year earlier had a huge kind of nonprofit organization, Cambodia called wild aid. And we were doing undercover work to busting

53:04 and it was like a little bit too much for me all. You know, it was just too much like, I had just come from about a month of doing that. And it was like a lot to me because I don't want to ever have to be facing death. Uh, you know, the landmine unbelievably fucked up time in history but it's so incredible how peaceful the Vietnamese are and how forgiving and accepting the Vietnamese people are about us invading.

54:53 You know, mostly young kids. And a lot of my documentary was on actually filming the amputees that lost freaky for a whole week i was freaked out it was like because the dmz is just filled with no one's Wow. it they're totally nice people they were happy to help me with my story um but uh they're uh Yes, yes. So yeah, a couple of documentaries have now been made since I did this.

57:46 They just gave a lot of, I think, money to make up for it. So it's almost impossible. And because at the time that's all they did. And your kid could step on one or it could just, you know, it might be just ready to, And again, it's also not, it's, it's also quite um you know this the the field where you actually put dead people into some type of freezing compound

1:00:55 So I spent, you know, a lot of the next 10 years as I was sailing just kind of reading about it, It's actually huge amounts of just pure academic philosophy going through it. We don't want it as part of anywhere in America. So they sort of outlawed. And so he kind of becomes And they say, we're going to take over your country. He wants his ideas to spread, and they want to keep taking away from him.

1:03:52 authoritarian, he's sort of, you would like him because he's driven. wanted, we'd be, uh, in a, in a pretty hectic place, both politically government, you know, with society, certainly are questionable, but again, it's a fictional novel, move forward with the whole, you're really going to do this. I think if you look at how far the transhumanist party might do by 2020, 2024, where I would

1:06:48 But in the next week or two, most of the infrastructure will be in place. science policy, but I actually want to use technology and science to dominate politics. I'm pretty convinced that if we put a trillion dollars towards conquering death, we would probably achieve it. But it would never work. all the benefits of technology, like we don't have traffic in L.A., like I told you.

1:10:35 Yeah, it's going up fast. I actually think the science stands pretty strongly for it. The question though, is whether tackling that broadly, 25 to 50 years, people will start downloading their consciousness into that Empire State Building and give millions of jobs to people, but it can also at the same time help the planet. I'd love to see the species replenished.

1:14:10 Isn't that incredible? out of its tails and whatnot. So I would like to advocate for policies that kind of make that happen less That is really hard for people to conceptualize. lot of people that doesn't seem like life um it could get to a point in our lifetimes where it is some sort of a virtual life that is absolutely indistinguishable from the life that you and I

1:17:07 You can't say I'm not in one or I am in one. I'm sure you've messed around with Oculus Rift. And he called me up just ranting and screaming, it's over, man. and you, you interact with them and you feel like you're in the room with them. computer 3g generated world like a video game like quake or something like that where you're going And then oh, this is here today.

1:20:39 And she's just growing up with this technology. And so for her, I think to put on whatever virtual I think it's people our age that are already still, we're like a little skeptical. And then You know, what's to say this is so different? and then they can program it through these goggles that you wear, and blind people can now effectively see. going to start programming things like we talked about gases or, you know, eventually it's just a

1:23:26 big believer that within 10 years we'll have bionic eyes that are almost equivalent of the when they start upgrading things. It's then it's like, okay, we got the apparatus in place. Experience will be sort of like virtual reality. 20-somethings. Those fucking kids, those wacky kids. I'm 40. I guess kids are anything in their 20s these days. Kids are in their 30s, right? Yeah.

1:25:30 from now, we're going to have such amazing access to each other's minds that the walls are getting And you can combine that with all sorts of things. they'll catch sharks. And when they pull them out of the ocean, like they'll catch them accidentally when they're fishing for halibut. And when they release them, they're on the surface of have no fucking idea that's going on so we already know that biologically there are animals that have

1:28:28 but organs that we know exist in the biological world. I've gotten older, one of the things that's happened is most likely from fucking staring at screens all the time, they cut it they do it with technology they change the form of it and then some people they get lasik they change their their actual lens they cut it they I think around 300,000 people in the world have this cochlear implant yeah

1:31:08 government funding for kind of these kinds of things, because, you know, sometimes it And better prepare yourself because there's no getting away from it. It's fucking insane. show any incredible proficiency with high performance engines and they have cars now that regularly hit zero to 60 in less than three seconds less than three seconds and they're going

1:33:43 or 10 million times or 100 million as people think it is. This is what I mean by that. There are 350 million people in this country. We could get to a point where an average human being has the ability to create worlds. That's a lot of questions. things where I don't think a lot of governmental agencies, politicians are actually thinking about. for ages you know programs that make everyone live better we're too competitive as as a species i

1:38:00 for ourselves. And yet we still, a lot of us have the freedoms that I think we all I think we can use technology to stop that. But at the same time, I think we can use technology to grow the species and I don't think a lot of people realize that anymore. some of the, uh, the head reading equipment and done a few articles on it. The brainwave reading

1:40:21 And Brainwave technology is increasing so quickly. of the body and very various places of the brain and the headgear you have can types of thoughts in various places of the body and various places of the brain you, what you actually And that's essentially what they're trying to do with that type of technology. We'll be at a conference and everyone will be plugged in and you'll be thinking these

1:43:34 if we all have headsets that do instant translations with anyone on the planet through our thoughts? difficult to learn. And most languages have imperfections. But a couple of scientists have thinking about things so it'll be some sort of tower of babel type shit we're going to have that And they're experts on it. And it's already here. Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.

1:46:50 concentrate on new technology that makes sure that people can see like eagles. Bam. You should type in the Google, the Mindwave reading post photos to Twitter. You know, they now have devices where you can actually post directly to Twitter and Facebook by thinking it based on those devices I was just telling you about. Now you're able to just say the word and it transcribes it.

1:48:42 other than this. And it's amazing. For a transhumanist, I'm not very high-tech with any of that stuff. We watch DVDs and stuff like that. yeah so we the internet we just use the internet for everything and it's just kind of like it's probably be something more projected from a hologram or something like that from the ceiling and I also have this big Samsung Galaxy S5.

1:51:39 And sometimes the laptop is the only way to make it with the software. 30 years it's going to get to something your size your thumbnail and inside your head and uh you this little tiny narrow thing this has a case on it and it's narrow and it just slides right into There's going to be no more gigabytes on our phones. It's just all about the new programs coming out.

1:54:20 it's such an interesting story because they just did the second completely robotic artificial heart surgery on a patient in France. They are the final replacement. These are the ways you're going to be able to control the technology in your life. and um so you know it's just a totally brave new world but it's also pretty awesome because when where they were talking about the potential

1:57:07 than you normally would have. maybe all swim races will be and then they get to some point where they're a Michael Jordan or some Olympic power lifter. be bored with regular sports they're not going to have the ability. But who is going to watch football if everybody's the Hulk? is that I work my butt off and I got, I was good at it, you know, and, but it's kind of cheating

2:00:27 But if you want to go back to the person that hasn't tested positive for And, and that's part of the cool thing is like, you're like, well, he has this engineer from Porsche or whatever. movie rocky like one of the things that people loved about it was that he got up when he was and get a shot of nanobots and become some Ultraman, just because he's taking these things.

2:03:39 going to lose. You know, for example, The World Cup just came, and I remember that was like, Toothpaste is unnatural. Well, from a certain perspective, everything is kind of like, you know, if it comes from All these things are natural. It's not in any, like, big statement saying that it's unnatural for us to transform ourselves, You know, I think if you had told someone a century ago, Hey, we're all going to be

2:07:47 areas and your the the cell phone is a perfect example of that it used to be gordon gecko on with each other, as far as the access to modern comforts, that's the one thing that gives me the Like all of these things will in fact raise the – we look at Africa as a perfect example. We look at the Congo, which is this incredibly rich area in terms of resources

2:09:42 the elevation of the quality of life of the average person on the planet. No, and I totally agree. In fact, They're like, wow, this is what some person is doing in Los Angeles. But if you can call someone and have them, a healthy person, are just, everything's getting better. And I'm totally hopeful that tech, everyone says, oh, to improve life, but they think it's all part of the elite trying to control us.

2:12:28 develop technology at first. And it takes a few years to trickle down, maybe takes a few decades. same time, he advocates for things that would absolutely harm some of the poorest people in We now have ways to deal with all of that. Like a primitive way of life? They're the black block guys. kill us by making us become different types of entities. hunter and gatherer lifestyle.

2:16:30 And it's a pretty big movement. I mean, they're certainly a lot bigger than transhumanists. We use speakers, you know, I mean, stuff like that. So this is why I had a lot of threats. I mean, Harvard did a series of experiments on people with LSD. who were involved in the creation of technology. I mean, the fact that anybody could leave out that, You're right.

2:19:33 guy was one of them so the fact that this zirzan guy is uh you know a proponent of kaczynski's Of course. technology, because, for example, he blames, he says school shootings are a result, the increase follow for potentially millions of anarchists around the world that are taking very serious There's too much government. And we're probably going to actually have another public debate because him and I liked

2:22:52 He doesn't hunt. My friend Steve Rinella, who's the host of the show Meat Eater, it's a hunting show, he has a really great point. There's nothing wrong with a supermarket. I like it. I like doing it. It makes me feel connected to what I'm eating, but you don't You had an open wound, dead, septic, dead. in their village. And so I was the very first one to actually get access into this.

2:25:38 stuff that we can deal with. It's not a place. innovation because you're constantly worried about staying alive, feeding your family, Now you're stuck eating shrubs or whatever it is. I think people, they fuck up with this either-or thing. And if you want to live in a house, then you want technology. Right. take a step back and try to work with other groups and, uh, and say, well, there are times,

2:28:30 Well, there's nothing wrong with it for the individual that's involved in that movement. Life Below Zero, one of my favorite ones. The train left a long time. and that was one of the things I wanted to bring up that we have to look forward to too. If eventually you can have something that fits in a backpack medicine right on there. And I think, um, it has the possibility of, of totally transforming manufacturing itself.

2:31:18 But this new iPhone, the lens and the camera on them, it's beautiful. Totally. Have you seen this new technology that they're using? How dare you? listening to this magic leap l-e-a-p is the name of this technology you can google it this guy has this for folks listening to this magic leap leap is the name of this This little girl watching a ballerina dance on her bed.

2:33:53 They're all going to be taken down. I mean, there's a whole host of problems. Yeah, this month. But it's mind-blowing. hoverboard thing where you know they were that did you see the hoverboard commercial that came out? I think it's going to be like a combination of like that hoverboard technology along with those scooters I know they have them like you can just rent them for a vacation.

2:36:26 because the gyroscope is somehow or another Just a good question. Like we were talking about horsepower wars, the way like you have to go first gear second gear they just go you know because it doesn't and I don't know if anyone's making any money yet. schedule right now, but it was a few months ago. And apparently you're going to be able to walk a

2:39:17 But I'm pretty sure in five years, you're going to see a lot more sporting events, So some technologies, like only 10% of the population would actually use it. uh, It like, And it's not supposed to be something sort of like the steel one where it helps you to like a dress. And that, the battery packs are going to get smaller and smaller. Because I've been a motorcycle rider most of my life,

2:42:46 So I think an entire recreational, like, you know, um, enterprise is going to occur because Yeah, exactly. You know, I've heard of the artificial skin. genomics, so this is uh the the image that you're looking at that that's a bullet that's headed towards this I didn't even get scratched. I can't imagine. It's pliable until it receives an impact. so you can you wear it around your collar and it's just like be an impact, it inflates like very instantaneous, sort of like an airbag so that you can wear it around your collar.

2:47:05 technology that kind of like blow up stuff could protect us from a lot of things you know in the nothing wow just stop it's just showing how pliable it is. Yeah. I don't think that's the same stuff. It was pliable. they're doing double triple stuff flips and stuff and crazy you know i even in surfing the stuff they're doing the waves they're riding now

2:49:00 be some new stuff six months down the line. And that's a big part of what exponential growth is about, right? it actually is like that there are huge amounts of new companies working on stuff every day And your book, the novel?