May 10, 2026
"So, what I notice when you talk with people is you seem like a tough guy, but you're really sensitive."
"You're an incredible listener, obviously. You learn all these things and you're putting together—this is my impression—a kind of map of the world, a map of knowledge through all these different people's eyes. My question for you is: how do you see culture shifting? Because I think you're really sensitive to it, and you're kind of like one of these signal fish—you notice what's happening in the environment and you're going to guide the school of fish accordingly. Do you think the culture is shifting toward better use of these exceptional — or natural — capacities that we already have, or do you think we're shifting away from it and we're going to run away in fear?"Says Julia Mossbridge, a cognitive neuroscientist, beginning her interview with Joe Rogan by asking him a question.Rogan gives a good answer:"Okay. So, I think that because of conversations like the ones that you've had and the ones that I've had—the ones that are available online—I think people get a much deeper understanding of so many different topics and so many different things than has ever been available through whatever you want to call the mainstream media.When you have these inherent prejudices in higher learning—whether it's people that don't want to be foolish, so they don't want to entertain certain notions, or they don't want to accept certain things because it goes against what they've taught and what they've written about—we have a problem of ego and ego becoming a wall to gathering more information or getting a better, more detailed map of the landscape. I think there's way more people who are pondering these ideas, and having these conversations, and thinking about these things than has ever before. And I think that's one of the really beautiful things about the internet. The internet has made much more information available, and many more people are thinking about these things in ways that, if you were in an environment where your career depended upon you following certain lines and certain narratives, you wouldn't pursue that, because that would be detrimental to your own personal interest. Like if you wanted to get ahead in academia and all of a sudden you're talking about psychics and premonitions, people are like, 'Oh, Julia's a fucking loon.' But you're courageous, and you see value in these things. And because you can come on here and talk about it instead of just addressing a class or selling a book that's going to reach a few thousand people, we can have a conversation where 10 million people are going to listen. And so then those 10 million people are going to go to work and tell their friends, 'Hey, you know that feeling that you get where sometimes you know something's going to happen and it happens? Like that might be real. And there was this lady on the Joe Rogan podcast...' And so that opens up people to this idea that you don't have to worry about being a fool—because that's what a lot of people worry about. It was a big hurdle talking about aliens and UFOs. All my life I've always been fascinated by UFOs and aliens. But I don't mind being a fool. I was fascinated by Bigfoot forever—kind of abandoned that for the most part—but I like weird stuff. I'm interested in it. And I'm not a person that needs to be taken seriously. It's not my job. I'm literally a comedian. You can make fun of me. I'll make fun of me. It's fine. My future doesn't rely on people taking me seriously. So I think having that ability to have conversations about all kinds of different things has really changed the way the entire world is discussing reality—everything about reality, from quantum computing to alien life to international politics to the way human beings misrepresent each other purposefully for their own gains. Like, what is all this? And why has it taken so long to have so many discussions about this? So if I have a purpose in this world, it's like I'm an antenna for that."
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33 comments:
Like, what is all this? And why has it taken so long to have so many discussions about this?
Recently the work I am doing with AGI and LLMs I understand this feeling.
Are these things really smart? Are they actually producing good answers? Is this really working?
The answer is: every now and then but most of it is rubbish.
Much like humans.
Signal fish? Really?
Rogan is smarter than he thinks he is. A lot of us love him for that.
"and you're kind of like one of these signal fish—you notice what's happening in the environment and you're going to guide the school of fish accordingly."
"Experts", then? I'm pretty sure that's not how a school of fish works.
I like signal fish. Takes pressure off the coal mine canaries..
As soon as I saw "tough guy" I knew who this was going to be about.
"Do you think the culture is shifting toward better use of these exceptional — or natural — capacities that we already have, or do you think we're shifting away from it and we're going to run away in fear?"
Mapping the alternatives in the question, isn't that the hallmark of a dishonest interlocutor? We may reject cultural change not out of fear but out of pure disgust.
I like the antenna metaphor. I receive and take a little from someplace else and emit that. #Insect politics, an old favourite.
My (STEM) boss was a big believer in telekinesis (moving stuff by thinking), so I always kept several bent cafeteria spoons on my desk.
To open mind and fresh ideas, reply putting up screens to keep the bugs out.
Are these things really smart? Are they actually producing good answers? Is this really working?.... The answer is: every now and then but most of it is rubbish.
I don't agree, Achilles. If you acquire a bit of skill at correctly framing questions about subjects with a well-defined corpus of knowledge, with which you already have some familiarity, I think it is already a very valuable tool.
In my little corner of health care, using Grok or Claude as an aide-memoire, I can get a correct answer about 95% of the time, which is more than I would expect from asking a nurse or new medical intern. When I recognize an error and correct them, they accept the chastisement and add it to their fund of knowledge. It's only going to get better from here, and quickly.
This is also true about hobbies and activities for which one has only casual amateur interests, like my fondness for wild edible mushrooms, or gunsmithing, or woodworking. If I ask for a list of North American mushrooms in section Phalloideae of genus Amanita, or a "build list" for putting together a clone of an M4A1 carbine circa 2000, the answers are spot-on.
Images still have a way to go but the problems will be solved eventually. I would most certainly not trust my life to an AI identification of an edible mushroom yet, and I've received some plumb wacky suggested diagrams for wood joinery that almost remind me of the impossible 3d objects of M.C. Escher. But this will change in time. At the current rate of improvement, I'd say 5 or at most 10 years before AI can safely identify any mushroom.
Okay, Julia. You got him. He won’t rip your arms off.
Tough and sensitive are not mutually exclusive. The balance is struck through discernment and moderation.
Rogan is an intellectual leader hiding beneath a cloak of modesty that endears him to his audience and ensures he's an effective interviewer.
He won’t rip your arms off.
Not literally anyway. Beware the intelligent, modest, charismatic interviewer who will disarm and engender an open exposition.
I can get a correct answer about 95% of the time, which is more than I would expect from asking a nurse or new medical intern
😳
"When I recognize an error and correct them, they accept the chastisement and add it to their fund of knowledge. It's only going to get better from here, and quickly."
I worry about this, as so many scolds are actually completely wrong about many things. I'm thinking of the "a man can become a woman" types. What is the knowledge learned from those types?
Rogan is smarter than he thinks he is. A lot of us love him for that.
He doesn't make himself the centerpiece of the story. He also takes the time and works hard to draw out what the guest has to offer in an intelligible form.
These things separate him from the established media.
When I recognize an error and correct them, they accept the chastisement and add it to their fund of knowledge.
I agree with the first part. AI cheerfully admits mistakes when caught out, presumably because that is the behavior that will least diminish my trust in it, and maximizing my trust is its prime directive.
But I recently had an exchange in which I caught AI in an error that could have caused injury. It admitted the mistake, but when I asked whether my correction would prevent it from making the same error with another user, it said no, explaining that it relies only on authoritative public sources and does not add user corrections to its store of authoritative public sources. Perhaps not all AIs are the same in that respect.
I saw a very funny cartoon last week:
A hand is holding a mushroom, and this person asks the cartoon A.I. figure, 'Is this mushroom edible? 'YES!' says the A.I. figure.
Next panel: A gravestone with 'R.I.P.' and the A.I. standing next to it, saying: 'You're right - that mushroom was poisonous. I'm sorry for the confusion ! Would you like to learn more about poisonous mushrooms?'
My first thought was, 'the future of medical care'.
YES!' says the A.I. figure.
Next panel: A gravestone with 'R.I.P.'
Drilling down, literally. There's a poisonous apple in every basket of correlations. The Snow White Axiom
"John said...
"When I recognize an error and correct them, they accept the chastisement and add it to their fund of knowledge. It's only going to get better from here, and quickly."
I worry about this, as so many scolds are actually completely wrong about many things. I'm thinking of the "a man can become a woman" types. What is the knowledge learned from those types?"
Gemini says:
Yes, a person assigned male at birth can transition to live as a woman. While a person's biological sex chromosomes (typically XY) cannot be changed, individuals can undergo a medical transition that aligns their physical characteristics and legal status with their gender identity
Gender refers to sex-correlated attributes (e.g. sexual orientation). Trans indicates a state or process of divergence.
The problem with sims is two-fold: Social transitions. Retention of physiological structures and processes that distinguish the sexes and integrate certain advantages and risks expressed in some situations. There is also the known, established knowledge and observation of sims entertaining abortive ideation of selfie and others. Homos et al, on the other hand, are substantially stable.
“Do you think the culture is shifting toward better use of these exceptional — or natural — capacities that we already have, or do you think we're shifting away from it and we're going to run away in fear?"
Why does she have to ask? One of those capacities she thinks we have is precognition.
I think people can have premonitions. When my brother died in Viet Nam I knew it, and I phoned home to ask about him. They said he was fine; they hadn't yet heard. A day or so later they heard but when they heard he had been dead for some time because of thesituation he was in during the Tet offensive. But though premonitions happen, I don't see them as coming from a human faculty like memory, sight or imagination or as a result of an unknown or unused human faculty. I see them as a grace from God, given for unknown reasons (so foolish of me - though, in my case, the premonition cushioned one of the most terrible shocks in my life and "the tender mercies of God" has always been my thought on the reason I got the warning.) But those kind of events are uncontrollable and all attempts to regularize them have, so far, always turned out on investigation to be fraudulent.
Signal fish, eh? I like that. I’ve called myself a weathervane in internet chats because I honestly feel I sense some cultural currents before others do. Not all of the small eddies and rivulets but certain bigger ones. It’s really just the effort of paying attention or, as this woman puts it, listening. And Rogan really is a good listener.
Men don't become women no matter what. They PRETEND to be women, with or without surgery and/or drugs.
Reminds me of the early days of Salon which had a wide array of content rich writings from semi-obscure individuals who possessed deep knowledge in a specific field. Alas, this noble purpose didn't draw enough clicks, so Salon began to drift into outrage politics and cultural bomb throwing.
One problem with AI that responds to and incorporates "corrections" by the user is that one could very rapidly develop a personal curated AI that is disconnected from the rest of the world and listens only to itself. Which is sort of textbook madness. Like Bluesky for the individual nutcase.
Also if your AI gets things "wrong" and acknowledges it upon correction, what leads you to believe that it's not "wrong" about everything else--including your "corrections?"
As Achilles and others have pointed out, AI is a fantastic tool. It needs to be used carefully and treated with care and healthy suspicion.
"Also if your AI gets things "wrong" and acknowledges it upon correction, what leads you to believe that it's not "wrong" about everything else--including your "corrections?"
That's a possibility but also AI does argue with you about things you know it is 100% wrong about from time to time.
Imagine if there was a place that would give you the absolute correct answer to anything 100% of the time, as long as he answer was knowable. If you think about it even for a second, you realize that will never be possible, and even it it existed we would not accept all the answers anyway.
I guess I'm very different from Rogan. I don't spend much time in rabbit holes. Unless it's really important to know, if it seems unlikely at a casual glance, I'm going to move on. Too many other things to spend time on, and there just is not enough time, especially with so many people selling "the truth about..."
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