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Aug. 27, 2022
10 - All Too Human: Remorse
This is the first in a series of episodes where Jason and Dimitri examine a number of distinctly human attributes. They begin with the feeling of Remorse, and the act of the Apology. Throughout this series, the idea of Artificial General Intelligence will be touched upon and referenced, acting as both a contrast to the human emotions discussed, and as a general topic of great significance.
This conversation was recorded on August 14, 2022, in Toronto, Canada.
Transcript
hello and welcome to intimate discourse my name is jason and i'm a human being
this episode is the first in a series examining some of the singular attributes that define us as a species
it will also note how these uniquely human characteristics must be fundamentally incompatible with any
artificial intelligence well this series will mostly focus on us human folk and the various ways we
instantiate these carbon-centric attributes it will also initiate a wider debate into the logical ethical and
philosophical implications of agi artificial general intelligence
this is possibly the defining issue of our times as advances in ai continue and as it
becomes more and more embedded in our everyday life it is crucial that the public become more involved in the dialogue
surrounding it or at the very least more aware of the scope and scale of what's beginning to happen
it's a topic we as a society and as a species need to engage in soberly
honestly and with a certain degree of transparency while artificial intelligence has
already done so much to improve our collective lives there is a terrifying downside in placing too much faith in these
technologies or in the researchers and companies designing them we must tread carefully
together with eyes wide open we must analyze the risks weigh the benefits and proceed accordingly
it is my hope that this series can play some small part in the wider discussion that needs to happen over the coming years
this first episode in the series all too human deals with remorse and by extension the apology
it was recorded on august 14th 2022 in toronto canada
welcome to the show my name is jason and i'm here with dimitri hello everyone
and uh we're going to be talking about apologies today uh the evolution of the apology the
um sort of related um attributes of an apology um just all
things apology all apologies that's what we're going to be doing today so oh to kurt cobain um
there are so many places to start with this i know it seems like a kind of a random a random topic um but uh there's
actually a lot to it so it's interesting i like kind of exploring these things like we almost take for granted sometimes
just uh personality traits and things like that i think one of the most important things
and i i haven't uh told you about this dimitri but i think we should do this
show as part of a series that we should do on distinctly human characteristics and
contrast that with because we you know on this show we talk a lot about ai and there's a lot of uh
move right now by some big ai companies um to just
replicate like human behavior and and a lot of um
a lot of the problems with around like getting agi like um artificial general intelligence where you have like a um
like a robot that is actually thinking for itself and um very much simulating
um human thought uh you would um uh
there are uh you know it gets a little it gets a little scary and when you see like so do
you know the turing test yeah so yeah of course and so this idea of sitting a
a a an ai down they're having a conversation with an ai and and a regular human and
you know for a random observer to be able to decide
which one is the human and which one is the ai um that's sort of the turing test so like
in in terms of like artificial intelligence but um as we get closer to that
point where the average person won't be able to distinguish between the two um i think um
and i still think we're a ways off for that like just if you see some of the things that ai can do like i don't know
if you ever watched any of these youtube videos but they'll have like you know they'll do like sort of interviews with a
an ai and it will be like um asking questions you know it'll say things like you know
is there a god is there and you can tell just by their responses that this isn't like a this isn't like human thought did
you hear the news though about a month ago that i think some google engineer tried to make the proclamation that
the ai he was interviewed became sentient that seemed like a big publicity thing is he hungover i don't
know i i i know the guy too just like seeing well you know it's a great way for him to get you know out there and
start talking about things i listen to him if it's the same person i'm thinking of um because i remember that story came
out and i was like what is this now and um it's great click bait and you know i clicked on a bunch of them but um
he yeah i i don't buy that i mean we could have we could talk about that if you want but i just mean it's um
i don't think ai will ever be sentient but um
at least not with i mean if it's not perceptible to us for all intents and purposes yeah there's a
whole argument to be made there but it just really the funny thing is like so many things it comes back to your fundamental
beliefs and then you get into this like
when you start putting belief into science like in injecting that it becomes more and more subjective and
more you know it's like i always thought like if i ever had a conversation with richard dawkins i was like because i do
believe in god but it's like i can't logically explain it i can give you i you know i can i can talk you through
the lot my logic of it because i'm not it's not just like a blind faith or whatever but you know some of it it's
just so subjective and i can totally understand why you know somebody who hasn't had the same experiences or or
isn't buying into the same sort of subjective um
criteria that i that i'm explaining which is why i believe it then you know i like the the atheistic response makes
sense to me um in a sort of empirical way it just doesn't make sense in a very
two-dimensional mechanistic sort of way and i think that's the problem yeah as far as we think we are advancing these
things we're we're in such an infantile mode yeah yeah right to try to explain that which is more of an intuition or
faith-based or lived experience you know yeah so yeah yeah i do think we're we're moving forward but we have it's
hubris i think we're getting anywhere close to solving that problem yeah yeah i think that there's um
there's a lot of a lot of work to be done i mean and of course with ai it becomes the question of you know how far
do we want to go you know i think there's a ton of positive positive benefits to it it's
just that it's um uh you know it just depends on the trajectory we take as a as a whole it's
just a it's a tool yeah not a replacement for reality right right um
but so all that being said i think it's you know we can do we'll do a series of shows sort of highlighting attributes
which i think make us distinctly human and i think this idea of an apology is something that makes the idea of feeling
guilt for something and feeling having that sort of um be the catalyst
to apologize to somebody i mean in theory this is how apologies are supposed to happen anyway but um i let
somebody down right could a computer ai like feel like i let you down yeah i told you i really
should have said sell the stock at this price even if they program that into some sort of um ai like you're not getting that
feeling i mean i i can't understand how it would be possible to get it you know how complicated would the circuitry have
to be like the software circuitry have to be for it to be actually having feelings of if it
doesn't yeah if it doesn't mean it then it's not real yeah no matter how you perceive it right right yeah and that and that's sort of like and that's i
guess a lot of what apologies are is like there are a lot of insincere apologies
right like we've certainly seen it i um and
anyway this is this is one of the things we we're going to be analyzing today in terms of the apologies but i do think that this is a sort of a distinctly
human characteristic it's something that if you're designing an ai i can't imagine how you would design that i
would love to hear you know um artificial artificial intelligence
researchers tell like it would almost have to be like the ai has its own life and grows up to know these things and
just reacts naturally right right some sort of heuristic growth curve yeah but but yeah because
you can't um well this is the i remember once i took this class where uh it was like a sci-fi it was like such
a it was at ryerson actually it was just such a it was a uh sci-fi um
was it like on sci-fi authors or whatever it was like sci-fi fantasy it was just like i needed credits to to do
something and uh so it's like the easiest class i've ever taken but like um when we were doing the do um the
philip k dick do row bra it was the blade runner yeah the move was the movie the book do robot stream of electric sheep or
whatever um so we were talking about that and we watched blade runner in there as well and it's like oh and and the question
was put to the class so you know um the morality of do you
kill an ai and this and that and i i stood up and i was like to everyone's horror said yeah i mean i would probably
you know rape and kill the ai with no qualms whatsoever and it was just like because you know they're not they're not
like they're not sentient they're not human like and i know that that might seem like kind of a hopelessly naive
kind of um position to take but they're not endowed with a soul which is i do believe in a
soul and i don't know what the soul is i don't i couldn't i'm just that's like a catch-all phrase or whatever but like
you're not you know if humans are designing it however you no matter what you put into
the code you're still um you're still left with something that is designed by humans and we're we're not
um you know i don't know for you it was as simple as if i want to
take a baseball bat to my car it's a baseball bat to my car i don't need to feel guilty about that
right i feel more guilty about the baseball back to the car um yeah i mean it's it's it's not we
have to remember that i you know uh robots it's just like the robots take over you know 30 years
from now i'll be the first one uh first one against the wall but uh
but i do think that it's we have to sort of remember that and putting it in those stark terms is like like let's not
romanticize this idea uh about um what we're giving birth to here yeah
well with you for me it's just a tool it's a tool it's a tool and to make it anything more grander than a tool is
it's almost demeaning to the human experience yeah you know yeah and life in general it's
not life it's a tool it's a hammer exactly and i think it is extraordinarily useful it is yeah it's
really the next the next evolution of you know um um
you know you i just think of like 2001 and the you know that kind of iconic moment where the ape
has the tool and discovers how to use it it's sort of the next phase of that right like um but you have
uh i i do think it's like um
it's extraordinarily interesting and i do think that as that tool like when you start to get to the point where we've
designed them and now they're designing other thems and they become you know
there is this sort of like software-based consciousness in the sense that they are
like you know for all intents and purposes their brain would
be able to retrieve all the facts and all the like can you imagine so so can you imagine now if somebody
just you say you realize that you were um you know you go back to battlestar galactica say you realize you were a
cylon you know what i mean like what kind of existential crisis would that breed in you or would you just kill yourself at that point because it's like
well i'm not real or would you feel real i mean it's something like when you find out you're an orphan at 25 or you're adopted not a
dwarf but adopted at 25. these aren't my real parents yeah it probably is anything yeah that's probably like a
minor version of that but yeah yeah it's probably the same sort of adapt and deal with it i don't know
but i mean but for example like if you thought you were and i you know if you thought you were
if you discovered you're a cylon now um you wouldn't want somebody to kill you still right so there'll still be like a
self-defense mechanism sort of built into them for their own survival oh yeah yeah um i
you're talking about super highly advanced levels though i don't think we're anywhere near yet
yeah you know so yeah theoretically yeah if you i guess yeah it's like data and star trek like
you just want to stay alive because it um it's real to you right at that point you know
sure i think that the presumption though of that even though it feels real doesn't
make it real yeah right like and that's the thing we're talking about as if it's like we're
talking from a human perspective like well what would it be like for an ai to suddenly have that consciousness of oh
i'm actually not real but i don't think that they would have it the same way they wouldn't have that experience and inevitably it isn't real like you're
watching a movie and you're watching two people like uh act a really dramatic scene but it's not real you know there's a
certain moment like but i feel it i'm feeling emotions these are really in there they're acting they're they're embedding themselves into the emotions
but it's not real yeah there's a moment where you say cut and it's it's over you know right no matter how
wonderful you've constructed that either ai or a movie scene or whatever but isn't there like a twilight zone episode
or something where there's um the characters in the movie they find out that they're in a movie like it
would be the kind the same kind of thing this is like um you can find out whatever you want
you can you can perceive it from your subjective point of view i think however the person wants but it doesn't make it
real it's kind of going back to like you know pop culture today my subjective experience versus objectivity
you know you can get into i feel like a man but i'm a woman you know like so to my feelings like you can go anywhere
with this i think there's a certain point you have to just go back to objectivity yeah i think that we have to it's sort
of like newtonian physics like you have to have objectivity in the sense of just so you can make your way in the world and live a life right like is if you
start like getting too obsessed with like you know maybe the quantum mechanical world or all these sort of
like you can always question anything is this table really a table is this a pipe like you know i know if something exists on the other side of your coffee cup if
i can't actually see the other side of the car yeah well you know everything's made of like all you know this
you know everything's made of like molecules and atoms and the atoms are spaced so far apart there's so much empty space it's like well is it even
real like how is it like true so it's you could get it you could really go down you know that proverbial rabbit hole but it doesn't really help you in a
sort of day-to-day like there's an intuition to it where you're like okay like i know like this is real and i can understand
how an ai would be thinking differently from us like it wouldn't be having that same human
experience of oh i'm a um i just realized i'm a um you know i'm
not a human and not real yeah i've heard too like the way to prevent the robot
robots from taking us over is simply treat them with absolute human respect from the moment they we start creating them so there's no
reason for them to ever want to feel animosity towards the human species yeah i guess right from the very day
like now we start with like you know in our constitutions this is life sort of thing yeah but i don't i think that
i don't know it's so like relying on like um you know
like there will be a point probably fairly soon where well in so many different levels ai is
so much better than humans processing and went on so it's like you ever get a situation where they're actually like
making decisions and like making other ai like it's just a that will very rapidly like
i don't i don't think our kind of the framework of our um
the morality that we impose on it will i think there will be a point where it supersedes that where it's sort of like if there's any kind of heuristics to it
it'll kind of be like okay well you know for our survival we have to do this or all it takes is one time for
that you know even if they're most of the time you don't have to go too far now you have like the green initiatives on earth and that and humans are a virus
right that into some ai and the ethical thing to do is to treat just like we treated
let's say unvaccinated people how dare they why do we tolerate them and take up space on this earth how far is it for ai
to say well humans are the actual virus on earth and so for the betterment of the universe we need to get rid of
humans so yeah you can go anywhere with that that's why we need to stay on top right right
right yeah we got to stay in control i just it seems so like really naive like to just
like hopelessly naive to think that we can create this thing oh it's like a whole pandora's box thing so it's like
we're going to create and it's like we've just created something that is going to be like exponentially more intelligent than us but we'll keep it
under control yeah exactly then i wonder just like my sci-fi brain will be humans that side with the robots and will there be then
robots that actually feel sorry inside for the humans guys break away yeah what's that gaius ball yeah yeah yeah
and they'll just break away from the other hive like ai structure like no i'm with the humans on this one yeah we're
gonna have some pretty interesting wars pretty much amazing yeah yeah
and how will they apologize to each other yeah yeah yeah yeah let's bring it back
um so yeah anyway so that's the overall context here so i do think that um
so getting into apologies you know obviously it's a uniquely care uh human characteristic uh
to feel that kind of regret and to um and to uh
you know express it in the form of like an i'm sorry and this and that i think it has to be lived i think i like the
way this conversation started because jumping with ai it really hasn't lived that life to feel regret
i don't right i don't know if you can program that in it would have to be programmed in such a way that like i said there's a growth curve to the ai
like the way you first release it in beta isn't the way it ends up it actually naturally develops on its own
if you could do that then you maybe we could naturally program in some self-taught
morality where it actually feels regret well yeah true because i need but i mean then i
just wonder if maybe there would be a uh case where it would just you could embed experiences or something
so yeah you know a total recall i don't know one of those take a vacation down there and leave we'll just program the
memories into you as if you're taking the vacation yeah perhaps perhaps yeah yeah um
i do think with a lot of those things i don't i don't i'm trying not to get off topic but like i do think a lot of those things are
you know we talk about these things hypothetically like as if we'd be able to embed memories in and as if we'd be able to
you know have kind of that vacation i think it's kind of like and i know i bring up the quantum physics stuff a lot but i think there
will be a point where we sort of think that these things are going to be possible because they
seem in theory possible to us now if we just keep going forward but there's a wall somewhere where
it becomes impenetrable like um where you know you might not
like you you get to a point where you're like it's it's almost like um that's the barrier where it's like okay we kind of
can't get around that i don't know that i'll play counter to my point where i think i should be limited or it'll never
make it because in the end i think human creativity is limitless and if we can just dream it we can make it
the question is whether we should well maybe yeah i see so um we can make
anything given the right time well yeah maybe but not really like we
can't make a time machine we maybe can well but but but that's bound by this is what i'm
talking about like if you're bound by certain laws like if you're bound by the speed of light the maximum of the speed
of the speed of light right no i i see what you're saying but it's but those these are these kind of
walls that i think come up where it's like okay like for example the whole uncertainty principle so you can't
actually like if you wanted to figure if you want to get really down to the muck with quantum physics it's like okay
well let's you know let's try it and this is you know what they tried to do is like trying to determine like position and momentum and like try to
figure out like in a classical world it's like okay you know like in newton's world it's like you know you could you could predict
with accuracy like where you know as long as you knew where everything was and how fast everything
was going you could figure out like basically the whole fate of the universe but because you have so but if you keep
going on a smaller and smaller level you get to a point where you can't actually do that physically so it's like and if
you can't actually do that then it means that there is unpredictability built into the system
right well exactly so that's sort of the blurring where it's like that's way out there though no but i mean but it's the
same thing with the time machine it's like okay then you know it's great to say i mean i know like tachyon particles or whatever
something they can go faster than light in theory or something like that but um
if you have that limit where it's like nothing can go faster than the speed of light and
um like how do you how do you kind of um
i don't know it's kind of like it's kind of like you have to you can say you can say something is
possible but until we actually do it it's really not possible like so
so i i guess that seems fairly like an obvious thing to say but like i i know you're i know what you're saying too
like it's just so many infinite possibilities like for us to yeah we're talking like maybe like millions of years of human
development to get there that's an interesting thing about religion because it's kind of like the hack it's kind of like you don't need to do all that
right you can peek behind the curtain you know your consciousness whatever we got you you know sort of thing yeah um
and maybe that's sort of like the built-in almost like mechanism that makes it a rigged game
like the universe is infinitely big and like you said infinite number of possibilities in order to make time travel happen that you just can never
solve it yeah and even trying to go down such a rabbit hole is something that's it's gonna
um if all what's the expression um uh good intentions there's the path to
road paced with good intentions yeah like maybe and maybe that's the thing like we're just um
it's a it's almost rigged because there's just so many very variables you will never actually get to that end point don't even try that right and then
you know in a sense religion kind of comes and goes you don't really need to even go there that's going to take up so much time and energy from the human
species it's a dead end yeah yeah you just you're not going to find what you're looking for right in
that direction yeah it is limitless and therefore impossible because it's uh
so many uh you know the algorithm is infinitely big right you'll never solve it yeah so don't try so but then you get
into like don't try too hard obviously you want a better quality of life and stuff but don't throw all your
eggs in that basket yeah yeah actually i do i do think that's true and yeah like i i that's
because i think that there is sort of the god principle where it's like you know i think that there is a bit of an
like i say this with no proof and obviously like this is just an opinion but like um
that god truly does guide things to some extent like not in a way where it's like you know necessarily he's showing up
somewhere and like pushing so he's like oh let's make the stock market go up a little bit today but um i think that
there's some sort of intelligence that we don't understand that does guide certain forces that are
you know kind of like oh like okay like we definitely don't want the nazis to have the atom bomb
first like you know what i mean like certainly certain like things like that interventionalist god versus sort of the
prime mover like the only miracle that ever happened was the the beginning of time and everything that has come since then is a miracle but from the original
miracle and it cascades forward right yeah you know yeah you don't say you know god bless you and he stops uh you
know just turns around and gives you your blessing and move on sort of right yeah i i don't know i don't know if we'll ever solve that one it could be
why can't it be a bit of both you know yeah i don't know yeah i think it's um um
yeah i think it's not something we will ever understand but i will say if ai does get to the point where they're like
you know really um you know because of the speed of computation and the this sort of
exponential learning that can go on maybe they can solve some of the um some of the problems that we
um maybe they can you know you're talking about like complex problems and we'll never be able to find things don't mean some things
will be able for sure because like just the amount of computation they can they can do um
it would like the problem couldn't be something that like right now as humans we have a
problem with like for example um you know finding uh
like like encryption encryption works because humans can't calculate so many
um iterations of like calculations or whatever so it's like so
that's why encryption works but you know if you have an ai that is able to i mean i guess encryption's about
example because you're talking about really large numbers but eventually ai the speed of computing power um you
actually don't even really need ai for that but like computing power and ai combined just anything that is a
computational problem will be solved but it's like things that are a little more like complex in the sense that we don't even
know the variables we don't know the variables yeah yeah you even quantify in this case right yeah because if the
universe by definition is limitless you can't possibly know what you're aiming for do you know that they
have ai now like that that can um detect uh like cancer
in the sense of if you breathe on them yeah like like that's crazy but that like but that's
so um i mean obviously that's like a beneficial uh thing for humanity but it's fantastic yeah yeah so you get but
you get that but it's a tool it's a tool but you you see how that builds right so then you'd have like but the building
requires like we're literally at still stone age uh you know caveman with a hammer going this now we've got power
right not realizing that we're still like on the same continent never mind planet never mind galaxy yeah sort of
thing right like it's so how does that um how does that you know as a society what do we need to
do like if we want to use ai as a tool what are the things that we that we want
to um use it for uh like what should be off limits i guess
for for ai what should be you know i'm gonna i
don't think i'm answering your question but i think i'm gonna say something that makes sense your spirituality like i
don't know why because i think it becomes two separate roads sometimes so you're going to take this path or this path right
how about just a holistic you your health your body your mind your soul whatever you want to call it is like we
like develop time we put time into developing all these things that we know best of after a couple thousand years
here of civilization and simultaneously we continue with you know modern technology
i don't i don't know why it has to be such a duality so like a paradoxical sort of thing like you must pick one path or the
other path no but i mean if you wanted to have like ai if you if if it's a tool and there's certain things just
it's just a hammer right what would be some things that we wouldn't want to use the tool for like
for example for replacing your spirituality i think sometimes it becomes a new religion unto itself okay that's what i'm trying to say yeah like
this is everything right you reach the singularity and have no more problems and transhumanism and all this stuff
and you've really kind of just derailed yourself from the other um not easily quantifiable knowledge yeah
yeah i know what you mean you know and so that's a path right like i think you need to try to embrace both paths yeah
no no that's a good point that's a good point yeah there's a lot of science in the least but i'm really pro-spirituality too and i don't think
they have to they're in such different veins they may circle around to the same point
you know millions of years as we develop as a species but we're nowhere near that yet so that one be one and the other one be
the other one and i enjoy them both for what they are yeah but i don't let one replace the other you know you have spiritual people like i don't need any
tech i'm gonna live on a island like tom hanks okay but you know you're putting a lot of wear and tear on
that body and you might not live as long right yeah i don't know you know if someone wants to look like that that's
fine but i wouldn't promote that for myself or my family and simultaneously living in a
1 million dollar 400 square foot condo detached from any uh interpersonal
relationships and love for nature and uh getting to know yourself is also not particularly um i wouldn't call it
fulfilling either yeah yeah and i think you know the issue with ai is um a issue like
i'm sure you can like you said program this in but as humans you know we are we're we are tribal creatures
right right and so uh you know we have the blue team versus the red team the shia versus the sunni
the protestant versus the catholic we are so tribal and literally every aspect um
the capacity to compromise has been the highlight of human evolution and i don't know if that you can you're
saying like tie that into ai at some point yeah yeah you know negotiating power
compromising your values can you compromise the value when you're a computer program that's the thing it's
quite interesting right but that's the thing like you know and obviously the programming is much more complex than this but i always think of it in terms
of like okay so say you're programming something into uh you know some ai software and you're
like okay for um if you want to have um
maybe your val like think of computer games where you're assigning a certain level of like attributes and it's like plus three plus
four or whatever it's really just an outgrowth of that isn't it i mean how else do you say like so if you're saying
those those values that you're just putting in are already programmed how do you know it's a plus one and not a plus seven
that person that ai's lived experienced where do you draw that even like it gets so like you said infinite number like a
george bush bush a thousand points of light but it literally cascades into this like 3d spectrum of like numbers
you know and isn't it and it's kind of like algorithmic like even if you have an ai that's like learning you're still
it's like okay now i'm not plus seven i'm plus eight or i'm you know what i mean you literally have to have each ai be its own thing yeah you know like how
that one particular robot let's say interprets its lived experience has to be different from another robot right if
they are overlappingly similar in too many ways um that being said to counter my point a
little bit there too you know our belief uh in foundational values as humans supersedes our religious political and
sexual identities so we do as humans have core values too right like a certain you know whether you know your
country you're born in a religion you are yeah so yeah i guess you could program a baseline into that and then
grow from there but there still has to be room for so much individualism inside the robotic experience
yeah you know yeah yeah it's uh yeah it's it's a real it's a real
interesting uh topic um yeah i i don't know like you know pure reason logic values these are these
are the things that enrich people in a truly classical liberal sense and i don't i just don't know if you're
gonna get there with um ai in a meaningful time for humanity
yeah in time frame you know like it's it's just i don't i think it's a bit of a is it the expression of red herring
you know we're taking us down a certain path that's really not going to provide for us it's kind of like transhumanism like we're going to have radical life
extension oh wonderful what does that mean well instead of living to 120 a.i will now let you to live to be
130. the problem is getting to 120 to begin with right which comes back to
core basic human you know don't put too much stress in your body great food have a job a work-life balance that is
appropriate yeah you know all these things are not technologically um relevant you know well though i would
say though in terms of life extension you do get into a thing where
i mean if you have if you have um technology that is able to detect cancers like at the drop of a
hat and you you know you know if you start eliminating these um pathogens or if you're able to kind
of go in there and much more quickly identify i you know it's a tool still oh of course there's a tool but i'm just
thinking like in terms of life extension like i can see you know there being so everybody wears their own has their own little personal ai yeah they're 55
instead of getting pro get prostate cancer the ai picks it up and yeah it just keeps shooting them down sure
yeah of course you know it's i'm not against medical science in any either
the trade-off for every dollar spent to try to get you from 120 to 130 would be better off trying to get you from 60 to
120. especially on a global perspective like how dare we in the west try to like you
know increase our our life expectancy through technology to 130 when there's people in africa that don't have drinking water
right yeah money better spent there yeah but it's not a money well i but that's i mean that's
i don't know i don't agree with that argument because i just think it's like a because okay so what company is so okay
go ahead and do it then you know what i mean like well like like you have like for example like there's no money in helping the poor no i'm not i'm not
saying i'm not even saying that i'm just saying it's like you know you're at the there are so much likes
why pharmaceutical companies are you know more interested in a drug for like like viagra or something than that but
other than something that is going to just completely cure um some disease that uh
but can we do it could we help more people with our money spent better well for sure for sure but but that's well
but you're talking about like a collective yeah we oh sure if we put all the money into one pot it probably is a better idea to get everybody up to one
standard uh than it is then you work on it yeah but i mean that's i i need to say
cars simultaneously you're doing research in this area because you don't want to start from scratch once you get you know that is kind of what's
happening you know what i mean because you already have like for example like agricultural projects that are like you
know there's more food available now like yeah i don't i never believe this world is overpopulated or there's like a
food shortage stuff drive from here to windsor there's nothing but corn fields i think what we have is an import export
problem based on individual economies around the world and how they're particularly run and they're buying capacity and what they can actually
supply for their own people you know and that's a man-made problem you know we can fix that right yeah yeah i think
that i mean i think there there are challenges to it because i i do think um you know again with climate change like
there's going to be different challenges in terms of where things grow but i mean you can grow a lot of this stuff in a
lab right like if you really wanted to so it's kind of like the idea that we're going to all starve i think is a little
bit like far-fetched given given what we can sort of accomplish now and
um yeah but i would say that um this idea of kind of like that is a good
idea as a sort of you know table topic idea but it's like how would you implement that like well easier than
implementing radical life extension well so yeah but like i mean so google already
has you know i'm sure like projects that are dedicated to the poor or hungry or like how you know i'm sure they have projects
that are dedicated to this but they do have but they also have deep mind right so they're both
yeah but just the focus today like it's just it's such a low hanging fruit you know it just it breaks my heart when
you sit there and like you know we're building teslas but do you see where the minerals come from and you see and i know it's probably just a small
screenshot of a window and they have to have any kind of job because before they had no job okay yeah i totally understand the growth curve they're
going through these countries um it just something feels wrong about it
like we're just focused in the wrong direction yeah
i don't know i mean i i i do you really think we live longer today i know you can do like different like stats and
like but really like when you i think when you average out all the um child deaths like between zero and five
years of age drop them out of the equation right and the deaths of women giving birth because
that happened to a significant number too and then you're left with like and those are wonderful medical advancements i'm not saying take anything away from
that but if you were a man and you made it past the age of 10 and you were in a country of decent weather and food
supply you were pretty much going to 70 80 years of age anyways well i think the idea though is if
you're in muddy england with wars going on like that's you know it's a different situation but to say that technology is
sort of swooped in and elevated us from 45 years of age life expectancy to 85. i don't think it
really um it's a lot more nuanced than that but don't what about like curing like there's a lot more you can
do medically now sure but how many people do you know are still alive today because of medical intervention
i i would expect some small fraction well i mean i just think of like i mean let me put in more simple terms because
it's irrelevant today how many years of life did the planet lose because of covid
when the average person who was dying was 84 years of age like they had some life left but not
that much right right this wasn't one of those diseases thank god that didn't kill people at 10 years of age because then
for each one you lose they're losing another 70 80 years of life per person yeah right so i think it's like
diminishing returns as you get older you know like it's only so much life left anyways at that point i think we really
need to move the bottom up rather than the top even higher yeah i mean i i think what it is though
is it's the same thing with like people talking about like whoa you know who cares if uh the climate changes one
degree like you know how can one degree have much of an effect it's like yeah but you're talking about like a
large amount of people so even the life expectancy you know you can say like oh it only went up like you know what 10
points or whatever since like you know 200 years ago or something it's like okay but those those 10 points are huge
like that's like you're talking about people yeah i'm very happy for all the technological things we have in our in
our world tremendously but those 10 points would have been 70 points for somebody
that's 10 years of age so my focus is always on the where am i going to get the maximum return getting that child not to die in uh
between zero and five of malaria let's say or some sort of disease you know well yeah vaccinations have been
wonderful for polio and those sorts of uh smallpox yeah i think i agree with what you're
saying all right you know or at least i like i think that that that is important and i but i do
think there's separate things like i think it's um you do need to um and i think that
you know you were saying how it's a lot of it has to do with sort of administrative issues and and where it's like um
almost depends on like governments or you know in certain countries that are like you know they're just not well run so
it's hard to get like for example like vaccines like to a certain area of the population like in the middle of africa
or whatever so you know um i think those are a lot of problems that do need to be
worked out it's gonna be hard because like the interesting thing about and dangerous thing about ai and going back to apologies
is like i just think the centralization of any of that stuff creates a we'll create a totalitarian society
so keeping it fragmented for instance like institutions whatever we're talking about medical science here
robotic science artificial intelligence science like if they all have the same ideology then they get folded into the
state and that's the way we go soviet you know so having it coming back to apologies and living the individual life
whether it's life expectancy as we were just talking about between 10 and you know it really comes down to like a an
individual sort of a it's really individual i think we've got to base the planet more on what's better
for individuals rather than the collective whole because if we face on what's good for the individual you'll get a stronger
collective as a byproduct well so it's fragmented to begin with yeah and that's the whole concept is
that we're gonna we're gonna treat it like a garden and each plant needs a certain amount of water not the same all the way through
and then collectively have a wonderful garden of course you have to curate the garden and make sure it turns out private not just a wild hot mess there's
got to be some rules let's say and so yeah bringing it back to like apologies i think like as humans
depending on the culture we live in there's certain like rules around it and but those rules have been radically changed in the last couple of years and
you get like the phopology where people's like sorry not sorry because i don't want to be excommunicated from the
world that we're building yeah you know it becomes like a new religious movement because like all these things become
folded into one right you know yeah and that's the the worry tying it back to ai where the centralization of
all this stuff by definition folds it into one what does that look like to you though
where if you're saying like let's not let's not focus on the collective like so you're saying that like if we start
for example with ai it's like you i don't know i guess i don't understand
that like it was so what are you saying in terms of like like what would be an example of some
things that we could do sort of as a society that would enrich us individually as opposed to
like are you saying like we need to stay away from technology as people so like well you can go back to something as simple
as george washington where you had the right to own property because they knew when you were when you were then independent you were more
independent from the state as such and you would have more free free will and free voting power you couldn't be so
easily swayed from one side to the other right because you had independence yeah you know it's it's it's as simple as
that and what do we hear today like well is it really you see articles all the time is renting really not the right option for you and really because then
you actually are beholden to the person who's got the contract on top of your head right as opposed to being completely like one of the things i
loved about the 1960s i think we saw something that for me feels and i'm not a fan of like hippie culture and stuff
but it felt like the closest to what maybe what the golden age of athens felt like where he had strong independent
well-educated well-financed families who then the youth were like screw this you know like
this is bs what you're doing i don't like your war in vietnam i don't like this and they had the time money and
opportunity to go and protest right that would be horrific to the governing powers
right so anything that diminishes that sort of independence only allows these the centralization
structure that the nature whether in canada we'll go back to the you know the state broadcasters of certain countries
and how they work together with corporations and how they work together governments create a single narrative you know that that really goes against
like the individual's um sovereignty your sovereignty is holy your individualities
and i think you need to start when you build a society based on that so coming back to apologies like
i was wondering we kind of bring this back here yeah um we've talked about everything except we're going i'm trying to steer us the
shore it has to be heartfelt and and come from
you the person rather than because it's like well my church tells me i must say
this because this is the ideology in which i subscribe to yeah even as an individual i don't believe it the mechanism in which i'm part of my tribes
as i should say such things so i'm saying them because the problem is today as far as i'm really don't like far-right people but i really never saw
them much in the last 20 years say the person on the left needs to be de-platformed like well you know he's a
jerk and i don't trust them i don't believe in them and whatever but they kind of left it at that but we're living in an age today
where the far left if you say something that's outside of it they want you excommunicated de-platformed right and
that's where it becomes fake because now everyone's just running for the hills trying to cover their butts yeah right yeah it promotes that behavior yeah so
so the the apology thing you know i think we've done an interesting conversation here it really ties it back
to the independence of the individual who's saying such a such a yeah
an apology yeah it has to be heartfelt sincere and from their own mind yeah i see what you're saying because like yeah
you get a lot of like um well the whole cancel culture thing you get uh
there are a lot of full apologies out there i think it's really taken the meaning out of it and i mean you have to look no further than our own uh prime
minister i mean how many times has he apologized for something and so this is actually i just wanted to kind of
quickly ask about that like so our prime minister in canada justin trudeau um
you know he's he's been sort of embroiled in a number of scandals and he's apologized for them and is there a
certain point where that stuff just rings hollow i mean i think the yeah for sure at this point
in canada but the problem is is that we're hypnotized so that and that can supersede it's like
software being installed like your own independent thoughts on him you still feel bad to say something publicly
against him because he represents the overwhelmingly good narrative right so as an individual you're like i
mean i might despise the man but he's part of the good narrative like saying you hate the individual pope
but you're catholic right at the end of the day you're still going to like side with team catholic because that's the
tribe you belong to i guess yeah because a lot of people have i mean
it's amazing to me how how many people have sort of almost become apologists for trudeau or like
you know when he's in sort of in a scandal and i i try to look at it objectively like when i see for example with the
residential schools where he was tearful and giving his uh giving the apology
my instinct is like that's disingenuous those are crocodiles is it coming from him or from the ideology he represents
like my ali ideology demands yeah sacrifice and therefore i'm crying
for this moment but does justin trudeau the person really feel that way well no see that's the thing this is what this
is what i didn't understand about it where it's like okay i understand like i think you know i want to try to
be objective about this so like i have to i want to give him the benefit of the don't be like okay he like it's a very
sad thing so maybe he's just really he's been talking to people who have
suffered from this they've had their you know and and he's and he's hearing these stories firsthand maybe so he's really affected by it like in you know in
theory so yeah so we think yeah so he's um
you know he's um when when he's doing this when he's making the apology maybe it's all genuine but then i think like you know
it's hard to think because like you said is it an individual or an ideology like he's be he's apologizing on behalf of
based on his individual behavior though as we've known him now somewhat publicly in the last six seven years i think a
lot of people can say the person is not a very good person yeah and and therefore they're like
ingenuous yes so you have to now start thinking like maybe not giving them but can you break away from that
that hypnotized hypno hypnotism well i don't know what you i mean i guess you mean like people like i i don't feel as
though uh you know i'm i think there's a lot of people that aren't necessarily hypnotized by them see in the next election yeah i mean yeah a lot of
people are unfortunately but uh um that's where i actually am really turned off of all state media because it's
television you know like it's such a overwhelm despite all the social media that we have these days the average
person still really sits down in front of the tv and just turns on the state news if not they have quality apps and
they read this stuff there and in canada i don't know if you would agree with this but i would give the cbc credit in
that it gives the most like thought out arguments for its points whereas the other companies like global
news and city tv kind of just give you the headlines and a rough little splattering of what's happening there's nothing really deep right right we don't
have a private company that actually goes really deep into the stories the way we
should you've got to turn to you know sub stack and different quality doctors that you fall around the world and read tons and tons of articles to
get their podcasts right yeah so the average person is still beholden to the state media which you know it's a very
hypnotizing factor it keeps you in plato's cave right yeah yeah i would i would agree with
that yeah i guess we'll see in the next election and maybe it's just the silo that i sort of you know live in and the news i listen
to is not um you know it's very it's quite negative against trudeau so i don't feel
any you know i feel like okay like you know this guy's i mean it's it's all every election don't worry
amazing did you see the supreme court that came out this week did we talk about that at all uh um
there was a court case this is a little derailing but just take a minute uh two canadian but british background uh i
believe there are restaurant uh entrepreneurs took the government to court and this is this will tie into state
media and they unsealed the documents and the question was federal government
what data did you base the arrive can which in canada is the only way to enter the countries with this digital app
whether you're a foreign national or canadian national okay what did you base this on in order to have have this digital gatekeeper
because of vaccines and covet and when they unseal the documents the data that came out the government's reason just a
doodle little snowman there waving a beaver tail yeah no um it was
absolutely nothing okay so never mind that fact that even somewhat it can be debated
i've scoured the regular news uh mediums here in toronto um there's nothing about
it i mean the toronto sign out of smart article the national post ad but the cbc the state broadcaster not a word
does it get more plato's cave than that when you actually have government why did it take two restaurant tours in
order to open this document you know take the government to court and where's the investigative journalism that's supposed to be coming from the oh yeah
publicly funded you have to the tune of 1.2 billion or so every of our tax dollars and they couldn't ask such a
question yeah so so much for doing your own research it literally took two restaurant guys to figure this out yeah
yeah and the fact that this the story is being run on international media but not in really major absolutely yes yes
although national posts and toronto sun are at least big outlets like you get that people get tribal i talk to the
regular canadians on the hour every hour the nature of my job and um you know if i do reference something from any of
those two oh well you know yeah and they just pick their tribe i'm like
can you just look at the data and read it i have no tribe i am completely try bliss you know
uh it's kind of cool to be in that position i don't know how i ended up here or that's a whole other podcast but i am and it's like just give me the data
man yeah and they don't want to see it so they really just want to be directed back to plato's cave and that's hypnotism yeah give me give me what the
cbc says because i've trusted it my whole life yeah yeah it's crazy yeah
and it's really disempowering to the individuals into intellect because what they're doing is they're deferring their own personal intellect to like a higher
ai which in this case is the algorithm which dictates the ideology of the cbc you know like it becomes like its own
out you know its own thing well i don't know everyone in canada trusts that and they just turn their head back to that
for fear that they actually have to use their own thoughts and maybe get called out a little bit like we've really lost that
sort of renegade frontier um i'm just gonna stand up and tell you what i think i mean it's not the point
of democracy that my my voice matters you know yeah
a little too too bombastic there yeah a little too heavy on the uh i i you know i'm very passionate about this
because i think it's the better way forward for humanity the better way forward for humanity is not collectivist
it's individualism yeah and through individualism will have a strong collective yeah i i agree with that i agree with
that it's two opposing um philosophies and yeah i would say and there has to be that point where the individualism does
become collective if not you have the balkanization and we'll just fragment and go into civil war yeah and you don't want to turn into that i mean you
already have states versus states and provinces provinces and that's bad enough as it is you know like
it's really be hit like insane levels like at you know in academia now they have like how to build better
architecture with queer theory like that's right that's where we've hit now like that's how nishi in some ways
because it's the over it fits the overarching narrative you know yeah it's just an urgent departure
from reason it's as if with the last 500 years of enlightenment we're just uh
for nothing and we're desperate to return to the dark ages we're desperate to return to feudalism yeah you know
yeah it's interesting if you can sort of separate yourself from the era that you're living in and you can kind of look at it and be like it's like whoa
like what's going on here i can understand how humans moved in different packs of different phases of like you know of humanity now right because there
is a certain temptation i can feel it you know but yeah but you have to resist it because we've lived long enough as a
species we've seen what works and doesn't work well just like you you had sort of the renaissance and like other
eras where you know the dark ages like you can kind of see how um you know because i always always used
to think well the renaissance so like you know they label that sort of um post
you know post there like they weren't in the renaissance being like this is a renaissance yeah um at least i don't think they were but they um but if you
look back at it [Music]
um but uh i feel like we're in the middle of some era that in the future they'll look back and be like this was
the like you know whatever plato's cave era or something or or just something like
there were a lot of positive things about where we are right now but yeah yeah but there's there's a lot of
we're on the precipice of a lot of psychological nudging of humanity and mass cohesion sort of ways like you can
see it you can see it and it's difficult that's why it's great to have these conversations because we're just like walking in the dark with our hands out
trying to feel our way through this you know it's quite challenging but you know our societies um it's a
wonderful thing is our societies have never been freer or more functioning than they are now and to be quite frank
than anywhere else in the world we have a lot to be here's a here's the killer word proud about you know hey forbid
that you're there if you're forbidden to be proud of the society that we live in where the you know the marching feet of
uh the world's poor are coming because it's so free and through freedom they find economic you know um upward mobility
yeah you know if you just want economic upper mobility go to china right you know they've done a wonderful job taking people out of poverty but
still is that the place you're going to live you're most fulfilled you've got one chance at life it's got to be more than just like how many digits are on my
computer screen yeah right all right just like what about those apologies
well because i think the apology that we're tying in here and it's really it's um it's almost like the target on the wall's the apology but it really comes
down to being sincere heartfelt and individually based and that's really a byproduct of society right now yeah
we're not living in an era where like your individual opinion really matters anymore because it's like well
subjectively this is how i lived my life right this is how i feel yeah that sort of thing and so the tribe in the
ideology says therefore you must you know instead of well actually i do believe in chromosomes and there is an
xxy and by god if you identify as something i'm your friend and i will support you to the end but i don't feel
the need to to participate in that game myself can i not just not have a pronoun or how
about i allow you to guess because i prefer it that way um is there uh do you think that people
apologize more or less these days or is there is it probably roughly the same
it's not the kind of thing you can really do a study on whatever it is it's it's less heartfelt
and more digital yeah technology has affected the apocalypse you're not you're not you're not face to face with the person the way
you used to be and i do think part of the tribalism that was mentioned is like um
that affects it like i think a lot of people and maybe this is maybe this isn't true but
i feel i feel like a lot of people are more defensive or you know aren't aren't
so willing to yield an apology for no reason like like or it's it's very skeptical about like if i run if i'm in
uh if i if i go for a run and i somebody you know so the other day i was i was doing this actually is where i thought
of this like like i was like let's do an episode on apologies where it was like you know i went for a run and on the pat on the
path somebody was on a bike and it was like running path like this is also a bike path so it's like they came around
a corner real sharp and i was running and it almost hit me and i was like usually my instinct on those things is
like like you're like just to yell and be like you're in the wrong path like what the hell are you doing it's a shirt
path yeah but but this actually isn't a shared path they should have been on they have their own path so but every
once in a while they'll you know bikes will come down because they want to go to the river which is like right you have to kind of cross it to get there so
i thought okay you never know but um but i i thought you know i like it bothers me when you
confront somebody about this and the reaction is not like like you're objectively in the
wrong here like these are the rules of this of this little system and you're going against the rules now if you just
want to be an and just be like i'm just going to do it anyway then that's one thing but if you're you can't justify that you're in the wrong here
like you almost hit me we can i came around a corner like it's because you're on a bike and you shouldn't be on a bike on this path and like where's the
where's like there's no there's no like i would hope that in that situation somebody's like immediately just be like
you know what you're right i'm wrong i am sorry like that's an apology you know what i mean you have to recognize that
you made a mistake it's rare when people like oh my god you know that you're right and it's it's a beautiful thing when
something because there is really in the moment and your hormones are raging and the person still have clarity to say
okay i wasn't wrong yeah you know it is a it's a rare thing have you ever noticed how if somebody does apologize
it's like it immediately opens up and then the person other person will be like yeah it's okay like
like it's just such a healing because we all make mistakes yeah exactly exactly and it's just you want the person to
know i mean it depends on the nature of how you know if somebody like runs over your dog it's not like like sorry like
you want to have like almost an equivalence in apology like the you want that to be you don't want
me to pull over on a podium and just have like crocodile tears and go as canadians we all know dogs matter and
i will do my best to endeavor right that's how that's how that's how you know apologies feel these days like
very scripted as opposed to just like man hulk i didn't see you oh jesus you know what
did i do you know well i will say like mistakes in defense of uh
the kind of like the the whole apologizing on behalf of a country or
whatever it kind of has to be scripted like how are you you're doing something for the record this is why the tears
ring a bit disingenuous to me and again i don't know maybe they were like i don't want to be just always
um negative about it but it's like because i'm thinking like how can you feel that much empathy like you didn't
do this you know i mean sometimes these these politicians must have been through acting school
as ours was but yeah but uh but in general globally because uh this tear on
demand thing it just really never feels authentic yeah and i i like to cry i
have no issue i am very emotional that way but i could never imagine pulling tears out of my eyes
on demand so naturally like just like it's a base emotion that you can't fake
so to be able to be an actor and do that i have to give full credit cause i don't know how they possibly do it but it feels to actor level fake from almost
all politicians all the time yeah but and corporations and whatever else is going on
like it's a tricky situation when you're apologizing on behalf of a nation or on behalf of you know some like you know
the church or whatever like because you you didn't do anything you're just it's a you know what i mean you're sure
well then you don't need to have tears though no i know that's what i'm saying so if the tears come let them be natural you're recognizing you're recognizing
you know it's kind of like you it's for the record it's like look what we did for example with the residential schools
and by you know what we did as a country was unforgivable so like you say that and it gets recorded for for the record
and that's you know important to do it now the kind of the injecting of tears into that is like that's fine like if
that's if you know i don't know maybe he's maybe that is something that really moved him but i i to your point of it
being you know where you're saying it seems like a drama or whatever it's like i kind of can see that because for me
i'm thinking like if i was apologizing on behalf of something you know my ancestors did or whatever i wouldn't
feel any kind of empathy for it because it's like i didn't do it like i might feel bad for the situation context of history like yeah man okay that was then
this is now however you know yeah there's a real art to it like there's it's not that it's not like i mean that's what it means to be a great
statesman right there's an art to that kind of thing um but yeah it's uh
have you has there ever been anything that you've been uh sort of really sorry for and
if i said i know i sound like a psychopath so i'm i'm digging deep here now yeah uh of course uh yeah
but i can i'm happy to say it's not that many times in life yeah you know like there's like but you look back with the um with
the benefit of age and um you can say oh yeah 20 21 i was
kind of toxic sort of thing i was too much of this or too passionate maybe yeah but i always um and my passions
took me down maybe rat holes that were created barriers of that i was certain
in was the better way to be live whatever and uh it was in in the
final analysis maybe two isolationists that's all but that's just i can you're
19 years old and a kid you know see but see that whole equivocation after the fact though isn't you know what i mean
like it's not really regretful like for example like i would say well i regret it now and i wish if i had a child at
that age i would definitely i can definitely think of um like advice i would give based on that
sort of nature that i didn't get myself um and that would be my way of like helping like each generation be a little bit
better than the previous but uh what can you do about it i don't know what happened you were you're a youth
right um you know like i think you're in a relationship and you break up and you're the bad guy sometimes in a relationship
you get dumped like like life just kind of oscillates back and forth we were particularly bad in one situation and one way or the other not really it just
happened but well so what you're doing see so this is that that's not an apology right so like and it's fine if
you don't have an apology like if you know the idea you're right be born out of regret and be regretful for something
and then you apologize for it and it's it has to like so i have a couple of examples that i've done specific things
i've done in the past that i've been like um genuinely sorry for and i've tried to
address it in a way where it's like looks like the whole alcoholics anonymous thing where it's like isn't one of the
you know rule you know when you're doing the 10 steps where it's or 12 steps i don't know i don't know if it's 12 or 10. um i forget
um i never got past four anyways but um you know there's a there's a step
where you go around to apologize to everybody that you've harmed sort of in the past by your behavior so um
and i think that that's a good you know i think that's a good idea to to because
you there has to be this recognition of the fact that you've done something wrong and that you're willing to reflect
like it's this whole relationship and learn from it and learn from it and that's the whole point of life that you end up and you know as we get older in a
better place than we were when we started right but that's also part of the yeah of course there's been moments in my life like that i'd have to sit
down and think about them individually more but but they're not they're not more than 10 big ones probably
so i um i'll i'll i'll tell you one of the one of these for me is this confessional time well i think it's
important to like i mean you know i i'm just trying to sort of put my my money where my mouth is right maybe maybe some
will pop into my mind too and i can reciprocate yeah yeah well it's it's it's it's like i'm not ashamed of it now i
mean i'm sort of ashamed of my behavior then but i feel like um the fact that i can kind of
i really do feel like i learn from it and i can sort of show like i i you know i guess i can't show
it but i can i know my own behavior since then and how i've changed and so i can kind of be like okay i made these
mistakes i apologize for it and i'm moving on it's like what's that um it's like that guy
i forget his name um but he's um from toronto and he was coming back from a bachelor party
and it was drinking and driving he ended up killing a whole family remember do you remember that guy yeah there's been a couple stories yeah lately was that
the one that was like from a wealthy family multi-family yeah i forget his name but um but you know
at the time i was pretty angry like you know as anyone would because you see this family it's just
been like and i think that like i think the remaining members one of them maybe even killed themselves or something because of the grief and it's like like
you can never repair that you know what i mean it doesn't matter how many times you apologize and like but it's like
and and not even in defense or whatever but it's just a little bit it's like you know you make one mistake you know what i mean you know what i mean i'm sure
he's made several mistakes but it's like you like like you know that's a real tough situation
like you know he he like split and what do you do yeah yeah it's like eight eight you know so he had he had more
drinks than he should have for sure there's like mass negligence on his part but for the rest of his life he's gonna be paying for that right so it's like
um you know no i'm not saying you know for sure like he'll just never be able to repay it is the problem um
it doesn't mean necessarily he's a horrible person but kind of like
i guess i guess my point is that like you know now like this whole thing came up i think earlier earlier this year great
responsibility and that's why you can only drive after a certain age and drink after a certain age
yeah but once it's happened it's kind of like you have um you have a situation where like it's
come up recently because he was um you know if somebody in the family like died
or killed themselves or something and i could be wrong about that i know they died and um it just kind of brought the
whole thing up again so it's kind of like you know so anytime something like that happens this is again something for
his you know like his his life will be forever changed for this and you know forever will feel guilty for this um and
it's horrible and he should feel guilty for the rest of his life but it's like i would i guess my i guess
my point is like that's that is a serious situation and i don't know if apologies can ever fix that and but you
know he this guy is not necessarily like he's not a monster right like he didn't deliberately do this like it doesn't
mean that he shouldn't pay it doesn't mean like he shouldn't go to jail or whatever but it wasn't like i get your point it wasn't a premeditated move yeah
exactly exactly it was a really dumb accidental murder yeah and the effect is the same you know people are still
dead because your moral dilemma is that it's in the category of accidental yeah yeah and um
i guess um you know like i are negligent yeah yeah yeah and i you know i've done i've done things where it has never been
to that level but i can i can you know certainly say like you know it's not that i haven't uh
drank and drive drank and drove before like i've done that too right like i like to think that i was in a better frame of mind or whatever and i wouldn't
have done that but who knows right you never know you're in the wrong place or wrong time you drop you know
it's such a split second thing so it's like sure and it also goes a little bit cultural you know it was uh in our
generation where it became more like they are testing with uh what was it you know the alcohol limits and how much it was a new emerging sort of thing you
know the breathalyzers and whatnot you know yeah how many drinks can you actually have and you can easily make a
mistake when it's a new emerging like standard right well yeah and i never really put much i
mean i just sort of knew my own levels but it's like you know i realize that that's something where yeah i'm not
saying that i always made sure i stayed under that level but i knew when it was like it was a gradient i remember you know being around that time too and
trying to figure out like okay so i had one drink six hours ago and another one like what am i at i feel pretty good you
know i can walk in a straight line i don't have a metric to measure me absolutely right and it can be a gray it
can be a gray area for sure so better not to even go near that line yeah but good luck telling a 19 year old that
true yeah but you know and you hope that for example with this guy uh you hope that that sort of serves as a lesson to
at the very least what you can kind of get out of that is other people might look at that and think twice you know um
for me i have there was a time when um this is obviously less dramatic but um
just online i got into this like sort of battle with somebody about a situation this was years ago i was
talking about the war in yugoslavia um and i was just i just didn't know much
about it and i i kind of heard a few things and i was like okay like so i made some comment about um like well i
figured what it was i think it was like defending serbia or something but really not knowing about the situation that much other than what i kind of said i'm
embarrassing how little we knew back then yes like in comparison now like i know so much about covet and i've just
gone crazy and i found great ways to do like university level research while
sitting at my desk at home sort of thing and i look at all the past events in history whether it's september 11th or
yugosland like i wish i could have been there at the time and have these mechanisms to dig do a deep dive before i open my mouth yeah yeah for sure it's
um you really have to um like it goes back to state media you know you're just watching the one-sided
version that's coming through the news you're going to quickly in five minutes develop usually the narrative they're
trying to tell you is the right one to have this was a situation where i i i was taking the other end like i've always
sort of been anti you know whatever authority or whatever so like i i was like well because it was it was the
serbians were sort of the bad guys and um and i was like well like this isn't so bad and then somebody i was
doing this on a forum and i got back and forth and he's like look like somebody chimed in he's like look i like i am
what was it i'm uh um was it i can't remember the like he
was from the area sure and he's like like i suffer i've had people killed i'm watching this happen like like who are
you to tell me that this is and and he was right like and i was like i didn't have any kind of like it's not like i
read specific reports or like it did any deep investigation and i felt like a real you know uh because i was
like he's you know he's absolutely right and i sort of thought about that and like it really bothered me because i
hate coming off as like you know uh yeah uninformed and and um
and uh and i you know i apologize i said like you know what you're right you're right
and um and you know i'm not i'm not trying to say like so i do it right or whatever but it's like i think that that to me that's what an apology like that
was it's important to reflect on what you've done and actually feel regret these kind of apologies where it's like
you don't even like this you know that genuine the general kind of like like oh i'm sorry
if like i'm sorry whatever i did i'm sorry like that whole thing it's like well you're not sorry then you know what i mean like you don't really
like you have to be specific you need to like and i think the greater and this is maybe um
i just try to always make sure i put it into action so i just live my life it's like a
refining process better and better and better based on the
lived experiences which includes regrets um each day yeah right because an apology
is great and definitely makes a person feel better and it should be done but the more important thing is to then live
that apology for the rest of your life yeah you should definitely learn from it um
all right so i'll say another one here and this i actually this is going to make me look like a real but um i uh and and it was it was such a
deal even now i'm like i think back and it's just like cringe inducing how but i you know part of this is like maybe i'll
say it on here and i'll maybe this person will hear it you know what i mean or maybe people you know or you know i deserve to be able to have my sort of
penitence and say this and be like how you know i mean it held to account i don't know like if he ever came back but
anyway so one time i i had this new car and it was uh uh it was like my mom's car or something
was mine but i was like i'm fairly young i was like um you know 19 or 18. and it
was it just happened to guzzle gas really quickly and i wasn't used to it and i ran out of gas in the middle of the highway i was like oh my god and
this guy like like pulled over he's like look i'm going to give you 20
bucks i'm going to i'm going to drive you to the gas station give you 20 bucks filled out because i didn't have any money on me i was just an idiot and um
there's less atms back in the day yeah yeah so he gave this to me took me to the gas station drove me back so i could
put gas in my car and then drive to the gas station put the 20 in or whatever and um
and he's like but i want you to make sure that you send this back to me and i'm like yeah i'll send it back to you whatever and um and i never sent it back
how did he want you to send it back um before you just like sent him a check or something okay yeah and um i just never
did it and like i i forget how i justified it to myself at the time i was like i don't know if it was like oh
sucker or whatever like just like just horrible like and i think back and i still remember it it still gives me
pangs of life it's imagine that so just 20 you know um how much
it because it wasn't it was the action you you promised and you let someone down yeah i know and you meant it at
that time and i can tell you i can see it in your eyes yeah actually like no man i'm telling you i'm doing this yeah
and then you didn't i know it could be for one dollar later it it drives me crazy and i'll never because i don't know who this guy
is what have you learned from this like never promise
yeah yeah well just take my wallow with me to deal with that guy in the future yeah no yeah no just i mean it's really it
was really humbling like thinking of this afterwards and there's no there's no i mean this
fortunately the effects of this aren't of the magnitude the the mistake that the guy made with the accident where he killed a bunch of
people um but it's like um it's the same sort of
uh like it is a mistake that i'm really sorry that i made i wish i could go back but i can't go back um it's you know if
i ever like i don't even i wouldn't even recognize the guy so it's like um uh
but do you think to this day like based on the essence you picked up from that person then
do you think he's just sitting and going that's okay man 20 bucks whatever i help someone out there and he feels good about it i think that this is i think
what bothers me more than anything is i feel like i made his view of humanity a little less he's like this guy looked me
in the eyes and said actually i don't know if he i looked him in the eyes but it's like whatever the case that's the real equivocating again but it's like
you know this guy said he was going to do it he didn't do it i went out of my way to be helpful to this guy and he he
let me down i've been in that guy's position before where i remember back in high school someone said can i just borrow five dollars man and you know
when you're 15 years old five dollars was uh lunch at mcdonald's you know sort of thing like i'll pay i promise i'll
pay you back like tomorrow the next day i just got to go home and ask my parents for five dollars i'm like okay sure and i gave the five
dollars and that person avoided me for the next three years right yeah but from my position i'm like
we were just kids uh that person probably regrets it doesn't need to
you know we all make mistakes it was a relatively minor mistake you know i think i guess you can put it in tears i
mean you know yeah how many how many uh hail mary's do you need to do for that one uh well that's the benefit of being
catholic i guess no he's just brought it in yeah put a number on it um yeah like i
think that that's i mean that's sort of you putting your positive spin on i appreciate that but it's like there's really no i think it probably affected
him in some way uh yeah i'm sure he's forgotten about it now but it's like he knew you were a child i think you're giving yourself um in this particular
case a lot more adult uh credibility or crunchy credentials you
know you were still a kid yeah yeah i guess um but yeah you would hope though that
you've learned since then right i think that's the same thing the girl that owes me the five dollars if she ever hears this um you know that
they just they they pass that that gratuity on to someone else in their life right right and just kind of like
let it happen like it's okay nothing has to be perfect there's no perfect order in the universe you know a little bit of
chaos is all right that's part of the organic living experience yeah he just wanted to be catastrophic like the car
accident that knocked out the whole family yeah you know that's just something you can't even though it's in the category of negligence and an
accident it's um it just it's you can't recover from it the ten dollars twenty dollars the five
dollars you can recover from yeah yeah it's um yeah it's something we hope as a society
we kind of like you know maybe one day i'll be in that position to do that and i won't be repaid and be like okay now
the universe is balanced again you know like who knows maybe today they'll say well you know in a position of
hierarchical power you are the powerless therefore you're not obliged to pay back right right yeah yeah i'm the victim
you're the victim james you can only see the way post-modernism will attack this problem well you know this is the thing
like if diversity by diversity i don't mean diversity of skin color religion or anything like that but like diversity of
fundamental values if diversity of fundamental values is what we're aiming for at the end you
know what you know what i really i thought along about this you know what that is decomposition
there's nothing to unify us right what you're looking for now and we're talking about the shared unified values i shouldn't have done this i
shouldn't have done that i would have been better served if i did that's you know
you're looking for a certain fundamental uh landscape here to judge your actions by and i i
commend you for that and i think society needs to stay on that sort of that's what keeps a society unified too much diversity is just a decomposition and
you're not going to have any unity anymore right yeah that's why we have you know laws and whatnot but then even they you
know like i said they're open to interpretation yeah yeah that's why based on new structures of power and
hierarchy which are just really kind of i don't say frivolous but not unproven perhaps you know
yeah that's why this organic change needs to happen slowly and um this is why we have like these
again these first principles that are supposed you know supposed to sort of like
um govern our society mm-hmm and yeah that are all things that we all are supposed to supposed to sort of
agree on that is like wrong or you know immoral or whatever you know like
this not really in the same vein but you know that sort of that flow back and forth and excommunicating people based
on their values like i've never seen anyone on the right call somebody left like i was telling you earlier to be deaf deplatformed right so like for
instance if you um uh fox doesn't care and i can't stand any of the american or our own canadian
news broadcasters but fox doesn't care if you've been on cnn then go on fox like sure whatever right yeah just well
let's talk about it i'll totally disagree with you but whatever yeah but cnn cares if you've been on fox right
because at that point you're tainted you've been stained with this sort of like immorality yeah how dare you have
gone to the other side there's definitely yeah i i definitely see that as well where it's it's it you
know and i think it's like the the reaction would be like well of course you would say that because you're
tending more right or whatever but it's like no i really am not yeah this is true this is something that i really did you know you really do see you don't see
people on the right at least not as much i'm sure it happened so i just i i don't you just really don't see it as much you
do see a lot of people on the left calling for somebody to get canceled you don't see that on the right like you don't see people for the most part
saying like i mean they could say like you know like um i mean it must happen but i i really
really doesn't come up as much yeah you know i can't think about it the left right thing is becoming so so tired
too like i just was thinking like i i just believe in classical values
yeah you know like why does it have to be a left right thing like they really are these are our foundational values and i just i don't really care for the
nuance of a splitting hairs uh what percentage tax points this or that or you know like it doesn't matter so much to me if we don't
have foundational values yeah you know so yeah for me then the apologies stem from that
right right yeah the right left used to be [Music] talking about
yeah economic policy or um maybe whether you're more hawkish or dovish when it comes to like foreign
affairs but there but uh but yeah and now now it seems to be [Music] um you know the rights are nazis the
lefts are communists you know what i mean there is it's like well wait a minute can't we all agree just as like canadians or as americans that like we
all certainly agree on like free speech right or like you know what i mean but not so much anymore did you not see the um someone high up at twitter when elon
musk was trying to take to take over about two years ago and he could caught an interview oh yeah he's like here at twitter we're communist as
f you know really yeah like just flat out said it caught on video like really and you feel confident enough to say
such a thing you know yeah where because where did the foundational values go when you can make such a black automation
we're not standing on the same level anymore yeah the same same um what would you call not so much level
but the historical western values platform
where we can at least see the diversity but we have some unity in how we approach the world yeah
so yeah apologies play out i think in in that thing like to what degree do you feel like the george floyd horrific you
know act but that was a worldwide event yeah it really i think was the right
well not the whole world very much apologized yeah it was a very i don't know what it
was maybe it had something to do with covet or maybe it was just the fact that it was caught on tape and it was fairly graphic like um that
catalyzed that whole movement like the carthages of people you know it's just yeah it was like yeah i think a lot of
that stuff is timing right like because we've seen that kind of thing before remember rodney king like yeah i mean
rodney king was like there was no mistaking yeah what was going on there right like um and i guess
it did spur russia riots and it's not like that was not global but it was a different age yeah a different age yeah
and that was the chanting the kneeling the hands in the air yeah how is that not religious
yeah it's uh we've just created the ideologies that fill in the uh atheist the goal that we've kind of created now
with a new religion it's like the religious tendencies and people just doesn't go away it just comes back in a new form
yeah i would agree with that yeah i think that this is the these are there's there's a religious aspect to a
lot of these movements these days and i think that that does come from a lack of religion and i mean it served a purpose
right like you can say whatever you want about organized religion like i'm not a huge fan of it either but it's like but it did it did fill a need in people and
i'm aware that i have a religion and i'm aware of its prose and its cons but i don't know if these people even realize
they're basically partaking in a religion yeah i've thought about the pros and cons you
know i don't need another religion i have one and it has its own issues right you know and i'm totally fine with that you know yeah they're full on like you
know spanish inquisition like they're still at that phase you know so then going back to apologies like to what
degree do they they're just they're stemming out of these um new religions of a sort that people
don't even necessarily have thought long and hard on an individual basis it's just the way things are like developing
and they just oh i definitely have to say you know like you see the classic facebook and everyone puts the new current thing
badge up right like it's basically a form of an apology yeah right do they really mean it have they actually
interacted with the person in a better manner than before because of what they've seen you know like that that's really what it
should come down to i don't know i'm just very bread and butter and like like feet on the street like just be a better person daily yeah you know you don't
have to like like people that show up at church and sit on the front row because they want to show people that they're more virtuous
it's horrible well i mean some people might just want the yeah i mean for the right reasons for
the right reasons that's that's what i'm trying to say yeah it's the same thing playing out over and over again
yeah it's interesting when you think of i think it's really important that people have the characteristic of self
and self-reflection like i think it's really important to be able to step back maybe take 10 minutes at the end of the day and be like
let's go over the day and how i behaved because like when you think of you i just have this image in my mind of
somebody waking up just being like getting on with their day just retweeting a bunch of stuff on twitter
and just being like participating in these angry mobs issuing fake apologies or like just doing everything and
without any kind of self-analysis or whether it's like like at some at some point you have to be like like wait a
minute did i like am i i'm a human being right like i like like don't i genuinely want to feel some of these things and
don't i genuinely want to like think for myself and you know i i it's no they don't but but it's amazing because it's
like what do you just cry yourself to sleep at night like like because i would think that people like this they're like alcohol they just they just it's their
version of like i'm just going to diffuse the pain maybe you just don't think about it until you have some crisis
yeah yeah yeah now you got me thinking should i apologize for more stuff in my life like
staring at the clouds in the sky going beautiful summer day here this is the thing that i've noticed with
people uh so guilty that i can't come up with some like big ones well to be fair i've thought this over the past week or
whenever so but kind of putting nobody's perfect there's certainly things but none of them might seem like i would put
them in a category of trivia trivial and growth currently right if i were just to just quickly sess out something you know
well i i think that um one thing i noticed
like with people these days and i don't know if this has always been the case but people never think that they're the
ones that people are talking about so like like if you're talking about like right now we're talking about um people
who don't say they're sorry and uh you know i think most people listening to this would be like
i don't know like you know i like our listeners probably have a lot a greater self-reflection than than most but like
i i think that there's often times i'll be in a conversation with people and like i've heard i've had people
talk to me about how crappy cancer culture is and and in my head i'm like yeah but you do it like
i've seen you do it you know what i mean and you're just not making the connection here i've never seen more self-projectionism than the last like
five ten years yeah i really see it online like you see the sentence structure there and they're like okay wait a second this is right not just
like words that are flying by quickly i can analyze your sentence and you're completely just projecting your own
fears or tribalism on me you know like um and you're not they're not understanding the context from where i'm actually you know
like hey we're friends we can figure this out you know um but i i do think that there's a lot of
people and i i often i'm querying myself to see if i do this because i'm i'm conscious
of it but like people will people never think they're on the bad side people always think when you when you're talking to people about like you know
covet or whatever i'm sure you get a lot of your clients are like like um you know like
like there's a lot of there's this already yeah yeah there's this self-defense mechanism or whatever it's like well i'm
not like it's like yeah i know all these ill-informed people right and it's like yeah but you're kind of you know in many
ways i tried oh in terms of that and it's an interesting thing like yeah um workers work and you know um
covet is covered and i try not to mix the two unless a person i know really well and we have a sort of like type of relationship and
and what not but um i'll tell you one thing though it's not so much an apology but a trait that i didn't have when i
first moved to greece so i was very canadian and i was very you know apologetic sorry wait in the queue right right that sort of norms that we grew up
with and i realized and it didn't happen quickly but it took about two three four years
that like if you behave like that there you're gonna get eaten alive so then you have to develop a sort of like a cynical
um they said yes but it probably means at best maybe um
there's no mechanism here to really think for me i'm on my own in a foreign country with nobody around go
it's all individual it's all you and you're going to be hoping for the best you know you always take a positive
approach to the world but completely preparing expecting and preparing for the worst and that can be
whether it's getting paperwork done for the business we're opening dealing with franchise managers dealing with
staffings dealing with strikes the country was going bankrupt when we were there so we had you know
riot police and tear gas and everything going on and you just realized like if i wait for the system to do what i need to
do i'll be dead so i have to start to pick up the pace and that makes you really kind of more edgier right yeah so then flash
fast forward we're back in canada now for about the same length of time as i was away about 10 years and i haven't quite let go with some of
those more jumpy attributes and they don't always serve me best in canada because for the most part things in
canada are the way they seem you know public health tells you to do something you're generally going to be okay you
know that here the canada the irs the cra asks you to pay something you're generally happy
where the taxes go and know it's going to be utilized in the same way and i find myself still dialed in in my greek
mode maybe a little more than um what the average client is expecting and it can
be a little off-putting interesting yeah now is that something to apologize for it's just something i've lived and i'm aware of it okay i'm
also and um my wife has pointed this out i can tend to now and i didn't always do this talk over people
talk you know louder or interrupt and if you didn't have notice [Laughter]
tell me about it and if i if if you didn't do that in greece they took you for a fool
it's unfortunate but sometimes there it's like the louder you speak the more angry you must be and if you're angry
you must have right because you wouldn't be angry otherwise you'd be a psychopath interesting right so you're if you're really angry people like okay no he's
got to be right he's super angry and nobody just wakes up really angry like it's a whole weird way whereas so then
to to know how to modulate that here in canada especially in my type of work where i'm with people all day long
is something that when your passion gets going about something especially what's been we've been through the last two years can be really hard to regulate
because i truly only want the best for every single person to ever bump into like hands down you know i got one chance to live
i think perry farrell said it once of uh jane's addiction i had to say i'm wondering what that name was like
forces of good are the forces of evil and there's a certain point in life you actually say you know this is my how i'm
going to operate going forward and um i always want the best for every person i interact with and particularly
those i don't get a chance interact with like in poor countries in the world you know like prior to getting to the industry i mean i wanted to be a lawyer
to not do for the family large of you know that sort of thing real estate law to help people in countries that didn't
have representation you know it's really like my overarching drive as a human
and uh but it can be hard to modulate that passion after you you used it to survive in your
format like i was like 30 to 40 years old when i was in greece those are really formative years we're like okay i'm running a business i'm on my own
let's go you know and to know how to modulate that back in a different environment it's it's tricky
yeah it's interesting the difference between cultures and like how one would act in one might not necessarily be how
they do your adaptability can serve you like just positive but can also then you have to re-adapt to where you are
currently yeah so i really sympathize like with like new immigrants now because to a degree i feel it in myself
right it's like how do i actually do things here you know yeah in a way that's expected
yeah what i you know one of the things about this is um canadians are sort of infamous for um
their apologies uh you always sort of see this um played up
and we do apologize a lot when i think of you know it's so subconscious like i i don't know what it is about us as a
culture that we do tend to apologize a lot more like it's almost like sorry is
just you can almost insert it as a comma in a lot of our um a lot of our dialogue like it's a weird
um how do you think that developed i don't know you know is it from abundance well i think british culture
just because we were sort of an amalgamation of british culture and american culture and like we get a little bit of each but i don't know
yeah because and british you know i really appreciate the british like i don't know i don't know this is like
just summing a whole culture up in one sentence but like they just seem so bloody polite you know and it's like i
always find myself having a a good conversation of the dead yeah you got a little red on
you it's like blood from zombies should have a sit down and and to your point that feels very
canadian very familiar right right and i think that's where we got it from but but it does seem to i do feel like we
use it a lot more and i've um like my girlfriend is american and
she notices it too like i'll say it almost you know just uh
like you know i think it is good though if you if you sort of bump into somebody or if you're like for example we're having
a conversation and you're saying something and then i say something over top of you or whatever i'm like i'm like
oh anyway sorry like that that kind of like thing i think is fine i think that's etiquette and um yeah it's it's
almost like the authenticness of the apology built into the etiquette of the way you behave on a daily basis right
right smooths things out yeah and you know and if you don't do it i think that's there's ways that that can be done and
also still be polite but it's not um i i think as canadians we sort of almost evolved this like
um a apology you certainly characterize you certainly notice its absence
yeah there was a time we were in rome and we were in one of these stores that had nothing but like nice high quality
wooden pinocchios and like all it's like a great story yeah and this um and we're standing there
just admiring just like the workmanship and there was a you know how those tills are and stores like that in europe they're just like a
front like a little desk sometimes like a big transactional area so there was an italian woman sitting behind a desk just
kind of just minding her business sabina and i were just sort of uh looking at the shelf admiring it and the door was open
because it was a hot day and they didn't have the air conditioner on so let the wind and this lady walks in and we must have been about 20 feet away
from her and she goes right up to the the lady working at the toy store and
without a hi how are you do you speak english may i ask you a question all the
normal things we would do in british or canadian society she just looks and goes do you got toys for kids
you know and i tap sabine's foot it's like shh like like in a sense like don't speak english because i don't i don't
even want to help this person yeah you know like it was so rude right off the bat right right
like you know it's just really like very egocentric you know look where you are you know yeah italy she's going to speak italian ask
her you know the proper you know norms of society right right yeah no that's a good point there was
another time too where we were living in greece and we were really quite greek at this point in the sense that i hadn't been back to canada in six years so it
was like okay you're just there and you're like i was saying earlier you're adapted to the climate you're in right and
if you're in a greek grocery store and you are two feet from the shelving looking at the different types of
ketchup it's not uncommon for a person older than yourself and by older i would say at this point like in their 60s so a
different generation would literally stand right in front of you in the two two foot gap between you
and the shelves right and block your view like what the heck just happened and
that etiquette would never happen in canada you'd give that to light space yeah interesting and then
we were in italy uh in england one time and have you ever been to preta manches have you seen those sandwich stores they have uh
in london england yeah they're fantastic they're like basically fresh sandwiches on the go grab them soup coffee and
you're out but like really nice quality so i'm standing there overwhelmed by the
beautiful selection of sandwiches in front of me and i bumped into this british lady
and before i could turn and say as a canadian greek canadian oh sorry she
turned to me and said sorry but i did the hitting yeah yeah yeah i'm like and i look like oh my god that's so canadian
and i hadn't felt that because i'd been living in greece for 10 years and that just simply wouldn't have happened right right so yeah i definitely felt the
cultural arc as you're saying from like let's say northern europe scandinavia england through to canada versus like
the mediterranean arc where you go through all the countries around the mediterranean completely different way of interacting interesting yeah yeah and
when you live that moment it's it's like just like um i don't know if you've never seen a palm tree like it's you've
seen it on tv but you can't believe it's real when it happens in front of your eyes right yeah yeah that's interesting
um so a lot of this you know the growth of this um
apologetic nature at least outside i think some of it is etiquette like you know we were talking
about almost cultural um even the pre-emptive apology where it's just like you automatically assume you're at fault
it's just like yeah i'm sorry like bump into them sorry it's just a polite etiquette thing to do uh at least in
these cultures and you know it's not even better than you know like um
if there's a culture that isn't doing that it's just a different culture i think it you know it doesn't necessarily
i don't know for us it feels comfortable but it isn't necessarily better you know uh i don't think for i think for us it
feels more comfortable yeah it's all about what you're used to i certainly after a while in greece
appreciated the the more direct approach to things too right and a story story story can be
very like are you really sorry right right are you just saying it like how you doing and then before the actual i'm
actually not having a good day right you just fine yeah you just move on with it sort of thing right yeah so yeah like
anything it's a matter of taste and you can take it too far but i do think it in a nice way it signifies that you live in
a society that has the space and time uh through the abundance of resources to
even be able to feel something like remorse in order to apologize yeah because if you're just you know trying
to do survival mode which you know some of the mediterranean countries more so than the north are you don't even have
space for that that that energy to like ooze out of you right you know it's just
it you have to repress it it's like when you're downtown living in a suburb versus living in a downtown core when you live in a
suburban first go downtown and you see a lot of homeless people and it's like you're a gas like oh my goodness i want to help everybody but
then when you actually start commuting daily you can't stop at every single person along the way because you'll never make it to your destination right
so there's a certain like uh evolutionary product in there too yeah so would you say so i guess
you know to feel more like these apologies that are based on genuine remorse or genuine guilt like
um this is uh you know as we said earlier kind of a
distinctly human characteristic that i don't know how you would sort of replicate in in an ai um
i wonder um like guilt is an interesting thing no like i mean um
sound like a devil your guilt is an interesting thing have you tried any
um there's this uh concept of um like i think like the the evolution of guilt is
like got to be something to do with like communal you know we want to be part of the group because groups
keep us alive and so sure in order for us to feel well i don't know though because like i
mean that would be certainly an apology because you'd say like you would want to say that you're sorry for something that you did wrong because you want to be
accepted to the group again right so like if you you know just thinking back to the uh you know pre
um prehistoric era like if you're like in a cave with a bunch of people and you're like you know you you ate more than your
fair allocation of um you know squirrel the night before or whatever and then
you know the group is all kind of angry at you maybe at that point it's like i'm sorry about that or like just wrong
so you know because you want to you don't want the group to be mad at you you want to be excommunicated or canceled by that group right so it's
like you you want to apologize um so i guess in that way there i can see i can
understand the evolution of an apology but guilt seems more sort of intrinsic right like like it seems like
like you can apologize without feeling guilt right like you can just do sort of i remember my first guilty experience
oh you remember your first guilty experience at all you just actually felt guilty like oh i really shouldn't have done
that yeah yeah yeah like it's interesting right i mean i remember something i don't know if it was my first one but i was just a little over
three not four yet and um it's a funny little story maybe this is my apology but um but it was more guilt than
apology because you're three and a half you know right and we were at the local corner store and i had seen a this is really like juvenile but i'd seen a fred
flintstone hot wheels car all the intricate details the the wood at the front like this looks amazing i
remember the moment like admiring the detail right and at that age you know you're watching the cartoons like my god
like i laughed it have like feet at the bottom or something doesn't they run yeah but it had no but it had the character but it looked really good i
should actually google it i've never thought about maybe i was a repressed memory right because i've googled everything else from my youth and i
haven't touched that one yeah you know um and uh i remember i remember lying on
the sofa and my mother and father going to me like dimitri like where did you get this car because they didn't buy it
how did this make it into the house i had managed to make money now package yeah it was it was entrepreneurial but
um not not at three your dad probably would have been impressed that's what they did in my time yeah you
start walking early yeah stealing's not the crime getting caught is yeah
and um i remember yeah sitting on the sofa and they were asking me very carefully and quietly like where
did you get this from i remember turning inwards to the in part of the sofa and not wanting to turn around not wanting
to say where i got it from it was just a natural instinct like i've done
something wrong yeah and i remember my parents being like very gentle about it you know they're very like concerned you
know we were three you know like yeah yeah but well they might have even thought
maybe somebody gave it to you or something it's some weird thing never thought about that because i was overwhelmed with the feeling i did
something wrong yeah so my father though i guess i told him the truth because then he
got me up and made me and him and i walked back to the same corner store and had me hand it
over to the store owner and say i'm sorry i took this from your store and i remember that feeling going i'm in
trouble and my dad is doing and mom but my dad walked me there he's doing the right thing and it's important to do the
right thing and i don't want to feel like this again at the time you even thought he was doing the right thing oh yeah 100 the morality was built in like
this is wrong what i did it was probably like some i even remember the feelings like a childish sort of like um
animal instinct right like resource gathering sort of like more stuff right
and uh and i remember thinking that's not the higher way of being and my parents were showing me and that's why they're
parents and i'm a child and they were showing me this is the right way i had totally screwed up and i remember that
and it really kind of like guided a lot of my childhood years after that yeah to this point like i actually gave
me chills thinking about it because i remembered the juxtaposition of like my animal instinct versus like
like the what it means to be educated coming from my parents and to always pick that path if you can not the animal
side right and i've never been turned on by money and like flashy things like i think it really really put me on a
different course like well like you said you also had the morality behavior matters not the material items yeah yeah in all
instances you know sorry what were we going to say well you had that morality sort of built in you were saying even at the time you
felt guilty for doing it and and yeah i guess it wasn't hard to turn on but i knew i'd let myself and them down yeah
yeah and by extension society because i had to look at that man in the eyes and say i'm sorry yeah and hand it over with
my little three-year-old fingers you know yeah that probably would have been adorable to the person at the time like but uh
but just like you say when someone says earlier like when they make an apology and just the act of making an apology diffuses the entire situation yeah you
know i'm sure that's exactly what happened there for sure yeah yeah you know and um yeah i don't know it's um
it's amazing and parenting is a very education and parenting is a huge huge factor nature versus nurture that's
actually like both aspects coming out through nature felt it was the wrong thing and through nurture they guided me
in the right direction um yeah and um i think what's really
important about this stuff too is it kind of it's almost like a communal thing where it refreshes people's
um faith in humanity you know where like i'm sure when he's
the store owner saw you giving giving this car back with your dad beside you he was like you know part
of them would be like this is good this is the way it should be and maybe more so because my dad being the immigrant with a bit of an accent yeah and i have
no idea what the nationality would have been the origin of the person working the store but things were much more
homogeneous back in the day you know we're talking like the 70s at this point in canada be like you know what these
are good people you know who knows how he interpreted the entire situation not just the child but like the father brought the child
back yeah yeah that's amazing right just there you go back to the fundamental core values that uh
for all our talk about diversity the shared fundamental values is what keeps us unified and we don't just decompose
and to fragmented subjective experiences yeah yeah
i don't know it's really interesting i find the whole idea of uniquely human characteristics interesting like i don't
know how you simulate that kind of thing um maybe through embedding an action
because a computer may say it's guilty but again like an apology it requires action or it's hollow
well it requires it requires a feeling of yeah it requires a feeling of um
there needs to be remorse behind it right because if you don't have the remorse then the apology yeah like you said is hollow or it's
like i mean you could certainly simul you can certainly make it you know ai say they're sorry or whatever sounds like a trifecta you got the remorse then
apology then the action and we're just getting apologies in modern society without any action at the end and any
real remorse to begin with well welcome to the internet age my uh my girlfriend has a way i've certainly
found this out the hard way of what she wants in an apology so for her it's just saying that your story is not good
enough it's like um so it's like it needs to have three
three things you have to say uh what you're sorry for and it has to be specific so it can't be just like you
know like i'm you know i'm sorry that you're absurd or whatever it has to be like i'm sorry for this action
and it has to be um you know why you're sorry for example you know it'd be like well because i hurt your feelings it's
this it's i don't know where she got it from it's a template like if this is some psychological template or something
but it's uh it makes sense i can understand why you would want to go through these steps um and you're going
to tell me after 50 times it feels natural yeah yeah yeah i don't have to look at the
template much anymore right i've got to download science um and then the last one is which i
think is talking about your action point where it's like what are the steps that one is prepared to yeah to make
uh so this won't happen again kind of thing right so like um i wonder about you know for example like
the you know the residential schools things like that where it's like maybe you know you build that in it's like how
can we make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again what do you put in law that's going to like those if those kind of i mean this actually is kind of
a good template for what an apology should be i mean um it's uh it's important to make sure that
it consists of that last bit because otherwise um because otherwise the
apology has no integrity right right right so your your story about your car
and i think my story about you know the car i think that was both taught us life lessons like my behavior has changed as
a result and yours probably is too so involved in automobile yeah funny enough yeah yeah
yeah and uh yeah i know it's interesting i mean i've we could do you know hours on apologies
but it's like i also don't want to just sort of reveal everything but integrity is a big part of it too i think like
maybe maybe this all cut actually comes can you build an ai that has integrity right right these are really complicated
like um and they have to just be like sincere but they couldn't they couldn't ever
have like real integrity right because you couldn't have like if it had integrity that's another you
know sort of human characteristic like it's like dignity like do you feel like does a is a computer proud of itself is
it a you know what i mean is a can you simulate pride like these are these are things we'll do like the seven deadly
sins of uh humanity or something like what you know i i just don't think that
because you can to your point it has to be able the ai has to be
capable of doing evil but chooses to do good
right yeah that's that's a lot of programming i would like to have a
computer scientist on here and explain to me programmatically how you would
make that happen you know what i mean how you would um because i don't believe it's possible i
just don't believe it like i i can't like i can usually conceptualize things um
like i i can think outside the box uh i just i but here it's like what
you know how do you how do you endow an artificial intelligence with those kinds of human characteristics wasn't it said
before of all the things we've ever found in the universe sorry whether that be black holes and
gravitational this and that and the other thing the most complicated thing we have ever found in the entire
universe is the human mind yeah that's true and we've got seven something billion of them on earth
and we still have just scratched the surface yeah so i i really think we're
way farther away than we could ever possibly imagine and i know who's the famous guy
hari um the jewish man who's always a professor about ai he's always talking about yeah we are the new gods you know
we will be doing you know that hari h-a-r-i but his last name i don't know i don't recognize the name yeah you have
to he's um part of the you know world economic forum and he's always at all these big events and he's always talking about how you know everything we see now
will be replaced by ai in the very near future right and just like we used to say god created all
this we are the new gods and just something about it to me just gives me like this creepy vibe like just
like i don't know i would be like a jewish slave in egypt and he's like the pharaoh
you know uh commanding a certain amount of knowledge but well in this case you'd be the pharaoh it feels like the pharaoh
no but i mean you would also be the pharaoh because it would be the ai who would be the slaves
yeah but he's he's coming at it from a perspective that he has the inner circle
of information that will be then disseminated down to us and he's that's why he's telling us this
is what the future will be right right and i'll be like oh okay i'm really scared you know kind of right right yeah
probably not a good idea to make slaves of the thing that you know are inevitably going to overpower you in
some days exactly yeah you should check them out h-a-r-i i believe okay check them out bone chilling and you're for me
my instinct just like this man is a salesman and he's trying to terrorize people and perhaps means it
yeah yeah i don't know i really do think there's a lot of you know positive well certainly there's a lot of positive
applications even simple trivial ones like i mean i like the adaptive search and stuff like that like i know that it's
like it's convenient yeah i think it's always like as long as people are balancing this idea that you have to
give up some of your privacy to be able to have it as long as it's all on the table you know i have no problem with it even if it's in the terms and conditions
i'm okay with it like don't make it you know a thousand pages long but like you know just as long as it's reasonable um i think
that that's it's helpful to have some of this stuff you just have to be able to decide for yourself what it is that
you're doing and i i think that that's um but uh anyway yeah just um i did just
pull it up his name is yuval noah harari h-a-r-a-r-o
okay and um yeah definitely it really ties into our episode so for our listeners i would um check him out and
uh think about that in terms of just the the complexity that we're talking about here today right yeah
yeah all right well uh i guess that's it we'll just wrap it up um
uh thanks for listening once again everybody god you've been great um i
would ask you to um feel free to share this episode if you
liked it and tell all your friends about it and uh we um yeah we hope to um
hope to see you here in the next two weeks and um we try to make these episodes consistent so they're every
every two weeks so there's uh just this built-in um i don't know consistency somehow
algorithm yeah just something that is like you know a human depend on it or whatever it keeps us honest and keeping
keeping us making episodes and as well also keeps us on track all right no thanks very much for
listening today and i hope you guys um all have a great time doing whatever
you're doing today take care everyone bye [Music]
you