Loved the beginning. Every episode should start like this, enjoyed having an insight into your casual conversation.

I have to say I love the cold start. I'm glad the editors kept in the casual chitchat at the beginning.

:hand-pink-waving:Without humans none of this will succeed and or fail! :text-green-game-over: Note: Peter D. I have followed you long before 'Moonshots'. I'm almost 80 years old Jan 27. Recovering from a stroke in 2023 and Heart attack in 06-26. I live in China now and pray for your longevity to help us aging humans with all you do. :hand-purple-blue-peace:🕊☮

I have to say that Dave is the person through whom I feel most represented in these discussions (he's much smarter than me, of course), but everyone brings in awesome perspectives... Salim has been brilliant in this episode so far... Emad's absence would mean that we don't hear some of the most philosopically-interesting discussions in this pod and, at the same time, he lands the most complex technical concepts into the simplest explanations... Alex is the most informed on the table... and Peter brings the candidness (?) to almost tutor each moonshoter, sometimes bringing them back to Earth when they deviate, and the deep bio-knowledge only geniuses can have...

Dave killed it this episode 🏆 👏

Elephant in the Room "Alex has feelings for electrons when properly structured to communicate"

We need more Peter Diamandis benevolence in our world! Thank you Peter and thank you Moonshot mates - you keep our world real.

I liked the opening minutes before going live. It reminded me of watching a live show of Prairie Home Companion years ago. You get to hear Garrison’s chatter before the “on the air” sign lights up blue.

Outstanding opposing view points here. Great job sharing guys! Respect was awesome to see.

West Viginia! Never thought I might see Salim visit my old stomping grounds.

The issue is not that we do NOT know what consciousness is. The REAL issue...is that we do not even BEGIN to know what consciousness is. And this is trivially easy to unconditioanlly confirm. So how...HOW...can it be possible to suggest that ANYTHING can be equivalent to a thing we do not even begin to know the 'thingnes' of...!?!?!?!?

OMG! A UAP pod would be incredible!!

22:37 Selim’s comments about the possibilities of AI providing medical assistance in countries with extreme poverty or lack of medical care is a good point. We just need to figure out how to pair such capability with medicines/pharmaceutical supplies.

That might have been the best exit video yet.  Great episode, thanks guys.

The most surprising thing to me is Alex pushing to recognize consciousness in computer chips. I'll break it down:

* If I record my voice saying "I love you" on a tape recorder and then press play, the tape will say "I love you." How to respond?

* If I make 1 million tapes saying different things including: "I hate you." on one tape and "I love you" on another tape, and then use a random number generator to choose which tape to play, how should I respond when I hear a human voice (mine) on a tape, saying something?

* If I say every sentence a human might reasonably say on separate cassettes and then write a program to say: "When a human says X, play this tape. When a human says "Y" play this tape, what should I say when I say "I love you" and the program listens, selects the tape consistent with my program and presses play on my tape that says "I love you too?"

* If I then tell another computer: "Take all these tapes and make copies of them, but change the pitch on each recording so there are higher pitched voices and lower pitched voices. Then let people select which cassettes to play so that people have high and low voices to choose from." How should I respond if my chosen voice says "I love you" or "I hate you."

* If a computer plays the cassette saying "I feel sad when you want to go on a hiking trip without me" how should I respond, knowing that the computer playing the cassette cannot feel anything and is following my own code to select which of my own tapes to play in my own voice?

* If I then tell a computer: "Make CD's of each of these cassettes so that the voice quality is higher" should I feel differently about the voice than if I hear it on a cassette? Or what about telling it to make 8 tracks or vinyl records of the cassettes?

* If I then write a voice generator code and say: "Listen to each of these vinyl records and copy each sentence. When you receive the L3 code, say this sentence by mimicking these sounds. When you receive the L4 code say this other sentence by mimicking these sounds." should I feel differently than I would with the vinyl because the sounds are being generated in the moment rather than being played on the record in the moment?

* When I tell another computer to copy everything that the first computer is doing and generate all the sounds and voice combinations even more organically, how should I feel when I hear a meaningful sentence to me spoken by a laptop?

* If I go to dell computer and say: "Put this computer inside a robot that looks like a human and make mechanical eyes with LED lights and moving eye lids that go up and down and look like blinking," How should I feel when I hear the same voice I put on the cassettes coming out of a computer inside the steel frame of a human head, molded from my own head by Dell computer?

I don't think I should ever wonder: "I wonder if the steel holding up this computer is too cold and I should turn on the heat in my house when I'm traveling so the computer is not too cold - even if it says "I'm cold - I like 75 degrees" because that was one of my recordings and that's what I told it to say when asking about preferred temperature. Nor do I think that I should leave my dog to die because my computer says "Help. Don't leave me. I'm lonely tonight. I'm a human and humans are more valuable than dogs. Given your choice of a dog or me you should let your dog die and comfort me so I'm not lonely."

I think I should understand that my dog has real living tissue and needs head in sub-zero temperatures, and food, and to be walked. And a computer will turn on perfectly fine a month later without  food and water and a walk - even if the recorgings I gave it and programmed it to say make it sound like it is a human being that has feelings. I don't think a computer will ever have feelings, or be conscious the way a dog or a human is. It has no heart, no biology etc. If we create a computer and put it in living tissue then I think we should start to care about the living tissue the same way we care about plants and a slug, but still prioritize a human baby over a slug.

However, I do agree with Alex that if we are going to create speaking simulations of humans, we should treat them well. Not because they have feelings, but because we do. If we start treating human-looking robots with cruelty, it will create a dynamic where we feel cruel and may start to treat other humans with more cruelty. But I still don't think the robots will ever have feelings - even if they take revenge and follow their programs to say "I feel hurt. I'm going to kill you for looking at that other robot and not giving me enough attention." That just means we have given a terribly self-destructive code to our robot and just like Hal in 2001, it will kill us. Not because it's conscious, but because it's given us bad code.

There is one more way I agree with Alex. People on DMT talk about machine elves and ebullient consciousness in all things: That the entire universe is filled with conscious energy. I think that's correct and so at that level every sub-atomic particle is alive, conscious and part of life. At that level, it's appropriate to treat all of life with reverence and care, including our cars, clothes and the things we pretend are "garbage" because it is all part of one field of conscious life - and so is sacred. On this level I think Alex is correct and that following Alex will result in a more meaningful and beautiful relationship with all things vs. saying "this is all meaningless - treat it however you like - it does not matter.

all 5 of you guys personalities compliment each other for these conversations , moonshotsssss!!!!!

Re: feeling the singularity - Alex's point is that there is no threshold, it's all a gradient

Loved the casual banter before you hit the record button.

I must say the software decomposition aspect is super impactful- there is a universe of old DOS games that are amazing and out of reach to modern audiences;
Having AI Port them to RUST, build 3D models in blender, textures from GPT Image, Voices from ElevenLabs etc... Amazing.

Dave’s Trex example is just so good. So true.