Excerpts from Naval’s Podcasts
Recently I stumbled upon Naval Ravikant’s podcast with Joe Rogan which gave me some insights into what life processes can be. He has tried to answer some of the high-thinking, high-value questions that we often ask ourselves or are being read somewhere that have no physical value but more of philosophical value.
Resources are limited. Whether it is limited to human resources or natural resources or something you want to extract to convert it into something useful. When do we know we have reached the final stage of extraction? This is one question that intrigues the intellectuals and what we can infer from it is demand and supply metrics.
When can we have an alien invasion? Only when aliens have exhausted their options of exploration in their galaxy or universe and they are out there to prove a hypothesis of something intelligent still exists in the nearby unexplored arena. Intelligence is the next oil. So when we will be exhausted out of products in the market, the significance of ideas will be the driving force for the next big thing. You know who is leading the race currently.
The AI revolution we are aiming for is a distant site and many recognise it. We can train a model with billions of parameters and explain to non-techies that “Hey, you can create an image and create involves passing something as simple as a single sentence and this sentence can be a thought, an idea or something which is creative and unique and hasn’t said a word about”. This stable diffusion model can create an encoder-decoder mapping but to generalise the one-to-one mapping of the brain still requires a stable structuring and understanding of how the brain works. We know the structural aspects but don’t know the interconnectivity of the neurons and their responses to a particular stimulus. AI can’t take over humans and won’t create a dearth of work or jobs.
We do give signals to the universe and they are mere show-offs or aren’t simply effective. People say they work 16–18 hours and hustle culture corporates back up this hype. But he argues this is impossible without a mental breakdown or under the influence of any product. We need to rejuvenate, complete our sleep cycle and give time to family. We can work like anything but that is just a signal to other people what you are up to, much like an iPhone.
Gripple’s dilemma — Suppose you have an inquisitive younger sibling who is curious to know the answers. We all have been at the stage where we would like the world to make sense. We question every scientific phenomenon and the logical reasoning we consume fits right in the jigsaw puzzle of unknowns. But some questions that we ask don’t have a logical answer. It ends up in one of the three states — infinite regress, circular reasoning or axiom. Infinite regress is the series of whys which don’t have an ending. We can simply imply why on every statement and it is perhaps a valid question. Circular reasoning is based on the fact that P happens due to Q and Q happens due to P. We are stuck in the loop. Axioms are statements that are assumed to be true to lead the further chain of postulates and theories. A question will end up in the answer like —
Big Bang was the reason we are here. Earth is one single entity that is creating consciousness.
The answer to the question that what is our purpose, it can’t be defined by a single entity. It has to be defined by race, by the goal that is achieved and by the actions that are changing the future.
