Brian Beckcom is a Computer Scientist, Philosopher, & Trial Lawyer based in Houston, Texas.
He has been voted a Texas Super Lawyer 14 consecutive times—every single year he has been eligible. Brian’s law firm, VB Attorneys, is one of the best law firms in the United States, and has obtained hundreds of millions of dollars for the firm’s clients, including many record-breaking results.
Brian also hosts Lessons from Leaders with Brian Beckcom, a popular podcast featuring military leaders, sports stars, New York Times best selling authors, scientists, and more.
Brian is a former Division I athlete at Texas A&M (basketball). He is currently a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a single-digit golfer, and an accomplished fly fisherman.
Brian graduated from Texas A&M University with degrees in Computer Science & Philosophy. He was a member of the Texas A&M basketball team and one of the leaders of the Corps of Cadets, the oldest military organization in the State of Texas.
Brian then attended the University of Texas School of Law, where he was one of the top students. He graduated with honors, served as an Officer on the Texas Law Review, & was the starting free safety for the Legal Eagles.
Brian is consistently viewed by his peers as one of the best lawyers of his generation. Brian has also published hundreds of articles and 6 books about success, happiness, leadership, and other important topics.
What you will learn
- Learn about the intersection of computer science, philosophy, and law.
- Discover why purpose and meaning are more important than pursuing happiness directly.
- Understand the limitations of artificial intelligence compared to human intelligence.
- Discover the potential impact of large language models on industries like law.
- Understand the potential dangers of leaving AI development solely to tech companies.
- Explore the importance of having leaders who are well-versed in ethics, especially when it comes to the development and regulation of artificial intelligence.
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:05 – 00:00:30
Hi, everyone and welcome to the Jeff Bullas show – I have with me, Brian Beckcom. Brian is a Computer Scientist, Philosopher, & Trial Lawyer based in Houston, Texas. He has been voted a Texas Super Lawyer 14 consecutive times—every single year he has been eligible. Brian’s law firm, VB Attorneys, is one of the best law firms in the United States, and has obtained hundreds of millions of dollars for the firm’s clients, including many record-breaking results.
Jeff Bullas
00:00:30 – 00:01:11
Brian also hosts Lessons from Leaders with Brian Beckcom, a popular podcast featuring military leaders, sports stars, New York Times best selling authors, scientists, and more.
Brian is a former Division I athlete at Texas A&M (basketball). He is currently a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a single-digit golfer, and an accomplished fly fisherman.
Brian graduated from Texas A&M University with degrees in Computer Science & Philosophy. He was a member of the Texas A&M basketball team and one of the leaders of the Corps of Cadets, the oldest military organization in the State of Texas.
Brian then attended the University of Texas School of Law, where he was one of the top students. He graduated with honors, served as an Officer on the Texas Law Review, & was the starting free safety for the Legal Eagles.
Brian is consistently viewed by his peers as one of the best lawyers of his generation. Brian has also published hundreds of articles and 6 books about success, happiness, leadership, and other important topics.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:15 – 00:01:54
Yeah. And, uh, accomplished fly fisherman. So, um, and we’ll have a chat about that. I did my first fly fishing actually in a Montana stream at Court six. So that’s my story quickly. Um, but there’s more. Ok, Brian graduated from Texas A and M University with degrees in computer science and philosophy. He was a member of the Texas A&m basketball team as well as leader of the Corps of Cadets, the oldest military organization in the state of Texas. He attended the University of Texas School of Law, where one of the top students graduated with honors, served as Officer of the Texas Law Review and was starting free safety for the Legal Eagles.
Jeff Bullas
00:01:55 – 00:02:14
Brian is consistently viewed by his peers as one of the best lawyers of his generation. Brian has also ST published hundreds of articles and six books about success, happiness, leadership and other important topics. And we’re gonna mention those along the way, Brian, that is quite a resume and a CV. Um, I’m looking forward to our conversation. Welcome to the show.
Brian Beckcom
00:02:14 – 00:02:19
It’s great to be Jeff. I really, really appreciate uh, you having me on. I’m really looking forward to this.
Jeff Bullas
00:02:19 – 00:02:27
Cool. So can you show me your hands like you said, we are not just one digit, is it? Oh, he, he’s got, he’s got 10 guys. That’s right.
Brian Beckcom
00:02:29 – 00:02:58
Yeah. Although I will tell you something interesting about that. I do Brazilian jiu jitsu, which I’m totally addicted to. And one of the most iconic jiu jitsu persons in the world is a Brazilian guy named John J who has basically one hand is, is a dominant jiu-jitsu uh legend with one hand. It’s really, it’s really amazing to watch it go. So, and you know, I, I actually know a couple of golfers that have one arm. It’s amazing to watch them play.
Jeff Bullas
00:02:58 – 00:03:02
Yeah, it would be, I would say that Jujitsu guy would be rather handy. Is that true?
Brian Beckcom
00:03:06 – 00:03:08
I love it. I love
Jeff Bullas
00:03:08 – 00:03:21
it. I, I’ve just gotta stop those dad jokes right now because I’ve got trouble with my Children who, who actually just groan and roll their eyes regularly. So it’s ok. But that’s your job as a parent, isn’t it? To annoy your Children? Really? That’s um,
Brian Beckcom
00:03:21 – 00:03:26
I try whenever I’m with my kids to tell as many dads jokes as I possibly can.
Jeff Bullas
00:03:28 – 00:03:55
So, um, Brian, tell us about how you got into law, right? And obviously you excel at it and I love the intersection of the different disciplines that you have brought to life. And I’m fascinated by philosophy. I interviewed, you know, Nick Bostrom, the philosopher, multi polymaths. Yeah. So I interviewed him recently and um so I’m interested in those areas. We’re gonna dive into a few things.
Jeff Bullas
00:03:56 – 00:04:23
Um So what, what got you into law? What was there for an aha moment? What sort of, you know, were you, you know, going to university or you’re at high school and you’re going, I wanna go and get those baddies who actually are ripping off corporations and other people. Is, is it, was it, was it the outlaw sort of thing? I don’t know. Tell us where this inspiration became a trial lawyer. Cos it’s a very tough gig.
Brian Beckcom
00:04:23 – 00:04:53
Yeah. So it, so it’s kind of an interesting story. I had no interest in being a lawyer. I have no lawyers in my family on either side. As many generations as I can trace back. I come from a family that’s primarily composed of military officers. So, my dad, my mother, my uncle, my older brother, my grandfather, we, we’re all in the military and, uh, I went to college. The only thing I was thinking about when I went to college was playing sports. I was, I was a jock and, uh, this was in the early 19 nineties,
Brian Beckcom
00:04:54 – 00:05:23
computers, personal computers were just starting to become a thing and I had kind of an interest in computers. And so I just said, you know, I guess I’ll, maybe I’ll major in computer science, which was not a big deal back in the early nineties. I mean, there were computer science degrees but it wasn’t nearly as popular as it is now. And so when I was, uh, what I didn’t know is when you take computer science at most schools, you also have to take a lot of math
Brian Beckcom
00:05:23 – 00:06:02
and some physics and stuff like that. And uh I somehow managed to pass all these calculus and differential equations, linear algebra class. I still don’t know how I did that. The, the, the, the thing of it is I think about uh for the listeners. I’m 51 for the listeners that are in that general age group. I was at, when I was at university or college, what we call the United States. Uh the internet, nobody knew what it was. The internet had just been developed by the federal government, the United States federal government. Um I had seen the first kind of uh uh uh versions of the internet.
Brian Beckcom
00:06:02 – 00:06:37
Uh, the email had just come out, of course, it was useless because there was nobody to email really. Uh Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, this cool thing called email and there were like five people that had an email address. But I, but I was on, I don’t want to say I was on the cutting edge of the computer revolution because in the fifties and sixties and seventies, you know, the mainframe nonperson computers, there was a lot of work done there. We, I mean, we could even go back to Alan Turing if we wanted to. But as far as the personal computer revolution, I, I was there when it happened and
Brian Beckcom
00:06:37 – 00:07:32
As part of the degree program you have to take another degree. And what most people in computer science would do is they would do math or physics or electrical engineering or something, something like that. And I said, well, how about philosophy? Because I like philosophy and they said that’s kind of weird. But go ahead. Well, it turns out that many of the original computer scientists were philosophy people. And it turns out historically, many of your listeners may know this, there was no such thing as scientists. Like when Isaac Newton was inventing calculus, he was a natural philosopher. And so it, it without, it was kind of accidental to be quite honest with you. But philosophy and computer science have a lot more in common than may appear at first. And so I was, you know, I spent four or five years
Brian Beckcom
00:07:32 – 00:08:22
in university studying philosophy, studying computer science. And the story I tell is I was uh in a computer lab all the time with a bunch of nerds and geeks. And I didn’t want to spend my entire life behind a computer screen with a bunch of nerds and geeks. And so I went to law school, I went to law school. And what do I do now? 25 years later, I sit behind a computer screen with a bunch of nerds and geeks. But, I went to law school, uh mainly because I wanted, uh I, I was interested in uh law as philosophy So law is really, uh it’s a, it’s a philosophical statement of uh countries or state’s values. Like this is what we think is good and this is what we think is bad. And so
Brian Beckcom
00:08:23 – 00:09:05
I didn’t know what kind of law I wanted to practice. I was recruited to be an intellectual property lawyer or patent lawyer, which is what a lot of engineers and computer scientists do. And when I was in law school, I asked a couple of lawyers that did that, hey, what’s it like being a patent lawyer? And they said, oh, it’s like writing a research paper every week. And I said, that sounds fucking terrible. That sounds so boring. And so I found that I found out about this thing called trial law and trial law. You know, I’ve been an athlete my whole life, I’ve been a competitive person. My whole life. Trial law is about as close as I’ve ever been able to find to the thrill of being in the arena and being in a competitive
Brian Beckcom
00:09:06 – 00:09:33
uh environment like that. But that’s kind of how I ended up doing it. The other thing that might be relevant to the story is when I was 10, my mother died and my father raised my brother and I as a single father. The reason that’s relevant to this story is that she died as a result of some very, very serious medical malpractice by the United States government. And my dad hired a lawyer to represent my family. I was so young. I didn’t know it at the time. I only found this out later
Brian Beckcom
00:09:33 – 00:10:27
but now I do what that lawyer did for other families. Uh, uh, I, I do the same thing that lawyer did for my family, for other families. So that’s part of it too. But the point is, this is just pure luck. But there has been as you know, and many of your listeners know a convergence of computer science, law and philosophy within the last five or six years as it relates to things like social media and A I and large language models. And so I feel super, super lucky and fortunate to have, you know, just by, by pure luck really been uh been studying this stuff, you know, for going on 30 years now. So I’m, I’m, this is an exciting time for somebody, somebody like me. I see all these things kind of converging together now.
Jeff Bullas
00:10:28 – 00:11:20
Yeah, my curiosity has moved on from social media to the intersection of man and machine or A I and humans because the thing about the machine is actually challenging and asks us big questions such as what does it mean to be human? And that fascinates me. And uh so um the, you know, you only have to put a prompt into chat GPT to write a document and then you’re going, then it comes back with something pretty damn good. Yeah. And you’re going, I do writing, we publish with digital publishers. Said, what, what do I do now? It’s, it’s taken over. But I, I think the thing for me is not so much the takeover. I think we’re gonna look at A I as an enhancement of humanity because it’s the collective intelligence
Jeff Bullas
00:11:21 – 00:12:13
created by zeros and ones shared around the world in digital formats. And that’s, and that’s what amazes me about it. We actually are collecting intelligence on the planet and organizing it and distilling it and turning into creators as well. And that’s, and that raises those big questions. And um yeah, so we are living in pretty exciting times and um so let me leap straight to one. Well, let’s, let’s say you went to trial law, which is, it’s very combative, isn’t it? It’s very competitive. Yeah. So, um and I’m curious, what do you think your secret sauce is or a recipe for your success? I’ve been intrigued by that. Is that because you bring, you bring, you just don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, you bring an AK-47, right? So,
Brian Beckcom
00:12:14 – 00:12:55
yeah, I, so I think my number one the, the, the one thing that helps me to be successful is, is I never give up. I’m, I’m persistent and I’ll tell you it’s hard to beat somebody who never gives up. And, and this, this idea of persistence is like deeply, deeply ingrained in my bones. And then when you put on top of that, the fact that I, I hate to say this is gonna sound so bad, but I’m, I’m gonna be able to out think most of my opponents. Uh So when you combine like a relentless persistence and a relentless kind of desire to get the results, you need to get from your clients
Brian Beckcom
00:12:56 – 00:13:38
with a level of intelligence that allows you to, to, to actually execute on that persistence. I think it’s a really good combination. I do wanna mention something to you about what you just said though, that I think is really important. You put your finger on. Uh 11 of the most important questions I think humanity can ask right now, which is what does it mean to be human? Th this is a profound, profound, I don’t want to just pass over that. That is a much more profound philosophical question that I think a lot of people give it credit for and that is something that I am absolutely fascinated about. And the other thing I’ll mention is a, at least as it relates to artificial intelligence,
Brian Beckcom
00:13:39 – 00:14:14
We already have and have had artificial intelligence for a very, very long time. As you know, the common example a lot of people use is that your thermostat is artificially intelligent. Yeah, but that’s a very, very good chess playing engine that is artificial, but that’s a very narrow band of intelligence. And what we’re seeing now is a type of intelligence that is a little broader. Now, uh There’s this term called a G I artificial General Intelligence, which basically means a machine that is intelligent in the same way, human is intelligent.
Brian Beckcom
00:14:14 – 00:15:13
Uh That’s a kind of a different ball game. And that’s the holy grail. Yeah, that’s the holy grail. And once we hit that point and like one of the, one of the, so what I think the most important unanswered scientific question in humanity today is with the question that fascinates me by far the most. And then I can tell you with 100% confidence that nobody knows the answer to. At least right now it is what is consciousness like, what is the evolutionary point of that? How did it arise? But more importantly, for purposes of our discussion, Jeff, can consciousness arise uh out of uh like is consciousness dependent on a bio the biological substrate that we call the human brain or if you had uh a non biological device or something that was arranged in a certain way? Could consciousness arise
Brian Beckcom
00:15:14 – 00:15:49
out of that? And I don’t know the answer to that. Nobody else does. But, but like when you think about like, what, what is consciousness? And I think it’s a similar question to like, what does it mean to be human? And you know, it used to be, gosh, 5, 10 years ago, I would look at people looking at their smartphones and I would, in my brain, it would be like information is going from your brain to the phone. And now when I look at people looking at their smartphones, what I see is I see a device that’s a program, it’s going the opposite direction. It’s programming just your brain. But we already have,
Brian Beckcom
00:15:50 – 00:16:25
I would argue that we already are cyborgs now, in some way, it’s just, it’s just that the device is not inside of our body. It’s, it’s a, it’s attached to our hand, generally speaking. So we already have some built in or I, I don’t even know my kids cell phone numbers anymore because I don’t have to memorize them because they’re in my phone. And so I’ve already offloaded a lot of my intelligence. But, I think this question about what, what does it mean to be human? What is consciousness? I, I’m not sure there are more, any more important questions we can ask in the world
Jeff Bullas
00:16:25 – 00:17:16
and that’s something and you know, you look at things like motivation, you know, then we look at things like discipline for me. One thing I reflect on a lot is when I started my little Humble blog back in 2009 and I was just, it was a curiosity about social media and then it became a compulsion and then it almost became an obsession because while I had my day job, I actually got up at 4:30 a.m. for four years and wrote till 9 a.m. and started my day job and it was almost like a force was coming out of me. I I it was in reflection, I went, where did that come from? It was not to do with Shaw. There was discipline. I got up early but it wasn’t hard. I just did it.
Jeff Bullas
00:17:17 – 00:17:52
And where does it go? So that and that drive and that motivation is very much part of being human. And I am asking the question, where did that come from? And it’s almost like you’re channeling the universe through you somehow, which is I was doing what I was meant to do and you’re obviously doing what you’re meant to do. Where does that come from? That’s, it’s, and then we get into quantum physics because a lot of physicists are actually really, they’re philosophers because they’re asking the big questions of the universe. They
Brian Beckcom
00:17:52 – 00:17:54
absolutely, they absolutely are.
Jeff Bullas
00:17:55 – 00:18:37
So for me on reflection about what it means to be human, obviously, you’ve been asking that question for a long time as well. Um And then we have a I show up which then challenges even more, asking even bigger questions. And where’s it all going? Dystopia? Utopia, you know, and Nick Bostrom S two books, Super Intelligence, which was dystopian. Look at 1 ft, you know, what do we call multimodal, not multimodal, but a multi universe or A I which would be controlled by different people or would be one A I take over the world? He is very dystopian. His latest book, Deep Utopia is More utopian
Jeff Bullas
00:18:37 – 00:19:19
and is really out there. And I had the pleasure of interviewing him on the podcast while I was in New York recently. But where does motivation come from? Where does your drive come from Brian to do what you do? Right. And yeah. And uh do you have a bit of a handle on that? Is it like, does it come from? Some people say that by doing meditation, you disconnect from the actual physical world and allow the actual universe to be revealed through you, which is very metaphysical. Um Do you have, have you sort of said to yourself sometimes where this drive to beat Brian and what he does come from? Have you asked that question
Brian Beckcom
00:19:20 – 00:19:52
all the time? And you bring up the subject of meditation. I’ve been a meditator for 10 years now. And probably one of the top five or six things I’ve ever done in my life. And one of the things that I’ll tell you that’s taught me is that the, the, the self that we think we have this like an idea this pilot in our head that’s, that’s dictating does not exist, it like it does not exist. OK. I’m just telling you that. And the reason I know that is because I’ve experienced that
Brian Beckcom
00:19:53 – 00:20:24
Firsthand, I’ve had no self experience that the Buddhist talked about. Now it’s, it literally lasts for like half a second. Uh because as soon as your brain comes back online, the experience goes away. But the point of that is that I think the important point that we can take out of that as philosophers and scientists is we can definitively say the experience that we’re having is not reflective of quite true reality, whatever that is. So you, you have these
Brian Beckcom
00:20:25 – 00:21:09
uh things bouncing around in your head. And there’s also, you know, Nick Bostrom is an unbelievably intelligent person. There’s a lot of talk about, like, for example, there’s a great book called uh Godel Escher Gel Escher Bob. It’s, you know, G Gel is Kurt Girdle uh in the incompleteness theorem of mathematics. MC Escher is the artist that writes all that paints all these really interesting uh kinds of physics type pictures that Bach of course is the Composer Js Bach. But uh you know, the notion in th that that book is uh and many books like it are trying to figure out like how does consciousness arrive and kind of the hypothesis behind that is
Brian Beckcom
00:21:11 – 00:21:58
The self referential loops ultimately create an image of the self and that is who you become. And so uh the reason I’m talking about that is the question you ask is like, where does your motivation come from? And I, I think it’s hard for most people to answer that including me uh completely because uh there’s a subconscious part of your experience that you don’t really have access to. And a and in fact, there are some people that say you really have no free will at all, period that you’re just kind of, yeah, you’re just kind of programmed by your environment and your experiences and things like that. And I, I think by and large,
Brian Beckcom
00:21:58 – 00:22:32
like the free will debate, I mean, we could talk about that for hours and hours, the free will debate at the very least, I think it shows us that a lot of the things that we do, we, we don’t do for these reasons. We think we do what we do. And then we come up with a rationalization afterwards for why we did it. And again, that’s because there’s this conscious experience that we have, but that’s like the tip of the iceberg and underneath the ocean is all this subconscious stuff going on underneath. And so, so in terms of like, for me personally, I think
Brian Beckcom
00:22:33 – 00:23:07
not to psychoanalyze myself too much but clear clearly when your mother gets a terminal illness, when you’re five years old and you see her go through that for five years. What that’s like will affect you either consciously or subconsciously for the rest of your life. It’s kind of like if you’re abused as a child, that’s the kind of thing that consciously or not will uh motivate you to a certain extent. So one of the things consciously that motivated me was I was raised, like I said by a single father,
Brian Beckcom
00:23:07 – 00:23:43
My brother, and I wanted to demonstrate to people that uh you could succeed if you were raised by a single father. And so that kind of motivated me to do what I did. Of course, the other part of it was, you know, I had a close family member, my mother died and uh we hired a lawyer who helped out our family. And so of course, you know, I look back on that subconsciously and it kind of explains why I do what I do but that, that it’s not like I was in high school and college and I want to be just like the guy and I wanna go be a lawyer and do what he does. It was almost like
Brian Beckcom
00:23:43 – 00:24:24
or more subconscious uh than conscious. And so, you know, the, the other thing I’ve been super duper interested in uh Jeff and I know you’ve probably read a ton about this but uh Ottoman and Tversky and behavioral psychology where essentially, uh you know, their, their famous book is thinking fast and slow. Basically, the idea is oftentimes you don’t really know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Uh You, you, you, you, so for example, if I say, hey, uh Jeff, uh what’s a great action movie?
Brian Beckcom
00:24:25 – 00:25:03
Something’s gonna pop into your head and you had no real conscious choice in what popped into your head, right? It, it just popped in there or if I say, hey, Jeff, don’t think of a pink elephant. The first thing you just thought of is a pink elephant, right? I just because in order to, and there’s a, there’s a really uh specific scientific reason for that in order for you not to think of something, your brain has to think about it and then not think about it. Like that’s how you, the operating system works. Uh But, but I guess the, the larger point is
Brian Beckcom
00:25:03 – 00:25:56
we’re all having this experience. Some of us are more conscious, like I would argue, some people have more consciousness than others. Everybody does not have the same level of consciousness. Certain people have more agency than others, but everybody is having some sort of consciousness or most people are having some sort of conscious experience, but everyone is also being driven by the subconscious experience. And that right there is a pretty sharp dividing line between man and machine and because the machines don’t have this sub kind, like everything they have is programmed into the machine or, or, or at least so far it is. And they also the other thing they don’t have that I think is really important is humans obviously have emotions and the emotions drive the decision making process
Brian Beckcom
00:25:56 – 00:26:39
for good or for bad. And that is not true with machines either. And, and and again, that could be good or bad. Like for a chess program, you really don’t want your emotions to get involved at all. But if you’re building a self-driving car and you’re trying to decide what you should tell that car to do, if it’s a choice between killing 2, 10 year old school Children and five nuns that are walking down the street and it’s gotta make a decision, right. I mean, uh maybe you do want some emotion involved in that kind of decision. But, but again, the point is I don’t think any of us has full access to all of that. Like we don’t really know what motivates us completely. Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:26:40 – 00:26:55
Yeah. I love that. You know, the mention about consciousness and decisions and uh and that, that reminds me of a quote I read recently is we, we think we’re doing thinking but thinking doing us.
Brian Beckcom
00:26:56 – 00:26:59
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Jeff Bullas
00:26:59 – 00:27:41
And um so, and that’s why meditation is so powerful I think is that it opens the door to infinity, whatever that is to and an unlimited universe because we’ve quietened the mind. So the thinking is no longer doing us or else we’re watching our thinking as an observer, which is what. And I think I’ve been reflecting on what meditation really means. It’s actually, it’s not about silence, it’s about us observing even our thoughts. So a lot of us go, we’re failing if we actually don’t have a silent mind. The reality is me, the power of meditation is just becoming the observer of the thoughts and going, oh, I’m thinking that and next or whatever. But,
Jeff Bullas
00:27:42 – 00:28:35
um, I’ve been meditating since the 19 eighties and, um, I do meditate, you know, every 5 to 7 days a week. Um, and I’ve had some really blissful moments which I just just, I don’t know, you just went somewhere else and it’s brief or it can be a bit longer, but I really have enjoyed it because I realize that the power comes from silence, not from forceful doing. And, and that reminds me too of something I’d be interested in your thoughts on this is what’s our meaning and purpose? Because I asked those questions and Nick Bostrom goes into his, we can actually create artificial purpose. That’s part of his actual thinking, which is really quite fascinating. And you’re right before I get onto this next thing I’m going to raise is that
Jeff Bullas
00:28:36 – 00:29:05
Nick Bostrom has got a big brain. I was slightly intimidated to interview him. What I did was to prepare for it. I’d already read his book, and almost finished his book, Superintelligence. Oh, then within a few days, I’ve read both books fully. I’d taken note. So I said I’ve gotta be prepared. Is he dealing with this big brain that is just thinking things you are going to do? Where did that come from, Nick? So it was a fabulous in discussion about that I read
Brian Beckcom
00:29:05 – 00:29:31
Super Intelligence and I think it’s a phenomenal book and he’s a phenomenal thinker. But I do think he and others like him make a fundamental reasoning flaw when they talk about the singularity, when they talk about artificial intelligence. And you know what it is. Uh uh they don’t, they don’t take into account the fact that there already may be superintelligence in the universe already. We just don’t know about it. Like there may be beings that are so smart
Brian Beckcom
00:29:32 – 00:30:20
that like when we, when we’re walking down the street and we sit, there’s ants on the street, we don’t even notice, right? And so, this idea that oh there, there’s gonna be this singularity or there’s gonna be this super intelligence, I think, you know, it’s already, it’s already here or, and it could be here in ways that we can’t even fathom. It could be for, for instance, with the question, as it relates to what is consciousness? It could be that it is impossible for us to get outside of our consciousness in order to evaluate our consciousness. Like it could be that, that is a question like an N plus one question or a three body question. It’s just not answerable. Uh So, and to me the, the really cool thing about this is a lot of this stuff kind of
Brian Beckcom
00:30:21 – 00:30:58
converges. So uh take, for example, Girdle’s incompleteness there, but a lot of your listeners will be familiar with that for those that aren’t Kurt Girdle was a logician who basically proved that no self-contained mathematical system could be completely self-contained. There’s always gonna be a contradiction. So for example, this statement, this statement is false is unprovable, but it’s, it’s, there’s true to it, a girl to prove that. And that’s really, really, really important for computer science. But I think it’s also important
Brian Beckcom
00:30:59 – 00:31:30
for the things that we’re talking about, which is there may be things that we just will never be able to have the answer to which is OK, like there may be things that our brains either by the physical design or by the nature of of the logic of it just we, we just can never finally get to the to the bottom of the answer. Yeah. And I, I think people that, that like worries people at so at at some level but in other levels, like
Brian Beckcom
00:31:30 – 00:32:06
I think it’s OK like it, it’s OK to say it’s OK to say like we will never be able to prove math is true. Like there is, there will never be a proof that proves this system of math is true and it’s true in all places and all times because of girdle incompleteness and it may be the same thing with consciousness. We may, it may, we may get to the point where we can say this is what consciousness is, this is what we think about how it rises. But we really still can’t figure out for example, why it arose, you know, what, what, what was the purpose of it
Jeff Bullas
00:32:08 – 00:32:18
and, and scientists and philosophers struggled with it for centuries and millennia frankly. And i’m even Einstein struggled with quantum physics,
Brian Beckcom
00:32:19 – 00:33:14
he, he, he was, he was, he was very uh troubled in particular about what they call spooky action at a distance. Like he was, he was troubled by the, the notion that in quantum physics, uh something that happened in one location could have an instantaneous impact on something that happened at a different location, which would seem to violate the, the uh notion in general relativity that nothing’s faster than the speed of light. Like if information can travel instantaneously, that’s faster than the speed of light. And that violates both Newtonian physics and general relativity. And that’s a, that’s a, the other thing that I think he was bothered about which I actually, I, I think this is really important too. So in quantum physics, one of the ideas is the, the act of observation
Brian Beckcom
00:33:14 – 00:34:14
uh has an effect on what you’re observing. And the famous experiment with that is uh Heidegger’s cat Haws experiment, right? But, but, but, but, but I I this is something that I think is super duper important. So essentially, and again, this is just a high level explanation. So when you take a measurement of something, you impact what you’re measuring, that’s one idea. And like the observer impacts what he or she is measuring. I think that is the same exact thing with consciousness. OK. So think about this, when you observe your consciousness through meditation, you change your consciousness by the act of observing it. And so I think, and, and I actually would go so far as to speculate that the human brain is a quantum system like it, it and I think there’s, there’s evidence, for example,
Brian Beckcom
00:34:15 – 00:35:13
the observation of your thoughts changes your thoughts that that’s a quantum phenomenon, right? And so, but I think it’s really interesting, Einstein was very, very troubled by that, but I’ll tell you what uh and, and you know, the famous joke about quantum physics, if you understand, if you say you understand it, you don’t. But the predictions of quantum mechanics have proven to be so accurate that whether we understand it or not almost doesn’t matter, right? And uh but I think it’s true, so if you’re meditating Jeff, when you start having this no self experience, the second you start observing that experience, you change the experience, which is the same idea in quantum mechanics. If you met people have this idea from classical physics that an electron is like a dot And electron is actually a wave
Brian Beckcom
00:35:14 – 00:35:20
of potentialities. And but once you measure it, then you fix it in place, right,
Jeff Bullas
00:35:20 – 00:35:22
energy becomes matter,
Brian Beckcom
00:35:22 – 00:35:50
energy becomes matter. But then what happens that’s really cool about that is because you fix it in place. Now you’ve lost the ability to determine its velocity, right? Because it’s, now, now you’ve observed it and you’ve frozen it in place. Whereas when you’re not observing it, it has some movement or some velocity. So, uh Einstein was troubled by it but Einstein was wrong.
Jeff Bullas
00:35:51 – 00:36:20
Yeah. It, it, it’s reality but being non reality, I, it’s really fascinating to talk about these topics because it gets into things like motivation and purpose and meaning. And, um, and a lot of it asks, why am I here? That’s another big question and, and generative, you know, the chatbot actually challenges that by going well, you thought you were a writer, that’s why you’re here. But hey, I can do this better than you can,
Brian Beckcom
00:36:22 – 00:37:17
by the way. That’s not true. Like, so far, at least if you’re a good writer and you read 99% of A I generated checks, you, there’s always something a little bit off, right? And it is, it is. And it’s an interesting question, by the way, why that is like, you can still tell. At least most people can still tell or most well educated people can still tell when they’re listening to a robot, right? Uh We maybe, maybe it’s something. So in other words, the Turing test has not been passed completely. Maybe it will be ultimately, but it’s interesting why, you know, these large language models have these, uh, little quirks where they do things that are obviously not human. That’s an interesting question by itself.
Jeff Bullas
00:37:18 – 00:38:19
Yeah. I, I think, um, the chat box, you know, chat G BT can do mechanistic writing, which in other words, it’s got all the facts Coates and organize. It’s all done. That’s nice. But it doesn’t touch human souls. The storytelling that should, that we as, as good human writers use, they use good storytelling and they’re powerful storytellers. And that’s, um, that’s actually co to being human is we’ve been telling stories that distill our humanity for millennia and the book SAPIEN um by the Israeli author. Um, he’s worried about the fact that if computers get really good at storytelling, then that becomes another species, that’s what he’s worried about. And, but I think you’re completely correct in that the chat G BT, what it produces as a document is just missing that human
Jeff Bullas
00:38:19 – 00:39:14
element, whatever that is, we can’t put a finger on it, but it’s just soulless. It’s not a story. It’s no humanity woven into the nuts and bolts. Um Despite it trying. So, um, but let’s, let’s move on a little bit. I just about this for me and I’m sure you’ve asked the question too. What’s my purpose on this planet? And I love Joseph Campbell’s take on it. He says we have no purpose except to follow our bliss and that’s where you end up with flow rather than force. And this, you know, for me, it’s the combination of two words where your curiosity becomes a compulsion, it becomes compelling to you to act and you don’t know why. But I think there’s power in that single
Jeff Bullas
00:39:15 – 00:39:34
three word sentence by Joseph Campbell. That is your purpose: to follow your bliss and trust the universe to deliver why you’re here to you through a door that you open through things like meditation. Vincent, your thoughts on, on what you think purpose is about. I’m curious,
Brian Beckcom
00:39:35 – 00:40:03
This is a great question and this is something that I think is a big AAA question that I’ve asked myself a lot in the past, probably four or five years. Like, what is the purpose of life? What is my purpose? Joseph Campbell, uh the, the hero’s journey, basically, tremendous, tremendous uh writer. He talks a lot about, uh you know, that the hero’s journey is about like this, this uh arch archetypal
Brian Beckcom
00:40:03 – 00:40:32
ulysses kind of, you know, the hero goes away and comes back and all that stuff and, and, and, and I, and, and evolve. Harari, the author of Sapiens, is really into the notion of storytelling as well. And I actually think that it is impossible for humans to reason without stories. Like that is how we think, like that’s how important the story is. Like, I don’t think there’s anything more important in the world than stories. I think stories are more powerful
Brian Beckcom
00:40:32 – 00:41:18
than armies. They’re more powerful than religions. Because religions, what really are religions, religions are stories, right? And we can debate about whether they’re true stories or whether they’re fiction or nonfiction, but that’s what they are and what our militaries militaries are uh things that carry out the stories that we tell each other. So I, so I, so I think this notion of story is super, super. As a matter of fact, I think it’s fundamental to thinking as it relates to purpose. I’ve, I’ve uh here’s what I, what I would say, what I’ve been saying is I do not know what the purpose of life is. I don’t know what we’re here for. But I think if you are uh trying to make the most of whatever
Brian Beckcom
00:41:18 – 00:42:01
abilities and talents you’ve been given and you are following something you’re really curious about. You could do a lot worse. Like, I don’t know if that is the p like maybe there is no, the purpose like Joseph Campbell said, which again, that is completely OK. Like people think you have to have, there’s no rule that says there has to be a purpose for anything, right? That uh some people think that there’s something wrong with that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all. But what I would say is I would say your purpose should be to make the most of whatever talents you’ve been given. This is kind of what I’ve been talking to my kids about a lot lately, like whatever you’ve been given whatever circumstances you’ve been,
Brian Beckcom
00:42:02 – 00:42:30
uh, uh, that has been assigned to you. Making the most out of that is a pretty good way of living your life. And at the end of the day, you know, I have a very good friend. He’s a very religious person, very Catholic. We have a lot of discussions about this. He has this thing. He says, Brian, he said, you can’t just say what you don’t believe, you have to come up with a hypothesis of what you do believe. And I actually think that’s true. Like I actually think that there are people that just sit there and just chop everybody down.
Brian Beckcom
00:42:30 – 00:43:23
That’s, they’re only doing half of the intellectual work. Like you need to come up with some sort of working theory to just being a contrarian for the purposes of being a contrarian is not enough. And I, actually, this is my working theory that is pure speculation. But I actually think your consciousness of my consciousness and everybody’s consciousness is the manifestation of a larger consciousness of some sort. And we’re just kind of a window to that general universal consciousness, you know, whatever you whatever what some people call it. God, some people call, some people will just say it’s a quantum phenomena that just is, is a fundamental component of the universe like gravity. Uh But, but I think in terms of purpose, what, what I ask myself is, am I doing?
Brian Beckcom
00:43:23 – 00:43:57
Am I getting the most out of what I’ve been, I’ve been blessed with certain, I’ve been, you know, uh I’ve had some hard things in my life happen, but I’ve also been blessed with uh you know, certain abilities. And so II I constantly ask myself, am I, am I getting the most out of those? Number one? And number two, I wanna leave the world just a tiny, tiny, little bit, little bit better off if, when I leave it than when I started. And so that, that’s kind of my, uh that’s my North Star as far as purpose goes.
Jeff Bullas
00:43:57 – 00:44:43
Yeah. Well, I think that’s, that’s um, that North Star is very important. I think that’s where people like you and others and all of us make a difference in leaning into why those innate abilities. I think the philosophy, Mr Japanese Ziki Guy, which is the intersection of innate ability, your experience that those elements still come together as an intersection as why you should be here and to tap into that. And just while you’re talking about, you know, super consciousness and you mentioned it is that I read a Wayne Dyer book who passed away in his seventies, fantastic. Um He said that we should view humanity as a, a blanket where we stick our heads up through this, this black
Jeff Bullas
00:44:44 – 00:45:21
blanket. If you like, we all stick our heads up through the blanket underneath, we’re all connected, which is a super conscious and I that sort of like visual analogy, you know, metaphor for me, I went and you know what that’s stuck with me for decades now. And I think we are all connected somehow through energy quantum physics has maybe explained a bit of it. Um And we are just our little heads, we’re just little human dots that are connected all underneath this blanket that are actually connected to the super conscious and to the infinite and we don’t know what that is. But anyway, I just love the way Wayne came up with that, you know,
Brian Beckcom
00:45:22 – 00:46:15
and you know, it’s interesting, I’ve never heard that before, but what I had heard is in quantum mechanics, uh it, it’s really hard to wrap your head around the idea that things are composed of waves and particles like there, it’s both the best analogy that I’ve heard to describe that is the ocean. Like when you look at the ocean, you see the waves and the waves exist and you can see the crest of the wave and the trough of the wave and the wave is a thing. But you, if you get close enough to the ocean, you can also see that it’s composed of individual water molecules, right? And so that analogy, you just drew off the collective blanket people pop. That kind of reminds me of the ocean like the waves or individual consciousness. Yeah. And,
Brian Beckcom
00:46:16 – 00:46:22
but it’s composed, the ocean itself is a much, much bigger thing than just the individual waves.
Jeff Bullas
00:46:23 – 00:46:57
And, and for me, I don’t know, but I certainly feel all the time that I feel locked in my own loop of thinking my templates and my experience and I’m going, I know there’s much more to be unlocked because there is so much more intelligence that is just this energy field it feels for me. And so the question for me is how to unlock that? How do I escape my own box if we like? Because it’s a much bigger world out there. And I think meditations, maybe part of that answer,
Jeff Bullas
00:46:58 – 00:47:36
I’d be interested in your thoughts. Do you feel that for me? I’m going, I’m stuck in Jeff’s world, right? And I do certain things I think, I think I’ve got control but I think, you know, control’s got us whatever that control is. And for me trying to tap into that is part of my journey. And I think I’ve actually tapped it sometimes. Like when I started my blog, it was just a simple thing, but I felt like I’d tapped into a force field that I didn’t know about, but I was able to access it. And it, and the other thing too, I think out of this comes things like
Jeff Bullas
00:47:38 – 00:48:10
Where does motivation come from? You can’t just let people say, well, you just have to show discipline. You’re going well, hang on, that really only works for so long. So how do we, where does that force come from? And I think meditation is part of that solution. But, and sometimes it’s shown up in these glimpses of a force that seems beyond your own mortal being. And so I don’t know, do you feel that sometimes you feel like I’m trapped in this limited universe that I can only see? I know all the
Brian Beckcom
00:48:11 – 00:48:57
time, all the time. And I hate it. Like, I think people that think a lot get trapped even more. And the paradoxical thing about this job is there, there is a transcendent state. I’ve been there. Most of your listeners have been there. It’s that state you’re in where your, your, your consciousness is offline, but you’re still conscious and you’re in a, some people call it a flow state. For example, when I’m rolling jiu-jitsu and I’m in the middle of a jiu jitsu roll, my conscious brain is not really online. I’m just doing like, some people do that when they’re flying, when they’re fly fishing or when they’re detaining, you know, and it takes this,
Brian Beckcom
00:48:58 – 00:49:45
uh you know, terrible self referential ego offline a little bit. And the ironic thing about it is that meditation is the same way. The ironic thing about it is you can’t think your way out of your own thoughts. Like, because if you try to think by thinking you’re just making the loop stronger and stronger, but there is a transcendence, the transcendence states the interesting thing about it. 11 of the things that I think clearly makes humans different from other animals is the level of self consciousness we have and, and, and this uh this experiential quality that we have. But the funny thing about it is a better experience and most people that have been in a flow state will say it’s, it’s better than this self referential experience
Brian Beckcom
00:49:46 – 00:50:34
involves not thinking. And you know what, what I think about some of the time Jeff is like uh you and I are spec on a spec on a spec on a spec in terms of the timeline of the universe for the 99.9% with a line under it is or a line over as far as you want to go over the time of the universe. You and I will not exist as conscious human beings at least as we do now. But people are that idea that frightens people to death, right? Literally. But why, but why? But why should it because you were already dead for you did not exist for hundreds of billions of years and it was OK. You know what I mean? Like it’s not like you were tortured for hundreds of billions of years.
Brian Beckcom
00:50:35 – 00:50:59
And so to me that, that to me, the transcendent state is real. I think people get addicted to thinking and I’m, you know, as guilty of that as anybody, the transcendence state is one of the reasons you were so passionate about your blog. And I’ve been passionate about things too if you were probably getting up and literally in a flow state a lot of the time. You know,
Jeff Bullas
00:51:01 – 00:51:21
That’s enjoyable. I, and you know what it came out of, it came out of following my bliss. It was a curiosity and this for me is um yeah, the book Flow by the I’m trying to think of his name, the author um Caesar
Brian Beckcom
00:51:22 – 00:51:26
J, I can’t pronounce it. Yeah, it’s a name. I think I read
Jeff Bullas
00:51:27 – 00:51:49
it. I read it about 20 odd years ago. Might be 30. And um yeah, so for me, a lot of us try to bring discipline to the table and we should actually be bringing flow to the table. So how do you get into that state of flow? And what I love about your, you know, your resume is that you are a paradox of thinking and nonthinking.
Jeff Bullas
00:51:52 – 00:52:27
You are doing jujitsu, you are doing fly fishing, which are nonthinking things. They’re doing things, but they take you to a state of bliss obviously because you love doing those. But they stop you thinking and then you bring non thinking to a thinking industry as well, which is law. And the interesting thing about that is I’m just thinking as you talked about jiu-jitsu, I’m thinking ninjas and you are out thinking your competition and when they go look at me here, you’re actually on the ceiling, you know. And so
Jeff Bullas
00:52:27 – 00:52:48
this, you are a, we all are paradoxes. Your paradox for me sits on your bio that I read, which is, you know, both thinking and nonthinking and I think that’s where the magic happens when you get that tension right? And play with it. And that’s what, that’s what I think you’ve done with your life. Which I find fascinating.
Brian Beckcom
00:52:49 – 00:52:50
Well, thank you for saying that
Jeff Bullas
00:52:51 – 00:53:19
it’s because I love, I love you. I’ve got a good mate who’s basically a mass whiz but he does Origami and does as well, right? Because he treats Origami as a mathematical competition, but in his own brain because he’s got to work out the math to doi. And so um but yeah, it’s really um this for me made a touch.
Brian Beckcom
00:53:19 – 00:53:56
I hated math, by the way, until about 10 years ago, I hated math until I realized what it was. And all math is, is a language, it is just a language to describe things. And once I kind of like what, what’s called calculus is just a language to describe change motion. Uh geometry is just a language to describe space. And once I kind of got that, I became utterly fascinated with math. But like you talk about Origami Jiu Jitsu,
Brian Beckcom
00:53:57 – 00:54:29
this and I study it when I’m not practicing it, it’s so rewarding to me because the more I understand about it outside of the jiu-jitsu gym when I go into the. So I study it. I think about it. I learn about it and then I go in and my brain goes offline and I’m better at it and it’s the same thing with fly fishing. Like the more you know about the types of the, like, Entomology, the types of bugs on the water, what the conditions are, whether the fish like to eat a certain bug, what depth of the water you wanna be,
Brian Beckcom
00:54:29 – 00:55:04
the better off, you will be as a fisherman. But once you throw that fly in the water, you’re not thinking about any of that stuff, you’re just doing it. You know what I mean? The same thing, the same thing with painting Winston Churchill. One of my heroes was a big painter, and wrote a small book called paintings, a pastime that talks about this. He said, I plan the paintings, I plan the colors. I’m thinking, thinking, thinking, but then when he’s doing the painting, he’s just doing, you know, and that to me is where the, where the kind of the balance is, you know, you think, think, think, think, think and then you do.
Jeff Bullas
00:55:05 – 00:55:56
Yeah. Yeah. I think as humans, we’ve gotta get that balance between thinking and nonthinking because thinking is doing us most of the time and we’ve really got to try and scale that. Um So in law, I’m just curious about this. Um, I’ve just been loving this chat about what it means to be human. Frankly, that’s what we’ve been talking about. We haven’t talked digital on apprenticeship and we’re not going to, I don’t think, but as I in law, how do you think that’s going to play out? I’ll be intrigued by your view. And I’m sure you’ve got some views about that in terms of how much I can use the law profession. And I think that’s actually almost how long a piece of string is as well. Um, so I just,
Brian Beckcom
00:55:57 – 00:56:43
yeah, so what, what I, what I like to do when I talk about this topic and I’ve talked about this topic quite a bit. A I and the law is, I like to differentiate between the current biggest thing in, in the law, which is large language models and then A I is a separate phenomenon. And so let’s start with a large language. Uh, uh, when people say chat GP T and things like that, that is like saying, uh, Corvette or a Porsche or a Cadillac chat GPT is a, is a smaller subset of what we call large language. Yes, it is. Large language models are basically math engines for predictive math engines that take large amounts of data and then
Brian Beckcom
00:56:44 – 00:57:37
literally predict what they call them. Tokens and tokens can be a whole word. It can be a single letter, it can be a group of letters, but they take one token, they predict what and they just recursively do that. And so it’s not intelligent under the hood now, um The, the way it manifests itself appears intelligent in many ways and some of the things that are happening, appear intelligent. But the point is with large, I think large language models are gonna have a huge impact, not only on the law but on any industry where writing or talking or communication is involved, a mass, it’s already having a massive impact. So I’ll just give you one or two little solid examples. Like you can write a contract in 10 seconds. Now, most of the contract now
Brian Beckcom
00:57:37 – 00:58:22
humans got to go through and review it and take out the errors and stuff. But the efficiencies that are created by that are not hard, hard to believe like you and I can get off this podcast and within 15 seconds have a I generated summary of what we talked about right now. There’s a problem with that. OK. And that, and that is just that this doesn’t just apply to the legal business supplies to any business where information exchange support, uh our brains have a limited bandwidth. So what I found with large language models is I can produce a ton of stuff, but I can’t review it any faster, right? Like I can’t get it inside my head any faster. So
Brian Beckcom
00:58:22 – 00:59:03
what I see, I, I see uh large language models creating a ton of efficiency in any single industry where information exchange using either written or spoken languages. But we, we’re gonna have a problem because it’s gonna be like so much we’re gonna be able to produce so much, so fast, but we’re not gonna be able to consume it any faster necessarily. So what does it matter if we, is it that fast? Right. Like you can only read so much? Of course, there’s, you know, Elon Musk and Nolan and all this other stuff. What that, that’s one of the things they’re trying to solve is increase the bandwidth of our brains. But, but that, so I think
Brian Beckcom
00:59:03 – 00:59:44
LL MS is gonna have a huge impact but there’s a hard physical limit, the amount of information that we as humans can process. Now, let’s talk about A IA I so A I is already built into everything around us already in the smartwatch. I’m wearing the thermostat, these computers or smartphones. Apple is now baking A I into the phone. And I think, you know, not artificial general intelligence, artificial intelligence is gonna get to the point where it’s so ubiquitous that it just becomes part of our experience.
Jeff Bullas
00:59:45 – 01:00:20
Uh on it like all the time. As a matter of fact, I’ve got the Apple Vision Pro which is this headset. Most people are completely missing. They think it’s like a way to watch movies, porn and stuff like that. And it is, it’s great. I mean, I don’t know about the porn, but I’m sure it’s great, but you know, it’s great for consuming content. But what people are missing about this is the operating system. You’re, you’re literally operating things with your eyeballs and your fingers and it’s as close as I’ve ever seen to operating a computer with your mind, right? So, like you, you so like literally, you just look around and
Jeff Bullas
01:00:21 – 01:01:08
so we’re getting to the point where we’re just gonna be walking around in our environment and we’re gonna go, hey, uh we’re gonna look over on the wall and we’re gonna say, uh pull up an 80 ft TV screen and play goodfellas or we’re gonna say, hey, uh order, pull up the New York Times cooking app. I wanna cook that pasta. Uh send an order to Instagram and there’s not gonna be a phone in your hand. There’s not gonna be a computer, it’s just gonna be baked into the environment. Uh That’s where I think A I A, not artificial general intelligence. Now, let’s talk about a G I artificial general intelligence. The second we get a G I, all bets are off, like it’s all bets are off. II, I, there’s nobody can predict
Jeff Bullas
01:01:08 – 01:01:27
What’s gonna happen like this singularity? There’s a lot of talk about once we have a G I singularity will occur, I don’t know, maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Uh But, but what I do know is nobody knows like once a G I happens, like nobody knows what the consequences of that are, which is why I think it’s so important by the way
Jeff Bullas
01:01:27 – 01:02:01
that we talk about these issues and it’s also the point I’ve been making for years now is these are not technical questions. These are not questions that should be answered by people in Silicon Valley that are a billion dollar companies. They have no more knowledge about ethics. These are ethical questions. These are moral questions and the people that run these companies not only don’t have any more knowledge about ethics and morals, they have incentives that are bad for the rest of humanity. And so we need leaders who are versed in ethics and morality
Jeff Bullas
01:02:01 – 01:02:44
and the legalities who can speak to, you know, what kind of uh society we want and what kind of safety parameters we want around a gi, I don’t think it’s enough to just say do whatever you wanna do. Uh Elon Musk. And we don’t care whether it’s good or bad for humanity. As long as it’s good for your company, we’ll, we’ll support it. Like, yeah, I think we need to, we need to realize that these engineers and physicists and computer people don’t know jack shit about. They don’t know anything more about morality than you and I do or, or the trained philosophers are. But for some reason, we feel like because they’re rich and successful that they have some
Jeff Bullas
01:02:45 – 01:03:16
moral component to their thinking that’s better than ours. And I would argue that not only is that not true, but it’s actually the opposite. Like actually they have worse sentences which we need to be really, really careful about. And the thing that I worry about, Jeff is we’re going to get to the point where it’s going to be impossible for us to push back because the tech companies will have so much power that if you and I get together and try to push back a little bit, their algorithms will turn around and just nuke us to death like nobody will even see what we’re saying. So
Brian Beckcom
01:03:17 – 01:03:48
and I’ve just written about that in terms of the algorithms. It’s a battle of the algorithms now battling humans and the, you know, the titans, we have seven companies worth over a trillion dollars now, which is bigger than the GDP of most countries and out of that power and money comes hubris and we only have to watch Elon Musk seemingly descend into, um, into a person. I no longer recognize where he started from and I think that’s the challenge for Valley.
Jeff Bullas
01:03:49 – 01:04:35
Um I think Elon Elon, so Elon, I, and I drove a Tesla for 15 years was a huge fan and I think he’s a visionary and is doing a lot of things. But I think he is Elon Musk. Uh There’s real questions about, I like what he’s even trained in. Whether he liked it when he bought Twitter, it was crystal clear that he doesn’t know anything about the program even though he pretends like he does. And I think Elon has confused luck with talent and he was in the right place at the right time. He happened to be in Silicon Valley when everything was booming. He happened to invest in paypal. And that was just pure coincidence and
Jeff Bullas
01:04:35 – 01:05:08
Tesla is kind of the same thing as Tesla, he did not create Tesla, he bought Tesla did, he bought Tesla and without the federal government, it would have failed the taxpayers who supported it for 10 plus years. And I’m not saying that’s good or bad. I’m just saying it’s different. It’s like, again, especially in America. I don’t know if Australia has this issue, but in America, we confuse success in business with being intelligent and those things are not necessarily connected to, you know what I mean?
Brian Beckcom
01:05:08 – 01:05:26
Yeah. And it, it, it’s really, um, I think the power of celebrity, uh, which has been pushed by Hollywood and f, he’s really quite scary. And, um, and the thing too is we’ve got a lot of information in the world but we’ve got very little wisdom.
Jeff Bullas
01:05:27 – 01:05:30
It’s a great way to, I love that. That’s a great way to put it.
Brian Beckcom
01:05:30 – 01:06:22
And I think we’ve got to work a lot more in wisdom and it cannot be left to the titans of industry that are the global behemoths that are worth trillions of dollars because they’ve only got one, they’re serving only one master and it’s called Mammon. That’s right. Money, the love of money. So we’ve got to bring some other smart, beautiful humans to the table that are wise and they will not be technologists and it could involve, you know, the Nelson Mandela’s of this world. These need to be brought to the table to know about being good human beings and what that looks like because I think we’re losing sight of what success really is. And that’s part one of the big question I ask is what is success? And it’s, it’s much bigger than earning a million dollars a year.
Brian Beckcom
01:06:23 – 01:07:18
So for me, I’m thinking of putting together a group of people that brings different disciplines and it’s to do with a I, because I just feel that my brain is trapped in its own thinking and I need other people to help enhance my thinking. But collectively, I think as humans, we can make a difference much, much bigger than individuals. So how can we tap that? And how can we have discussions? And A I is asking these big questions and also the creation of a new species which is a multinational trillion dollar company which has got more power than nations that also needs to be like the tax law needs to be looked at, for example, globally. Um cos they’re raping and pillaging basically the revenue of the entire planet.
Brian Beckcom
01:07:19 – 01:07:46
And then there’s on top of that is, you know, mining as well and we’re trying to live in touch with the world and uh just looked at a little book, a book that was in review recently said and this is where we, we talk about technicality and physics and everything else, but on the other hand, and talk about going to virtual worlds. But I think there’s magic and wisdom that sits in the natural world by being in it. And I’m sure you experienced that with fly fishing, for example.
Jeff Bullas
01:07:47 – 01:07:47
Yeah,
Brian Beckcom
01:07:47 – 01:07:50
and no headset is gonna give you that.
Jeff Bullas
01:07:51 – 01:08:31
Yeah. Yeah. Uh a 100% and you know, um in many ways like you can really nerd out about this. But for example, I’m going to Colorado on Saturday, which is a very mountainous state in the United States because Houston is very hot right now. And I, that’s where I like to go fly fishing. I like to camp and stuff. But just you, you can literally walk down any path in Colorado, pull a leaf off of the tree, look at that leaf and the amount of engineering and science. I, I mean, it, it, it, it, it, it, it just renders everything we’ve done from a technological standpoint
Jeff Bullas
01:08:32 – 01:09:05
to be almost meaningless, like the, the, the human brain, for example, like the computer in our head is such a miracle of engineering, physics and science. And like these computers were putting together just cheap knockoffs of that. And, but, but what you, they talk about wisdom, I think is, is important. And so I’m a free market guy, I think the free market is really, really good. But I think the free market needs rules and because otherwise it’s just a free for all. And I also think there’s like
Jeff Bullas
01:09:06 – 01:09:42
In America, for instance, the law requires corporations to maximize shareholder value. Exactly. That’s the goal. There’s nothing that says that has to be the law though. Exactly. We could change the law to say corporations have an obligation to maximize shareholder value. While at the same time minimizing the external externalities on the environment, we could say that and that could be the law and there’s nothing that says it could and there’s nothing that says it couldn’t work. I mean, we have a good example of this right now, the country of Bhutan has the gross national happiness product.
Brian Beckcom
01:09:44 – 01:09:46
But exactly what it’s gonna bring up as you’re talking about it.
Jeff Bullas
01:09:47 – 01:09:47
Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
01:09:49 – 01:10:32
Yeah. And so, so the point I try to make is, people are always like, well, but the corporation has to do that because that’s the law. And I say, well, I understand that. But, who said that has to be the law forever and that wasn’t the law forever. As a matter of fact, in America, at least it wasn’t until the early 1900s. It used to be that forming a corporation was a very hard process. And you had to go through a lot of different loopholes or a lot of different hurdles to get it done because people back then realized and appreciated that one of the things the corporate form does is it disperses responsibility. And so people are gonna tend to make less moral decisions if they don’t feel like they’re
Jeff Bullas
01:10:32 – 01:10:38
00, well, it wasn’t me. It was my boss who said I had to do that. You know, I had to do that to maximize Cheryl Bren, blah, blah, blah, blah,
Brian Beckcom
01:10:38 – 01:10:41
blah. That’s how the Nazis arise. I didn’t do it. The
Jeff Bullas
01:10:41 – 01:11:22
government, the government told me to do it. Yeah, that, that, that, yeah, that’s the Nuremberg defense and that way. Yeah. And so, but, but my point is it doesn’t have to be that way like we could, we could literally say we’re gonna evaluate, we’re gonna value companies based on uh profits and other things. Like we’re, uh for example, we could say we’re gonna evaluate uh legally, we’re gonna say that corporations not only have to take an account of shareholder value, they have to take in uh the external impact on XY or Z and pick whatever you want. So my point is that’s the way it is, but that’s not the way it has to be.
Brian Beckcom
01:11:22 – 01:12:03
Exactly. And this is where we need to bring wisdom to the table. Right. And the thing is that the thinking, this is what we’ve talked about trying to escape our own minds. I think corporations have to escape their own corporate charter, which is make money, make money. Um, hang on. We’re raping and pillaging the planet. We need to look after the planet. We’ve got to live with it. We’ve got to actually work in balance, um, and a whole bunch of other things. And I actually haven’t read what the Happiness Index in Bhutan actually includes, but it’s sure that it’s, I’m sure it’s not just about making money.
Jeff Bullas
01:12:04 – 01:12:33
Yeah. And you know, the thing I realized about money, uh, not to. So I got plenty of money. Ok, the lawyers get paid. I have a comfortable lifestyle and by the way, I don’t have anything at all against people wanting to make money or people being wealthy. I think if you, if you do, if you work hard and you provide a service that people want to pay for it. You should be able to enrich yourself because of that. What I have a problem with is when that’s all it’s about. And you know what I realized was,
Jeff Bullas
01:12:33 – 01:13:14
and this may sound stupid to you and your listeners, but I realized it. I, so I got to a point financially where I basically had everything I wanted and like I have the car, I wanna drive, I live in the neighborhood, I wanna drive, I wear the clothes I wanna wear, I do the things I wanna do. And what I realized was uh like for example, a house, you can only physically exist in one room at a time. Like, like, I mean, how big is like how much, like if you have a house that’s 40,000 square feet, you’re literally never gonna experience 90% of your own house. And so do you really get any additional happiness out of it? Like if you’re
Jeff Bullas
01:13:14 – 01:13:53
uh if you, if you’re really into cars and you have a really nice car, you can only drive that car, or 11 cars at a time and only at certain times. So are you really gonna get that much more happiness? So I guess my point is there’s all these studies that say up to a certain amount of money. Uh Once you have a certain amount of money, anything on top of that doesn’t increase your happiness at all. I think that I know that is 100% true. And what people that are focused only on money, they’re not wise people because they haven’t realized that I’m sure you have to have a certain amount of money to be comfortable and all that sort of thing. But beyond that,
Jeff Bullas
01:13:54 – 01:14:44
it really, truly doesn’t matter like it, at least in terms of your everyday day to day. Well, being it, it, it, it does not matter at all. And in some ways, it’s kind of like the old paradox. If you seek happiness, paradoxically, you will be unhappy. If you seek purpose or meaning that will lead to happiness. And it’s the same thing with money. If you seek money, you’ll probably get it, but it’s not gonna make you happy. Whereas if you seek to do well or to provide a service to people, you’re probably gonna make money. No, and you’ll probably be happier doing it. But
Brian Beckcom
01:14:45 – 01:15:21
yeah, I think you’ve, you’ve touched some really important points and um look for me like you, I’ve got enough money. Um So what’s more important to me is being in nature just like you go fly fishing, for example. Um It means having um a dinner party where you sit around and talk shit with all your friends over a few glasses of wine. And so choosing happiness is, is, is multifaceted. And that leads me to my final question when I ask you,
Brian Beckcom
01:15:24 – 01:15:39
What would you do every day? Even if you weren’t paid for it? What brings you joy? That’s really what I’m asking. We’ve talked about the happiness index. But what brings Brian true heartfelt joy? I’m curious,
Jeff Bullas
01:15:39 – 01:16:20
I hate to say this. Uh, but I wouldn’t change it. I do exactly what I’m doing right now. That has not always been the case by a long shot. But, you know, uh I, I, uh, you know, II, I heard this saying a long time ago there are two guys talking, they see this billionaire on TV or something and one guy goes to the other. Oh man, that guy is a, he’s got billions and billions of dollars. And the other guy says, well, well, he has, I have something but he doesn’t have. I like what, what could you possibly have that this millionaire doesn’t have? And he said I have enough and
Jeff Bullas
01:16:21 – 01:17:00
That’s kind of how I feel right now at this stage in my life. II, I wouldn’t buy, I wouldn’t change what I’m, what I’m doing at all. And it’s not just about the law, by the way, I have a lot of other things that I do. I spend a lot of time with my kids. I’m involved in a lot of different charitable stuff. I do a lot of, and jujitsu, I have a lot of younger Brazilian guys that I sponsor and, um, and talking to people like you quite frankly, like the conversations like this are, uh, this really makes me happy. Like, this energizes me having discussions about this and then, you know, it tonight, I’m gonna cook dinner for my wife.
Jeff Bullas
01:17:01 – 01:17:11
I might, uh, I might have a glass of wine or two. I watch a little TV. And then I’ll wake up and do it again tomorrow and that’s enough for me quite frankly. Yeah.
Brian Beckcom
01:17:11 – 01:17:46
Yeah. Well, it sounds to me like you’ve actually organized your multiple bliss into one bliss called life and it involves thinking and nonthinking, which I think is the paradox. And um it has been an absolute joy talking to you, Brian. Um I’ve just, it’s been an absolute joy and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this with beautiful smart people around the world and that’s what brings me joy as well and there’s many other things, but that’s part of my bucket of bliss. Let me call it that.
Brian Beckcom
01:17:49 – 01:17:51
Thanks Brian.
Jeff Bullas
01:17:51 – 01:17:52
Thanks.