Producing this podcast and transcribing the episode takes tons of time and resources. If you support The Disruptors and the work we do, please consider making a tax-deductible donation. If you can’t afford to support us, we completely understand as well, but an iTunes review or share on Twitter can go a long way too!   Most of the the kind of Eastern religions are going to say that you know,  once you do some investigation, you discover, you are God you are the the connected consciousness to every living being in every inanimate object in the universe.   Matt: Warning, if you’re afraid of going deep on controversial fringe topics and potentially exploring the nature of reality in today’s episode we’ll throw you in a twist today. We’ve got Euvie Ivanova and Mike Gillian on the program host of the future thinkers podcast a show on the evolution of technology society and consciousness they’ve co-founded positive digital innovation hub and startup incubator for technologies like blockchain, VR. May I and also run a cutting machinery a blog and app focused on meditation and consciousness the two are also very bullish on crypto and blockchain running the crypto radio show and [Inaudible] I find these two to be very interesting futurists and explorers of the human experience.   And I’m very excited to have both on the program. I want to tell you right now things get a little bit trippy. We get deep into the weeds of what it means to be human alive and conscious you had your warning today we discuss the nature of consciousness and how Mike can you V explore it the role of psychedelics and self-actualization why the world operates potentially in a quantum confusion about how to create your own level of sovereignty and control in your life Euvie and Mike get excited about Bitcoin and blockchain how travel transforms. You as a person and society one likes optimistic and realistic about the future where we’re headed with AI and automation and what it all means the complexities of the universe. And how to understand or accept them and for a bonus, how you can control dice just by thinking about it sounds absurd it is we’ll jump into it in a sec and now without further ado, I give you Mike Gillian and Euvie Ivanoka. So, we were talking a little bit about the program and Mike’s not supposed to talk about drugs in psychedelic so let’s jump right there what’s your experience guys.   Mike: Great! That’s a good place to start well we’ve actually talked a lot about the stuff on our podcast. I’ve got some interesting stories of doing mushrooms and I was 18 and ice fishing in the winters of Canada we’ve done some crazy stuff with DMT and kind of documenting our experiences with that. I accidentally did vapor Wasco once and that was a horror show but yeah I swear I’m not an addict   Euvie: Oh! we just like to explore our consciousness to its outer limits and sometimes that results in us falling off the map   Mike: Yeah   Matt: Works our tagline is exploring the edges of human understanding both for future and in terms of consciousness that’s a lot of the reason. I wanted to get you guys on you got a great podcast and I wanted to dive into that a little bit more what if those experiences revealed to you about consciousness and who you are what you are.   Euvie: Oh boy! Straight into the deep end yeah I don’t even know where to start with that well   Mike: I mean most of the kind of Eastern religions are going to say that you know once you do some investigation you discover you are God you are the connected consciousness to every living being and every inanimate object in the universe so I I suppose we could talk about some of the actual experiences of that but through psychedelics and meditation but I mean that that’s kind of like the cheat sheet answer at the end of all of the meditation that you do I’m God that’s it   Matt: it’s a solid cheat sheet paper in long books about what that means to be God so I think let’s let’s go there a little bit because I think it is very interesting and becoming more relevant as more and more people in the tech industry look to expand essentially we’ve gotten to the point where we as a species we live long enough in terms of we’re not gonna die of starvation we need to have some type of Maslow’s hierarchy of Awesomeness and you guys are trying to go it sounds like a little bit higher up what pushed you there   Mike: I think a big part of it was when we started traveling and we were doing this digital Nomad thing kind of like taking it straight from the 4-hour workweek script started an online business tried to automate as much as we good hire as much as we could while we’re traveling and kind of like exploring the world and what that did was give us a lot of our time back which allowed for us to kind of focus more on the things we wanted to focus on things that are entertaining or interesting to us so we ended up reading a lot of books and having a lot of interesting conversations, And I think we we both managed to push past this sort of existential fear of like okay what’s next what happens after you’ve got your time back and you can just do what you want and I think most people we’ve met who have done the same kind of thing have also faced this existential question of what what now what not what do I do with my life so we just basically gave that time to ourself and read a lot of books about different subjects about consciousness and life and death and philosophy and all kinds of stuff and then just kind of went from there   Euvie: Well, I mean a lot of the stuff you can read books about it but if you just have a conceptual understanding of it it does not compare to the actual lived experience of it and I think that’s the most interesting part. I mean we’ve done both a lot of meditation and psychedelics as well but far more meditation for me at least I mean going on eight years now I’ve been doing meditation. Mike a bit longer and both of us became interested in consciousness and how the mind works quite early on in our teens.   And I don’t know what got me started on it personally but I remember just questioning those things since I was 12 it’s just been a lifelong interest for me and I’ve got particularly serious about it in the last couple years I was meditating for over an hour a day and yeah some pretty weird stuff happens when your mind with your mind when you do this   Matt: Are you guys a couple? I never got that.   Mike: Yeah!   Euvie: We’re married. Yeah!   Matt: Okay what’s it like where you’re both exploring these experiences and I imagine one of you is probably going to be further along than the other and that’ll make things awkward tense what’s what’s the dynamic like that there.   Mike: I think if you think you’ve mastered anything and there’s nothing left to learn then you’re kind of fooling yourself so I mean on some levels you’ve to ease much further ahead of me on some things in some levels. I’m further ahead than she is so I think we both kind of the first try and strip the ego away from whatever it is that where we’re trying to talk about or learn or get and then if there’s room for either of us to help each other then that’s what will tend to do but I think in like across many dimensions in a relationship like if you’re working together. If you’re exploring these topics together if you’re right now we’re making music together like there are lots of different things we do together. And if we didn’t have the ego part of it under control when someone’s giving you feedback or criticism then it would be more of a nightmare than a fun experience so I think that’s probably the first thing   Euvie: Yeah! Actually, I wanted to share some interesting stuff that I’ve been learning recently. And I’ve had these experiences and recently I’ve become interested in what is actually happening in the brain when these things are happening.   So, I’ve started reading up on neuroscience and and brain imaging and all sorts of research that they’ve done in this area and it’s quite interesting because so it seems that they have found a brain circuit that referred that we refer to as the ego and it’s the default mode Network which is the part of the brain or it’s a network in the brain that is responsible for self-referential thoughts so thoughts about me like what is my body what is my mind what is my personality like how does the world are they to me how is it relevant for me   Mike: Basically the storyteller   Euvie: It is the storyteller but there’s more to it because it’s also your sense of where your body ends and where the world begins or your awareness of how you are doing something in the world as an agent so it’s a very useful part of the mind obviously kept us alive for a long time that’s why it’s there but when people get too caught up in this default mode network and so, first of all, we have two networks that seem to be activated at different times so they’re normally not activated at the same time they’re like a seesaw so the default mode network is the self-referencing thoughts.   Aand then the I think it’s called task-oriented Network but I might be screwing up the exact term and that’s when we have a task to do when we have an objective we’re doing something in the world and that’s why people get into a flow State for example athletes or artists when they’re you know singing or running they feel like their sense of self-disappears and it’s because the default mode network in the brain is actually not activated they’re not thinking about themselves they’re thinking about their objective so what happens if you do really really a lot of meditation and I mean like 10-20 years of meditation you become capable of activating both of those networks at the time and that’s what they think produces what they call non-dual awareness so   Mike: Which is also known as enlightenment?   Euvie: Also, known as enlightenment or awake their awakened state and what this is is a profound sense of oneness with everything where you no longer feel like you are separate from the world and you no longer feel like you are contained within your body and your mind is contained within your head which is this kind of sense that well I am everything. I am God and it’s interesting because they’ve actually been able to observe this in MRI scans of Buddhist monks. So, it’s not some mystical boo-boo thing it actually exists and it’s a result of doing really really a lot of meditation so actually what is what is interesting in this study is that the default mode Network is not deactivated in these states it is active but it’s active at the same time as the task-oriented Network so instead of thinking about yourself you feel a oneness with everything and in connectedness with everything and the boundary of self-dissolves so that you feel like you-you’re capable of everything and anything but at the same time you don’t have to do it because everything already is if that makes sense. \Yeah! So, yeah it’s so kind of a long-winded explanation but to get back to the idea of ego the kind of the New Age idea that you have to kill the ego is completely incorrect both scientifically and experiential II with these types of things so it’s yeah it’s less about killing the ego but more about having the ego get kind of absorbed into everything else   Matt: as technically if you killed the ego you would die you would   Euvie: Well, you would be psychotic there you would not have any reference point for what you are or you would be perpetually in a flow state which I don’t even know is possible like you like if you got hurt, you wouldn’t bother to you know wipe your wound or if you lost a leg you wouldn’t bother to go to the doc because you would have no sense of self   Matt: This sounds like what some of the ancient tribes would use they would jug themselves up so they wouldn’t feel pain and they would go into battle fearless and ready to kill.   Mike: We’re gonna jump into the actual science behind drugs and the different categories enjoy.   Matt: Well, I I think you have to have a more sophisticated kind of definition of what what certain drugs are doing there’s there are basically three categories of drugs and you’re basically looking at stimulants depressants and psychedelics and I said I think psychedelics are quite separate so in in the case of the Warriors going to battle they’re probably doing something to numb the physical body not necessarily it could have an effect like a stimulant on the mind but really psychedelics are of an entirely different category.   Euvie: Yeah! Completely different category but actually it’s interesting that you bring it out because they’ve done in my studies of ayahuasca and mushrooms as well and what they’ve noticed is that the activity in default mode network does decrease so this is it’s not quite the same as a non-dual awareness it’s more similar to a flow state but you also have other activity which the brain becomes really hyper interconnected so you associate things that you normally don’t associate which is why you know people have hallucinations and strange thoughts so it it’s more related to creativity and open-mindedness and this kind of thing not so not so much related to non-dual awareness.   Matt: So, going off of that I know you have a lot of interest in in AI artificial intelligence my imagine it has to do with is intelligence inherent in driving consciousness what uh what spurs you guys to get into futurism   Mike: Oh! it’s kind of the same answer is what got us into consciousness it’s just thinking about having the time to think about life and anything I guess when your present day is kind of taken care of and your week or your month ahead is taken care of then you just start getting a little bit more forward thinking at least that’s kind of natural for me. So, I mean I was interested in technology as interested in futurism UV and I were having a lot of interesting conversations reading a lot of books and that kind of like spurred the conversations but I wouldn’t necessarily say futures futurism is is the number one thing it just happens to be like the interesting question at the end of every interview that we do like what’s your vision of a future a positive future that you want to create because I’m like intention and actually creating what you’re envisioning set of just kind of going along with whatever direction the entire world is moving in by default I think that’s sort of like the critical difference we want to have and and and do with our podcast is like be intentional about what we’re creating in the future so yeah it’s not so much futurism it’s just about intention   Euvie: I think in a general sense people are what makes us unique as creatures as that we’re very exploratory in comparison to other animals and some people are more exploratory than others and archetypal. II were both very much explorers and we want to explore not only the existing map but also fall off the map and find what’s there and the future is one of those things that is just not on the map yet so it’s wide open you can create it you can envision it you can do anything you want with it because it’s not set in stone and in my case I grew up in the collapse of Soviet Union so it was far from a perfect environment.   And I saw that you know I was surrounded by all these brilliant creative capable people but they didn’t have the environment to self-actualize and to do something in the world and you know. I watched on TV these people in other countries doing amazing things seemingly and I wondered why is there such a big difference like why is it that in my country people can’t do it they don’t have these opportunities but somewhere else they can and so that differentiation created in my mind this idea okay well what kind of world can can we create that would allow for people to express themselves and to self-actualize and to create something amazing and then you know when I started traveling also my sense of the world broadened even more and I started thinking well how can we create this amazing future where everybody can self actualize that is also good for everybody else on the planet and is good for the planet and for the animals and that can sustain our civilization for you know many more years to come because obviously climate change and and Wars and destruction is something that could stop it at some point. I mean these are real existential risks so I don’t know it’s been a long process for both of us just thinking about these things it wasn’t really like a single aha moment that’s kind of just a life long of things overlaid on top of each other   Mike: I think artificial intelligence question it’s more of sort of an abstract question in my mind of what are the limitations of my own consciousness and what would that look like if it was as if those limitations were removed in a synthetic consciousness so that’s what got me into artificial intelligence is what would what would my mind like would be like without the limitations that it has. So, I started taking courses on machine learning and artificial intelligence and basically came to the conclusion that were nowhere near replicating that at least on you know creating conscious beings so I kind of put it away and and thought like it’s a nice idea for the future but I don’t think we’re very close to it so I’ll just explore consciousness on my own and see what my own limitations are   Matt: Hey! Matt, here we’re about to jump off the rails and get into some really deep hmm don’t want to swear on the podcast so we’ll just drop it as a mmmm it’s very interesting though and I think you’ll really enjoy this next part with Mike   Euvie: Yeah! I mean if you think about it the brain the human brain has been a machine in the works for how many billions of years from the beginning of life on this planet and it’s been how many iterations. So you know thinking that we as a human can create a superintelligent AI that can rival that is pretty ambitious and I don’t know if it’s accurate so I mean people complain people compare artificial intelligence to human intelligence but I don’t think it’s even in the same category because the human mind is we had a guest on our show called kirby surprise who studies consciousness and he said that the human mind is the most powerful quantum supercomputer in the known universe so I think this is a pretty good definition and if we want to create superintelligent AI that could rival the human mind it would have to be something in that category   Matt: Possibly but also when you look at technology oftentimes things are done and suddenly a breakthrough makes things significantly more efficient so whether that’s a new type of engine or a higher gear ratio there’s always ways where as you start to figure things out the simpler method becomes the more elegant the more complex. I’m not saying you’re wrong I just am saying that the people that feel that it’s only a game of numbers and getting to a certain number of neurons may be underestimating the ability of something more than evolution to evolve so   Mike: I ‘m I’m not so much of a skeptic that I would deny the possibility of creating consciousness in artificial intelligence altogether. I just think the current methods we’re using now to uncover this or not there yet but I do think based off whatever experience meditation and psychedelics. I do think there are interesting ideas in the phenomenon of consciousness is either multi-dimensional or some sort of quantum phenomenon.   And I’ve explored that category a little bit and it seems like a very difficult thing to prove if not an impossible thing to improve but with when you have a degree of complexity in a network plus a degree of randomness in that network I think it’s possible so maybe something like the actual architecture of the Internet could prove to be some sort of artificial intelligence or at least some basis of intelligence to build off of in the future   Euvie: Yeah if this is something that you’re interested in there’s there are two scientists that are studying this Giulio Tononi and Christopher Koch they are both studying consciousness as a complex systems phenomenon and so they’re comparing it’s two different machine learning algorithms and the internet and different kinds of networks it’s quite interesting   Matt: And blockchain I know you guys are quite deep in that rabbit hole how do you see that playing out with a AI and then be just industries in general   Mike: It’s quite financially focused now which I find to be a little bit annoying however I think that the possibilities of it in the future are quite interesting we did have a good chat with ship what was his name the guy at the conference with a funky hat he’s like the most well-known guy in artificial intelligence   Euvie: Oh bender. oh yeah   Mike: Oh! Yeah we did have a good chat with Ben girsl about this and he does he does have a lot of theories about artificial intelligence and ideas about how to implement it and he thinks that blockchain would be a good basis if they could solve this speed problem but I kind of agree with that actually I think that’s an interesting.   Matt: Platform this decentralized network idea and then having sort of the the gas element where things only things that provide value or that are good for the network are allowed to continue and then they they die if they’re not providing value I think that’s interesting so gas is referring to ethereum and the blockchain platform which we’ve talked about previously with Kyle somani in Episode six if you haven’t listened to it how gas works is it’s the transaction cost so to speak to be able to run something through the etherium network there’s a lot of crypto projects that are currently undertaking something like this it’s a similar process to spam filters if you have to send a tiny amount of money for every email that’s sent and that’s used as filtering spam if you have to do something and pay for it then it’s much less likely that’ll happen that said we still all receive junk mail and our inboxes and at home so it may not be as perfect and to fine-tune this we would like   Mike: As far as the rest of it with blockchain I think it could be a really interesting new application and a new way to have truly decentralized society in the future but as far as how we implement it there’s still a big question mark.   Euvie: Yeah it’s a very young technology and people got pretty excited about it because of the financial speculation aspect but it’s still very very early in terms of what it’s capable of and I think realistically it’ll be at least a decade before it does something significant that is outside of just the FinTech space.   Mike: It’s basically like asking the question what will social media or what-what did MySQL databases do for social media like it’s such a huge disconnect it’s such a huge gap between like a single database and like all of the phenomenon of social media and information sharing and connectivity between people and like the ability to instantly connect across the globe all of this stuff and it’s just like asking the question what is that what does a MySQL database have to do with that what do you think about MySQL databases it’s just kind of like it’s such a base layer of what is possible that it’s not really worth talking about in a way it’s more interesting to talk about the abstractions that can be built in the future based off of this technology but I mean we’re so early in this-sort of field and so much resistance and work is ahead of us to actually get this stuff adopted in actual society that I think, yeah I might it’s just a bit of early to talk about the future of this   Matt: I would agree and at the same time it’s almost never too early to talk about the future because if you don’t talk about it you can’t help to sculpt the future or design away some of the flaws so with blockchain specifically I would say it’s a little bit different than MySQL I know the technology analogy that people like to use I think it’s slightly different because the trust factor but I know you guys are very involved in the on the investing side with both the crypto podcast and then the crypto syndicate side what’s what’s going on in those areas   Euvie: Sure about that so well yeah we’ve we’ve dabbled with in investing but it’s more of a long-term strategy so there are a lot of different applications that could end up being really useful in the future but it’s hard to tell now which ones it will be so I’m just looking at all the different ones especially protocols and interoperate interoperability tools and kind of the base layer stuff rather than the consumer facing applications that’s what is interesting the most to me. Because that’s the stuff that can have the widest impact in the future so that’s what I’m focusing on that side but actually in terms of the stuff that we talked about and in the like you know our conversations with each other we don’t really discuss that kind of stuff very much it’s more just I don’t know it’s a hobby I guess.   Matt: What do you guys describe it?   Mike: Consciousness anyone lately it’s been music a lot because we’re kind of switching gears and we want to write an album and we want to record and stuff so we’re talking quite a bit about that I’m taking courses and music theory and stuff but before that it’s pretty much consciousness actually all the time we’re still talking about consciousness   Euvie: Well, because it’s it’s you know it’s that frontier it’s the unexplored territory and that’s always the most interesting thing for us and with consciousness there’s just so little known about it both scientifically and experience really there’s a lot more if you read the Mystics you know there are people who have been proved explored that quite deeply but again it doesn’t compare to exploring it yourself and as we’re both doing this stuff there’s just always a wealth of stuff to talk about and there’s always new insights and a new understanding and it’s just it’s yeah it’s like an endless well of knowledge and wisdom and   Matt: We’re about to go really far over the edge if you want to look into the research discussed in the following section fringe fm look up Dean radians research and you should be able to find all of that right they’re going to jump into the science of magic and the possibility of influencing your environment and more ways than one I know it’s controversial I know it’s interesting I know it’s exciting so now let’s see what we got   Mike: I just finished reading this book by Dean Radin this year he was one of the founders of the Institute of noetic Sciences   Euvie: I think so. yeah!   Mike: I thought it was like iota or something anyway Dean Radin check out the latest book I even forgot the name – yeah so he talked about synchronicity and talks about all the different scientific studies that have been done about synchronicity and non-local awareness and saw all kinds of different-sized phenomenon.   And basically I think that’s that’s one of the most interesting things for me because it’s like I’m very science-based I like to see proof for things but I’m not so scientific that if there is something that is unproven that I’m going to disbelieve it entirely I’m gonna say it’s false I think there are a lot of very public scientists out there that are actually like that if something is not proven then it is not true and I don’t like that idea and what SCI phenomenon has kind of made me aware of is there are a lot of things out there that are not proven but are commonly experienced and the element of belief plays a big role in synchronicity and psy phenomenon and all this stuff and if you if you can make your and that’s actually one of the elements of the tests – so they’ll do tests like dice rolls and you predict the roll that you want to make or you try and influence the dice – to land on a seven or something and there are actual studies that show that statistical probability increase that comes if you focus on the outcome that you want with an increased amount of energy and a positive outlook and a lot of attention you can actually have a statistical increase in the probability of you achieving the number that you want however when interest or excitement wanes over time then so do the the influences over the dice rolls but this applies across the board with tons of different things and I think the higher the degree of your focus your ability to focus your belief that it’s gonna work the more influence you can have on these sort of outcomes and I’ve been experimenting and we’ve been talking about this for years now   Matt: I know I know this sounds absurd it may in fact be I’ve looked into the research from Dean Radin and I haven’t been able to find any faults with the way that the research or the methodology was conducted if you go to French – FM you can find the links there just search for a UV or Mike or future thinkers or Dean rate and you’ll find any of those there I would love for you to look into and find flaws with this research because this research is very challenging for someone that’s very highly logical and left-brained to take if you find some Blas comments-section, of course, Twitter anything would love to hear your thoughts   Mike: So, that’s one of the more interesting things to me is is when the belief is completely opened up and you can just like observe what is and you test and play with this thing, then you start noticing all kinds of synchronicities all over the place and and I think that’s probably one of the interesting things because it’s almost like speaking to the universe it’s almost like having a dialogue on a daily basis you start you know we’ll be talking about owls or something that all of a sudden owls will pop up like everywhere in the environment   Matt: How large was the sample set through a lot of times I have a lot of trouble with a lot of things further in this area because of a the the buy-in effects from placebo and then [Inaudible] of small numbers so if there’s not a large enough sample set the numbers are always going to skew one way or the other and then you can read into them.   Mike: Well, basically his entire book is about the legitimacy of these studies that have been done and basically the desire to not believe it that is taking has taken place in the scientific community so people’s jobs are on the line they don’t want to be seen as woowoo so scientists will have like private conversations be like yeah it’s amazing this new study that was done in synchronicity or whatever and then anything stated publicly is just completely the opposite direction they don’t want to be public about this stuff they don’t want to talk about they don’t want to risk losing your job or being seen as a hack so I can see exactly why this is not more mainstream science. But this book by Dean Radin this year really covers that in a lot of death the whole thing it was kind of boring actually for me because like I already I already know the stuff from experience and reading all the previous books that I’ve read but the book is just all about studies that have been done   Euvie: In terms of the sample size I actually saw the meta-analysis at Micah’s referring to and it was a collection of several different studies done in different universities around the world and across three decades. So, I think collectively the sample size of those studies was several hundred in maybe over a thousand people so it’s a pretty decent sample size   Matt: Interesting it brings up it brings up a ton of questions I was talking with someone previously about the active quantum computing and just when you when you dive into quantum computing for me at least it makes the world seem as if we’re running in a quantum simulation itself where if you actually really start to understand how quantum computing works and the probabilities of whether or not you think about an electron or whether or not to observe it it’s based off of whether or not you look to observe it it makes it seem a lot like if you were gonna write an if-then in a code base for some type of person playing the world of symbols [Inaudible]   Mike: Yeah I find this stuff to be fascinating and the application I can’t say I understand quantum phenomenon in any shape or form but I do find higher dimensional mathematics to be quite interesting and I’ve taken some courses on that and read books and stuff and it’s um it’s quite easy actually to visualize higher dimensions and there are some physicists out there that are coming up with some very interesting theories about the higher dimensions of reality and how we’re kind of like a slice like out the observable realities is a slice of a much larger pie that we’re not aware of and that there is a lot of symmetry in this pie if something happens in this universe then it also happens and the negative you know bizarro spider-man universe or something so I think it’s quite interesting to think of and one of the examples they use is higher dimensional objects.   I think it’s interesting to think of thought forms as higher dimensional objects that cast shadows on our reality in the form of physical objects so that’s that could be an explanation for when you visualize something visualize an outcome and that thing manifests and you know a span of time you could be creating this higher dimensional object that casts a shadow at some point in time in the future and creates the thing in reality not to say it just like appears out of nowhere but the probability manipulation is really the interesting thing that’s talked about in a lot of these synchronicity books is the possibility that if the brain is a quantum computer and it’s manipulating probabilities in the future then the whole possibility of synchronicity starts to come into shape you start to see what it that it could actually be possible   Euvie: And as doing it via higher dimension   Mike: Yeah   Matt: Or or if the brains a quantum computer and we do live in multiple universes where everything is happening simultaneously whatever your brain is choosing is happening more frequently in this one versus your brain choosing something else in a different one so that suddenly you have a situation where obviously you’re going to be influencing it because it’s changing your path don’t worry understanding time states is complicated for anyone looking at getting a top quantum researcher on the program so we can discuss and break it down into simple science but now let’s jump up   Euvie: You know they talk about the law of attraction and how you can manifest things I think it’s more accurately titled the law of attention. It’s what you put your attention to you will find and even in physics we keep looking deeper and deeper into space and deeper and deeper into the microscope and we keep finding more and more particles and more and more universes or galaxies in outer space and it’s it seems that they are there because we look for them.   And I don’t know I mean it’s kind of a primitive explanation but this seems to be it does seem to be a factor that you know the more attention we pay to something the more we look for something the more we find there   Mike: I think in physics the most interesting thing is that old experiment a lot of people are aware of because it happened so long ago now the particle wave experiment where if if something is observed it’s a part like a I don’t want to have to explain that whole thing so just a double   Matt: double slit.   Mike: Exactly! But essentially that experiment proves that what you observe you have influence over just by paying attention to it and I think that’s that’s a fascinating thing that whatever you’re not looking at can be in this like probabilistic quantum superposition of any outcome existing until you observe it and create and it turns it into an outcome one or zero like one or the other so I think that plays a deep role in in you know any [Inaudible] our [Inaudible] or that kind of thing like there are an infinite number of probabilities out there until you observe the one and you haven’t while the thing is in superposition you have the ability to influence the outcome so that what you’re visualizing is what you end up seeing I think that’s probably one of the more interesting ways to explain that.   Matt: You don’t know if the cat’s dead when it’s in the box until you look but   Mike: At the same time   Euvie: Yeah.   Mike: They’ve done studies as well if you look at people who self-identify as being lucky they’re more likely to find money on the ground than the ones who didn’t not because they didn’t walk by the money but because they feel lucky so they’re more opportunistic and looking   Matt: I think part of it part of that could prove or part of that could prove the theory I think there’s a lot that goes into it I want to transact I want to transition a little cuz we’ll never get anywhere on this so you guys have been traveling I’ve traveled a lot as well where is the coolest place you’ve been and what’s been the most transformational experience for each of you   Euvie: Well, Bali is definitely a very alien place I very much appreciate how they have preserved their ancient culture and how much they love it and practice it every day and I don’t know how much longer it’s gonna stay that way because of a little tourism but I just found it amazing going to see these music performances or dance performances or just observing their daily life and how absorbed they are in in the the ritual and the presence in everything that they’re doing for me that was really amazing to see that because it’s a stark difference to how people live in the West they’re completely not present in their lives just you know running on autopilot and and very much in the head whereas yeah I just I don’t know if I’m just making it kind of a colonialist observation like oh these people are so spiritual.   But yeah it did have that effect on me I was very amazed by how they live in Bali   Mike: I like to Vietnam a lot I liked Ho Chi Minh City because I rented a motorbike there and I was you know I I felt very free to travel around and just see things as they are there it’s one of those cultures and cities that I don’t think is yet really overrun by tourism and not super influenced or catering to tourism so you go there and people are just kind of living their normal lives but in a very urban environment and I just like cities. I like getting on a motorcycle and riding around and it’s one of them my favorite cities in the world to get on a motorcycle and ride around   Euvie: Yeah ho Chi Minh City is really fun it’s so chaotic and dirty and crazy but at the same time somehow it works yeah and one thing that I really like about it is that life happens in these tiny little alleyways and it’s very communal like sometimes you’ll just be walking down the street and you know somebody will hand their kids to you and be like hold on like I have to serve a customer in my shop and it’s..   Mike: It’s not a super common thing it did happen to us once but yeah!   Euvie: Yeah and not a super common thing but it’s interesting how like people don’t don’t seem to live in this kind of isolated way like they do in the West it’s very communal and a lot of the time people have their living room doors open and the door is basically the whole width of the house. And so you can just observe people living out in the open you know they’re cooking they’re hanging out they’re playing with their kids and it’s like you get a window into people’s lives.   And it’s not this kind of like locked away behind walls thing it was yeah very interesting and very different and people take it seems that people have a very high sense of personal responsibility in Vietnam like you know they take care to sweep the streets they don’t wait for somebody else to do it and when they’re in traffic they’re very opportunistic but at the same time like how would you describe.   Matt: it it’s a swarm this is a centralized swarm that works really well because you’re your one and only rule is look out for yourself first and foremost and don’t die and   Mike: Yeah! You said that period it works yeah look up yourself don’t die don’t screw with anyone else and you’ll be fine.   Matt: You should listen to this podcast now Google Ho Chi Minh City rush-hour traffic just to see what we mean it’s hundreds of thousands millions of motorbikes everyone drives a motorbike no one has a car in the city that goes all across the lanes you go down the sidewalks there are no rules other than survive I didn’t get where you’re going.   Mike: Yeah red lights stop signs all of that stuff are more just like natural suggestions and they are hard rules.   Matt: And the cops will try to pull you over and give you a fine because you’re for and it was for me it was incredible because in Ho Chi Minh City especially it was like you almost die every day so you kind of save her life a bit more.   Mike: Yeah yeah when I was first learning to drive it was definitely like that I was like so thankful to be alive but then I got used to it after a while and it’s just it just became pure fun.   Matt: Yeah it’s a it’s very interesting I want to transition the interview a little bit now so what are what industries are you guys most excited about what technologies do you see transforming the future in the next five to ten years the most   Mike: I have to say blockchain is probably the top of that list to be honest like it’s it’s already transformed our lives and usually I think we’re kind of ahead of the curve when it comes to adoption of new weird things like it’s always been that way it practically in my life that whatever I start using like five years down the road or you know on the high end all I find all my family or friends they’ll all start using something technology wise or whatever. So, I think we’ve been using cryptocurrency for about two years now is like our primary mode of payment and our primary way of compensating people that work and so we’ve been basically running and cryptocurrency and traveling around the world using that and it’s worked quite well for us it’s definitely not like super easy it’s not as easy as visa for sure. But I think it’s definitely the future I think that’ll probably have a massive impact to not have government’s printing currency and devaluing currencies and stuff at on a whim so that’s a big thing.   Euvie: And I do think AI will have a very large impact but not necessarily in the way that people think. Yeah with just automation of various aspects and increasing the efficiency of different processes like there are a lot of systems in the world that is very inefficient and I think blockchain and AI combined can make those systems significantly more efficient which in turn will mean that people will have fewer jobs. So we’ll have to restructure our society accordingly and I don’t know what the solution to that is if it’s universal basic income or some sort of a resource-based economy or something else but I think that is one way that AI will transform our lives and it’s it’s just the automation that will force us to restructure society I think that will be a really really big thing.   Matt: It will force us to or we will have lots of revolution and and distress in the streets up would you guys describe yourselves as optimists pessimists or realists.   Mike: Well, I don’t know we its kind of based on what we talked about before I think we have we come from this belief that there’s. We have a large degree of control and influence over our own lives and our own sovereignty and that belief I guess for most people would be quite limited like just the advice that we had when we left Canada was always very pessimistic always very like get realistic focus on you know find a job that sort of stuff.   And we always ignored that and that’s worked out like it’s there’s definitely been some ups and downs but it’s worked out quite well and I would say where we’re very very sovereign we have complete control over our lives and almost every dimension. So, I think on that level I look out into the world and I see a degree of possibility and an opportunity that maybe most people don’t see so you could consider me an optimist. But I don’t think it’s like optimistic and just wishful thinking I just think it’s optimism but realism at the same time but then on the other hand like this whole like social justice warrior movement and Marxist movement in in Western countries and and like capitalism the failure of capitalism the desire of some people to like revert to communism or something like that all of that just seems absurd but it’s actually gaining traction and that’s kind of scary   Matt: Yeah! what do you think of a black you’ll be?   Euvie: Well! okay so first I’ll answer your question about optimism and pessimism. So, I think optimism and pessimism are biases and I think that they’re both false because well they’re biased I prefer to just observe what it is but also rail realize that I am as a human limited I can’t possibly observe everything I can’t possibly understand everything there’s always more than what I can see therefore there are more opportunities and more solutions that we don’t see and therefore even collectively as a human you know we’re just experiencing a tiny sliver of what is out there a tiny sliver of reality. And we can’t possibly know and the solutions to our biggest problems but they probably exist. And we probably don’t know what form they exist in but they there’s definitely more out there than what we know so in that sense it’s not pessimism or optimism. It’s just an understanding of good reality and that there’s more to reality than what we can see so yeah and then to answer a question about communism. Well yeah growing up in in the failed communist country and one of the largest communist experiments in history, we had communism for over 70 years in the Soviet Union I can tell you that it’s not a utopian society at all there are certain things about it that worked really well the free education and the free healthcare was definitely a good thing but the forced equalization of people was not a good thing at all the limiting of free speech was a horrible thing thousands of people millions of people died in camps or disappeared throughout the history of Soviet Union and that’s what ends up happening when you start limiting free speech so these social justice warriors who are trying to claim that using the wrong gender pronoun is hate speech and that people should be somehow legally punished for that that’s how it starts. I mean read 1984 or Animal Farm or any of these books and you’ll get an idea or just study the history of the Soviet Union or China think Soviet Union history is a bit more accessible because it’s a bit further in the past so there’s more kind of objective observations of what actually happened because for a long time it wasn’t even known to the outside world the things that were happening. So yeah communism is definitely a very flawed system in it in practice. It doesn’t work as an idea it sounds nice but when you implement it and implement it for long enough time and for many people it turns very very ugly and very totalitarian I think that communism and fascism are kind of the extremes of what we consider to be the left-right spectrum fascism is maybe extreme right and communism is extreme left and they’re both equally totalitarian in my opinion. I think that whatever kind of systems we end up adopting collectively as a humanity you know something that follows capitalism I don’t know what that will be but it will definitely not be either of those things I hope.   Matt: It seems like a circle if you get far around on one side you actually get into the other side communism and fascism are for all intensive purposes the same thing for societies   Euvie: yeah!   Matt: With slightly different names what uh what are you guys most excited about today   Euvie: Well I think we’re living in a very amazing time and probably every future thinking persons thought. The same thing at any point in history but just seeing all the possibilities constantly emerging all the new things emerging new ways of thought and new incorporations of old wisdom and new technologies and you know just new scientific discoveries it’s all adding to the realm of possibilities like the more data points we have the more things that we create with that we can create with them and the knowledge of humanity is increasing exponentially every moment. And it’s increasing faster than it ever has in human history so the rate of expanding possibilities is almost also increasing faster than it ever has and it’s it’s overwhelming and exciting at the same time and for me that’s probably the number one thing.   Matt: I can that’s pretty much.   Mike: The same answer for me.   Matt: Yeah it’s a incredible how everything is going faster I want a challenge for listeners know what’s something you would like them to look in to do or takes action on?   Euvie: Well, it had to be prescriptive I would say that there are a lot of books out there right now that are very interesting and that you know summarize a specific area in a very concise way. But I find that older books do a better job of delivering actual wisdom. I think that the way that books were written in the past was different than it is done now because now it’s you know there are publicists and and professional editors and formulas for how to sell the most books, on how to write the most catchy title so a lot of the books that are written today are very useful but for a very narrow purpose like if you want to optimize your learning to be the fastest possible then read the 4-hour chef by Tim Ferriss. But if you want to gain wisdom and to open your mind and I find older books and classics to be more useful so definitely read books.   Mike: I would say I use discomfort an emotional reaction is sort of a barometer of what I need to dig in deeper to. So, if it’s someone I’m listening to on YouTube that I really disagree with and I’m going to consume as much literature and content on that subject. As I can if it’s something that makes me uncomfortable or angry or afraid when I want to dive into that and I think that has worked out exceptionally well. For me as far as being able to hold my own intellectually but also manage fear manage expectation manage how I like engage in the world and plan and all of that stuff. It’s been profoundly helpful for me to go against the grain and do things that are uncomfortable.   Euvie: Yeah! And by diving, you don’t mean like to engage in the conflict or or to try to you know to start a debate with someone necessarily but to investigate why that feeling is there to point that light of awareness within and you know. If there’s some sort of cognitive dissonance between your lived experience and your belief set then investigate why is that, why is there a dissonance that could because if you think about it. There shouldn’t be you know if you are observing reality correctly as you know as best you can with your senses and with your cognitive abilities then there shouldn’t be any difference between lived experience and your model of that experience so yeah.   Matt: Although it rarely works that that way until you start to get much more mature emotionally and personally thanks for both coming on both of you guys. Where is the best place for people to check you guys out and see more about what you’re doing?   Mike: That’s that future thinkers dot Org   Matt: And it’s a great podcast guys I can highly recommend it if you like fringe fm. Like future thinkers as well thanks for coming on guys   Mike: Cool! Thanks forever.   Euvie: Thanks for having us.   Matt: Sweet Cheers! If you want more of Fringe fm you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to fringe FM. You will find tons of audio and video interviews with leaders in the fields of genetics, cryptocurrency, longevity, AI, space, VR and much much more and you can follow me on Twitter at itsmatward. If you enjoyed the show please leave a quick review in iTunes to help more people discover Fringe Fm.