Lex Fridman Podcast: #358 – Aella: Sex Work, OnlyFans, Porn, Escorting, Dating, and Human Sexuality

The following is a conversation with Ayla, a sex researcher who does some of the largest

human sexuality survey studies in the world on everything from fetishes to relationships.

She is fearless in pursuing her curiosity on these topics by asking challenging and

fascinating questions and looking for answers in a rigorous, data-driven way and writing

about it on her blog, knowingless.com.

She is also a sex worker, including only fans and escorting, and is an exceptionally prolific

creator of thought-provoking Twitter polls.

Ayla and I disagree on a bunch of things, but that just made this conversation even more

interesting.

I like interesting people, in the full range of the meaning that the word interesting implies.

I'm currently reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac and would be remiss if I didn't mention

one of my favorite quotes from that book that feels relevant here.

The only people for me are the mad ones.

The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at

the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn,

like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

In the middle, you see the blue satellite pop, and everybody goes, ah.

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data.

It's interesting because this conversation with Ayala is, in fact, about data, a lot

of data, a lot of data from, I think she has over 500,000 people that took a very extensive

survey on their sexual preferences and all that kind of stuff.

So basically, self-report information about your own understanding of your mind and body

and so on.

I mean, that's so powerful, that's so, so, so powerful.

Data in general is really powerful for any kind of study, for medical studies, for psychological

studies, sociological, for any kind of study that includes humans.

And it's nice to see Ayala do this gigantic data set.

But to figure out what you need for your body, for your life, for your diet, that should

not be based, no matter how big the data set is, that should not be based on population

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And now, dear friends, here's Ayala.

I feel like this conversation can go anywhere.

Is that exciting or terrifying to you?

I think it's more exciting.

The uncertainty exciting to you?

Yes.

In conversations in general or just this one?

I think conversations in general.

Like, is anybody like out of certainty is really exciting?

Maybe if the certainty is something new.

I mean, novelty always comes with uncertainty, right?

Almost always.

I started trying to think of a counter example.

Immediately.

Yeah.

You're uncomfortable with generalizations of that kind.

Like, always is always a really bold word to use.

But if it's truly novel, that means you don't really understand it.

It's outside your distribution, so therefore it's going to have a bunch of uncertainty.

But you don't think of it as uncertainty, you think about as something new, but it

actually also attracts you because there's a lot of uncertainty surrounded probably.

Like, what is this new thing?

Yeah.

Like annihilating the mystery, like that drive.

What about the danger of it?

It's like part, I was just thinking of on the drive over because I was like, I'm like

a little nervous about doing this podcast.

And then I was like feeling into the unpleasantness of it, like the fear of what if something

goes terribly wrong.

And then I was also feeling into like how much that feels like part of why it's exciting.

Like if I knew that it was going to go great, I don't know.

Does you actually imagine all the possible ways it can go wrong?

Not like all of them, but I was like, what if I say something really dumb or like you

asked me a question and I answer it in a way that makes me sound like a lot less capable

than I am.

I'm like really afraid of being perceived as stupid or something.

I was also thinking about this on the way over.

Like I'm kind of risk averse in some ways.

Like I don't driving fast, like driving fast in cars because I was driving very carefully

here because the roads are bad.

And then I was thinking, but I'm very like pro risk in other ways, like being really

exposed to like a wide variety of people who might hate you.

And I think like from the outside that might look fine, but I think the monkey brain is

really sensitive to lots of people yelling at you for whatever problems that you seem

to have.

So that's the big risk you're taking is putting yourself out there as an intellectual, like

through your writing and then a lot of people yelling at you.

Is that the worst embarrassment you could experience?

It's pretty bad, yeah.

I think the worst embarrassment is if I put something out there that I failed to like

be properly skeptical of in myself and then people are like, oh, we caught this thing

that you didn't catch.

I think that's the biggest terror.

Yeah.

From looking at your reading and listening to your interviews, you seem to be very defensive

and worried about being a good scientist.

Yeah, definitely.

While you're like methodology.

Yes.

And funny enough, you get attacked on that methodology.

Even though I'm a fan of psychology, like the academic psychology and it's kind of disappointing

often how non-rigorous their work is, how small the sample size and so on and how big

and ambitious, overambitious the proclamations about results is, especially with the news

reports on it.

Now, you're both the researcher, the scientist and the reporter, right?

So like that's what you have with the blog.

Your sample size is often gigantic.

The methodology is right there.

The data is right there.

You provide the data and then you're like raw and honest with your interpretation of

the day.

Like there's an honesty, authenticity to it.

So it's actually really refreshing.

I don't know why people criticize it.

I think this is what psychologists are probably terrified about being transparent and transparent

in that way is because they'll get attacked for their methodology.

So they want to cloak it in a sort of layer of authority.

Like I'm from this institution.

It was peer reviewed, there's kind of all these layers.

And I'm also not going to share the data with you.

And I'm also going to pretend like most psychology studies are not replicable.

I'm just going to pretend there's authority to it.

I think it works on a lot of people.

From the outside, you're like, ah, the scientists with the white lab coats with credentials.

Those are the people who are like doing science and like doing science is, you have like fancy

terms that other people don't really understand.

And to be fair, I have a lot to learn.

I'm still like, I'm self teaching.

I'm like learning through people, learning as I go.

I'm definitely not super knowledgeable about this stuff.

But a lot of what those people are doing in science is not that hard.

And a lot of people like don't try to learn it because it seems so like elevated.

And this is one thing that really bothers me.

I think like everybody can do science.

Like if you just have this aspect of curiosity and like you just really want to figure something

out, you can go and start asking people questions, doing surveys, like writing down the answers.

And then you can go learn how to look at that data in a way that gives you more information

about the world.

Like it's very simple and straightforward.

If you just approach it humbly and earnestly, and you're like, please, let's figure this

out together.

But people are, I think, self crippled in this because they view this as like relegated

to the domain of the experts and the fancy scientists.

And I think that makes me feel really sad.

You're almost attracted to the questions you're not supposed to ask.

Oh yeah.

Also, yes.

It might contribute to the controversy.

Not exclusively probably.

Oh no.

But you're just not limited by like part of your curiosity asking questions that seem

common sense.

Like some of the most controversial questions are like around sex.

It's like everybody thinks and talks and does sex.

I mean, it's the driver of human civilization, and yet there's so little like rigorous discussion

about the like the philosophical and the scientific questions around it.

And it's like, it gets really weird to be able to discuss them.

It becomes tricky to discuss them.

Yeah, super charged.

Super.

Because everybody has a really strong opinion.

Like whether or not, you know, pornography is damaging to society or like how sex corresponds

to gender or like what kind of sexuality is acceptable.

Like do, can you have sexual preferences that in themselves are immoral?

People get very angry about it.

Well, the sad part is they're not just opinionated, but most of us, our relationship with sex

is I think, I guess I want to say not rigorous.

I think it's very difficult to be rigorous about sex.

Like I would consider sexual urges to be kind of elusive to introspection in a way that's

a little bit disproportionate to a lot of other things.

Like you could like, you know, introspect about, you know, how I want other people to like

me and how, where my insecurities lie.

But sex is one of those black box things.

A really common thing is for people to, if you have a fetish, you sort of check back

in your childhood to see an event that corresponds to that fetish and then you like develop a

narrative like, ah, this event in my childhood must have caused this fetish.

And so I think this causes people to be biased towards like a, like a concrete coherent causative

way that events happen or there's that sexual fetishes happen.

Um, this is just like one example of like, why, I think it's really hard to be rigorous

with introspection because we can't avoid, you just want to tend towards making like

coherent narratives, which I think is not always the correct way to explain it.

The narratives that are connected to childhood and so on, are the originates.

Yeah.

You've, I mean, we'll talk about fetishes because you have a lot of really interesting

writing on that.

Just actually zooming out, I shouldn't mention you tweeted, I wrote this down, you tweeted,

I do not understand how to have normal conversations with people in person if I'm not on drugs.

So I guess, let's both agree to not have a normal conversation, I guess, assuming you're

not on drugs now.

Or if you are, you don't have to talk to me.

I feel like a very small amount of fun of it, which is a new tropic, don't know if that

counts.

Well, I guess I'm on caffeine.

Yeah.

So we're both drugged up, good enough to have a normal conversation.

We don't have to.

What is normal anyway?

What do you think is the primary driver of human civilization?

Is it the desire for sex, love, power, or immortality?

Like avoiding the fear of death, constructing illusions that make us forget about our terror

over mortality.

So sex, love, power, death.

This is a Twitter poll, four options.

This is reality, not everything maps perfectly to a Twitter poll, but in this case, because

there's four options and it is a small number of characters it does.

But I'd like to think I am more interested.

You know what?

I think your Twitter polls are fundamentally interesting.

There's something about the brevity of a poll, limited to a set of choices and having an existential

crisis and searching for the answer that's beautiful.

That combination.

Well, this one is a big one.

Like what do you think is behind it?

Like do you believe that there is one primary driver?

Like do you think that it can be understood in the terms of primary drivers?

Yeah, I think, well, maybe it's an engineering perspective, like trying to reverse engineer

the brain.

I don't think we're equipped or understanding enough about the mind to get there.

Yeah, like what's the primary driver of a tree?

Yeah, well then it gets the question of what is life, what is the living organism?

To self-replicate probably.

That's a very clean simplification.

But I think life is more interesting than just self-replication.

Yeah, but it sounds like there's a curiosity in you that you're trying to like poke at.

And I don't understand exactly what that curiosity is.

So if I had to dedicate a thousand years to understand one of these topics, which one

would be the most fruitful, I guess, is the indirect thing I'm asking?

Fun?

No, well, fun.

To me, everything is fun, but yeah, I mean, I'm with David Foster Wallace.

The key to life is to make sure that everything is unboreable or to be unboreable or nothing

is boring.

Everything is fun.

Like everything.

I could just literally sit, I honestly, because I don't think, I don't know where you got

that glass, but that glass exists and I forgot it exists, and it was really fun to me to

know that now it's there.

What about like really unpleasant things, like if you're in like deep agony?

Yeah, that's fun.

That's fun because it's like, I mean, yeah, heartbreak is like knowing that I'm capable

of that.

It's like from, you know, we're all living in the gutter, but some of us are looking

up at the stars.

So when you're in that gutter, for some reason, the stars look brighter, right?

It's like whenever you're going through a difficult time or whenever you see maybe other

people being shitty to each other, it makes you like really appreciate when they're not.

The contrast makes life kind of amazing.

I'm reading a bunch of books, one of them is Brave New World, where they remove the

ups and downs of life, partially through drugs, but over sexualization and all that

kind of stuff.

I feel like you need that contrast, you need the ups and downs of life, the dark, you know,

you need the dark to have happiness, to have like a deeply intense feeling of affection

towards another thing or a human being.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So everything's fun.

But fun is also a weird word to define because fun, I think for a lot of people, that's why

I talk about love a lot.

I think love is a better word than fun, because fun is like lighthearted.

Love is more intense.

I love that glass and the water that's in it, because it's freaking awesome.

Somebody made that glass, right?

And not have many mistakes, and the way bends light in interesting ways, and the way water

bends light in interesting ways, like I can see part of your arm through that water, that's

freaking amazing.

Everything is amazing.

I'm with the Lego movie anyway, but from a scientific perspective, if I were to investigate

sex, I don't know why I put love in there, let's just narrow it down the Twitter poll.

Let's focus on the basics here, sex, power, or death, immortality.

If I were to try to, like from a neuroscience, neurobiology perspective, or reverse engineer

through building AI systems that focus on these kinds of dynamics, exploring the game

theoretic aspects of it, exploring the sort of cognitive modeling aspects of it, which

one would get me to a deeper understanding of the human condition?

That's the question.

Sex.

Okay.

Nietzsche is the will to power, Freud and the bunch is all about sex.

And then death, Liv just, Liv Burley, brilliant previous guest on this podcast, she's just

released a video where on her bedside was the book Denial of Death by Ernest Becker,

which of course she would have on her bedside, but his whole work is that everything is motivated

by our trying to escape the cold harsh reality that we're going to die and we're terrified

of it.

And gifts and burdens for human beings is that we are cognizant of our own death.

And that terrifies us.

That's the theory.

And because of that, we do everything we can, we build, we build empires to escape the fact

that we're mortal.

Wouldn't this change quite a bit for religious people then who don't believe that they're

going to die?

Well, they created religion, the idea there is to create myths, religions, you can create

religions of all kinds.

Yeah.

But if this is one of the defining things that define civilization, then we should expect

to see massive differences between people who believe we're going to die and people

who don't.

Good.

I love it.

You'd think it like a scientifically here, but, and they have actually answers.

There's a whole terror management theory where they do write psychology type papers and they

do actual experiments.

I can mention how their methodology is interesting.

They prime with the discussion of death.

They take one certain set of people, they have a conversation with them and another set

of people, they mentioned death to them before the conversation and see how that affects

their, the nature of the conversation.

It's really interesting because death fundamentally alters the nature of the conversation.

Just even priming, like reminding you that you're going to die briefly changes a lot

of things.

These kinds of priming papers usually not replicated.

I just have like, I feel like I've heard a bunch of priming ones that.

I think you have PTSD over psychology papers is not replicated.

I just did one, I just did a priming experiment on my own and found it didn't have any effect.

But again,

Can you just give me a perilous statement summarizing an entire scientific discipline

of terror management theory?

I don't know.

Like I haven't rigorously looked at how good of it is psychologically.

I think it is interesting philosophically the way Freud talked about the subconscious

mind philosophically.

That's an interesting discussion, then you have to get rigorous with each for sure.

But the idea is that like it's not that religious people get rid of the terror of death.

This is just one of the popular ways they create an illusion on top of it.

That's that idea, like a myth that allows, that makes it easier for them to forget to

escape that terror, but everybody else does different methods.

You feel your days with a capitalism has a whole religion of itself, like the rat race

for getting more and more material possessions and so on.

Then couldn't you argue it in the opposite direction, like let's say assume that we're

Christians here and we're like, ah, the atheists, everybody has terror of hell and the atheists

invent this mythology where actually evolution is true in order to escape their terror of

hell.

It doesn't feel like a persuasive argument to me, but I used to be very, very Christian

and I did not have a terror of death and then I lost my faith and then I had a deep terror

of death set in for a few years and it felt very different to me.

For denial of death, I don't know if he says that it's actually possible without really

a lot of work to get to the actual terror.

I think his claims that in early, early, early childhood development, that's when the terror

is real and then we come aggressively construct systems around it of social interaction to

sort of construct illusions at the top of it.

I'm doing a half ass description of this philosophy, but it is interesting to simplify

the human mind into underlying mechanisms that drive it.

Yeah, I was going to say your thinking seems kind of poetic, like the way that you're

sort of handling these?

Yeah.

These concepts feel like more like aesthetically driven.

I think this theme is going to continue throughout this conversation as we talk about relationships

and sex, yes, for sure.

I think so.

And I think your thinking seems to be very driven by how can I construct an experiment

to test this hypothesis?

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, but aren't there some things, especially they have to do with the human mind that are

really messy, really difficult to understand.

There's so many uncertainties and mysteries around that we don't yet have the tools to

collect the data.

One of your favorite tools is the survey, is asking people questions and then figuring

out different ways to indirectly get at the truth because there's flaws to the survey.

You kind of learn about those flaws and you get better and better at asking the right

questions and so on, but that's not, that's indirect access to the human mind.

But do you think like poetic narratives are?

I'm not saying poetic narratives are bad.

I think it's like a cool way of like handling concepts, but I'm not sure that they are more

rigorous.

No, no, no.

Okay.

No, but like they might be the more correct, like philosophy might be the right way to

discuss things that were really far from understanding.

Yeah.

I mean, they might be more useful shorthand.

Yeah.

Like morality, like I don't think morality makes any sense, but it's really useful shorthand

to use when handling concepts in a lot of the time.

Right.

Like ethics and morality, you could construct studies that ask different questions.

Like just having worked with the autonomous vehicles a lot, the trolley problem gets brought

up and I don't know.

You can construct all kinds of interesting surveys about the trolley problem, but does

that really get at some deep moral calculus that humans do?

It's sexy because people like write clickbait articles about it, but does it really get

to like what you value more, five grandmas or like three children, whatever they construct

these arguments of like, if you could steer a train, if you could steer an autonomous

car, which do you choose?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know if it's possible with some of those to construct.

Sometimes the fuzzy area, there's some topics that are fuzzy and will forever be fuzzy given

our limited cognitive capabilities.

I don't know, there's a way of looking at things where it's like, for example, the childhood

fetish thing that I was talking about, like where do your fetishes come from?

Like you can develop a narrative where it's like, you know, I think like this kind of

thing is, you know, when you're surrounded by feet, when you're a child, this causes

foot fetishes.

And this is like kind of a cool narrative.

And I think a lot of people's ideas about philosophy fall the same sort of thing.

Like what is the narrative that is cool?

And I think this is useful for meaning making.

Like I'm very pro meaning making.

Like when you're talking about everything is fun because, you know, it's the contrast

or whatever.

I very much just ascribe to that.

I really enjoy that philosophy.

I also find everything to be very delightful.

And this isn't like a question of truth, right?

We're not like, where is the true delight that we're objectively measuring?

Like this is a frame, a poetic frame that you're using to like sort of change the way

the light hits the world around you.

And that's super useful because it like makes you happier or something.

Yeah, but also gets to the truth or something.

Yeah.

I guess if what is true, you had another question, what is truth?

You've actually to jump back, you don't believe, you believe that free will is an illusion.

So why does it feel like I'm free to make any decision I want?

It's a cool illusion.

I think it's probably like where a sense of identity comes from.

It's a fun illusion.

Like when you really meditate on your sense of identity, for at least for me, it seems

like it comes down to the sense of choice.

Like, oh, I am doing the thinking, like what does it mean to do with thinking?

It's like, ah, something in me has exerted agency over having this thought or not having

this thought.

Like the sense of self really comes down to choice.

And so when I say that like free will is an illusion, I also mean there's something like

the self is an illusion, identity is a trick of the light, but it's a really fun one.

You think a lot about your identity, I have occasionally, yeah, like you're really struggled

with it.

You're proud of it.

I do too.

It's not, we have different journeys, but so I really take a lot of delight in it.

I used to be very into like deconstructing it.

Like maybe you know, I did a bunch of like way too much LSD for a while and at that point

very no ego and now I'm like very ego and I really enjoy having a lot of ego.

I actually happen to know like everything about you.

Really?

Yeah.

Like more than you do.

It's interesting.

That's fascinating.

Wait, could you, can you solve my problems?

Yes, all of them.

I did thorough research.

Okay.

What is consciousness then?

I actually wrote that as a quote.

What is consciousness?

To remind myself.

So like, how's that tying together with free will and identity and all of that?

What is consciousness is like one of the biggest questions ever.

I think, I do think that people often get confused when talking about consciousness

because I think people are referring to two separate concepts and often like combining

them into one thing.

Like we asked the question, you know, is AI going to be conscious?

I think this is kind of the wrong question.

Like we can identify signs of consciousness.

Like, ah, they seem to refer to themselves, but this is not necessarily proof of consciousness

in the same way that like dream characters acting exactly the way normal human people

do in your dream is not evidence that they themselves are conscious.

So like signs of consciousness are not proof of consciousness, but there is something that

we definitely know, which is like I currently am conscious.

I can tell because right, like I'm like just directly observing my experience.

And so like there's one kind of consciousness, which is I am directly observing my experience

and that you cannot replicate it.

Like I cannot observe two experiences, it is necessarily singular, and it is necessarily

certain.

Like you can make all the arguments you want.

Like I'm still directly observing.

It's not a thing that's subject to reason, whereas our other thing is conscious.

This is something that's replicable, like you can apply it to multiple people.

It's something that's not certain, like almost definitionally not certain.

Like we don't actually know if there is, you know, an internal experience.

So my argument is that like when people are talking about other things having experience,

they're using a different concept than the thing that they're actually looking at when

they look at their own experience.

I think they're two different things.

Definitely not possible.

No, if you understand the mechanism of consciousness, you'll be able to measure it probably, right?

Yeah, but what are you measuring?

Like I think this is like a subtle difference.

Like when you're asking the question, is this other thing conscious?

Yeah.

The easy thing to measure is like a survey, does this thing appear conscious?

And then the hard thing is, do you understand the actual mechanism of how consciousness

arises in the physics of the human brain?

Yeah, but you can do that in a dream, presumably, like if you had a very good dream or a very

good simulation.

Yeah.

But we could then have somebody in a simulation or a dream where they go through and they fully

understand, you know, they do all the tests and the tests come back exactly they would

expect them to.

But from the outside, we're like, well, this is misleading.

They're not actually conscious.

Like your dream characters aren't conscious, right?

Probably.

I don't know.

Are you asking?

I'm appealing to an intuition.

But it sounds like you're driving towards a narrative.

You did a poll about men and women and dreams.

Yeah.

Those are some kind of difference.

I couldn't tell what the difference was except that more men and women...

Quite a lot more women dream vividly than men.

Which I actually found in my chaos survey.

So I did a survey, maybe you know that I've had people...

I know everything.

Do you remember?

Yes, I'm sorry.

So as you clearly know.

I'll try not to talk down to you through this conversation because I'm not only know everything,

I know how your future looks like and how everything ends.

Yeah.

So you could probably win all the prediction markets on my life.

Yeah.

Cool.

So we should also mention that you have like prediction markets, you have like votes that

you...

What's the site called again?

Manifold.

Manifold.

And one of them was, will I be on the Lex Friedman podcast?

Yeah.

And I voted.

I invested everything I own into the yes.

Is there such thing as insider trading on there?

Because that goes against the terms of the...

No, I think insider trading is part of the information, so it's supposed to be.

And then I realized it's actually public information that I voted because like I think my face shows

up there's like, damn it.

It's going to influence...

You could make the fake account or it could be lying, right?

Yeah, that's true.

I could be and then dump the stock or whatever.

You know, I try to manipulate.

Somebody made a market like, is Eila going to post a poll spelled P-O-L-E on her Twitter,

like a photo?

And I was like, I'm going to manipulate this market.

And I like fucked around with it and I voted no.

And then I accidentally posted a photo of a poll without thinking.

Oh, but that's like self sabotage.

Yeah, I accidentally fucked up my own market.

That's like the reverse of insider trading.

Yeah.

What were we talking about?

Oh, the women and the men and the difference, the vivid dreams and the markets.

I forget what the market...

Oh, because I can perfectly predict your future, but then it's not fun.

I like the role mass of unpredictability.

And so I like to, even though I know everything, I like to forget everything.

Yeah.

I'm a very Buddhist of you.

Yeah.

The river.

No, no man in the river once, whatever, the footsteps, however that goes.

That's one of my favorite questions is like, if you could press a button and then have

all of your wants fulfilled, anything that you want, just like such a rapid degree that

you don't really experience the want, like as the want arises, it then is like completed

as immediately so that you are completely without want.

Like, would you press that button?

100% not.

Yeah.

No.

No.

Because immediately everything stops being fun.

The first...

It's only fun the first time.

But if you want it to be fun.

But like, what would be my source of fun?

I feel like I would have, like on day four, just to get off, I would need to like do like

nuclear war because it will escalate quickly.

I feel like if everything is possible, I assume you mean like something that like is not just

normal human things.

Yeah.

Magical world.

And you start escalating really quickly.

Like I wonder, I'll probably do like, I want everybody to just fly into the air and hovering

the air.

Everybody.

And then you're like, oh, life is meaningless.

Like why does...

Like you go...

I feel like you get...

No, I actually, that'd be a really interesting experiment.

Like what are the limits?

Like are we all capable of becoming psychopaths essentially?

Like I'd like to believe not, there's a very hard limits on that, like in our own mind,

like of basic compassion, because I love being compassionate towards other human beings.

And it's one of the things I think about if you give me power, like a lot of power, like

absolute power.

And I think that's the power you mentioned is the scariest kind of power, because it's

like, it's not even power in this normal world, it's like magical power, where you lose...

It's like dream world power, where you, like video game power, you don't even think of

it as reality.

You could just mess with the world.

And I feel like that's terrifying.

Yeah, you basically be God.

God, yeah.

But without like, I feel like the idea of God, it wants to like kind of keep things like functioning

properly.

And then you would probably...

If you wanted to keep them functioning properly, then it would wrap it, like you would never

experience a time where you're like, oh no, that was a mistake.

Because before you've even experienced that, the world would shift to match it.

Oh, interesting.

Now, I think I would actually, I take it back.

I think I would regret the first time I heard somebody, see in my visualization was like

a video game where everybody's like NPC really dumb.

No, I think the first time I witnessed pain from anybody, that's when I would stop.

And I would probably run into that very quickly, like even just the hovering, make a person

hover, and they're going to be probably really upset with the hovering, right?

And so I'm going to be like, no, don't do that anymore.

And then I'll probably go to, honestly, I'll just return back to my normal life.

Yeah, that's kind of what I feel like.

Like if I had the power to do anything, I think I would probably want to have a life

very similar to where I am now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's like with Uber, like it would probably be more convenient to do certain

things.

But even then, like the struggle, like I got a flat tire, so I have to fix that.

I kind of, the flat tire makes everything more beautiful.

It's like, cool, I can do like a normal manual thing.

But also it makes you like appreciate your car, appreciate transportation, appreciate

the convenience, the transportation, all of it.

I know some people who would call this a bunch of copium, like you're just sort of making

do with what you have.

And we wouldn't go back to Amish times or like pre-technology because to like in order

to make ourselves appreciate things more.

And so this seems like a hindsight reasoning, which I can appreciate that argument, but

I don't know.

I'm like-

Anyone who uses, sorry to interrupt the word copium in their argumentation, I think it's

sus.

It's sus.

Yeah.

It's sus.

My entire argument is now.

No, I'm just kidding.

I'm sorry.

I interrupt the rudely, the flow of thought.

But you say you don't think so.

In part you disagree with that kind of argument.

Yeah.

Because I think people have this idea that if you like come to accept or like find meaning

in what you have now, this is sort of at odds with trying to improve it.

And I don't find this to be the case.

I find like the attempt to improve it to also be part of it.

Yes.

I enjoy the fact that there's something like problematic going on because now I get the

experience of like striving to make it go away.

And like that in itself is where the meaning lies.

It's not just that things are bad, it's that there's things are bad and we're trying to

stop it and also-

Exactly.

There's-

If you combine that with a sense of optimism that the future can be better, yeah.

That feeds into this productive effort of making things better.

And it somehow makes the vision of the things that are better, more intense, having experienced

shitty things.

Yeah.

So we talked about free will and consciousness and what drives human civilization.

Question left unanswered.

It's a homework problem for the reader.

Okay.

Let's-

Like you get like a scoreboard at the end, the amount of questions-

They answer?

Complete successfully versus not.

Like polls.

Yeah.

Can we talk about some practical things?

Sure.

So one of the many amazing things.

I think of you as a researcher, but you've also been doing research in the field.

Yeah, fieldwork.

The fieldwork.

The Jane Goodall of-

Yeah, right.

The sex work.

How did you get-

What's the short and the long story of how you got into sex work?

How did I get into sex work?

Well, I mean, there's a whole like childhood thing where I was conservatively homeschooled.

Do you want to actually talk about your childhood?

I think it's interesting because you also worked at a factory.

It's like your childhood is really fascinating and difficult, traumatic.

So, and you've written about it.

There's a lot of ways we can talk about it, but maybe what are the things you remember

the good and the bad of your childhood of your maybe interaction with your father?

Yeah.

My dad probably has narcissistic personality disorder.

And so it was very centered on very controlling childhood, immensely so.

We were homeschooled and pretty isolated from the outside world.

Like we didn't know anybody else who wasn't homeschooled.

We went through a program called Growing Kids God's Way, which was very-

It was like the kind of program where you're not supposed to pick up babies when they cry

to train them that they can't manipulate the parents because like baby crying was viewed

as like, you're just teaching them from an early age that they're allowed to make the

parents do what the kids want.

And they're very against this philosophy.

So, you know, that combined with a narcissistic personality disorder, dad was pretty rough.

So controlling.

Super controlling, yeah.

And developing and feeding the self-critical aspect of your brain.

Yeah, very much.

It was, you know, I was like lazy, but I was never going to accomplish anything in life.

I was going to move out of the house and realize how good I had it at home, you know, the classic stuff.

He was very like logical and smart though.

And so he'd also like teach us logic stuff.

I remember some of my earliest memories are him like giving me basic logic puzzles.

Like the dog has three legs, you know, how many dogs have four legs and I would mess up.

But he was an evangelist, basically a Christian evangelist.

So we did like Bible study five nights a week.

I memorized I think 800 verses of the Bible by the time before I became an adult.

Yeah, and it was very patriarchal also.

So I was expected to a girlfriend become a housewife basically.

They're like, oh, you can go to college to meet a man and also to get a little bit of education so that you can homeschool your own kids.

Like we were explicitly told that women were subordinate to men in regards to like making decisions when you're married.

Our pastor's daughter was not allowed to leave home because she would be outside of the authority of a man.

So when she got married, she was allowed to leave because she was never allowed to live in a house where she was not under a hierarchy.

So this is like the kind of culture that we live in.

So there's a hierarchy and there's a gender aspect to the hierarchy is men at the top of the hierarchy.

Men at the top.

Okay, but your own psychology, your own mind.

So most of that self critical brain is bad, right?

It was confusing because he told me that I was smart but also that I would fail.

But not smart enough, right?

Like smart but not smart enough.

Smart but like not virtuous or something.

Okay, right, there's always a flaw.

There's always a flaw.

I think a lot of it was, a lot of the fucked upness of my brain came from feeling like I didn't have the authority to think.

Because it was so like carefully like suppressed.

Like my ability to like express or have any sort of power was just absolutely annihilated.

Like systemically, like psychologically, they would do like psychological torture mechanisms to make sure that like I wasn't actually thinking on my own.

Or like being able to deviate from anything anybody ever told me.

To the degree that it's still ingrained in me.

Like I once was a friend we were traveling and he wanted me to hop a turnstile.

It was like very late at night.

The train was here and I could not physically force myself to do it.

Like he was like yelling me like, come on, do it.

Like, I was trying so hard to make my body cross the line and it was just, it's like embedded in my physical being to like be unable to do stuff like that.

Which is really annoying.

Do you're not free to take action in this world?

Yeah, some of them.

So that was I think the most annoying part of my upbringing.

Would you classify it as like suffering?

At the time, yeah, definitely.

Well, it's confusing because like when I was a child, it was just painful in the sense that like things suck.

But it was placed in a meaning framework, right?

Like it is good, it is virtuous to submit to your parents and do what they want.

If they tell you to say goodbye to your best friend forever and never talk to them again, you go do that.

Without complaining.

And so like I would go do something like that and I would like it would suck.

It really was like concretely painful, but it was also placed in this narrative where I was like fulfilling some sort of greater purpose.

And so it's very confusing to refer to it as suffering because there's so many painful things we do today that are placed in the narrative of a greater purpose.

That like I think I would agree with.

Like I go get a medical procedure done and that sucks.

But I'm like, ah, this is helping me in the long run.

But like say if I got abducted to an alien planet and they're like, by the way, all of those medical procedures you got done, like you didn't have to get them done.

Those are totally unnecessary.

Then I might get really upset about it.

Yeah.

I wouldn't trust those aliens though because they probably want to do different medical procedures.

That's true.

I saw a thumbnail for a video that I'm proud of myself for not clicking on about a man who was claimed that he had sex with aliens.

How did you feel for not clicking on that?

Because I would probably watch it for like 20 minutes and then I should be doing work.

Oh, I see.

And I'm actually happy because I get to imagine all the different possibilities that could have been for that man who had sex with aliens.

Do you have like a really high like resting happiness state?

Yes.

Yeah.

Probably like a mushroom state.

Yeah.

Wow.

Do you do mushrooms?

I've done mushrooms before.

It was very awesome.

More intensely awesome.

But because I was just looking at nature, it makes nature even more beautiful, I think.

But it's already pretty beautiful.

I haven't done MDMA.

People say that I should.

It's very nice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, but I'm already, yeah.

What did you call it?

Resting happiness state?

Yeah.

High resting happiness.

Yeah.

That's a good way to describe it.

But it's not like some of it is genetic that you're able to notice the beauty in the world and some of it is practiced where you realize focusing on the negative things in life like unproductively is, it just doesn't help your mind flourish.

So like you just noticed that and it's like, I mean, I think people with like depression learn that or like probably with trauma too is like there's certain triggers.

Like if you're, if you suffer from depression, you have to kind of constantly know there's going to be triggers that will like force you to spiral down.

And so just avoid those triggers.

Some people have that with diet, with food and so on.

But I just don't like whenever there's a shady things happening or shady people, unless I can help, unless I can somehow help, like why, why focus on it?

Yeah.

Anyway, back to your upbringing.

What, what was the journey of escaping that?

I, well, I left home like kind of early because my, my dad and I were not getting along by the time I was a teenager.

But I still Christian for a while.

And I lost my faith after I think I moved away and I started having friends that weren't religious or like weren't raised in this super conservative environment that I came from.

And I think I, this was not conscious at the time.

This is my hindsight story.

But I believe that like being exposed to a culture in which I had the capacity to believe like allowed my brain to actually seriously consider the thought that maybe all of this stuff was untrue that I've been taught like 6,000 year old earth and evolution is a lie.

You know, macro evolution and all of this stuff.

Because like when you're, when you're immersed in an environment like that, I don't think you actually have a choice.

Like your brain has to believe these things because this is a survival thing.

Like if you believe this, you'll be like, if you believe the wrong thing, you'll be totally cast out.

Even if they're not going to cast you out, you're going to be cast out in like communion with others because we're always told that you can't like trust non believers really.

They don't have a moral compass.

They're going to screw you over.

And so I'm like, Oh, I can't be that like everybody's going to outcast me internally.

So anyway, I wasn't, I don't think I actually had the capacity to seriously question my faith, even though I thought that I was questioning it quite hard until I got into an environment where it was safe to do so.

And once I started being able to make friends who were not religious, I'm like, Oh, if I lose my faith, I'm still going to have some sort of community.

And then at that time I went through some questioning and then I lost my faith.

And so in that, given your friends, given your situation, you have, you're now have the freedom to think essentially,

or at least the ability to think of something that was acceptable in the new culture. Yeah.

Without, I mean, is there a danger of like adopting the beliefs of the new culture?

So like, there's some aspect of just being able to think freely, which you weren't able to do when you were growing up, just to think, like look at the world and wonder how it works.

That kind of thing.

I mean, you work it within certain boundaries.

Like there are certain basic assumptions.

And as long as you were following those basic assumptions, which is to be fair is like kind of what we're doing now.

Like we have, have I gone and done the personal research that like evolution is the thing that's going on?

Have I looked at like the age of the stones?

No, I haven't. I'm trusting other people.

Yeah.

Which I think is like a fair choice to make, given where I'm at right now.

But you're also assuming like there's causality in the universe, time is real. Yeah.

That like, that first of all, the thing that your senses are perceiving is real. You're assuming a lot of things.

Yeah. I think like it's better just to become aware of the assumptions you're making, like as opposed to not making those assumptions at all.

Like you have to assume something. And I did, it's very suspicious, right?

That I went out of this very conservative culture and now I, well, I guess I don't believe things that are super in line with the current culture.

I think this is why I feel a little bit safer right now, because like when I was Christian, I believe generally Christian things.

But now I believe a bunch of things that like people really hate, like I get canceled online all the time.

I'm like, okay, this is a sign that maybe you're thinking independently if you're like able to think things that are completely at odds with the people around you.

And to be fair, this is a little bit easier to do when it's like general culture, but it's much harder to do with your peer group.

Like the people that you trust, your friends, the people whose opinions you respect, like disagreeing with those people is very difficult and I'm not very good at it.

Yeah, I do think that if you establish yourself as a person who can be trusted and is a good human being, you have a lot more freedom to then explore ideas that are different from your peer group.

So like those seem, if you separate the space of ideas versus some kind of like deeper sense of what this person is, like that they're an interesting and trustworthy and good human being.

Well, like, is there somebody that you respect who you consider significantly smarter than you?

And can you imagine believing an idea that you've heard them talk really disdainfully about?

Like how would you feel coming to me like I believe this thing that you find to be?

Yeah, I do all the time.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

You may be braver than me.

And to be fair, I support doing this.

Like I try to do this, but I think like subconsciously, I notice that I don't do it as much.

And so I'm suspicious of myself.

I'm like, oh, I wonder if I'm hiding to myself like actual curiosity about things that might deviate from my peer group, because I notice that I'm not actually deviating with them as much as I do with the outside world.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I mean, like, because I do see most people interact with a smarter than me, but I also have this intuitive feeling that dumb people, which I consider myself being, have wisdom.

So like in the disagreement, actually, I'm also believing the power of conversation and in the tension of disagreement.

So I think I even just disagreeing from a place, from a good place, from a place of like love and respect for each other.

I think I just believe in that.

So it's not like individuals, you're disagreeing, you're like working towards arriving at some deeper truth together.

Even if the other person is smarter, maybe that's how I justify it for myself.

I'm also a fan of conversations, because I've seen just listening to conversations.

It seems like a great conversation more emerges from it than the sum of its parts, right?

Like somehow two people together can do like that dance of ideas can somehow create a cool thing.

There wasn't a bar drunk, it didn't look drunk, but just the dancing.

It was like ballroom dancing type of thing.

Yeah, something like that.

I've been doing a bit of tango dancing.

I like it.

Argentine?

Nice.

I like stuff with the body in general like wrestling or combat, like usually when there's a tension,

you have to understand the mechanics of how two bodies move when they're in conflict and dancing is similar.

Like you have to do like rapid thinking also, like rapid intuitive physical thinking.

And that's my favorite kind of thing.

Like a lot of exercise is really boring to me because you can just do it while your brain's off.

But something like ballroom dancing or fusion dancing, you have to constantly be like figuring out like it's a rapid puzzle.

And that's so wonderful.

What's fusion dancing?

That's the video.

Fusion dancing is like if you have any sort of dance background, you can come and you just kind of mix those together.

You can have people doing ballet with people doing ballroom with people doing blues.

Cool.

And then there's an interesting dynamic because there's, I don't know, maybe you can correct me, but there's, that's very meta.

There's usually a lead and a follow.

I guess most dancers have that.

Yeah.

And so that, but both have a different, like you both have to be quite sensitive to the other human being, but in a different way.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

Yeah.

So I like both that there is that definitive role, but also like it's not somehow that one is better than the other.

There's an interesting tension between the two.

Yeah.

It's cool because it's like a basic rule set that allows for a ton of expression.

I've recently started to experiment with like reverse leading.

It's not like back leading.

It's like, I don't know.

Like sometimes I was like, lead the move.

So you can lead as a follow.

Oh, you can lead.

When I'm typically following, I'll like occasionally throw in a little lead here and there.

But don't you kind of follow it?

Oh, I see.

Don't you hit hint at a lead when you're following?

Like don't you just by the dynamics of your movement, you're not perfectly following.

I mean, because it is like the lead is listening to your body.

Right?

Yeah.

So like you're kind of both figuring out what you do next.

That's true.

I'm a very good follow though.

Okay.

So I'm like, I'm like, I'm an invisible follow.

You do move.

It's like I,

Oh, interesting.

I'm not like good at technique.

I didn't know those existed.

Like a perfect follow.

A perfect follow.

I'm really ideal.

I'm not great at technique and sometimes I'll follow over, but like with the following part, I'm very good at it.

Do you enjoy follow?

Yeah.

It's again, like it's a very fast physical puzzle you have to solve.

It's like typing.

I really like typing.

That's why I was inquiring about your keyboard earlier.

Why do you like typing?

Because it's like the very fast, like the really rapid response was the reaction time.

I like things that like have very fast reaction times, like games like that.

But typing is not a reaction or is it the brain generating words and then you're like

how's typing a reaction?

Well, okay.

The sensation that I get when I am typing is the kind of thing that I'm trying to point

at.

So maybe, maybe reaction time isn't the quite, I don't know what the term is, but whatever

that thing is.

Like the thing where you have to like look at a word and then communicate it into your

fingers.

Yeah.

It feels like dancing.

Like you're responding.

You're responding to your brain.

Your fingers are doing the responding to the brain that generate the words.

Yeah.

Making your body do what your brain wants it to do, but like fast and precisely.

Well, then you might not like this Kinesis keyboard because it makes the, it makes it

easier to do that.

You probably like the struggle, right?

Well, I mean, that, it looks hard because you have, it looks like it's high depression

on the keys.

No, it's, well, oh, I see.

Yes.

More than, more than like a laptop keyboard, but like that you don't have to, one of the,

the main things is you don't have to move your fingers at all.

So like, so like, for example, a lot of people that I think they have a backspace up in the

top right corner.

Yeah.

So if you have to make mistakes, which is like, I mean, that's like so metaphorical.

Like every mistake you have to like really hurt yourself for.

You have to like stretch for the backspace.

There's that poetic narrative again.

It's like, it emanates a lot of your perspective.

Everything.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

I don't, and I see it as a, as a, as a good thing.

It's a good, like a, a romantic element permeates my interpretation of the world.

Yes.

But you, you left home early.

How did you end up working at a factory?

Well, I tried to go to college, but failed, couldn't afford it.

Did you like it?

I remember it just being really slow.

I remember being shocked that the teachers didn't care.

Like I was used to homeschooling.

Yeah.

And, and where, I don't know, like educate, it just like it meant something.

It felt like the people around me that were teaching me, because we had like a moms group

also, like directly cared about what I was learning.

And I would be able to ask questions and they would like really respond.

What's a moms group?

It was like a homeschooling groups who were a bunch of moms who were homeschooling their

kids, get together and then teach each other's kids.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

And they have different like interest and capabilities with the one and they kind of.

And sometimes if some of the kids are really good at something, you have like the older

kids teaching the other ones too.

So it was very like everybody kind of figures out what they could good at and they should

share that skill set with everybody else, which I think was a pretty great setup.

Honestly, I think my childhood kind of sucked in a lot of ways, but homeschooling was excellent

for me, mainly because it just had so much free time.

Like I was just did like two to three hours of school and then did whatever the fuck I

wanted for the rest of the day.

And I got to actually pursue skills that are still useful for me to this day.

So.

Even in that constrained environment.

Like I wrote, I've read fantasy books and I wrote so much.

And now I'm, now I'm writing a lot from my blog.

So.

What kind of fantasy books like sci-fi type stuff?

Like classic, like I read like Mercedes Lackey and the E.E. Night and Ursula Quinn and.

I don't know any of this.

What is this?

What is it?

Is it a romantic thing?

Is it like, is it a romance?

Just all the fantasy books, like dragons and.

Oh, dragons.

Got it.

Got it.

Got it.

You didn't mention Tolkien for the fantasy.

I read Tolkien.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, it's beautiful.

So you, you threw all the dragons.

How did you end up in a factory?

You try school.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Try school had dropped off a couple months and then I was like, well, I'm poor and I

was, I was ready to take any job.

I was like applying for super jobs and then I got a factory.

I'm like, all right, let's do it.

Cause my parents, no, no financial help at all.

They're like, you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you know.

So anyway, I went to work at a factory and that sucked ass.

Do not recommend.

We had to work up, wake up like 4am, you know, work on weekends too.

fluorescent lights.

It was terrible.

And so I did that for about a year and I was like, this is, I was trying to grip my teeth

and be like, this is my life.

Right.

I didn't have high expectations for my life.

I was just like, I thought like, if you get a job where you don't have to be on your

feet all the time, that's, that you're living a good life.

But, and then I got another job briefly as a photographer and then they fired me.

I think I was 19 at the time.

Fired you for like.

I was just, I was just too young and really, really bad at interacting with people in the

outside world.

Like I was pretty well socialized as a homeschooler with other homeschoolers, but in the outside

world, especially with all of the like hierarchy submissions stuff beaten into me, like literally

beaten into me, it was very difficult for me to interact with other people who were like

older than me or had any sort of confidence at all.

So they hired me to do like photography for people and then I was rapidly turned up that

I was bad at this.

And so they fired me.

But at that point I'd left my factory job.

I'm like, I can't go back to the factory.

So I tried, I had some savings and I slept on friends' couches and I tried various self

employment stuff.

I'm like, maybe I can do product photography or something, but it's Idaho, you know, nothing.

And if you're like a 19 year old with no experience in the outside world at all, it was really difficult.

And so I had a friend recommend that I try being coming a cam girl.

So that's how it started.

What is camming?

What is being a cam girl?

Camming is like you chock through the camera live on the computer like you live stream.

It's kind of like Twitch.

And then people are typing in the chat like, huh, do this stuff.

And then the people can tip you money and then you can do things in response.

Like, oh, if you tip me a hundred tokens, you know, I'll take my shirt off or something

like that.

And like what's the, what site were you using at that time?

My free cams.

My free cams?

Yeah.

Is that a popular site?

That's pretty popular.

Okay.

And how did, what were the next steps?

Like, did you enjoy it?

Oh, well, it was the first time I had actual control over my life and I made like actual

real money.

And so I just exploded into it.

I thought about it nonstop.

I was streaming all the time.

I was like coming with like new creative things.

And the thing is like, I don't know, there's something about public school that I ended

up living in a house of cam girls full of other girls who had gone to public school.

And I don't know if how much of is genetic or like just because I'm weird or is it because

of our upbringing.

But I felt like I was much more fearless and much more weird and creative online than

other people were.

Not because they weren't awesome people, but because I think like public school, I got

the impression based on them talking about it, that it sort of like beats out any sort

of deviance from you.

Like more so than your, cause I, I got the, we had moral deviance was beaten out, but

like you could do whatever creative deviance wasn't so much.

Like I didn't have other kids making fun of me ever.

I didn't, I don't think I'd ever heard an insult about my physical appearance as a child

or teenager once.

So your father was basically saying you're not good enough was intellectual.

Oh no, that was like moral fail.

Moral fail.

Yeah.

Like I was not, not virtuous.

Oh, wow.

Like in various ways, like, you know, like you're lazy and mostly the lazy part.

I have like, I have like ADHD or something.

Uh, yeah.

And it was, I was not good at it as a kid either.

I would totally forget all the time and.

Is there some sexual repression aspect to that?

Like, uh, you know how they say that there's, um, it's, it's, it's not just homeschooling,

but just like Catholic girls and so on, just because like there's moral you're forbidden

to do certain things.

Like there's a kind of liberating feeling of saying like baby, basically rediscovering

yourself, rediscovering your freedom by doing just, uh, diving head in, head first into

the sexuality, into your own sexuality, some aspect of that.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

To some degree, I think that like people kind of model it slightly wrong.

Like I think there's just a truth to it.

But when I first got out of the house, for me, freedom was like going outside at 2am or

like eating chocolate, you know, on days that I've previously often wanted to eat chocolate.

Like that was like a really intense expression of rebellion for me.

And I think people like don't think of this, like, like I got out a lot of my like intense

rebellion through things that people don't typically consider to be rebellious at all.

Sure.

Like I wore a bikini.

Yeah.

Insane.

I just like walked around in it and like, I can do this.

Yeah, basically.

Yeah.

And so like this was most of that emotional processing for me.

And I took me a couple of years from leaving home and all of that conservative culture into

doing sex work.

In the meantime, I was, I did try having sex with a lot of people, but this was mainly

because I didn't know what the norms were.

I didn't really understand.

I was just like, okay, take things logically, take things one step at a time.

And I'm like, okay, if the whole previous set about like how I'm not supposed to kiss

somebody until the altar of marriage, if that's not the way that things are supposed to go,

then what is the way things are supposed to go?

And I was like, well, if I am aroused, I should go have sex with someone, right?

Is there any reason not to?

No.

So I would, I just, I would go around asking random people to have sex with me.

Did you have any peer pressure saying like that's not good or that is good or like any,

did you feel any currents of society in any direction?

Or are you independently just thinking like from first principles?

I think, I mean, like I'm not saying it was a totally a clean thing.

I'm sure that I was experiencing society telling me this is bad, but you have to know, like

I wasn't watching normal movies when I was a teen.

Like we watched Christian movies, the stuff that we watched was filtered.

Like I watched the Titanic and I had no idea that Jack and Rose had sex because it was

put through a filtered.

Where did they?

Yeah, they went and you know, he'd painted her naked and there was a scene in a car on

the ship.

Yeah.

On the ship.

They had like sort of cars and storage and there's a hand.

I watched it again later and I was like, oh my God.

I don't remember the sex scene.

Well, maybe were you also put through a filtered version?

Maybe it's the filter I see like, did the couple in the notebook also have sex?

Cause maybe for romantic movies, I focus on the romance, maybe, right?

And the sex scenes are always like weirdly filmed in these, cause it's never, I mean,

it doesn't, it feels more like romance than sex.

I guess that's the main focus of this, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

Anyway.

So they had sex.

It was good to know.

They did.

I'll go back and watch.

You have your own personal filter on your brain.

And once you realize that there are some, like the foundation of your beliefs were wrong,

then everything might be wrong and you kind of just doing first principles, basically.

And again, like not totally separate from culture, but also I think in general I also have a predisposition

to just be like, you know, fuck what culture tells you, just figure out what's right for

you and do it.

And so that mixed with, you know, the figuring things out from first principles, I did eventually

figure out that I didn't like having casual sex with just anybody quite as much.

So I stopped that, but it took me a while to figure that out.

What's the negative of casual sex?

It's just like not good.

I mean, if you like figure out the chemistry you have with someone better, then that, then

it can be a lot nicer.

But I wasn't doing that.

I was just like somebody I met and I'm like, you seem kind of cute.

Okay.

Like I didn't bother to try and develop just any chemistry.

I mean, I didn't know.

Chemistry even outside of sex.

Just chemistry, like human chemistry.

Yeah, just basically.

Just conversation.

Yeah.

Okay.

I would, I would, it's like kind of cringy, but I would like, I would like walk up to

guys or send them messages like, would you like to have coitus is what I would say.

You would say coitus.

I had said that.

I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of cute in a way.

I mean, yeah, it's a girl asking you to get laid, so they probably didn't care that much.

But I'm saying that like I had a lot of rebellion out of my system by the time I started sex

work.

Yeah.

So like for me, like maybe I'm sure it was somehow related because we were extremely

sexually repressed growing up.

I remember the day I learned I had a vagina, which was absolutely horrifying.

Do not recommend figuring out, you have another orifice in your body, but like-

Do you want to share the process of you figuring out that you had a vagina or is that-

Just they told me I had a vagina.

Oh, like intellectually, like there was somebody said you have a vagina and that was horrifying

to you.

Yeah.

I didn't know I had that because you weren't supposed to ever like touch or look at yourself

ever.

So I never did.

It was just really disgusting.

And so I had no idea that what was going on in my general region.

And so one day my mom sat me down, I think it was like nine or 10, and she was like,

you have a, there's another?

What?

And you're going to bleed out of it is what she told me.

Well-

You're going to bleed out of it for a while.

And I was like, what the fuck, mom?

I didn't know the word fuck was, but I would have said that if I had known.

And did you first learn the word fuck?

Oh, I think I learned it when I was at a playground and it was written somewhere and I read it

out loud and then a kid next to me started giggling.

Did you ever, did you say fuck again for a while?

No, I think the next time I said, I swore the first time I was 18, like intentionally

said a swear word when I was 18.

Did it feel good?

I was like really nervous.

I was like-

What's your favorite swear word?

I mean, fuck's pretty good.

Yeah.

Fuck's pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's camming.

I mean, what are the pros and cons of camming and how does OnlyFans map into this?

Did you switch to OnlyFans at some point?

I did.

Yeah.

I came for like five or six years and I burned out eventually.

What are the good aspects?

What are the bad aspects of camming?

Well, the good aspects were that it was just your own terms.

You get to decide everything about it is under your control, which I loved at the time.

I was like, I can't work when I want, how I want any sort of expression.

I experimented and I was a very successful, I was making around $200 an hour, which for

that website at the time was like pretty good.

I had elaborate routines.

I was a mime.

I would do like dress up as a mime and then dress up a chair and I would seduce the chair.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

Or like-

Was there an artistic comment to it almost?

Yeah.

Very much.

Did you talk to the chair?

You had gnomes?

No, I was a mime.

You don't-

Oh, sorry.

Right.

Yeah.

Get us straight, dude.

You know what I really appreciate about you is I'm asking some really dumb questions and

you're answering it in a very intelligent way, so I appreciate that.

All right.

Did you ask the chair questions?

I was a mime, you fucking idiot.

Okay, I'm sorry.

That's true.

Yeah.

But there's gnomes on the-

Yeah, there are gnomes.

Like big gnomes or small gnomes?

Like lawn gnomes.

Lawn gnomes.

I used to do the lawn gnomes on the chair.

The gnomes sitting on the chair.

There were some, yeah, gnomes on the chair.

I did a photo set, which I submitted to Reddit where I got abducted.

I was like stripping, taking my clothes off, and then slowly the gnomes surrounded me in

the background and then dragged me off, and I did this as a photo set.

Consensually?

I mean, I didn't feel consensual in the photos, but it was the 11th top post of-

Consensually not consensual for the gnomes.

It was very successful at Reddit, basically.

It was a top post thing on Wild in the 11th top post of all time on Reddit.

Which I think will probably just means it's artistic, it's interesting, it's IG, it's

funny, so it's really, really well done.

But it was really shocking to me that nobody else was doing anything creative with sex

work.

For me, it was like breathing.

You're just doing sex, and you're bored, and I'm like, what do you do?

I don't know, let's try something funny.

It's just the natural progression.

It felt to me like there was almost no competition.

I would just be really creative, and immediately it was the top not safe work post on Reddit.

I didn't even try that hard.

It's really shocking to me that other women who are doing this sort of thing.

Is that still a little bit of the case?

There's not as much, because from my sort of outsider perspective, that seems to be

still the case.

As you describe it, that's kind of cool.

That's almost like playing, having fun with sexuality almost.

But that does require kind of thinking through, it's almost like a creative project, like

a photography project or something like that, almost like a little skit movie.

It's interesting.

It's the vibe of how can you bring vibrant novelty to whatever you're doing, anything

you're doing.

I really like doing this with surveys, too.

I've been doing a lot of standard surveys, but I'm also experimenting with novel creative

artistic surveys.

How do you ask a question in a way that's beautiful and unusual, and a thing that's completely

groundbreaking?

Nobody's ever tried crossing this before.

You always make everything so poetic and romantic, it's disgusting.

But yes, I think you have that engine in your head, I guess, of creativity.

The way you ask questions, which is not trivial to do, it's actually very difficult to do,

like good survey questions, and I mean, we're joking, but almost like poetic, because you

have to ask a question in a way that doesn't lead to the answer.

You have to kind of inspire them to think and then indirectly get at the truth.

It's an art form, honestly.

Yeah, and also in a way where they don't misinterpret the question, because it's amazing how any

question you think, oh, this is the clearest question possible.

No, you're wrong.

It has to be even clearer.

Right.

Willingly or unwillingly, because you also have to defend against that question being

criticized later when you publish about it, all of that, you have to think about it all

the time.

I think this might be my greatest strength.

So I'm not very good at statistics.

I'm not a great at presenting data, but I think probably my greatest strength is in fact

survey design and question phrasing, because I have treated so many thousands of polls,

and every single one, I get people telling me the way that they misinterpreted the poll.

So it's like, it's like gone through fire.

And then again, I'm testing the phrasings all the time, like what happens if you slightly

shift phrasings?

And so I'll do the same question test over time to see how it changes and the way the

framing affects the results.

So the good and the bad of the canning, so you said good, the, what was it?

I forgot.

The freedom.

The freedom to be also be creative.

And the bad is just that it was exhausting.

The site that I was on, the way that it's structured is that you're ranking on the site,

and thus the amount of people that see you, and thus the amount of money you earn is affected

by the amount of money that you earn on average over the last 60 days.

So if you're streaming and nobody's tipping you, this means that you're going to be dropping

down in the rankings, which is going to make it harder in the future.

So the rates get richer in that site?

Yeah.

So it's very high pressure.

Like if you're on, you need to be making money as fast as you can, if you want to continue

to make money.

So that was really stressful.

It was very mentally taxing.

I would do it for a couple of hours and just log off and be completely exhausted because

you're just on as hard as you can.

And this is why I have a little PTSD around streaming.

I've considered Twitch streaming, and I try a little bit, and I haven't fully integrated

the fact that you don't have to be maximally entertaining every single second yet.

You can actually just chill out and take it slow, and nothing bad happens.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can just enjoy silence.

Yeah.

Did you feel lonely doing it?

I mean, even just streamers feel lonely.

I made it into a house of cam girls.

Did that make it better or worse?

It did better.

They're great.

I'm still friends with them to this day.

Also, it was like a team almost like we're in this kind of together.

Yeah.

So we would like work together and stream together and swap our clothes and stuff.

It was great.

Swap ideas too.

Swap ideas, yeah.

And actually on a small tangent, maybe a big tangent, what do you think is the recent

controversy of Andrew Tate and that he, I think in the past, ran a camming business,

and he's being accused of sex trafficking.

What do you think?

Like from your own experience, what do you understand about Andrew Tate?

Is he a good person?

Is he a bad person?

Is there something shady about his practices or not?

I wish I could answer, but I don't know.

I haven't looked into it at all.

At all.

When I was talking about it, I just haven't bothered to go into it.

It is well known that like when I was doing it back in the day, the Eastern European models

had something different going on though.

It was like a trope about, you know, there's the Eastern European models and then there's

everybody else.

They're what?

It's like darker or something like that?

Like they do studios and they're lower quality.

Which means what?

Like studios are, you go into like a warehouse and then they have set up a little like things

that replicate bedrooms, but they're just like stalls.

And then you give, you rent out or you pay the studio percentage of your income.

And you can tell when something looks like a studio, it's like a type of background.

If you're like watching enough, it kind of starts to notice the patterns.

So like the standards are lower there and the ethical boundaries are a little looser.

How people are treated.

It's uncle, we didn't, I never heard anything about the ethical side.

I just knew that it was like lower quality.

Like the girls seemed like they were less into it and like cared less.

How does this all interplay with like sex trafficking?

So consensual or just not consensual?

I would be shocked if there were never any non-consensual camming.

I mean, I guess it's like, if it were going to happen, we'd be surprised if it were in

fact Eastern European models based on, this is outdated.

This is, I'm just thinking of my stereotypes back when I cammed a lot.

Sure.

So some of that is stereotypes versus like collecting good data, right?

Yeah.

I haven't done data on cam girl.

It's hard.

I mean, it's hard.

It's even hard to get that data.

Right.

Yeah.

Obviously a really important problem.

There's a method that I'm trying that I really like.

I designed a survey type, which is like asking people who you know, like, who do you know

who's done this?

And you tell me like, oh, do you know anybody who's a doctor?

Do you know anybody who has had cancer or like smokes or?

Personally.

Yeah.

Personally.

Just do you know anybody?

Yeah.

And then if you ask about a whole bunch of things, you can calibrate the responses.

So like, if your population, you know, 20% of them are doctors and then you know the

actual amount of doctors, then you can tell like how this is corresponding.

Like what is the visibility of doctors?

So you can reconstruct the graph.

Basically.

Yeah.

And we can do this with sex trafficking.

Of course, people are going to be like, well, sex trafficking is not visible.

People, you don't know those.

Like, well, then we can ask about other non-visible things that other people don't know that we

do have data for.

Like homelessness or being in jail or like, if you have been like sexually assaulted,

a lot of people don't like talking about if they've been sexually assaulted.

So you can do a whole bunch of things that are like similarly suppressed in knowledge

in some way that we do actually have rates for.

And then compare that to the graph when we ask people, do you know anybody who's in

sex traffic?

Yeah.

So again, this is not perfect.

I'm not saying this is ideal.

You can infer things.

You can infer things about that graph.

But I'm saying we don't have good ways of measuring sex trafficking right now.

Anyway, I did a big deep dive into the research that we have in sex trafficking in the Western

world.

And the actual, like I read the studies and like reports about the studies and it's really

pitiful.

We have terrible data.

It's like, there's just like vague estimations made from one guy in a basement in the 80s.

That's like the basis for like one big study that like a lot of people report on.

And so I'm like, okay, so the method I'm proposing obviously it's not perfect, but

like the bar is so low at this point.

Well, I wonder also if there's a wasted design a survey that gets at the victims of sex

trafficking also, which is they presumably have public access to the internet.

And I wonder how many of them are distinctly aware that they're victims.

Like it's asking the question when you're inside of a toxic relationship, are you inside

of a toxic relationship?

I mean, if the toxic relationship is truly toxic, sometimes your mind is fucked with,

right?

You don't even know what's true.

So it's interesting if you can design surveys that break through that.

So basically get data on how many people are getting sex traffic directly.

Oh yeah.

Like if you don't frame it, like if you don't say the word sex trafficking, you're like,

are you just in a situation where you'd...

And maybe through the survey, I mean, that's very meta, but through the survey helped them.

You know, I did this, this is what started my relationship surveys.

So I've done a series of relationship surveys and that was because I knew somebody in a

terrible relationship and I was like, I bet if she took a survey where she answered questions

about her relationship and at the end got a score that compared her to everybody else,

she'd be like, oh wait, everybody else has much better relationships than I do.

So that's why I started making the relationship surveys was exactly for that reason.

Yeah, that's really, really powerful to know that you're not crazy for thinking this is

a bad relationship.

Right.

Or I think like the actual question is like, could you do better if you broke up?

And I think the thing that keeps most people in their relationships is like, this is the

best that I can do.

Right.

Like this is normal.

And if it were normal, I would say that they are right.

Like if you live in a culture where everybody is abusing their people and their relationships,

then yeah, what are you going to do?

Break up and then just be alone for the rest of your life.

Most people don't want to do that.

But now comparing yourself to the average is good to know.

Yeah.

To know.

Know what your options are.

At least understand it because, you know, being normal is not always, like this conversation

is not always great, meaning this conversation is anything but normal.

Okay.

And that was a tangent on a tangent about a niche passion, which is really fascinating

that you're playing with those kinds of ideas of survey design.

Back to camming.

So what were the cons, what were the negatives of camming?

Oh, like the exhaustion of just like live, like the high pressure thing.

Yeah.

That was probably the worst thing.

So not, was there, what about the interaction with different people?

Like the dynamics of the interaction with the, with the fans, I guess.

I had pretty great time.

I mean, obviously it wasn't perfect because it's the internet, but I don't know.

This is the thing that confuses me a lot because a lot of women that I know complain

about being harassed by men quite a lot, they're like, you know, men are always, you

know, groping on our ass, you know, you have to be paranoid in the club.

People are like, they're always often on you and you're just like, Jesus Christ, get

away man.

And I do not have this experience.

Or like maybe I do, but I'm interpreting it differently.

I don't know.

The thing is I don't know what causes me to have such a different experience from these

women that are like really, feel really hostile towards men.

And my guess is that there's some sort of like very subtle signaling that we're accidentally

doing.

We're like, no fault of our own.

I'm not saying this is a virtue.

I'm saying like maybe it's just genetic or the fact that I fall.

The women are doing?

The women are doing.

And it might be just something that I'm completely accidentally through no intention, like happening

to signal the thing that is causing men to not view me as like a desirable target or

like a target at all.

Well, what about the flip side?

Maybe you're not sensitive to the creepy stare.

Yeah, that also might be true.

The dude who's like, as I'm dressing you with his eyes, that like in a creepy way, that

you're just not, you don't like worry about it.

Or you're not touched, like the fear of that, the anxiety of that, the unpleasantness of

that just doesn't hit you.

I think that's also at least part of it.

Maybe all of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think there's some evidence for it.

I think often like guys will do a thing to me and I'm just like, that's a thing.

Cool.

I don't have any negative response whatsoever.

That's call back to the tire.

It's a thing.

This is nice.

That happened.

It was good to know that can happen.

I had a homeless guy ask me to come back to my place baby and I was like, this is fun.

I'm like, do you want me to, I love asking men, are you trying to get me to have sex

with you?

Just saying it out front and they'll be like, well, usually they stop for me and they're

like, well, yeah, but I would like to have sex and they'll be like, thanks for asking,

but I'm not interested in having sex with you.

I'll be happy if you have a good day and then I walk away.

That's great.

I don't know.

I have no issues with that interaction, but maybe this is the kind of thing that other

women would find to be really offensive.

You have that conversation and it doesn't turn into like a threatening feel like with

a homeless guy.

No.

I've never had that happen though, but I think there's just something, I think I'm doing

something like, again, this is kind of accidental.

I'm just M like this always.

I think I just happen to be like this at people and they don't expect it.

They don't expect me to be like really nice while explicitly asking them what their intentions

are, like directly putting my finger on the thing that like, oh, you're trying to have

sex with me and then also not judging them for it.

I think this like throws people off a little bit so they don't get aggressive.

They're like, oh, you're autistic or something.

Even the cloak of anonymity on the internet, you weren't getting.

Yeah.

I just think I'm just not reactive and or maybe I'm giving up.

I don't know.

I don't know what's going on.

Maybe it's both.

Maybe it's a feedback loop.

So I just, I had a pretty good experience.

I know not everybody did.

Definitely people reported having antagonistic experiences, but when I was scamming, I generally

really liked.

People were really nice to me, had a great time, made friends.

So you also did OnlyFans as you mentioned, and I read on a website.

So this is very investigative reporting that on some months you've made over $100,000 on

OnlyFans.

How did that feel?

Great.

Really great.

I mean like, well, actually because so much of your upbringing, you didn't have money.

You had to struggle with the fact of your job and so on.

Maybe a good person to ask and money by happiness.

Well, I mean, I think you get like a resting set point of happiness regardless of how much

money you have, but money can buy being less stressed, I would say.

Is there a lot of variation in the, in the basic rest happiness for humans in general?

Like, is that a good thing to think about?

I mean, they've done some studies, but again, like, again, I'm not sure.

I haven't actually read the study.

So maybe they didn't replicate where like they measured people before and after winning

a bunch of money to see if their happiness is higher.

Yeah.

I think like it's by some measures it wasn't, by some it wasn't.

No, I mean like basically almost genetically, so nature and nurture, but is there, let's

say after year 18, is there like some stable level of happiness that all the environmental

genetic factors combine to create so that everything that life throws at you has to

face that happiness.

You mentioned earlier that I seem to be happy with a lot of stuff.

So maybe I have a certain level.

Do other people have a lower level?

Some people have higher level?

Yeah, definitely.

Like is there, is that a useful or is that a useful model of human beings or is it all

ups and downs?

Like is it all like, there's no stable, right?

Like, I don't know.

Some people just are happier than others in general and other people aren't, but then

you also have ups and downs.

Like I'm sure you've experienced sadness sometimes and happiness the other times.

If I actually were to integrate, so have an integral under the curve, the area under

the curve, I don't know if I'm different than other people.

Maybe I'm just like really focused on the happy moments and maybe feel the down moments

most intensely and maybe that like on average is just all the same.

Is that possible?

I mean, maybe?

I just, I don't know.

Like I remember when I was a kid, my mom would call me Pollyanna all the time.

So I was like finding the good and everything.

Oh yeah?

I'd be like something bad would happen.

So you were a happy kid?

I was a really happy kid, yeah.

Even in the harsh conditions?

Yeah.

I mean, like I said, like anything the harshness comes from the bad meaning, like then I had

a good meaning applied to it.

You were a stoic.

With another book I'm reading next week, tune in, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.

All right, all right, camming 100K, so it felt good.

So it's crazy though, right?

You can just like take clothes off in a creative way with some gnomes and make 100,000?

Yeah.

I mean, there was a lot more to it than that, but yeah.

What was it?

What's the different process?

I mean, it's marketing.

Like so with only, with my free cams, I was unusual in that I decided to do outside of

the website marketing.

I would like post on Reddit, right?

This was very unusual at the time, but only fans have structured such that they have almost

no internal discovery whatsoever.

So if you want people to come to your page, you have to go out on the external websites

and advertise for yourself directly.

Very different model.

And so this is something I had already been doing and already had practiced in, and so

I think I was like already quite advanced.

Like I already had an account on Reddit that was like seven years old at the time, tons

of like karma that means I could post in subreddits.

I'd already been on Twitter for years, you know, like posting actively.

So I already had like presences on all these other platforms that really helped with the

conversion.

Reddit and Twitter.

Reddit, Twitter, Fetlife, Instagram, TikTok.

And you were still advertising creatively.

So like there's like sexuality, but there's also like creative sexuality and ideas too.

Yeah.

Like one of the really popular ones was I like molested myself as a, as a mime using a,

a, one arm through a jacket.

And so the jacket looked like it was, the jacket looked like it was alive and,

you know, and that one did really well.

Did you like brainstorm with somebody?

And like, I recently got to hang out with Mr. Beast and sit on a session of brainstorming

different ideas.

I just envisioned you would like a team brainstorming.

All right.

How about we try the mime and the molesting thing?

I don't know.

It's too edgy.

I wish.

I think the team would have been fun, but no, it's just me, like I had an apartment to

look like kind of like this, you know, you just sit alone and you're like, well, it would

be a good idea.

And I'd seen, you just collect ideas over time, right?

Like, um, I'd seen somebody doing a version of the, like this, this animated hand act,

like when I was a kid and I just always stuck in my head and like one day I was like, I

bet I could do that.

And then when I was thinking, try and think of ideas to do as a sex worker, I was like,

why don't I just try that?

And then it turned out to be like, like a really like quite a viral hit.

Is there, um, is there stuff like you mentioned too edgy, like Mr. Beast tries to keep it

PG.

Yeah.

Do you try to keep it PG 13?

Because the sex advertising stuff, I mean, it's sex advertising, so it's obviously not

PG 13.

I don't know these ratings.

What is it beyond that family friendly, it is X, like the, the one that I'm describing

to you at some point, like you can see my boob as a boob is X, a boob is, I guess, I

thought R, I think you could show a boom PG 13.

Yeah.

Maybe X is like, if you got some sort of rhythmic motion going on, maybe that sound, but the

rhythmic motion or not, you can have one or the other, but you can't.

They have both.

They have both.

That's when we hit the X.

Yeah.

Okay.

So it definitely not family.

I mean, with the sex advertising stuff, like guys like vanilla shit, guys want basic hot

girl.

You can do something like kind of sexy and creative, like getting abducted by gnomes

or like the self molestation, right?

But those are still pretty within the normal boundaries.

What do you mean guys like vanilla stuff?

I mean, most guys like vanilla stuff.

What's vanilla stuff?

Like, see, we'll talk about fetish fetishes.

I think my, uh, overton window on what is vanilla is expanding quickly after following

your work.

But yeah.

I actually have done a lot of studies on what is vanilla.

Like I've done a couple of different surveys where I ask people like how taboo is this

thing and I've worked like a rating from least to most taboo.

By the way, I don't like, I don't appreciate the beauty of vanilla ice cream.

You don't?

It is really good though.

You eat vanilla ice cream.

I eat vanilla ice cream.

Yeah.

I mean, there's just so many more options.

It's like the absence of creativity.

I mean, if you put it in like some chocolate chips or something.

Yeah.

They already made it more interesting to start.

Okay.

So what's vanilla?

What, and why do guys like vanilla?

So hot girl doing hot girl things, what, like I'm dressing and then having sex.

The thing that I found was most successful were frames where the man was framed as passive

and the woman is active or like, for example, like, oh, you know, we got assigned to the

same bunk at the breeding school or something or like, oh, we're the last people on earth.

Right.

Or like, oh, no, I, you know, I like, I desperately need somebody to like cure me with this disease

and I need semen.

So it's like in any scenario where the guy's just like finds himself such that the woman

like desperately needs him for some reason and he doesn't have to do much.

That is like typically one of the much more successful things, like guys like women falling

into their lap.

What about the power dynamic?

So guys are less into power dynamics than women are.

And you can do power dynamics as long as it's like handed to them.

Some guys, obviously, some guys are like very dominant and like prefer like having to work,

but this is the minority.

Like if you're trying to do make a hundred K a month and you're trying to appeal to the

widest group of people, the most effective advertising, you're not going to be making

the most money by being like particularly submissive.

So on the gambling side, that's your, unlike, like escorting or just personal relationships,

you're trying to, you have an audience, you have like a theater full of people.

Like with live camming.

Yeah.

With live camming.

Yeah.

It's like a live theater.

Does that freak you out?

There's just a bunch of people watching.

I mean, what, how do you feel right now?

I don't, I don't know.

They're watched because it's not live.

Yeah.

That's true.

It's not live.

So like it might as well be like they could be watching.

I feel like there's just the two of us.

I don't know.

And there's like, I feel sometimes I imagine there's a third person.

Like God.

Usually.

No, no, not God.

I imagine either a guy or girl or a couple just sitting there for some reason, like usually

on the beach and usually high or on some kind of like on mushrooms, just like listening

passively, just kind of looking at the sunset.

That's what I imagine.

That's really good.

Yeah.

I think it's useful.

Like when I write my blog posts, sometimes I do terribly, but it's the most effective

when I imagine one person that I'm writing to, to try to explain.

And like having a high couple watching the sunset is maybe really lovely as a calibration.

I have to say it is pretty romantic cause I've gotten a chance to meet couples that listen

to podcasts together.

I don't know why that seems like intensely romantic to me because like, cause you're

not watching TV together.

You're listening to a thing.

I guess sometimes they watch it, but like you're listening to ideas together.

I don't know.

It's like you're going through the same kind of thought process at the same time.

That's a really beautiful way to put it.

It's like you're melding, you're thinking is falling the same line for some of our podcasts

do that more than movies.

I think movies give you a lot more freedom to think about stuff.

I feel like your thoughts are aligned and like, especially if the, if the podcast is

good, like if it's listening to like a Dan Carlin podcast about history, that you're

like on a journey together as there's an intimacy to that anyway.

But I've learned that those couples do that, you know, hashtag relationship goes.

Go ahead.

That's what you want with your future wife.

With my, yeah.

You should make an application.

Application.

An application for dating you.

I mean, maybe this is more of like my strategy and less yours, but you have like a wide enough

audience that might work.

It's not, okay, let's just go there.

So because you've put together an application of like people to have casual sex with you,

I think.

You have had that.

And also dating.

Yeah.

And also dating and relationship.

Yeah.

That's an application.

Cause like, you know, I'm sure there's quite a lot of people that would like to date you

or to sleep with you, but finding the person, I mean, it depends what your goals are.

I guess relationship would be an open relationship for you.

Yes.

Right.

Like for me, I guess it's more intensely selective because it's like a monogamous relationship

and a committed one.

Like, like, like I'm, I'm swinging for the,

Yeah.

Like for like longterm.

I'm not, I'm not like weirdly obsessed with longterm, but it's like, you just, I would

love to have one girl for the rest of my life, but the finding that I feel like applications

will not get to that.

I feel like there's some aspect of the magic of the, the serendipity of it of meeting people

in strange places and so on.

I just personally have noticed that like fame has not made that process easier.

But I mean, like if you could, you know, if there's two rooms and one of them, it's like

a random population of hot women.

And the other one is a random population of hot women, but all of them definitely are

monogamous and are looking for a longterm committed relationship.

Yeah.

Like which room would you rather go into?

Like if you're looking for a mate.

Yeah.

Well, but see, I guess my preferences are more, that's, that's, that's a really strong

point, but my preferences are represent the majority probably.

Right.

Cause don't most women want monogamous relationships?

Yeah.

So like it's, I'm okay with either option because like statistically speaking, I'm

like, we can apply it to like a bunch of other things.

Yeah.

And I'm just, this is just a problem if you have like high, if you have a high volume

to filter through and you like, you don't know, like it's a good, like initial filter.

Like you can take it from like a thousand people to 20 people and then go to dates

with them.

But the filter is so anti-romantic.

Like what?

This is true.

This is not the romantic narrative that you're very prone to.

If I feel like, how did, how did you two meet?

Well, she passed the three filters I set up.

And I mean, but it's also, but also can you put into a survey the things that you're

interested in?

Yeah.

I mean, I definitely think about this a lot with hiring, like, like teams, engineers

and so on.

But with engineers, you're okay losing truly special engineers because you have to filter

because there's like thousands of applications.

Like it feels like, it feels like I worry that you would miss the thing that actually,

because so much of it is chemistry, so much of it is like the magic, you know.

But the thing is you're missing it anyway.

Like, yeah, you're missing it.

Oh, you can just run it and then in addition, try some of those people.

And then go on the dates that you were going to go on with anyway, regardless.

It's just the thing that helps like pull someone out of the crowd.

Like this, I dated a guy from my survey.

I'd ran the survey.

I assigned point values to each of the questions.

Yeah.

And it was like the top couple of people.

And then one of them, I was like, and I'm still dating him to this day.

And it was awesome.

And I would never, I never would have gone on a date with him without the survey.

Can you, if from memory, or we can look it up, do you remember what kind of questions

were on the survey?

I asked a couple of different categories.

I asked about like basic life stuff.

So like, what kind of relationships like monogamy versus polyamory, like do you want kids,

you know, like where you want to live, like basic things that you need to be compatible.

And then I asked like sexual compatibility, like various preferences.

And then I had a section about like personality, like what are, I try to ask questions that

would do the most effective filtering.

So like, what are ways that like, I can't give, give people what they need that like,

maybe they really want, like, I don't really, I'm not very outdoorsy.

It was just very common.

A lot of people like being outdoorsy.

So I asked the question, like, how much do you value someone else that you're dating

being outdoorsy?

Have they marked?

Yes.

I was like, okay, we probably, I should probably down for the results.

Man, but that doesn't polyamory make that really difficult because can't they find somebody

for the outdoorsy stuff?

Yeah, they could.

I mean, this doesn't, like, but the, if you're going to have somebody, it's like nicer to

have them be more compatible than less.

But you're a little bit like in terms of sexual compatibility, you're able to like yourself

aware enough to know what preferences you have, like you can.

I think so.

I think that one helped a lot with the escorting, like the escorting helped a lot with knowing

my preferences.

But there's like out of the, the giant pool of different preferences, you haven't like

a subset that's clearly defined for you.

Okay.

Like, like dominant submissive, power dynamic stuff, power dynamic stuff, okay.

In the, not just sexual, but in relationship too, like that was that in the survey?

I don't like power dynamics in relationships.

I didn't ask a lot.

No, defining them in like making it clear in a survey, like asking a question about

power dynamics in a relationship.

I don't think I asked about power dynamics in relationships because I just assume most

people don't.

And there's a lot of things that kind of like.

Most people don't, you're putting together a survey, a systematic survey to understand

compatibility, wouldn't power dynamics inside of relationships that naturally emerge often

be part of the question or, or is that, is that hard to question because it naturally

emerges?

Well, the thing is like a lot of questions sort of overlap in demographic.

And if you're making a survey, you want to have the minimum possible questions that give

the maximum possible, like filtering information.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

But that purpose of that survey, it wasn't to do a good research study.

It was to select one subject that you could take.

So that's part of what's, it is good.

Like you want to most efficiently filter out.

Cause one, like you get more people taking the survey, the fewer questions you have,

which is good for finding a mate.

Like if you have 5,000 men take the surveys, better than 1,000 men take the survey.

Don't you want men that, that would be patient enough and dedicated enough to fill out?

Yeah, but like, what if you want like a high powered man who's like on his lunch break?

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

And the guy that I did was, he took the survey, he was waiting for the pizza to come out of

the oven.

And so it was important that it was short.

And so you want to be efficient.

Is it metaphor or literally pizza coming out of the oven?

Literally waiting for pizza.

And he saw the thing is like, I guess I'll just fill up the survey really fast and changed

our lives.

So romantic.

I, it's for me, this is my kind of romance.

I'm really into it, but, but you could, it could be efficient with surveys by like making

sure your questions don't overlap.

So for example, if somebody's very polyamorous, they're very unlikely to be interested in

like a traditional like man works and like, and the job and the woman stays home and raises

the kids kind of relationship.

Cause probably people just generally don't do that.

And so if I'm asking about polyamory, it's sort of kind of already covers the thing.

And so if I have a whole bunch of questions, like I can kind of like triangulate a bunch

of implicit kinds of questions that I haven't directly asked about.

So this is why I didn't ask directly about power dynamics because like from the rest of

the questions that are in my survey, like I can pretty accurately predict whether or

not you're going to be interested in power dynamics.

But I'm afraid I'm, yeah, like I'm trying to think as you're talking, I get it.

That's, that's really interesting that you did that.

Also maybe not for the effectiveness of finding a partner, but for just exploring the actual

the process of, of human sexuality of, of, of like the search, this, this complicated

optimization process we're all engaging in on the landscape of happiness that seems to

be a, this, not even a differentiable function, it's a, it's a giant nonlinear mess.

Okay.

But like for me, I don't think I'll be able to design that survey.

I would like bias it too strongly.

Like I'll probably prefer women that have read Dusty F. Ski or something like that.

Like there'll be a filter for me, right?

Yeah.

But like that's a horrible filter.

Cause there's a lot of, like there's a lot of amazing people that have never, they don't

give a shit about reading or they don't give a shit about reading Russian literature or

they don't give a shit about, but they're amazing and passionate and creative and all

cut in some other dimension that you might completely miss.

But you were like, cause I wonder if there's any, basically you're saying compatibility,

like hard lines that you know statistically is just going to be an issue.

Yeah.

I mean, you wait this a lot more.

Yeah.

But there's also like preferences.

Like if you have a woman who's totally equal and she's rather the thing that you like for,

it's another woman who's also identical, but like she hasn't read the thing that you

like.

I like very slightly prefer the one that I like.

But you don't know the identity.

Yes.

Yes.

But like you can't through survey, get the identical.

Like you don't know.

Sure.

But you can kind of like, like do a whole bunch of weight.

So like the person that like I ended up going on a date with, he did not answer like correctly

to a lot of the survey questions, but he didn't have to.

Like he was just overall, overall the weights were like, he just tended to be more in the

direction.

Was there a text-based fill in like survey, but like, sorry, a paragraph, like.

No, you want to avoid that if you're dealing with like large amounts of data.

No, why not?

Cause you have to fill.

Like, oh, oh, interesting, interesting, like I'm, I'm different.

Yeah.

First of all, I can do keyword searches.

That's fair.

Second of all, you do, you can do machine learning models that like, like, uh, first

of all, you can do, you can do like crude metrics, like the length of, of, of how long

they've written, right?

And it could flag certain things.

Yeah.

It's actually pretty easy to, like I've, I've looked at, like for hiring, I've looked

at like thousands of applications really quickly.

Like you can really, the, the human brain is really interesting, especially, um, like

if you visually highlight certain information for yourself, like keywords or again with

machine learning models, like sentiment, you can, you can highlight different parts that

will catch your eye better than not, and I can go through just a huge number of applications.

Are you telling me I can use, if I learn machine learning, I can process dating survey applications

better?

Yes.

No, like textual.

Like I can like have them write things in, like this is like a new way of, that would

be, yeah.

It's really good incentive.

I think that would, so it's a really nice aspect of text input, like long form text

input, multiple long form text input based on an interestingly phrased question is you

get to learn how to make a better survey.

I think you would appreciate that.

Like you start to see how they're actually interacting with these questions.

Like I asked certain questions, like, um, just to see how people think, is it better

to work smart or better to work hard, uh, or, um, is it, uh, ever okay to betray a close

friend?

Hmm.

Like I'll ask like questions like this that don't really have a right answer, but I just

want to see how they think, or is, uh, truth more important than loyalty.

Yeah.

And, and I get their long form answer.

You get like a, and you get to see the reasoning process.

Yeah.

Like what they, it reveals so much, not just about the person, but about the kind of questions

I want, I should be asking to have nothing to do with truth or loyalty, but like how

to get a good engineer with like very specific questions.

But I think it's really useful to get text input.

I have done text input usually with beta surveys.

So I usually do beta surveys before I do the real survey.

What's the beta?

Like, like I do like a shorter version or it depends on what I'm doing, but like a different

version of the survey that I have people take before I release, I use their information

from the initial survey to inform the questions that I ask in the real survey.

And I haven't actually in recently, but I used to do a lot of like the text-based questions

to see for similar, although I don't think I relied on it quite as heavily.

And if I introduced machine learning, I think it would be a lot more efficient.

I love that you're also doing like you're writing scripts and stuff like you're doing,

you're doing something like, uh, like statistical analysis using Python.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I had to learn Python for this just a couple of months ago.

There's no way to learn Python and the best reason to learn machine learning is to solve

actual like problems.

Yeah.

I can't be motivated.

I'm just not motivated to learn something unless there's an actual curiosity I have and

I have to learn it and to solve it.

I was trying to avoid learning coding for so long, but eventually it was with my dataset

became too large.

I couldn't work with it with anything else.

So, oh, Python it is.

You know what's also an interesting dataset that you're probably interested in a little

bit is like Twitter itself, right?

I don't know if you've, I've played with the Twitter API a lot.

Can you just get the download the, I'm just, I'm stuttering now because the

Download the Twitter, can you download Twitter?

No, there's a lot of Twitter, Twitter.

So Twitter is a social network with a bunch of people that are interacting a lot.

Like there's like, I don't know, the number is insane, the number of interactions, but

there's different ways to interact to get data from Twitter.

There's streams you can look at, it depends on what you're interested in.

You can do results for searches.

You can look at individual tweets and get entire, which to me is super interesting,

the entire tree of different conversations that were, that replies, which might be very

interesting for you because like, it's not, it's, it's much harder to ask rigorous questions

which you do with your polls, but you can see like how divisive certain things are.

You have to be good like, like calibrated to figure out like exactly what questions

you should be asking.

Yeah.

And also highlight interesting anecdotal things where like two people freak out at

each other and just argue like a thread that goes on for like a thousand messages that

you might never be even aware is happening because you're like, because Twitter doesn't

like surface that, like it would be, Twitter doesn't make it easy for you to like visualize

what the hell's going on even with your own social network.

Like, like if you post something that's controversial that gets a large amount of attention, it,

you can't clearly visualize everything that's going on.

Yeah.

So it's very, it's a blurry amorphous, like you're just kind of looking through the fog

at different replies and the kind of, it's, yeah.

So to be able to-

Do you see what the API, they have like graphs of networks?

They have the data for the graphs.

Yeah.

So you can reconstruct yourself.

Oh, that's so cool.

Yeah.

And then you have different levels of access in terms of how many queries you can do.

That is really cool.

And now, because there's like Elon, there's a lot of sort of revolutionary stuff happening

at Twitter.

I think you could literally sort of push for innovation there.

Like there's aggressive innovation happening.

So in terms of requesting stuff for the API, you could do all that kind of stuff.

I think Twitter is just a fascinating platform for the, as cliche as it sounds, for studying.

For me, it's interesting what makes for a healthy conversation.

That term has been used, but it's interesting how conversation, to me, is fascinating how

conversations break down and not like how like the virality of drama or conflict or disagreement,

how that evolves when a large number of people are involved, when a large number of misinterpretation

of statements is involved in text-based, with some anonymity thrown in.

Like I feel like there's a lot of study that can be done there.

I mean, Twitter is probably not great at it, right, as it stands, because it's like necessarily

short, you can quote, treat things out of context, et cetera.

But we should understand that, right, at a large scale, you should be able to study

that kind of thing.

Oh, yeah.

What was your casual sex survey?

I actually haven't looked at it in a while.

I think I just asked people about a whole bunch of fetishes, because you don't want

to be obvious about yours, because when people are going to hijack it to try to tell you

that they like what you like, so you want to be obscure.

So how do you design a survey, where you're testing for a thing, but you're still obscure

about the thing you're trying to ask about?

So you still see it as a survey, like an application, because I think you tweeted saying, like,

I'm thinking of just showing up to San Francisco and saying, is anybody open for casual sex,

something like this?

Am I misremembered?

Maybe escorting, I'm not sure.

Oh, for escorting, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Which is similar.

Like I kind of use escorting as the way to have casual sex now.

Okay, so let's talk about escorting.

So you wrote about escorting in your blog post, escorting was good for me.

How did you get into escorting?

I was working at, like, I quit camming, because I was burned out, and I was like trying to

work at a friend's startup, and it was hard for me.

It's difficult for me to work on projects that are not my projects.

And so I was like, hey, fuck it.

Like I want to go back to sex work, I want to make more money, but I don't want to cam

anymore because I'm burned out.

So I was like, well, let's try, I have a friend who is an escort, like let's try that.

So we had a call, she like outlined the basics for me, and then I put up some ads and started

working.

What's the basics of escorting, how does it work?

If you want to get started escorting, so just in case you have a career change, or you're

going to want to get some nice photos, so you probably have those.

First of all, you assumed I haven't done it before, how rude.

Have you?

Yeah, well, you know, recreation, I would like to do professionally, I suppose.

If I wanted to do it, if I wanted to do it, if I really want to step up my game, how would

I do it?

Yeah, well, you got the whole tutorial.

Recreational escorting is just, okay.

Okay.

No, meaning like, you know, like selling products on Etsy versus doing a startup.

Well, I mean, escorting is kind of all just selling products on Etsy.

Selling a lot of products on Etsy.

High volume.

You've like dabbled.

High volume.

Yeah.

Like, yeah.

Small handcrafted.

It's a small handcrafted doll.

Artisan.

Yeah.

Escorting.

Where's this mass manufacturer?

Okay.

If you want to mass manufacture your escorting.

I just feel like I haven't been getting, you know, I've been undervaluing my services,

and I would like to really step up.

I think you could really just like grease some marketing gears and be sure you can do

it.

I mean, so some of this is marketing.

So like how, I guess I want to like know, is it similar to camming in that way?

Like is it, you're basically advertising yourself and you're marketing, they have all the creativity

that you mentioned before, all of that.

Yeah.

I found escorting to be pretty easy because escorting is not like highly competitive.

For example, camming is highly competitive because like the strut, the thing that I outlined

before, you know, the amount of money that you make determines your ranking.

And you can also go and see other girls.

You can see what they're doing.

So if a girl figures out an incredible strategy for making money, it's like two seconds before

that strategy, pearl little threats into everybody else.

So it's very fast paced and like really tough, but escorting, you don't get to see what other

girls are doing.

You can look at their websites, but like you don't know what they're doing with clients

at all.

You can look at their rates, but you don't know what their volume is.

So you don't actually know what is successful and what isn't very much.

So I think there's much less like evolution of marketing through this process.

And so I came in with like my aggressive marketing skills for being a cam girl.

I think that really helped.

I did very well as an escrow.

I just came in like made a fantastic website and I knew how to do the ads right.

And what was the finding people, I guess it's also like finding the right kind of customer,

the right kind of client.

I got like in a lot of trouble for this recently in the sex worker sphere because I said that

if you raise prices, you're more likely to encounter clients that aren't going to abuse

you.

Like it's safer.

Yeah.

So they did not, they said that I was being classist, you know, implying that poor people

are more violent.

But to be fair, if you're a guy and you want to be violent towards a woman, you're probably

not going to be paying her a lot of money.

You're probably going to be like, you're the kind of person likely who's going to haggle

a lot because you don't respect her.

Yeah.

But anyway, that aside, it's a little pet peeve for me.

Yeah.

I just, I just started charging 800 an hour and then pretty rapidly raise it to 1200 and

then a while after that raise it to 1400.

So the interesting thing you mentioned, in my sense of research, you used to do 1200

to 1400 an hour and then you said that you're thinking of jumping back in at a rate of 2400,

the first hour.

And I think 900 each excessive hour.

That's interesting.

That's like, that's, I mean, to me that's really interesting.

Like the first, like why it's like a lot in the first hour.

Oh, it's just because this depends on how you want to incentivize like the amount of

hours.

So if you have to pay a lot for the first hour, but not very much for the excessive, you're

more likely to buy like a longer period of time.

And usually I find that clients who buy a longer period of time are nicer to you.

I don't have like a great theory for why that is, but there's the more likely like take

you dinner and get to know you first.

And I just enjoy that a lot more.

I enjoy like, like knowing who I'm going to have sex with, like a date, you know?

Yeah.

You can incentivize the long form date dynamic versus like not.

That's really interesting.

That's really interesting.

How does money change the dynamic?

Just basic human dynamic of interacting for free versus for money.

Like I think about that a lot because like just talking to rich people, it's like you

usually get paid for your time and you're doing this for free.

Like what's the difference?

Is there a difference really?

Or no?

A bit.

I've actually, it depends a lot.

So when I was doing it full time, it was my only source of income.

It changed quite a lot because I was really incentivized to have repeat customers.

So I'm like, okay, if I'm, my primary interaction with you is to like, have you hire me again?

I will do whatever that takes to make that happen.

And so if I have to like laugh at jokes that I don't find funny or like be like more adoring

of your penis than I actually genuinely feel like that's what I'm going to express.

And obviously it's to some degree like titrated, you know, like it's unpleasant to force yourself

to like something that you don't.

So like, I would actually like not see clients again that I didn't want to.

But it's just some degree, there was a sort of self suppression going on, which I think

is the way it works in any sort of customer service job.

Like you want the customer to leave happy.

So you just make sure that you are happy the whole time and you're like, ah, really enjoying

the other person.

But so recently when I've like kind of dabbled in it since baking money through other means,

where I don't need the money, it's more like a fun side thing that like, that I'm like

I said, it's fulfilling the role of casual sex for me.

So like, I don't have to do it.

This is not my primary job.

I just want sort of a good excuse to like have sex with somebody and the money is like

a great filter for that.

And so in that case, that's interesting.

So the money is, but yeah, okay, the money is basically a filter for somebody who's taken

this interaction series.

Yeah.

It also, so there's an interesting like psychological thing where I have difficulty having casual

sex with somebody because some part of my brain, which I assume is like quite female

is doing some evaluation of status and whether or not this is going to damage my reputation

by having sex with them.

So like, if you found out that I went and like had random sex with like a homeless man,

you might be like, wow, that says something about Alah, like maybe she's, you know, trashy

or she just has no standards for who she's going to fuck.

But if, and so some part of me is continually anxious.

I'm like, does this mean I have no standards if I decide to have casual sex with you?

Like what are people going to think?

And so if you introduce money, it takes away that anxiety.

I don't have to worry about it because it's like, oh, of course, Alah would have sex with

that person.

They paid her.

Like this is not an indication of the kind of mate that she can get.

This is just an indication of like a business transaction.

And this allows me to enjoy casual sex so much more when somebody pays me for it.

To the degree that like I almost view it as a kink.

And so it's like, so I'm using it sort of to replace casual sex now, like occasionally

I'm like, I just pay, you know, like it's paying me a little bit to erase the anxiety

and I'll like have a fun, fun time.

I mean, can't you see like dinner like that or something like that if the person pays

for dinner or like, so like it's all just if any money is involved, if it's a kink,

then you can just like use it and you buy as a coffee to Starbucks.

It's like, all right.

Right.

But it has to be plausible.

Like you have to like trick my brain into like having it actually be incentivizing for

me.

Two coffees?

Like a cappuccino or something?

Yeah.

Like the homeless man bought me a coffee and then I sucked his dick.

Like that's not cool.

All right.

So no shade of homeless men, by the way, like I've been friends with a lot of them.

I'm just using like some sort of stereotype of.

Yeah.

Right now.

Like it has to be plausible where you could trick your mind, interesting.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

And so that's different.

So now, now in this sort of frame, I am still like, I'm accepting money, but still much

more expressive of my actual preferences.

So like before when I would start escorting full time, I was suppressive.

And now I'm like, you know, I'm doing this for me.

So we're going to make sure that I have a good time and some much more demanding.

And then you're having more fun because you're not pretending like laughing at a joke or

something like that.

Sounds terrible.

Sounds like.

I mean, that's.

But it's also like social.

I mean, I guess I would, would I do that?

Like when you first meet people, like strangers and so on, there's some aspect of like niceties,

but like, I don't know, intimacy, like real intimacy requires like getting past the niceties.

Like laughing at somebody's joke when it's not funny feels like anti-intimacy.

Yeah.

But I laugh at so many jokes automatically.

It's interesting because like I don't mean to, I'm not trying to be fake.

But like if I'm in a group of people and somebody makes a joke and everybody laughs, I laugh

even before I'm checking within myself, like, do I genuinely enjoy this joke?

Yeah.

So it's like, I don't know.

Like the degree that I am sort of just like a result of social programming in all cases,

that like when I'm with a client back when I was doing it full time, like it doesn't

feel significantly different.

It just felt like a different version of myself.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

To that degree, to the degree you don't feel like you're going against your nature.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was very rare that I actually felt like I was going against my nature.

What about the market of how much to charge?

So 2400, like how transparent is that market?

Is there like a market?

Like how much can you sell when you're charging that much?

Yeah.

No, like what, what are the competitors?

Like if this, like what do you just think they were, because you said it's a lot of

is a bit more shrouded in mystery, like it's a more confidential, like do you have some

transparency to the, the market, what the competitors are and so.

I think a survey of Escort, it's only like 130, I'm trying to remember, and the median

was around like 400, 300 dollars, I think an hour.

Oh wow.

Something like that.

It was a very long tail at the top end.

I'm trying to remember what the, I also asked the amount, or I could calculate the amount

they made per month.

I think it was like six or $7,000 a month.

I need to double check that one, but.

I charge 50 bucks an hour.

You charge 50 bucks an hour.

You should raise your rates.

Yeah.

I believe I give a really shitty hand job.

All right.

But usually the rates are around, like if you want a median Escort in a big city, it's

usually four to six hundred dollars.

A city, so the, sorry, four to six hundred.

In a big city.

But like smaller cities, do you charge the rates go lower?

That's so fascinating.

What's like the most you've ever seen somebody charge?

I think I am.

You're like.

But at this point, it's because of post work, like I can, I can just put it in the same

number.

There's like, does the fact that you're sort of like a sexuality expert, like a researcher

and so on.

Like your mind is fascinating as well, and you're a bit of a celebrity.

Does that play into it?

Yeah.

Or do you feel the celebrity now?

Like when you're with people?

Yeah, absolutely.

If people are interested in hanging out with me, it's because of that.

But that's, that's different.

Like I think besides the, like the fun part, like the, this is a kink as opposed to this

is a job.

Like with this is a job, usually the high end is closer to 2000 an hour, like the very

high end.

Have clients ever fallen in love with you?

I think so, yeah.

I think it doesn't, happens to me much less than most other people due to like the thing

that I think we were talking about before.

Which is what?

Like, you know, you give off fives, maybe like subconscious fives.

But they have fallen in love or not, but not as often.

I think I, something about my signaling indicates that people should not fall in love with me

because I don't think it happens very much and it happens a lot with other women, but

I know.

But I have occasionally had, the thing is it's, it's hard for me because I try to be

as vulnerable as I can in a connection with a client and like I do really like some of

them.

I still remember some of them very fondly and I'm like, I hope they're doing well.

And some of them are really profound.

Like one guy saw me because he found out he was dying of cancer and he was like, I don't

want to die without seeing someone.

I'm like, Jesus Christ, that's such a, I don't know, I'm very touched by many of the

people that I saw.

So there's like deep intimacy there.

Yeah.

I know that it's brief and I know that it's like kind of weird, but like there's, there's

like a real glimpse into somebody's soul when you get to be intimate.

And I think this is especially true for men because a lot of times men don't have like

a way to be really vulnerable in front of anybody.

But like if you're in bed with a woman that you find to be attractive, you can sort of

let loose a little bit more.

So they can become vulnerable in general quickly.

Yeah.

And I really like that.

I like being as vulnerable as I can to match it.

Like I'm not forcing myself or anything, but like I just feel into it and like notice

how like beautiful the person was and like feel grateful for being able to be in this

intimate experience with them.

And that was so wonderful.

Has it ever hurt to say goodbye?

No, but I think that's unique to me because I like being alone a lot.

Even with my friends who I like dearly, I'm like happy not seeing them because I don't

like making facial expressions very much.

But I do miss some of my clients.

Wait, sorry.

What does making facial expression have to do with saying goodbye?

Well, if, if you are not with somebody in person, you don't have to make facial expressions

anymore.

Oh, you can just think about them.

Yeah.

You can just, you can just sit there a totally blank face and then have all of the emotions

that you want.

Are you telling me?

Do you have this thing too?

It's not a thing, but like you're on camera.

Yeah.

So like I feel feelings, but people usually want you like social interaction is such that

like you probably want me to show feelings on my face.

Yeah.

Like that.

Good job.

Yeah.

And there you go.

I definitely, there could be just an introvert thing where you like have a vibrant inner

world that you forget to show to the rest of the world.

And also I'm scared of social interaction and I just have a lot of anxiety about interacting

with the external world.

So yeah.

I'm kind of surprised to hear that because when you talked about like finding the light

and everything and everything is fun, like I usually don't associate that with having

not very much anxiety.

Well, because I have the, we mentioned that earlier, I just appreciate the beauty in the

world when I observe it, but then when I'm interacting with others, I have a very harsh

self-critical aspect to my brain that says like, you're going to fuck this up.

You're going to fuck up this interaction.

You're going to fuck up the beauty that's there.

If I'm sort of being fragile and vulnerable for a moment, one of the things I'm afraid

of, I get so much love from people that listen or even like reach out.

Like you said through the survey, like women and so on.

I'm afraid that, yeah, you know, you admire me because you don't know me, but you won't

admire me once you know me.

So that, that's self-critical.

But it's a silly, I mean, as you get older, you're like, yeah, okay.

Like I'm able to step away and objectively look at myself as like, there's no, this is,

you're fine.

You're good.

But it's still, this is the part of the brain that you can't just shut off.

Does it, is like, what would fucking up in this conversation look like?

Like, it doesn't have to be rational, but I'm curious if there's like a specific thing.

A lot of it is just a feeling, like an amorphous fear, a failure, what it would actually look

like.

Maybe because we're talking about sexuality, me not being able to eloquently explain the

worldview I have and why I appreciate, appreciate it, that would make me feel like a failure

because that would make me feel like maybe you don't know what you're doing, right?

Because sex, sexuality and not sexuality, but even romantic relationships are really

important to happiness, they're really important to me.

And I'm not sure like the conception of love I have, romantic love, is like fully made

rigorous.

So especially when I'm talking to you that thinks very rigorously about a lot of these

topics, I'm not sure I've thought about them a lot.

I feel them.

I interact with the world in a space of feelings.

Maybe I'm almost afraid to be very rigorous with these kinds of thoughts.

And so I think the failure would be like, I would be confronted with the fact that I

can't explain what makes me happy, that could be a failure.

And that could be just a bunch of other failures.

Another big failure is like, not, I think you're a really brilliant person.

And a lot of folks I know, know and admire your work as well.

And so like for me not to be part of highlighting that brilliance would be a failure, definitely.

Like because then other people might feel like, like notice the discrepancy or something.

Yeah.

No, no, no, that's not other people, just my personal, my personal feeling.

And the other is like jokes, because like we're talking about sex, right?

So for me, like it's fun to just joke around, but you also have to tread carefully because

like it's a weird, it's a weird surface because like, you know, even I already feel bad about

making a joke for 50 bucks for a handjob that's crappy by me, but I think, I think sometimes

you just got to go for it.

I went for it.

It kind of flat, both flat in his face, but that's the thing of the conversation.

For what it's worth, I think there's like this fear where it's like, if you become like

scientific about something, you'll figure out that your feelings are unjustified and

then you'll experience this horrible thing where like, ah, shit, like I'm like afraid

of this, but I'm sort of being forced to by my logical mind to like believe this thing,

which I don't think, I don't think this is true at all.

I think like your feelings are there for a reason, like they're for a good reason.

And like logic or like rigorous analysis or something should be dedicated to figuring

out why it's there, not that, not by, not to like suppress it or tell it it shouldn't

be there, you know?

What do you think is more important to like, to just life, to reason versus emotion, like

not life, to what makes us human, I guess.

My romantic narrative answer to this, which is like not rigorous at all is curiosity.

Curiosity.

Yeah.

Which is curiosity, that's such a middle, curiosity is like both emotion and reason.

Yeah.

It's like this pull, because reason is the tool you use to figure out the puzzle.

And then curiosity is the pull towards the puzzle.

Yeah.

I don't like the world views that pit like emotion and rationality is opposite each other.

They feel like beautiful parts of like a cohesive whole.

Yeah.

Like if you're doing rationality to the extent where you're like suppressing some emotional

reactions you have, then I think you're doing it wrong.

You're like missing a big part of it.

Like it should be like integrated, it should be like part of like one unified flow.

Like the things that you like, if you want to be in a romantic, committed relationship

for the rest of your life, then this is like beautiful and good.

And the kind of like logic that you're using to make sense of the world should be fitted

into that correctly.

I think it's really cool.

Like anytime you have sort of like an internal at odds thing with it, I think you're like

using some sort of force to suppress one or the other, like, oh, I'm not allowed to reason

about this or I'm not allowed to feel about that, and that feels harsh to me.

And I think curiosity is the solution.

Like if you're simply just calmly curious, oh, why do I feel like that?

Let's go find out.

That's so cool.

Right?

Like you can use logic and your feelings to like discover the answer.

Do you sometimes, because you do this kind of technique, which is interesting, and I've

mentioned it to others, you'll sometimes step away from like a third person perspective

and describe the feeling you're feeling.

Or like even just the situation, like you'll step out and talk about what is happening here.

Like in the conversation itself.

In the conversation itself.

Yeah.

First of all, what is that?

Do you find that to be useful?

Because it's very interesting.

It feels raw and honest.

The danger of it seems like you escape the actual experience of it though.

So that's the trade off.

You make it intellectual, right?

Is it though, intellectual to do that?

I mean, maybe it is.

I don't mean to...

No.

Maybe that's the wrong word.

You can make it intellectual.

Yeah.

You can continue the same flavor, because you're not fully disengaging from the conversation.

You're just creating an extra metal layer that's happening at the same time.

Yeah.

I think exploring the emotional reaction to what's going on in the moment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In some way it's actually making it stronger, like or enriching it, like making it more,

giving it more context, giving it deeper understanding.

I think there's like a way of going meta that is a flinch move, like, oh, I noticed that

we're doing this thing.

Let's just name it.

And I think the thing that I described earlier, like when the homeless guy approached me and

asked, you know, can you go home with me?

And I was like, oh, are you trying to have sex with me right now?

Like what I was doing was like a meta, like you're stepping outside, like, and like, okay,

what is the purpose of this conversation?

And we explicitly identify it.

And in that case, I think that is sort of like a flinch move.

Like I'm not telling him my emotional response.

I'm not like being fully present.

I'm like sort of identifying it as a way to subvert what's going on.

And I absolutely think this is a possible thing, but I usually try to be aware of that

myself.

And it depends on the purpose of what's going on.

That guy, because that is actually like a chess move you did.

You had a purpose with that chess move, but the flirtation is on.

Like he could have like done a better move that would make you like curious, like, huh,

like interesting because you had an agenda with that, but he could have changed your mind.

Like he could have with a few words because you just created extra layers, extra entry

points.

You could have more meta.

It might have been like, okay, well, no, I am going to sleep with you.

Exactly.

I mean, see, there is something, yeah, that's aids into the chemistry of the conversation

when you do that meta.

I really enjoy it.

It's like a rare, I forget who, I've had a few people do that with me, like just in

conversation.

And I feel like you were involved somehow because I've met you before somewhere.

I don't know if we were, or you were just-

We were like couple parties together.

Or maybe it was just like a bunch of people that kind of play with the same, or like a

comfortable-

It's circling.

It's just a practice explicitly dedicated towards that.

What's circling?

Circling is like-

That might be the thing they-

Yeah, I think we have some mutual circlers in our networks here.

What's circling?

I don't remember what's circling.

I'm going to describe it horribly because it's like one of those things that's difficult

to describe unless you experience it, like kind of like drugs.

But it's something like you sit around, there's like kind of guidelines to the conversation

where you talk about the present moment and you're like honest about your experiences

as much as you can be.

And if you don't want to be honest, then you say, I don't want to be honest.

And you're like commitment to connection.

So you're here to actually connect with the other person, understand them and be understood.

You're not supposed to like project.

So if you're like have an analysis about the other person, you own it.

You're like, I'm experiencing you as this, and then you check is it true?

Or like-

Are you supposed to be almost like converting it towards the thing you're thinking like

constantly?

If it feels right in the moment you can, the thing is it's very amorphous, right?

It's like almost like creating a magical sensation.

And I've been with some, I've seen some very good circlers, really high-skill circle, and

I feel like I'm on drugs when that happens.

It's very rare to see.

Does it feel honest somehow?

Yeah, very honest.

Like right now in this moment, I'm feeling like kind of like nervous energy because I'm

talking to you and this is a unique situation and like I want you to think I'm cool.

I want everybody listening to me to think I'm cool, but I'm also having some sort of

delight at being able to express in this way and like some admiration for how you set

up and built this thing that I can be a part of.

And all of these things are sort of in my body right now is this sort of vibrating high

thing.

I remember like in the party setting, because I had to talk to a few people, I felt like

it was going sexual very quickly.

Okay.

I don't know if you remember this, but the first time I met you, I didn't know who you

were.

I just heard, I knew I'd heard your name.

I think I've heard people discuss that and I was in the middle of a very sexual conversation

with another woman.

Oh, you were?

Yeah, I was.

And you just like turned around and left very shortly afterwards and I thought it was very

Oh, was I listening in on the conversation or something?

I think it was like, it was like, I was talking to her and you were just kind of like right

there.

And so we introduced ourselves and then we continued on with the conversation.

You were like standing there and listening.

Yeah.

I don't think I would have left the cut.

So it's funny.

You probably interpret it in a different way.

It sounds like- I interpret it as you like not wanting to listen to like graphic sexual

stuff.

Was it like super graphic?

I was, I was asking her about, I was doing, I was interviewing her about her fetish basically.

Oh yeah.

I don't think I would have walked away from that.

I would have been like curious.

Oh, interesting.

Cause I don't often see people having a deep interview about fetishes.

Like I wouldn't even be, listen, I'm like, Jane Goodall here.

Like I'm not like, I'm not afraid of sexuality or something like that.

I just have certain values in terms of like monogamy and so on, but I think sexuality

is really beautiful.

Yeah.

But I don't think, yeah, I can't imagine myself walking away from that conversation.

You know, somebody must have like called you or something.

Cause I didn't remember exactly how it worked.

I just remember thinking later on.

Or maybe I thought I was intruding.

Oh, maybe.

Cause you-

I was kind of drunk.

So-

And I probably was very drunk.

Okay.

I would like to actually have like footage of that conversation so we can actually interpret

what actually happened because it's probably, I mean, you know, human interactions are funny

like that, they can happen for all kinds of reasons.

Have you ever fallen in love with a client?

No.

I mean, like in tiny ways, like micro loves.

Like-

Have you ever fallen in love, love?

I mean, I don't know what it means, but probably the thing that other people say when they

say fall in love is probably something I've experienced.

What do you think they mean?

What is love?

Ayla?

Yeah, I know.

No?

It's a fantastic question.

It refers to like a billion different concepts and I think we maybe should just taboo the

term to have a better understanding of what we're referring to because there's things

like a feeling of intense attachment, there's something feeling like like soulfully aligned,

there's like sexual attraction, there's like excitement.

Are you talking to me and saying we should taboo the term love in this conversation?

How dare you?

No.

Okay.

Romantic love.

To make it flourish into lots of other new definitions.

Okay.

Yeah.

Let's limit-

We're expanding love.

It sounds like you're censoring the most important word.

This is like 1984 all over again.

Okay.

Also on the book reading list.

No.

Okay.

Listen.

No, romantic love, like a deep intimacy for somebody, like a deep connection with a human

being that is also, I mean, yeah, with polyamory is tricky and your relationship with sex is

also tricky.

So like what's the difference between a deep friendship and a friendship that also has

a sexual component?

I remember being very confused about that when I did a lot of LSD.

I was like what, the line between romantic relationships and everything else kind of

got blurred.

I was like, oh, I'm just like in intimacy and some intimacies mean that you spend your

life together more and have sex, but like the same basic thing is there, like you're

seeing someone for like who they are.

Do you think you can be, if you're heterosexual, do you think you could be really deeply close

to friends with a guy and not have sexual relationships with him?

I assume it's possible.

Like if anything is ever possible, then probably, yeah.

Like I'm-

Well, everything is possible.

Time travel is possible.

Quantum mechanics makes every, traveling faster than the speed of light is possible according

to your own relativity.

Everything is possible.

So you're saying there's a chance.

Dumber has taught me that everything is fucking possible.

Not super likely assuming that they are like attracted to each other.

Yeah.

And for somebody that has surveys and statistical analysis, we're interested in like what's

the likely thing here versus like what's possible.

If you say possible, it's like anything's open.

Did you just avoid answering the love thing?

Okay.

I like to say about love.

It's just like to be precise.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's be precisely and precise and continue.

Yeah.

Sorry.

It's my phone.

It feels like a passive aggressive suggestion that we shouldn't talk about love anymore,

but we shall continue.

No, we should absolutely talk about love.

It's just the term is very confusing because it's like some people say the word love and

the thing that they're thinking of is like, oh, the butterfly.

It's like the sparkle thing that I get in my stomach when I think about my loved one.

But I study relationships over time.

I just released, like I did a survey about it and that sparkle goes away within like

two to four years.

But people still report loving their partner after that.

So I'm like, okay.

Like when you say the word love, what the fuck are we talking about?

Yeah.

I just want to get on the same page.

Okay.

So what are the different, so the butterflies, boy, I'd like to push back on two to four

years on the butterflies.

But okay.

I mean, statistically.

Not everybody.

All right.

Butterflies don't give a fuck about statistics.

You ever heard of the like the flap of a butterfly wing causing like nuclear war?

How do you describe that with your statistics?

Okay.

So butterflies, that's the basic infatuation, the chemistry of the initial interactions.

Sure.

But a deep meaningful connection like that feels like sexuality is a component of that.

Like the kind of intimacy that's only possible when you're also sexual with another human

being.

So on top of that, you have the butterfly and on top of that, you have the friendship and

on top of that, you have like, what is that?

That's a sandwich.

It's the love sandwich.

The love sandwich.

Okay.

I'm down to call it a love sandwich.

Okay.

So we just call it sandwich.

LS.

Okay.

What role does that play in the human condition?

Like.

He asked me about the human condition.

It's an interesting phrase.

Yeah.

I'm like, I'm like, this is like not a phrase that's common in my own thinking.

Sure.

The condition is a good summary.

What do you think?

What do you feel when I say human condition?

I think I ask very different kinds of questions than you.

Sure.

Yeah.

Which is interesting.

I've been trying to like figure out like what kind of brain that you have is like creating

like this category of question, which is why I was like saying like there's something

about a poetic narrative in there because it's very like, like aesthetic.

I think you have asked much more aesthetic questions than I do.

I don't even know what the word aesthetic means really.

Like artistic.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I know what aesthetic means, but I also don't know what it means.

It's kind of like the word love.

Aesthetic perspective.

Yeah.

Well, but part of it in conversation, you don't want to ask a question that has an answer

fully, always.

Do you have an example of a question that has?

What's the meaning of, oh, does it has an answer?

Like one that you do like, ah, that's like a bad question because it has an answer.

How many sexual partners you had in the last year?

Oh my God.

That's such a, okay, I feel like we just like got to some sort of crux about like the kinds

of questions that we like to answer because I would love that question.

Okay.

Right.

To ask enough people.

All right.

But does that really tell the story of what you've felt over the past year?

That's true.

But then I could just tell you, okay.

So by when you're saying the kinds of questions that you like, the ones that don't have an

answer, by not an answer, you mean like not an answer where you can know that you're

done telling it.

Is that?

Yeah.

You can escape having to think by actually answering it.

I see.

Yeah.

The struggle is the place where we discover something, not the, not the destination.

Okay.

Consensure.

Okay.

It's working.

It's working.

Okay.

So what is the role of the love sandwich in the human condition?

Okay.

That's fine.

I take that question.

It's a stupid question.

You don't have to.

I'm ready to try.

Do you like love?

Do you personally love?

Yeah.

I mean, I, I think like there's a part of me that feels like I've un-good to show love

for all things.

Like when you're talking about the class being beautiful, I've felt that it's like, that

feels like it felt like it rang something that like I have a, a similar resonance in

me for that.

If I were to circle right now, I feel like you're avoiding the love question, the love

sandwich question.

What's your own personal feeling towards loving another human being versus having sex with

another human being?

I think, I love is like one of the concepts that dissolved for me a long time ago.

So I have difficulty directly answering it, but I have the experience where you described

the love sandwich.

I feel like I have had that experience.

I have it currently for some people also, like I'm dating people and I have that.

So people who you date, you, you would describe sharing a love sandwich with them.

Yeah.

Okay.

I thought it was a, I mean, that's great to hear.

So you're not, are you afraid of love?

No, not at all.

So can you describe to me, polyamory, what is it?

What does it mean?

Cause it's like different terms.

Yeah.

You have a nice blog post about it.

Yeah.

I have a personal definition of it, which I readily admit is not shared by a lot of people.

But to me, the definition of polyamory is simply not forbidding your partner from pursuing

intimacy with others.

Yeah.

It doesn't mean that you have to pursue it personally.

Like you, two people could be married and only have had sex with each other for 20 years.

And as long as they're like, you know what, if you ever, you want to go out sex with somebody

else, you're welcome to do that.

Well, the interesting thing you said is that doesn't mean they have to do it.

They just have the freedom to do it.

Yeah.

It's the freedom that matters to me, which is a, I mean, it's called the, the polyamory

post.

Yes.

So many good blog posts.

People should just go look at your, read your writing cause it's really, really strong

and often backed by data, but also just a deeply honest look at yourself and your understanding

of the world.

It's, it's night, it's, yeah, it's, it's refreshing to be like with a lot of stuff

I disagree with, but I feel like if I disagree with it, you'll be very open and arguing

and kind of thinking through it.

There's just the honesty that radiates from the whole thing.

Anyway, so, uh, yeah, it's, I mean, it would be interesting to kind of explore what polyamory,

like how it works, what are the different versions?

What is the, what does that freedom look like?

What does that, what does that freedom feel like to be able to go see other people?

It depends on you.

Like do you want to go see other people?

Maybe you do.

Maybe you don't.

So usually for me, I tend to be pretty happy with like one or a few people and then occasionally

I like some novelties.

So usually I'll go like, like I host orgies sometimes.

So I'll host an origin and then I'll go have sex with people at the orgie and then that'll

be good for the novelty for a while.

Ask about orgies.

Yeah.

Like how many people are at an orgy?

What's like a standard, we're having a Sunday picnic and it's an orgy.

What's like a number of people at an orgy?

Oh wait, I've been, I've only recently started hosting orgies, but I have been to a lot of

orgies and I would say like the median is maybe 15 people.

I like how you say median versus mean.

Okay.

Median is 15 people.

What's the, what's the gender distribution usually?

Uh, usually about even.

It's like ideal if you can get more women than men in most of them.

I've recently been hosting free use orgies or orgies where consent is assumed by default

when you enter.

And of course you can revoke it anytime where go over a whole bunch of rules to make sure

it's very safe.

You like have wristbands.

So nobody's actually doing anything they don't want to, but in those ones, you have to have

more men than women.

I thought free use was like consensual, like at any time, but it's at any time within the

constraints of this building or something like that.

Yeah.

And at the orgies, it's like you buy entering, if you wear a wristband, uh, then you are

like by default opting into consent.

So people don't have to like do a thing where they negotiate with you and like be like, is

this okay?

It's just the default is like, you just go for it.

And if they want you to stop, they say the safe word like red don't, and then you have

to stop.

Um, and we do like exercise in the beginning of people saying red to make sure that everybody

knows exactly what the rules are.

What's your favorite safe word?

Red.

Red.

When I first started doing like weird kinky shit, I was like, oh, let's make a safe

word.

And we picked the word foliage.

I was like, that's goofy, right?

And then, but then it eventually came a time where I did actually in fact want to say the

safe word.

And I couldn't, I was like, like in agony, I was like crying, I'm like, I can't make

myself say this stupid word right now.

Foliage.

So after that, I was like red, doesn't matter.

I don't care.

It's not funny.

We're just going with very simple.

Very practical.

How does an orgy compare sexually to like one-on-one sexual experience?

Um, like what, it's like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know,

is it, is it same ballpark or is it fundamentally different?

I mean, the experience of both orgies and one-on-one sex can be like really high variety.

There's a high variety.

But you kind of, it's a little bit like you're having sex with someone, but you're surrounded

by really realistic VR porn of other people having sex.

Oh, okay.

Cool.

And sometimes it's like three sums also.

Like maybe there's another person involved, but it's hard to like have a whole bunch of

people on one, in one cluster, because usually there's kind of different little clusters of

people having their experience.

Sure.

So if you're part of a 10 woman orgy, it was a total lesbian thing and that felt like a

writhing cluster.

It was very nice, but typically you kind of separate out with like very small pods of

people doing stuff.

Okay.

So back to polyamory.

So what, uh, what's a good, uh, what, what does it take to manage?

Do you have a main partner?

If you're doing, being polyamorous and you have your dating multiple people, is there

usually a main one for you personally?

For me personally, kind of, yes.

Like right now I kind of, too, that aren't, like I see roughly around, for me, it's kind

of just descriptive.

Like if I just happen to be seeing you a lot more and I, and confide in you more than you,

like you were descriptively my primary partner, but I don't usually have rules to protect

that.

I'm down with rules to protect it.

If you're like, you're trying to build something.

Like if I buy a house together, I'd be like, okay, we need to like, whatever our relationship

is, we have to do the thing where we're both paying the rent for the house or the mortgage

or whatever.

Uh, a lot of people do have primary sex.

It's very common to have like, like prescriptive, like I'm going to get married to you and you're

not allowed to like have anal sex with anybody else, that sort of thing.

What about like the transparency and the communication they have to do?

Yeah.

I usually try to be super honest.

Extremely.

Yeah.

I mean, I've learned over time that like, even if it seems like a very small thing, you

talk about the small thing, because often I would just sort of have like a small twitch

in myself.

Like, I don't know if I like that.

But I'm like, okay, this is really minor.

It's probably nothing.

And I don't, if I talk about it's going to make it into a thing and I just want to make

it into a thing.

You know?

And I would, I've come to realize that it's worth making it into a thing because I can't

predict at the time if like the small feeling I have is going to grow.

And then when I grow it, now it's like much more difficult to deal with.

So now it's like any little bit of jealousy, I haven't immediately communicated.

I'm like, ah, I'm the little jealous of you right now.

I don't hold that in at all.

I used to be kind of like, back when I first started being poly, I used to try to pretend

that I was not a jealous person and that backfired quite a lot.

That's really interesting.

So you do still feel jealousy.

Oh yeah, definitely.

And like, and it's also interesting that you kind of recommend when there's a little bit

of jealousy, like to, to, to bring that to the surface.

Yeah.

Just like excessively communicate.

Even if it feels stupid, like this is, I feel like a cliche, I feel like a stupid therapist

training video.

Like I just feel ridiculous sometimes when I'm saying the things, but it's just, it's,

I've learned over time, it's just important to just say the things.

Cause like, you know, the traditional of your jealousy is exactly like you said, if you

bring it up to the surface, like it's going to sound like you're overreacting to everything.

But you're saying like, still do it.

Cause you're, you're basically, your brain blows stuff out of proportion.

Yeah.

And it's good to like be going through it with a partner.

Like I have a partner right now who's like dating this other girl and he like really

likes her and you know, like went traveling with her and stuff and I was like, I feel

jealous about it.

And I have to tell him that and that way he can be with me in it.

He like, he like holds me when I'm feeling jealous and it's like a bonding experience,

you know, but it's important for me that like he's able to handle it.

Like I try not to date people who really freak out when I have negative emotions because

I want to be able to express that I'm upset by something they're doing without it being

taken as a demand that they change their behavior.

Right.

So he has to be able to skillfully handle the interaction.

He has to be like, cool.

All right.

You're jealous.

Like I'm not going to freak out about it.

I'm not going to change my behavior.

I'm just going to be with you in that.

We're going to sit in it together.

I mean, is some of that just insecurity that he should also just comfort, like basically

alleviate your insecurity, bring it back to like a rational objective of evaluation, right?

My relationships, I love it when people do not reassure me.

I like not being comforted quite a lot.

Okay.

And so usually the people I date don't, I'm very gravitating.

Like it's one of the things people do to make me fall in love with them is if I say

something really like terrible and they're just like, do not give me any comfort whatsoever.

Like that's where my heart gets captured.

So I typically have in relationships where I'm like, oh man, I'm so jealous and they

just like, do not reassure me at all.

And that's good because it doesn't give me an out.

Like I have to deal with it myself.

Right.

Like maybe it is true that the other woman is better than me.

Like maybe that is an actual possible reality.

And I don't want to be dealing with my life in a way where I'm like pretending like I'm

only okay when that reality is not true.

Would you like them to, to say that, that the other woman is better than you?

Yeah.

Or if they, if they feel that.

Yeah.

I mean, they should say it in, according to themselves, like, oh, I prefer like I have

a better time with her than I have with you than I would want to know that.

Yeah.

And even, even though that might be painful to hear, yes.

That which can be destroyed by the truth should be that which can be destroyed by the truth

ship.

What, what is that?

That your ego or something like that?

My ego.

So your ego just generally grows and you like the destruction of it.

Yeah.

It's like really accurate.

The process of truth.

It's not, it's not like a fun experience.

Like I've had like guys be like, well, you're not as pretty as I'd like.

I'm just like, oh, you know, so stabbed to the heart and.

But then also like give me your number after.

Yeah.

Oh man, that's, oh, well, that's, that's kind of beautiful.

What do you think of monogamous relationships?

Like philosophically, can you maybe steal man or make the case for monogamous relationships?

Um, can you understand the pros and cons of monogamous relationships?

I mean, depends on how you defend, if you're like, hey, uh, we, you can do whatever you

want, but you and I are going to spend the rest.

Like we just, you're 80 years old and like, oh, we spent 60 years in a marriage together.

We've never had sex with anybody else.

I think that's like, awesome.

That's what you want.

That's great.

Um, I like a little bit more problems with people doing that while also forcing their

partner not to misbehave if they want to, like if you're like, oh, I, we only made it

this far in a monogamous relationship because I forced my partner not to pursue an intimacy

that she wanted to.

Then I feel like a little like more like, I don't know if that's great.

How do you know if it's a real want for an intimacy, like checking out a attractive

person while being inside a monogamous relationship?

Yeah.

How do you square that?

That is that bad that the person cannot pursue those feelings?

Uh, I mean, it depends if they want to.

Like I often find people attractive, if I don't want to pursue, I'm also okay with

people entering into agreements.

Like if you and I want to agree, like I'm only going to enter this because I'm going

to be so hurt if you pursue somebody else.

So I'm not going to pursue anybody else.

That seems fine to me, but I also extend that.

Like if, if somebody's like, I don't want you to have any friends, I'm going to feel

really insecure if you, and like, okay, like if you want to enter that agreement, like

I feel the same way.

Like I think you should have the right to do it if this is what you want, but I also

kind of, I feel like a little weird about restricting your partner from doing things,

you know?

Oh, but I guess if you're honest about it and you just put it on the table, I don't

want you to have any friends.

Yeah.

I want you to sit in a box.

Yeah, I think a lot.

I guess if you're like really on the, but then there's like, there's a power dynamic

that like you can be quite influential in a relationship and convincing your partner

and it's sure sounds like you're honestly agreeing to a thing, but you're not really

agreeing.

I mean, part of that is the beauty of relationships, right?

Like, it's messy, it can be messy.

It's hard to know what you really want, right?

I think that's mainly my complaint with monogamy.

Like I'm down with like conscious monogamy, but I think so many relationships are like

monogamous by default.

Like people, it's not actually right for them, but they just get into it because culture

just doesn't give them another option.

And they don't even ask themselves the question, is this right for me?

Right.

Which like, I'm a weird ass person who thinks a lot of weird shit, but I didn't even think

about polyamorous adoption before I had heard that it existed.

And I was only when I first met my first polyamorous couple and I was like, oh, that's what I am.

That's clearly the thing that I am.

Yeah, it's funny because to me, monogamy, it's not, it doesn't make sense for it to

be a default.

Like to me, monogamy goes against human nature.

That's, in some sense, like romance is a fuck you to the way the world works.

Really?

Yeah.

Like Romeo and Juliet romance, like traditional description of what romance looks like versus

like, sure, there's like a million variations of that, but in my, in my head, like this

partnership that's for a long time together is a kind of, you know, like, I don't know,

like true romance.

You know, that movie, it's a really fucking good movie.

I haven't seen it now.

Okay.

This is just, just like you're together against the world.

Yeah, that's the, I mean, that's what close friendship feels like.

It's like ride or die.

Yeah.

Like that.

I guess it doesn't, it doesn't, it can be, it can span across multiple, you can have

multiple partners in that way.

Yeah, absolutely.

But I just don't see monogamy as like this, definitely not a default.

Yeah, I would actually, like honestly would probably see polyamory as a more natural default.

Yeah, I mean, it just depends on what you mean by default.

Like most of human history has been sort of a weird mix.

Like you get polygamy and monogamy or the kind of the main arrangements.

Sure.

But I mean, it's just like human nature.

Like I, yeah, people are attracted to other people and they want to, yeah, especially

in longer term relationships.

I, I tracked in my relationships, sorry, I tracked the amount of cheating over time in

a relationship.

Like how long have you been in this relationship and how have you cheated?

What's, what's the results of that?

Men cheat a lot, women too, but men cheat about 30% more than women do.

I also asked men and women to predict if they think their partner has cheated and people's

predictions were about the same.

So people roughly predicted that their male or female like spouse hadn't cheated about

the same rate, but men cheated much more than women.

So who, who was more correct in their prediction though?

So men were more correct in their prediction predicting women and women were thought, men

were more off.

Women thought men cheated much less than they actually did.

And but both of them were off, but like the male gap was significantly more.

So yeah, I mean, you're right.

When you say monogamy is not default, like I think you're like really getting at something

like human beings are just, especially in long-term relationships, difficult to only

want one person.

But to be fair, I think monogamy and commitment are very different.

I think you'd be incredibly, I haven't known so many very long-term super committed poly

couples that live lives that look very similar to the very romantic monogamous couples, like

children, houses, like 20 years.

And that works great for them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, there's so much to like open your mind to in these kinds of conversations, these

kinds of ideas, but I also like realize like some of the cake is baked.

Like I have some assumptions that are hard to break through for myself.

Like it's difficult for me to imagine a polyamorous relationship for me that would work.

But I don't have enough data.

I don't have a, like I have very little, but like at this point, it's like, I haven't

eaten pizza in like 20 years, because I know I just don't, there's a bunch of stuff.

I just eat low carb because it makes me feel good, but there's so many foods I haven't

explored.

It's just like, well, I know what I love.

So you explore every once in a while.

Yeah, and you kind of figure that out, but at the same time you're humbled by like even

talking to you or looking at your data, like with sexuality is a, is a fascinating topic

because it seems that we're very, like we were talking about very afraid of this topic.

Like to be really honest with ourselves about it, the whole like the academic research is

afraid of it, but it's so core to who we are as human beings.

I got to ask you about this.

I can't believe it took us long to get there, but one of your many fascinating services

on fetishes, you wrote a blog post about it, probably several because it's like a huge

day still in progress.

Yeah.

So the one I'm referring to is on popularity and tabooness of various fetishes.

So what are some interesting takeaways?

I got to pull up this graph because it's fricking epic.

Yes, this is a big graph and it has tabooness as one axis and popularity as the other.

Okay.

For people who are just listening on the X axis is tabooness.

Yeah.

Asked to rate how taboo society viewed the sexual interest and on the Y axis is percent

of people reporting interest log scale.

Oh boy.

All right, so just some examples on the low tabooness and high popularity.

There's a correlation here.

I think you said it's 0.69.

Yeah.

It's just not, it's just hilarious.

Is it still 0.69?

Are you tracking that?

I haven't looked since I did this, yeah.

So like the last taboo stuff is more likely to be popular and the more taboo stuff is

less likely to be popular.

And on the missionary position, fingering, vagina, low jobs, light spanking, cuddling.

Cuddling is more taboo than missionary.

I think people are conceiving like if you're like, I'm really sexually harassed by cuddling

specifically, then you're like, that's a little more weird than getting specifically

harassed by blowjobs.

You expect people to be harassed by blowjobs.

So this was like getting at like as a fetish versus like an activity.

Yeah.

As a specific, as a like a concrete sexual interest, like I'm specifically interested

in this thing.

And so those are thighs and lips, different body parts, jaw lines.

And then some of it is color based on more female preference versus male preference.

Like jaw lines is more female preference.

Being submissive is more female preference, light bondage, more, yeah, more female.

There's a lot of interesting ones.

There's so much.

Okay.

So the far side of that, I mean, it gets pretty dark, but even all along the way, like extreme

bondage being at 50, tabunas, pegging, pain, giving pain, sexual frustration, like I suppose

as a kink, and there's so many interesting ones like to me, like just that I haven't

even like considered.

Yeah.

I had to do so much research in the fetishes to compile the list.

And there's some surprising like options to you that you're like, okay, this is like

a fetish.

Yeah.

Well, more confusing was like what the fetishes are about, because like I didn't want to overlap

fetishes.

So I had to kind of look into them.

Yeah.

And I'm like, there's like such interesting manifestations of core drives, like if you're

really aroused by disgust, like maybe you're very into rolling around in dirt, but you're

not into rolling around with ice cream.

So I'm like, okay, I have to make those sort of two separate fetishes, you know.

And like I'm seeing like at the far end, rodents, like different types of incest branding.

So there's like pain and then sex with animals, I guess, dogs, horses, receiving oral sex from

an animal is high tabooness and pretty high popularity.

Yeah.

It's surprisingly high popularity.

I was really shocked by that one.

I went and triple checked that number because I'm like, no way this is about to people are

reporting interest.

Do you know which animal?

Is there?

No, I didn't specify.

I asked like, which animals are erotic?

And then I separately asked like, how erotic is it to receive oral sex from your preferred

animal?

This is so fascinating.

So I would like, can we just talk about the methodology of this?

This feels like deeply honest map of humanity in a way we don't usually map humanity.

Yeah.

Like, because it's so mean, like your fetishes are so meaningful to each individual person.

Yeah.

That's what I love about this work.

It's like, nobody cares about your someone's fetishes.

You never get to express them.

And if you have a more unusual fetish, people usually judge you.

So it's like this tiny little pocket of like the shame thing, but it's so cool to me that

like human brains could be oriented in such a way like woundfucking like somebody finds

that so erotic.

And that's so cool.

Yeah.

And then they probably, it should be explored like, how did that come to be?

You mentioned that we'd like to construct narratives that somehow was grounded in childhood,

but maybe it's genetic.

Maybe it has to do with, maybe you can actually form and unform that fetish very quickly.

I don't know.

This is one of the things that I'm researching.

So in the big survey that I'm doing, I asked so many questions about childhood.

All the ones that I think like, we have common theories about like, oh, are you abused?

Is it yelled at by a man or a woman?

Stuff like that.

Like, are you really sexually repressive?

You know, is it gender roles where you've expected to conform a whole bunch of stuff?

And then I asked, you know, obviously about like a massive amount of fetishes.

And my sample size right now is 500,000 people.

500,000 people.

Yeah.

It's massive.

And I have stayed for all of it.

And the result looks like this is not really correlated.

Nothing that I asked about in childhood, nothing correlates with fetish preference later in

life.

It does correlate with onset.

Lots of things that happen in childhood can like change like the age at which it triggers.

Yeah.

So many fascinating blog posts.

You had a blog post, I think, on the age of fetish onset.

And like you really nicely organized it by age, like reproduction as a fetish, I guess

pregnancy.

Yeah.

At age of 17, about 16.9, toys and like anal beads is 15.5.

Yeah.

One of the interesting things I found, I mean, this data set is so huge, it's taking me a

long time to go through it.

So this is like snippets from what I remember when I was glancing through the data.

So this part is not rigorous.

But I seem to get the impression that if you are, if a fetish occurs for you earlier, like

if you have much earlier onset, you're more likely to report being extremely interested

into it.

So later onset means you're going to be like less into the fetish.

But if it hits earlier.

But I wonder if it passes like, is there like faces?

Yeah.

I didn't measure old fetishes at all.

Like no longer, right?

You used to, but it is no longer there, interesting.

One interesting thing that I don't understand is that, that non cis people seem to have

more correlation between childhood experiences and fetishes.

So I was saying that there's no correlation between childhood experiences and fetishes.

This holds for cis people, but trans people, especially trans men, there's a correlation.

It doesn't mean they have absolutely higher rates of abuse or fetishes or anything.

But I'm just saying that like for them, there does actually seem to be some sort of connection

between childhood experiences and sexuality later in life.

And I don't understand why this plays to one group, but not the other.

I don't have a good theory for that.

So usually you try, like when you see something like that, you'll try to construct theory and

see if you can find, like you keep that theory in mind, like a hypothesis of why it would

be.

And then you ask further questions to try to elaborate.

So can you maybe talk about the methodology of how you got the 500,000, like what, like

how did this come to be?

Yeah.

This is, I might go out of way too much detail about this because I thought about this so

much.

Cause I'm like, the question is how do you get a lot of people to take a big survey?

The longer the survey is, the lower the response rate.

And I really wanted to do one big comprehensive survey so I could like check a whole bunch

of correlations with it, within it, cause it's more annoying and it's harder to get

a lot of people to retake similar surveys to each other at a time.

So I'm like, okay, I need to convince a very large number of people to take a lot of these

questions.

And even building the questions that was really hard because I'm like, okay, I need a comprehensive

amount of fetishes.

I can't ask everybody to answer for every single niche fetish.

So I'm like, do you like ball gags?

Do you like funnel gags?

Do you like wife shrew gags or whatever?

I'm like, you can't do that.

Nobody's going to finish that survey.

Can you define it?

Okay, fine.

I'm not going to ask questions.

What's a wife shrew, but okay.

I'm trying to refer to like, there's like a thing that like...

Different types of gags.

Different types.

Okay.

Yeah, different.

So I'm like, so what I need to do is I need to ask people a question, like, are you in

like a bondage?

And if you say yes, then then I'll go ask you all the bondage questions.

Got it.

Right.

But then this seems simple, but then it's just exploded because I'm like, how do I

categorize these fetishes?

There's like, if you're into splashing, which is like, you like sitting in cakes, you like

getting in mud, but basically like kind of messy sensory, like, is this a disgust thing?

Is it a humiliation thing?

Is it a sensory thing?

Like, which category, anyway.

So it took me like two months of just agonizing over each fetish because you don't want to

miss a fetish.

You don't want to like have a really important thing that you accidentally put in disgust

category when it actually belongs in the humiliation category.

You know?

Well, let me think about that.

Cause like you're still catching it, you're just miscategorizing it.

Right.

Cause if you're into splashing, and you're like, this is clearly a humiliation thing.

So you say, yes, I'm into humiliation stuff.

And then I don't ask you about splashing, then I'm missing a whole data set of people

because I've falsely categorized your question.

You're going to miss stuff.

You're just picking what's less and less important to miss.

Well, I'm trying to get people into the right question set.

Sure.

Cause like, I can't ask you all the questions.

I have to ask you a couple of overarching questions to know what specific questions to

ask you.

And so I have to, those overarching questions have to be really, really well calibrated

so that I can accurately feed you into the right sub part of the survey.

Awesome.

And so that was extremely difficult.

If I'm, when I'm dealing with, I think it was like 850 fetishes.

So I did a couple of things to spot check.

I like, I did a couple of questions where I asked, like in the detailed in the survey,

but like also the beginning of the survey, just to see like what cap percentage of people

I was capturing, but, and then, and then I scored the survey.

So if you take it, I had other people answer preliminary surveys where they gave me data

about how taboo the various fetishes were.

And then I use that data so that when you fill out the survey, it's extremely comprehensive

and you get data about exactly how taboo your interests are.

And then you get a score at the end.

And I give you an equivalent kinky character, which I also had people write a whole bunch

of fictional characters and some historic ones about like how kinky they were.

So then I matched the historic character, kinky character to your score.

So that makes it like more fun, like game-fies it a little bit and you could, like you can

brag about, like how people would share it with others.

And a lot of the characters were like goofy, like, like there's SpongeBob and like Hitler's

on there and you know, South Park characters.

What is, what is, what kink does Hitler have?

I think he's like, he's around Marilyn Monroe, which is like a slightly above average kinky

character.

Oh, sorry.

I thought there was like a two-dimensional space somehow.

So this is like a literally from zero to-

How kinky?

Yeah.

So Hitler's a bot as a Marilyn Monroe.

Who is the most, what's the character for like-

Willy Wonka.

Is the most kinky.

The most kinky, yeah.

And I think like maybe Captain America was the least kinky or something or Gandhi.

Meanwhile, but that's another conversation.

Oh boy.

Yeah.

So it went viral on TikTok basically because people were like, what, I got this insane

character and then the sample size exploded from 40,000 to 500,000.

Wow.

So like all it took, is that kind of incentive or did you like at first have to pay people

for the server?

Nope.

It was just that incentive.

And what about the demographic or the different people that took it?

Mostly younger.

So usually early 20s, predominantly female, like 70% female.

70% female.

I was just pretty like, I've raps out on TikTok demographics pretty well.

Oh, okay.

That's interesting.

Young people are probably better for this kind of survey because there's probably a culture

that's a little bit more honest about their sexuality.

Yeah.

Most likely.

I think people are incentivized to be honest when they're getting a true identity response

out of it.

If you're doing it for money, you don't care, but like if you are invested in the result,

you want to know what the truth of the answers are, then you actually.

It's possible that you also don't want to know the truth.

This is true.

But on average, hopefully, that doesn't, I mean, these are really difficult.

What is this some interesting little quirks that people should know about, about your

methodology that you had to kind of solve to try to get to a really good survey?

So one of you said is the categorization to make it more efficient.

Is there some for the analysis part?

Yeah.

So the graph that you were talking about is the binary.

So it's like, if somebody expressed even a little bit of interest, then it goes into

the graph.

80% of people expressed even a little bit of interest, so it's not representing degree

of interest.

It's not differentiating between them at all.

So it's possible that some fetishes have exactly the same amount of people, like are

at least a little bit into them, but one of them, it's very extreme interest, and the

other is like vague and not very intense.

So that's not reflected.

I also probably didn't represent the visual part right, like might not be intuitive, but.

So you chose a log scale, but it was kind of spreads things out to make it more clear.

Because the linear, it was just so clustered at the bottom, you couldn't really separate

it out.

So there's obviously like selection effects as possible that like the identity results

at the end impacted people's results a little bit, but the thing is like, I'm comparing it

to what exists, like what is the alternative?

And right now the research on this stuff is terrible.

So it's like, I'm not saying my research is perfect, but it's like, at least it's something,

like it's something that's pointing us maybe in a direction that we might be able to do

more research on.

And you're making the data available.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm doing it slowly because there's so, I ask about so many questions, it's like not

very anonymized.

So I'm really seeing the small sections of the data at a time.

Have you, have you published in like journals and stuff?

No, I haven't.

You have any interest in that or is your, your approach, I'm like, I haven't been conflicted

about it.

But it sounds cool because then I could be like, haha, I'm publishing a journal and then

people who are yelling about me who don't know anything about statistics on Twitter,

like then I can go like shove it in their face.

But then you're also giving in to the silly criticism, right?

Yeah.

Like I don't, like I want, I feel so passionate about extra science, like science that you

can just do.

Like I want to make science accessible.

Like anybody can just go look and learn about the basics of like doing a survey or figuring

out how to interpret information and doing, doing a published journal feels like I'm betraying

my cause a little bit.

That's often behind a paywall.

Yeah.

It's, it goes against the, I mean, I think you not publishing a journal is doing a big

public service.

Oh, I think it was the first time I've heard that.

Thank you.

Oh, like just coming from like on this topic, the elite, the elitism I see on the psychology

side with the journals and the academia, the positions and the institutions you come from

all of that, that goes against, I think that's more useful for math and computer science

and so on where there's like clear, like, but even then, even then code is code.

Data is data.

Yeah.

Like prestige shouldn't matter at all.

Maybe, maybe for like, like biological experiments, like virology or something like that.

It's good to be from a major lab that has a reputation for like going through all the

procedures.

Like, you know, you can trust, but here, like you're dealing with a giant mess of humanity.

Like it's beautiful to be transparent, to be raw, to be exploring it together with everybody.

Yeah.

It's really beautiful.

I think people like have a lot of incentive to doubt the results.

Like a lot of the research I'm doing is to like assist and trans people.

Like we don't have any data about transsexuality, like not very good at least.

And I'm really curious.

I don't really have an agenda about it.

I think like being trans is cool if you want to be trans do it.

And like I have some skepticism about like gender theory, but like it doesn't come down

to impact like the way I think trans people should be treated, which I think is like,

treat them, you know, be fucking nice and human about it.

I don't know.

But when I'm talking about the thing, like my conclusions are that like transsexuality

is really unique.

It's not like cis or cis women are manned sexuality at all.

And to me, this is super cool.

But like a lot of people, this is very politicized right now.

Like the data into like transsexual preferences, like it's so loaded, which is really sad because

I am very accepting of weird sexuality.

Like if you're into a weird thing, I'm like, good for you.

This is super cool.

Like let's figure out how to make it so that you can explore the thing you're into without

any stigma.

But because there's so much stigma that like if you find it one demographic isn't a weirder

sex stuff than the other, like it's hard to present that in a way that people don't weaponize.

So it's been, it's been really politically touchy subject here.

Yeah.

But you do it in a way that's not, it's not feel like it has an agenda, right?

You're just exploring.

Yeah.

I feel pretty open to what I'm going to find.

Like I often have no idea what the data is going to tell me and I'm like, I precommit

like, okay, I could say A, B or C and I'm like down to publish any of those findings.

So you've put together an ask whole cart deck, a lot of awesome questions to ask at a party

or anywhere.

Honestly, including on the podcast, let me ask you one from, from, from that deck is

sex really about power.

So what's the role of power dynamics in sex?

But everything you understand, like in, from the survey in terms of what people are turned

on by, you've talked about like the preferences that women versus men have for like submissiveness

and dominance.

And we've already talked about it a little bit, but like it's expressed more strongly.

I already forget the results, but I feel like women have more preference to be submissive.

Yeah.

This is one of the things that got me into researching fetishes to begin with, because

I think I came across some data, I did like a brief survey where roughly around 60% of

women report being submissive and 40% of men report being dominant.

And this was really fascinating to me.

I'm like, well, why is there this gap?

Like why, why do we not?

Because I guess I have some priors that maybe this is an evolutionary thing, like the submission

dominant, like strong men and you know, like women would be like, oh, hot, hot man, you

know, the men are like ravaging and stuff from like shouldn't this be in our genes, but,

but there's a gap.

What's the gap?

The gap is the dominant submissive gap.

More women are submissive than there are dominant men.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

It's a pretty significant gap.

And this is held up like it depends on what you're testing.

I've tested a bunch of things.

This is part of why I did this big survey.

But it depends against, again, on like what kind of dominance you're measuring, but overall,

it's a roughly 40 to 60%.

So when you say there's not many dominant men, the meaning like they express like a desire

to be dominant in the relationship?

Yeah.

Or like in sexually.

Sexually.

Sexually.

In bed.

So like if I ask questions, like how much do you like being dominant in bed?

Like men are less likely to answer strong yes to that question.

But if I ask, are you likely to be submissive?

Like women are very much yes.

Really?

And that's expressive?

Like that represents truth?

My guess is...

What's wrong with men?

So this is, I think there's some reflection on like FetLife.

So FetLife is this website where people like sign up and connect based on their fetishes.

And this is like, you can kind of see it picked up in the forum posts about like how like

dominant men are, you know, are getting laid so much and, you know, submissives are always

looking for a dominant.

Like there's, it's an unequal market.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

This is great news.

I didn't know this.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

So...

What does it reflect about modern society?

Is it like, is that, because you know, there's these trends about like decreased masculinity

or that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

So...

Does that reflect, is that similar?

I'm trying not to hold on to one theory because I'm not sure.

One is possible like decreasing testosterone levels.

Testosterone seems to be, I have a little bit of other research, but I'm still checking

it out.

It seems to indicate that higher testosterone, you're more likely to be dominant.

So if we're seeing decreased testosterone levels across society, we should be seeing

a greater gap.

This is so fascinating.

Once again, this is like a super interesting way to look at humanity because it is such

an important part of humanity.

And so like how many people are doing large scale research like this?

I feel like you're like at the top of the world, you're like world class at the top

of the world doing research on this stuff.

Yeah.

I think I might have the biggest, most comprehensive fetish data set in the world right now.

That's epic.

Thank you.

I'm happy about it.

I'm very proud.

Yeah.

And it's probably growing, but it's also enabling you to establish a name, like a reputation

to where people can go to you to like trust you more and more, to do longer surveys perhaps.

Yeah, maybe.

I think the data analysis afterwards is very different from like the survey design itself.

I'm still very amateur at the data analysis.

Yeah, but you can always catch up on that.

Yeah.

The data analysis does enable you to, does teach you how to ask better questions in order

to understand.

Yes.

It goes back and forth.

Like as I'm looking at the data, it informs the way I want to phrase questions the next

time.

So women are more, at least in private, able to say that they would like to be submissive.

And men even in private are not disproportionately saying they're not willing to be dominant.

Yeah.

So it's possible.

What the fuck?

If this is caused by decreasing testosterone levels, and this means that we're probably

having less satisfying sex overall, we're becoming less and less sexually compatible

as time goes on.

To be fair, I'm not sure that it is connected to testosterone levels.

It's possible that this is just like a genetic thing.

The gay uncle theory, the idea is like maybe gay people evolved to be sort of taking themselves

out of the gene pool to be assistance, and it's possible that there's certain percentage

of men sort of quote unquote, evolved to be submissive, to take themselves out of sexual

competition, and to instead be like the monkeys revolving at the edge of the pack.

It's unclear.

Oh, it's a method of survival.

So you stay out of the competition?

Yeah.

And I'm like a little suss about these kinds of evo-psych theories.

So I'm not, I'm just saying it because it's like one thing.

There's different ideas that are possible.

Yeah.

Okay.

So yeah.

I'm not saying that it's definitely testosterone.

There's other things.

It's also possible that it's culture.

People are definitely going to bring that up.

Based on my survey, though, it doesn't seem to be any evidence of that.

Like I asked about like how much pressure was put on you to be, you know, agent-y in

your childhood.

Like a lot of questions around this kind of thing and no correlation at all to dominance.

Well, related to sexuality, I'm very uncomfortable right now, but nevertheless, plow forward.

In a dominant fashion.

The blog post titled Rape Spectrum Survey Results.

What are the key takeaways from that survey?

So I did the survey when I had a friend be like, hey, I had this confusing sexual experience.

Was it rape?

Like somebody kind of pressured her and she eventually stopped saying it or something.

I was like, that's a great question.

Like I don't know how people would consider this.

And so I put a whole bunch of different gray scenarios into a survey and then asked people

to rate how rapey they thought that scenario was.

So you actually like little narratives that they get to rate.

Like, you know, this person is on a date with this person, they get drunk and the other

person is not drunk.

I try to keep gender neutral names for all of them.

And then you reduce them into a more concise description of the situation.

Yeah.

Like in this visualization, so you have this rape spectrum that's a result where on top

are things that are less likely to be considered rape by the people that took the survey and

the bottom more likely, the, the likeliest is a stranger forcibly assault someone who

screams and fights the entire time that gets a hundred.

What do we make of something that's not zero?

It's like a 12 is what?

What is that?

How are we supposed to interpret a 12 out of a hundred on the rate?

Extremely low.

Okay.

That's like not zero, but it's just very close to it.

Having sex with an enthusiastic sex worker.

Yeah.

Is it 12?

That's the lowest one.

And there's a few, I'll just mention a few that are lower, like at that level, have sex

to make a partner happy in a relationship, lying about wealth hobbies in order to get

laid, person with Down syndrome eagerly has sex within your typical, not revealing being

transgender until after sex and so on.

I think you mentioned that there's some, like that not revealing being transgender until

after sex, there's some differences amongst what men and women or something like that.

I think that's the one that men found more offensive than women.

I'm trying to, I wrote it a while ago.

I mean, this is nuanced and difficult, right?

Because I think in a lot of public discourse, the word rape is pretty binary.

Yeah.

It's like either is or is not rape.

And so you had a friend where it was like, this felt rapey.

Yeah.

She's like confused about how to interpret it.

And I think that people look to the terms to know how to feel about something.

Yeah.

Like, have you ever like been through an experience?

You're like, that was weird.

And then you tell it to somebody else and they're like, oh my God, you were assaulted.

And then it totally recontextualizes the thing that you've experienced.

And I think that this is clunky with the word rape because either you were raped or you're

not.

You either like have this entire context like a thrust upon you or you don't.

And we're really not nuanced about it at all.

And so I would really like to have some sort of like, oh, that was like a 30% rape you

just endured.

Yeah.

And I mean, there's probably other dimensions about how traumatic it is, how difficult it

is to recover from all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, like people, it's a dangerous thing to assign a word to an experience, like even

or to a relationship, like saying a toxic relationship that can completely destroy your

perception of that relationship.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I remember this was the case with my childhood.

Like I talked about being very abusive, but I've talked about how like there was a good

amount of meaning there so that I didn't process it as abusive at the time.

And I remember after I got out of that house in that culture, people would tell me, oh,

your childhood was really abusive.

And I was really confused by that because it's a total recontextualization of that narrative.

It's like the things that I went through were not good and virtuous and had meaning, but

rather those were like the results of parents who didn't like love you enough or something.

And even though the concrete things that happened to me did not change, like no facts

shifted.

The fact that like the interpretation of the facts shifted caused me quite a bit of distress

for a long time.

I was like, oh my God, I'm a traumatized, like abused person.

Like I went through an abuse of childhood and it was really hard for me, made it worse.

Like it's crazy the power that terms have.

I think we didn't talk about this, but how did you begin to overcome the trauma of your

childhood?

You mentioned LSD, so drugs are part of it.

Yeah.

Like what was them just a mental journey of that?

I was doing LSD quite a lot when I was 21, 22.

What's it like?

By the way, I've never done LSD, what's it?

It's very difficult to describe because it's like it changes sort of aspects about your

environment that are invisible to you because they're so stable.

Is it like if you can compare it to like psilocybin, is it very different?

Oh yeah.

It's like similar.

I forgot that you did shrooms.

Yeah.

Okay.

That you probably know.

You know, like the kind of shift that you have from cyber to shrooms is roughly similar.

It's like more clear, I think.

Shrooms is more like embodied, but LSD is much more intellectual for me.

It strikes different people differently.

I prefer shrooms a lot.

I'm sorry, LSD.

I prefer LSD a lot.

Why is it not popularly, like there seems to be a negative connotation to LSD because

like it seems to potentially have like a destructive effect.

Like maybe dose is just more difficult to get right or something like that.

Does this exactly?

So actually a long time ago I did a survey on shrooms versus LSD, so I asked people and

people had slightly stronger experiences on LSD overall, I remember, but rated the experiences

about is equally good.

I think people like shrooms because it feels more natural, quote unquote, but I think if

you like fed somebody a shroom and like actually had the LSD molecule in it, they would think

it felt very natural.

But that's beside the point.

I think people would get kind of incoherent on LSD in a way that feels really alienating.

Like I consider my LSD use very heavy to be one of the best decisions I ever made in my

life, but I definitely was incoherent for a lot of it.

Like talking about like we're all one, consciousness, everything is love, man.

Why is that incoherent?

So I think it's not incoherent, but like if you go around saying everything is love,

people are like this guy's kind of blasted out of his mind.

This podcast is basically your LSD for a bunch of episodes.

Yeah, I get this for sure.

Well, it's not just about love, but it's about like talking in that way about reality, about

the world.

Yeah, sure.

It's like overfitting.

Like the narratives that you make about the world become really vivid.

And so you pattern match just really aggressively.

Like everything is connected and you come up with these explanations for things.

And I think I was very fortunate.

So I like this theory about psychedelics where you either like belief construct or you don't.

So you take psychedelics and it sort of like burns away a lot of your belief structure.

And sometimes this happens and then you're like, I need to like invent something to fill

in the gaps.

So you're like, okay, I think that maybe time is an illusion.

So I must now believe that like we're actually in a time loop or like time travel is possible.

So you experience time differently and then you come up with a different belief about

time.

Whereas other people don't do this belief construction at all.

Like you experience time differently and you sort of let yourself not have a belief.

You're not like, okay, and you're not developing any beliefs about time in its absence.

You're just simply experiencing the absence of the concept of time.

And so I don't have a lot of data to back this up in my anecdotal experience because

I've tripped side a lot of people.

People either tend to believe construct or they don't.

And people who do not believe construct seem to get more out of their LSD trips.

So if you can let a belief go without building anything in its absence, it's much more beneficial

for you.

And I think I just for some reason happen to have some brain that's constructed where

I don't get a belief construction at all.

So that's really interesting that belief construction is negative.

What isn't necessarily negative, can you elaborate that a little bit?

I mean, belief construction in a way that's not like playing with frames, but rather committing

to a different frame.

So I like being able to play with ideas and be like, let's look at it this way or that

way.

That's awesome.

But if you're like, okay, you know what, I took LSD and now I absolutely believe the

cops are outside.

And you're like, dude, no, you just like, you can't shift out of that, right?

Your brain needs to fill in the gap.

You're not allowed to have a gap.

So you're not allowed to be flexible.

And again, I don't think this is like a personal failing.

I think this is like literally probably genetic or like physical thing that's causing this.

But do you think there's possible beliefs that are like enlightening that you can stick

to like find a frame that like, I guess, if you're don't believe constructing, you're

escaping your previous beliefs, aren't you doing like just some, you're picking up a

bigger frame?

Yeah.

I mean, you're taking your beliefs as object as opposed to being subject to them.

Got it.

Got it.

Got it.

Got it.

I think people, there's two categories that experience LSD in different ways.

Yeah.

And you're one of those that are able to just let go.

Yeah.

I just think I had a good reaction.

And I think a lot of maybe the negative stereotype of LSD comes from people who are belief constructing

or carry the belief constructing off of the LSD trip.

So you take LSD and you're like, ah, I'm believing these insane things and people from the outside

see that and they're like, oh my God, this person took LSD and became stupid.

Yeah.

It's very scary.

What's frame control?

Because that has been at the core of your trauma, at the core of your upbringing.

What's frame control?

And also, sorry, frame control in general, because that's part of human interaction.

Yeah.

Frame control is like a way of manipulating somebody else that is non-obvious.

So there's a negative connotation to that usually?

Yeah.

I mean, I think maybe I chose the term kind of poorly because I think to some degree

people are always a little bit manipulating each other.

But I think it's generally obvious, for example, if I disagree with you, I want you to believe

what I believe.

Yeah.

But this is an obvious thing that is visible between, it's like an object on the table.

It's like, here's the box where I want you to believe what you want to see.

The disagreement box.

Yeah.

So we're under a shared context where we understand that we're trying to move each other.

This is chill to me.

I think this is cool.

Yeah.

We just all the time and it's important.

But frame control is the kind of thing where you are trying carefully to obscure the existence

of that box.

You're like, oh, the thing that I'm doing, I'm using tactics to try to influence what

your reality is without us being both aware that this is what I'm doing.

Yeah.

I've been assuming you're doing that the whole time.

No.

Oh my God.

I have to figure out how to read your facial expressions.

I'm still learning.

There's none.

There's none.

You don't have any?

I'm not even like a chat GBT.

I'm like GBT1 with my facial expressions.

It's kind of off.

Business doesn't seem to match emotions, but it's kind of intelligent seemingly, but definitely

not conscious.

Anyway, so negative connotation, manipulating, not being honest about the actual intentions

of how you'd like to control the conversation.

I think there might be a naive version of interpreting this where you're just like,

oh, I'm trying to subtly get you to believe, oh, do you really think that's bad though?

But this is not quite what I mean.

I mean, there's a couple of concrete things that are signs of frame control, like one

of them is pushing the painful update button, which is this thing where it's like, hey,

if you learn this, it's going to be really painful.

The truth is painful.

And if you're realizing this thing about yourself, it's going to hurt.

And this is a sign that you're heading in the right direction.

So if you frame all pain as a sign of virtue, then this means that pain that's resulting

as damage is something you're going to ignore.

So it's like this, it's a common like cults, right?

This is for your own good.

Oh, you know, you've faced of brave truth about yourself that you're like not quite

as wise as I am.

When really your brain might be trying to tell you protected things, or like another

one is like finger trap beliefs, where the belief is constructed in such a way that doubting

it lends proof to the belief.

So very common example is like Satan, like the Christians are like, you know, Satan is

going to try to make you doubt him, the existence of, he's going to so doubt, like maybe he's

not actually real.

And so if you believe in Satan, and then you're like, okay, now I'm having doubts, like maybe

he isn't real.

This is like, oh, this is exactly what I was taught to expect.

Like I am doubting this belief because I was told, because like this is what Satan does

and it's taken this evidence for it.

So like the attempt to move away from the belief like rebounds on you and like causes

you to be more embedded inside of the belief.

So it's like techniques like these, like very subtle things where like being inside of this

system sort of just self reinforces the system is what I consider to be frame control.

And have you met people that are really good at this kind of frame control?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Definitely.

So like you're saying that your father was like that?

Yeah.

To be fair, I'm not sure he was good at it because I was a kid.

Right.

I think like he's probably not very good at it actually, but when you're a child being

raised in a house where he works from home and you're homeschooled, it's just kind of

what's going to happen.

And to be fair, I do think that like strong frame control is quite rare.

I don't think, most people are kind of doing something like this, but not nearly to the

degree that makes, gives me the ick.

Yeah.

I've met maybe like five or six people, I think who I've really don't like because

of those very subtle things that they're doing.

Well, I think also I'm starting to kind of understand that there is people who are narcissists

and sociopaths and psychopaths out there and I'm not even sure of people like that because

I think they get good at frame control, but I don't know if they're aware they're doing

it.

Oh, yeah.

Which makes me also nervous about myself, like, am I doing frame control?

Yeah, that's one of the big things is like, like typically people, you can't think about

incentive.

Like you can't think about, oh, is this person trying to do it or not?

Yeah.

That's like not the quite, not the way.

You have to look at one of the effects.

Because you're programmatically looking at the effects.

And then you also have to do that with yourself when you have interactions with others.

It's like very much like, how much space are you making for the other person's reality

here?

Like, are you giving power to the other person?

Because a big aspect of frame controls, you're carefully rerouting the power to yourself.

You're like, I am the person who knows.

Like you're having pain in your beliefs because you're updating towards the things that I

believe.

Like it's just like a gravity well.

But if you're setting up the gravity well of your interactions such that you're making

sure you're giving the other person power over the shared reality you inhabit, it's

a really good sign that you're not doing frame control.

If you're making room for them, okay, unless we're talking about embed, then it's all

general relativity from there and black holes and stuff.

Frame control.

Bed frame control.

Bed frame control.

It took me a long time to get a bed frame, just I'm saying.

Wow.

But you wear a suit though.

Yeah.

So frame control in the streets, no frame in the sheets.

I don't know.

I don't know what the funny thing is to say there, but there you have it.

So the LSD helped you escape the frame of, can you elaborate what was the frame that

was holding you back from like the frame constructed by your childhood experience that was holding

you back as an intellectual, as a thinker, as a free being in this world?

I was really fucked up.

After I left home and I absorbed the external narrative that I had been abused, which technically

is true.

I'm not saying I wasn't, but I absorbed this narrative and I just remember how this burning

coals in my chest at all times.

If I had to call out of my factory work when Father's Day happened because I was spending

the whole day sobbing because everybody's talking about their fathers, I was really

messed up.

And it's because I held this important thing, this idea, this frame, that I had been deeply

wronged.

There was a correct way of being and the world had violated that.

Something should not have happened.

My father should have loved me.

And it was this sheering in the nature of reality and that was really agonizing to have.

And LSD really messes with frames a lot.

It takes what you think is normal and really screws with it.

And I did an LSD several times before, but there's one LSD trip where I went through

my entire childhood in my head because LSD really makes your memories quite vivid.

Anything you visualize, it's like you're in it.

And so I just went and very carefully, deliberately went and remembered every single memory that

I could have that was really painful for me.

The times that I lost friends and all the things I valued in being broken because my

parents, especially my dad, would refer to breaking me explicitly.

We're going to break your will.

And so all these times where they had successfully broken my will over and over, it was horrible.

I was just sobbing, tears streaming down my face.

And then I worked through my whole childhood, I got to the end and I'm going to tear up

because I've never talked about this.

The sensation of being free from that for the first time is so incredible.

I remember being outside of my house and being able to go where I wanted and think

what I wanted and it was just so blissful.

And I was soaked in this gratitude on this trip, just vibrating with complete joy for

everything.

I was just looking around like I could touch anything.

I could cry if I wanted to.

I wasn't allowed to cry.

I was going to be depressed.

I got depressed as a child and my parents were like, if you keep being depressed, we're

going to force you to scrub the whole house.

Just the ability to have a feeling was so thrilling.

And I was so grateful for this.

I was like, I would do anything to give this experience to someone else.

I would do anything, even if it was like pulling them through what I went through.

And then with that realization, I was like, oh, it was worth it.

The thing that I went through was worth it for this.

I would do it again to be able to have this deep gratitude for what I have now.

And then that shifted the meaning frame because before the meaning had been like something

had sheared, something that shouldn't have happened, but now it's like the exact right

thing had happened.

So it's almost a gift.

Yeah.

I was like, ah, I would not give up my childhood.

I would do it again.

And I believe that to this day.

For the moment of discovering that freedom.

Yeah.

Because like everything now, my whole life is in contrast to that.

And it's awesome.

It's fucking great.

I'm really thrilled about it.

Do you, is there a part of you that hates your father still?

Kind of.

Like I don't want a relationship with anymore.

After that, there was some forgiveness.

Like I had this burning, I would have nightmares about him killing me or something.

And after that, it kind of stopped.

Like the fire in my chest went away permanently after that trip.

It was so fast.

It was like, before I was fucked up after that trip, I woke up the next day and I was

clean.

Wow.

It was really severe.

And I definitely don't want to be around him still.

Like he still like triggers the fear in my body, but I don't have that hang up anymore.

I'm like kind of, I'm over it.

Like I've let go.

He's his own person.

Like ultimately he didn't get to decide who he was in the same way that I didn't get

to decide who I was.

So that's almost like a kind of, at least intellectual, like forgiveness you have for

him.

Yeah.

And that, so that, that trip just took you through your whole, were you alone by the

way?

When you're doing the trip?

I had roommates, but the trip was mostly alone.

I had somebody else who was like sitting in the room, but they weren't interacting with

me.

So you're sitting there experiencing all of this.

What's the timeline?

Like how long does it take to go through your whole childhood?

I don't remember.

My time's really messed up when you, when you do that.

I was listening to the soundtrack of the fountain, which is excellent.

Yeah.

I listened to that a lot when I did LSD.

I know it was probably just a couple of hours.

That's amazing.

I mean, it's like, it would be, it's just like a vivid experience of your childhood moment

by moment, trauma by trauma.

And it's good to experience it purely.

Like it just is what it is.

It's just is grief.

Like it is loss and you just are in it without having to make it be anything.

And it's so interesting that you can, I mean, work through that.

So for a lot of us, for a lot of human beings, like childhood is full of those kind of mini

traumas, big or small and like working through that, it feels like what a lot of life is

about is trying to work through that.

And it feels like you have to kind of relive it.

I guess that's what therapy is about in part, be able to vocalize it.

Yeah.

And this is why I feel really confused about the concept of trauma.

Like people use this word so much, like, are you traumatized?

And I understand why, like, this is why I feel confused about it.

But part of me is like, I wonder if by using that term, we're creating the trauma in people.

They were using the frame where the thing that happened to you was not supposed to happen.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe there needs to be a different frame.

No, I agree with you, I just, I've made friends with and talked to this guy named Paul Conti

and he wrote a book on trauma.

He's an incredible, brilliant psychiatrist.

Yeah, he's probably agrees with you.

Oh, that's cool.

I should read it.

Yeah, you should.

Maybe even talk to him.

He's a fascinating human being.

I'd be interested in the, a psychiatrist perspective is really interesting because it's a, you've

been doing kind of an in-person survey because you've done so many patients.

Like, he's, like, just talking to him is fascinating because, like, if I describe my experience

or somebody else's experience, I could see his brain mapping it in interesting ways to

the tens of thousands of, of, like, data points he has in his head.

And it's like, of course, that's what doctors do, but it's cool as the doctor is basically

the doctor of the mind.

And to have like an actual, like, qualitative data.

And be able to, I mean, that's where the poetic stuff comes in.

Ultimately, as a psychiatrist, you're exploring the human mind with a bit of a sort of romantic

element.

Yeah.

You can't be really systematic about it, but it does seem like frame or not, be able

to just talk through the experiences you had is really powerful.

What about it is appealing?

Is it just, like, being able to revisit it with new eyes?

No, I don't know.

Exactly.

It just seems to work for people.

I don't know if it's appealing.

It just seems like almost acknowledging to yourself the things happen.

Like I've said, I think I've said this before, my brother, who I love very much, tried to

set me on fire a few times.

And I think, to me, it's funny, but I wonder if I didn't talk about it, like, if that would

be traumatic, maybe like talking and laughing about it, because it was traumatic to me at

the time.

I see.

I was like, I love you.

Why are you setting me on fire?

What do you do when they're like, yeah, because I was like, I was whatever, it's what boys

do.

Like, they're crazy.

It makes total sense.

It was probably funny from his perspective.

But yeah, I wonder, I want to bring that to the surface of that, that helps.

And maybe LSD allows you to, or different drugs, depending on the person, allows you

to more vividly bring it to the surface.

And then, depending on your genetics, be able to find a better frame.

That's fascinating.

Human mind is freaking fascinating.

All right.

What's romantic to you, by the way?

I'm not a big romance person.

What is?

So you're not like, so to you, romantic is like objective analysis of the interactions

between humans.

A little bit.

Like, I do find kind of the survey process that I did to be romantic.

When I, the guy that I asked out who I'm still dating, I was like, hey, you squirted how

my survey, you want to like, go eat food or something?

And his response was like, you want to try doing three days in an Airbnb as our first

date?

And I was like, yeah.

And that was romantic.

Like the bold leap into a really intense date.

I think you mentioned, I think you mentioned something also, it must have been a tweet

or something like that, where if you, if people want you to show up to a thing, give like

the time, the location, the dress code, and not no pressure for you to be there, but like,

show up if you want.

That was your specification.

That's a great memory.

Yeah.

And then I think you said that you did that for like, some castle in south of France.

I did, yeah.

I was in my early twenties, people, my friends at home were taking prediction markets on

whether or not I was going to get abducted and killed.

Yeah.

What was that like?

I mean, what, you've traveled quite a bit.

Like do you take these giant risks?

What's with that?

I think I used to more when I was younger with the traveling.

I think I'm a little traveled out now, but like my first one, I moved out of Idaho for

the first time.

I moved to Australia.

Just kind of yeeted myself across the globe.

Which verb did you just use?

A yeet, it's like yeet to yacht, yatted, yeet.

So do people, is this like slang?

Is this like urban dictionary or is this actual or is this Webster?

Yeah.

You have to like feel another word.

Like if you take a thing and you just like curl it really hard, it does not feel like

a yeet motion.

Okay.

So you yeeted.

So aggressive.

So across the globe, you didn't even stop in, I don't know.

Just hurled myself.

Yeah.

Literally along the way.

That's kept yeeting myself in various places.

Yeah.

And so at one point I was like, okay, keep it and somebody sent me a long message being

like, you should come to, I don't know, I'm hosting a castle.

It's some people that I met, I'm like, I have no idea who you are, but I just bought a plane

ticket.

I just went.

And it was life-changing.

I ended up dating that guy for years and he changed my life quite a bit because he like

was very agent-y in the world.

And before that, I wasn't agent-y.

Agent-y like, so it sounds like you were, and don't you have to express agent-y when

you're yeeting yourself across the world?

Yeah, but only a little bit.

Like in the same way you express agent-y when you eat LSD, like the only thing you actually

do in eating LSD is like put the tab in your mouth and then you just kind of scream the

whole way after that.

But there are a lot of other things, like I didn't feel powerful enough to like go make

events happen or anything.

And it was this guy, he had a lot of agency in the sense that he would just sort of create

realities through the people around him, be like, okay, we're going to do this startup

or we're going to throw this incredible event.

Like let's just do it.

And it would somehow happen and it was really cool to see that.

And so that one thing led to another and it was one of the biggest impacts on my life

I think.

Yeah.

That's pretty bold.

I would say it's pretty romantic.

South of France.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was in a little castle.

It was in the winter.

So we were all closed up by the fire.

I'm jumping around here.

Twitter poll.

Have you ever hitchhiked?

No, you posted this Twitter poll.

That was a big list of Twitter polls.

Why did you pick the hitchhiking one?

I don't know because it's relevant to traveling.

Oh, I see.

I don't like that one.

That's romantic too, right?

I'm actually terrified of hitchhiking, but I have done it a little bit.

Oh, so it's terrifying because I don't imagine too.

So you're terrified of what?

Oh, so you are terrified of the...

Interacting with strangers.

That's terrifying.

Yeah.

So you go to South of France.

Yeah.

But that was like a cohesive thing.

I don't know.

It made sense.

There's times where you're allowed to be weird and times where you're not.

If you're...

Who's allowing you?

Yeah.

It's some vague eagerness of society.

I'm not sure.

Okay.

But some people are like, hey, we think you're cool.

Come to this party.

You're like, all right, I'm allowed to come to this party and be really weird.

But if you're being picked up by a hitchhiker, they're going to want to make small talk and

you can't be weird or they're going to kick you out.

I kind of think, because Valentine's Day is coming up, I kind of think it's doing something

crazy.

South of France sounds nice.

You got to go on a crazy romantic date with a woman.

You don't know at all.

Yeah.

I think I'm going to tweet something and just like, how do I select randomly, basically?

How do you select totally randomly?

Not people from your audience?

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

Nope.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

Like sometimes it's nice to drop a little like chaos into a thing, right?

What's your chaos survey, by the way?

Like you mentioned that earlier, I kind of saw it.

I don't, yeah.

That's one of like the sort of artistic attempts at a survey.

Cause, you know, like, at least from what I understand, the big five and the way

that they used to do IQ tests I've heard is that they do factor analysis, you know,

where they ask a whole bunch of questions and then they run calculations on the

data to like sort of group it by organic clusters.

So like with the big five, it's like people who say, Oh, I like to be at parties.

They also tend to say yes to the questions.

Like I like being the center of attention.

And so you notice that like there's a cluster of ways that people are answering

the question and then you can sort of pull out an organic spectrum.

And so I was like, okay, we've done that a whole bunch with things like personality

or like romantic stuff.

Like I did it with the rape spectrum survey, but like what happens if you apply

that method to a completely unselected group of questions?

Just like no random chaotic, no thing whatsoever.

Like what happens if you ask all possible questions, what natural things

evolve out of that natural spectrums?

So I had other people submit questions for a very large survey

and I took the first, I think, 1100 and barely filtered them at all.

And then I just had a whole bunch of people answer them.

Can you give like a hint to what it looks like?

Like what, like how crazy did the question get?

I mean, a lot of them were standard, but somebody was like, if Bay as a

above like did something in 1512 to like turn the world over, would you,

would you like it?

I don't know.

I say it was really just insane questions.

There's a couple of those.

A lot of like, would you fuck Aila ones?

But I don't know.

It was all across the spectrum.

A lot of would you fuck Aila?

Yeah.

I had to.

Oh, a lot of the same question.

Yeah.

Ones.

Okay.

I got you.

Yeah.

So it's really all, it was like normal personal habits.

It was, you know, romantic preferences or political preferences, personality stuff,

like random opinions about media.

Okay.

That's interesting.

I'd love to see those actual questions, but because your audience is probably

really super interesting minds.

Okay.

You mentioned body count.

You said you can answer that one easily.

Do you share your body count?

Do you know your body count?

Do you know, is there a spreadsheet?

There's spreadsheet.

Yes.

Is it Google Sheets?

Is it Excel?

It's Google Sheets.

Yeah.

Okay.

Have you run like, is there, you don't have to share the, the, the contents,

but is there like data on each?

So I track paid clients and free sex separately.

And I track different things on either of them.

Like with clients, I track like positions we used and who had an orgasm.

And with personal people, I just track basically like age, city, you know, name.

And I, I've had things like 42 people, I think for free.

So it's, I'm sharing this because like I want people to calibrate.

Like it's not like huge.

It's not like tiny.

One of the people I've recently talked to, Mel, Destiny's, Steven's wife is a

huge fan of yours.

She was actually really excited to get to talk to you.

But she, I think she said her body count is more than 42.

I think she said 60, something like this.

And so it's interesting because she was like saying, like, she loves like looking

at your, at your work, talking to you, because you have similar perspectives on

the world and it's really refreshing.

It's liberating.

Wow.

It's really sweet.

It's kind of interesting.

So what is there like an optimal body count?

Like if you were to map, I wonder, yeah, what have you found out about body

count and doing?

Have you actually done surveys on body count?

Like on how many people?

I actually have collected that information on my last survey.

I just haven't looked at it yet.

There's just so many things to look at, so I haven't, but I think if I'm

sleeping with a guy and he's had sex with more than 120 people, then I start

to get a little bit wary.

Why 120 is opposed to 100?

I don't know.

I just like kind of skimmed through the numbers in my head and picked one that

felt right.

Just now.

Yeah.

120.

Ish.

I think that's when I'm starting like.

Ish, so you're flexible.

Yeah, I'm flexible, very.

Um, but 200 is a hard line for sure.

Well, let's see, you know, we have to.

It depends.

The factors.

Cause like there's a level of body count at which you start to wonder if how

much like accidental misrepresentation a guy is doing to you.

Oh, like if you're saying 200, that might be dishonest.

No, like if he's had sex with 200 girls, this means that he's had a lot

of casual sex and not a lot of like, long-term sex.

Um, and not a lot of like, long-term relationships, assuming that he's,

you know, hasn't been super poly.

Yeah.

And this usually means that there has to be some sort of, um, like indication

that he cares about the girl more than he actually does.

Like he, he's like leading you on basically.

Um, and so I'm not saying this is necessarily the case.

I'm saying like at a certain level of number, I start to become, I start to

wonder if this is what's happening.

Is there like, from your understanding of it, is there a different perception

between men and women?

Like if you look at the high body count for a woman versus a high body

count for a man, like how society views it.

Oh yeah.

People are way more judgmental of women.

Uh, I haven't experienced this personally in my circles because I'm in

very sex-friendly circles.

Like I'm in orgy circles where everybody like dates the same women and they're

like, whoa, good job.

Uh, but yeah, the people are much more, like people always tell me online,

like you're not going to be able to find a husband because you have sex

with too many people.

Okay.

It's very common, which I don't think.

I mean, like men are also perceived negatively if you have high body count,

but I think, I don't think it's negatively in the same way.

Yeah.

Do you think it's unethical to lie about in your body count?

Yes.

So all lying is unethical.

Yeah.

I'm not a big fan of lying in general.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Body counts is an interesting one.

It's so silly to take that, to care about that.

But still we do.

Yeah.

Jealousy is silly, but still we get jealous.

Is that weird?

I mean, it's like, the thing is like, I don't like viewing emotions as like irrational,

even if they are, it's like emotions are always there for a reason.

And people don't like high body counts for a reason too.

It's just fine and valid.

Yeah, it also is like, yeah, I don't know what I make of just the past of like time.

You know, like, like each human is a collection of experiences and you don't know most of

those experiences and all of a sudden you meet this bag of experiences.

And like, what are you supposed to do with both of your like training data?

Are you supposed to like, like what?

Like, I don't know if we, like part of me wants to not actually ever talk about it to care at all.

Like, why does it matter?

Cause it's only like the futures that matters.

And yet the past also matters a lot potentially, but maybe not really.

Cause you're, you're, you're somehow like constructed from that past, but you're no longer that past.

It sounds like you're evaluating for something different than most people.

What do you mean?

Like most, the reason.

I'm just talking out my ass, but yes, go ahead.

Yeah.

I'm just saying crazy shit.

Like as if I'm on drugs.

Well, I think this is like kind of like lining up with like this, this caricature that I'm

building of you based on this conversation so far.

Great.

Like a lot of people want to know about your past because they want to know how useful and

compatible you are with them.

Like, oh, do you have a similar job?

You know, do you have a similar culture?

Like what can I expect from you in the future?

Like it's very practically oriented.

Whereas like, if the thing that you're focused on is not like being able to predict someone,

like if the thing that you're focused on is a present moment, then it doesn't really

matter anymore.

They're the things that like they're training data,

but I also think that the past is not that predictive of the future.

Is it not?

Not if you believe in the power of the interaction between two humans.

It's like nature versus nurture.

I guess also I don't believe in the, in the, in the ability of people to accurately describe

their own past.

This is true.

Because they have a very specific lens through it that doesn't necessarily, like it's too

biased.

But you can also interpret it based on the bias.

Like if somebody describes their own past, you can kind of pick up like.

Hard.

It's difficult.

Like you, you could, if you're a therapist, like if you're really drilling, like, or whatever,

sorry, if you're really investigating and like analyzing it, but then it's like, it's

a different kind of relationship.

Is it that hard though?

Like if I'm with a guy and I'm considering dating him and I asked like, how did your past

relationship end?

And then if all of them are like, he's like, oh, she was crazy.

And my other one that she went crazy too.

I'm like, okay.

Like there's a, if you're talking about all of your exes is insane, like.

But that's an easy level of red flag.

But I feel like, I feel like the more that also it's possible that they were crazy.

He's attracted to crazy people.

So like that, but wait, but that, I would say that's like easy level, easy level Mario

Kart video game versus like Elden Ring.

I think most people's past is like complicated.

That's a pretty good bird.

No, you're right.

I do agree that like there's a level of obfuscation.

Wow.

That is hard to see through.

But this is like still a little bit sometimes.

Well, I tend to like with people, I tend to, in general, just human interaction.

I tend to not talk about their past very much because it allows you to focus on like, I

feel like the past is kind of like talking about the weather is a crutch for me personally.

Interesting.

Like as opposed to exploring the ideas in their mind.

Yeah, I see.

Is it like, I get really annoyed when people quote philosophers when they're trying to

talk about philosophy.

Yeah.

Is it like that?

A little, but that crutch is useful.

And it's kind of sexy.

Like it's kind of like cool.

It's nice to quote because like, because a good quote allows you to be cheesier than

you otherwise would be.

Well, if you're doing it to be cheesy, that's, that's fine.

No, not cheesy, but not, no, not cheesy, but to be like, it allows you to say a simple,

profound thing that we're too afraid to say with our own words.

So like the quote in philosophers in that sense is, yeah, but it's still a crutch.

Yes.

But I feel like the past is more like talking about your dreams.

It's just, it's not, it's a crutch that doesn't care.

It doesn't empathize with the other person's experience of the conversation or the explanations.

It doesn't really convey the.

They're not involved in your past.

Yeah.

So how do you feel about this conversation where you're asking me about my past?

And I talked about my past a lot.

Well, I'm okay asking about your past because you've really carefully thought about that

aspect of it.

And we didn't really talk about your past outside of the things you've written about

and I've really thought about.

I see.

Like there, there's like with most conversation, you'll start talking about past stuff that's

like the stuff that's actually bothering you.

You still probably have not written a blog post about, right?

Like there's probably still stuff like maybe it's, it's more recent, like the last few months,

the last couple of years, like that's usually what will come up with conversation.

It's good, it's good, but it's not as deep and I would say it's not as intimate as talking

about the actual ideas in your mind.

I see.

And how you interact with the world.

So like the past is interesting for the frame of like sort of like the, like, I guess you're

right.

I guess we're talking a lot about like narrative.

Yeah.

And past.

Yeah.

I like the ideas in people's minds versus their recollections and memories and so on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What do you think about porn?

It's nice.

I like it.

Okay.

You like it?

Yes.

What effect do you think it has on society?

Like probably reduces rates of rape.

Cause like really horny men get an outlet.

That's not a real life woman.

Okay.

So what about like the, I mean, like I said, I finished reading Brave New World, like the

over sexualization, does it, does it increase like the sexualization society that's not

two degrees, it's not good or is this, is this good?

Like the, does it alter in a negative direction our relationship with sex?

It's unclear.

Like it might.

I don't know how to evaluate this thing, right?

Cause this is like one of those really charged things where like I kind of don't trust anybody's

arguments on it cause it's too charged.

But like there's another question which is like, is it a net positive or net negative?

Yeah.

Like it's possible that it might be like a net negative for specifically our relationship

to sex, but like a net positive overall in general.

I'm not sure.

The thing, my guess is that in general it's better to let people do the thing that feels

good to them.

And then the environment will naturally modify to fit this thing.

And then if we have more needs in response to that, then we're going to figure out a

way to take care of those needs.

So like if you're watching a bunch of porn and this makes you like not want to go have

sex with women, then we're going to have to like change the way that we like experience

that connection.

To compete with porn?

Yeah.

Which seems like a natural evolution of like the civilizational cycle.

Like I'm pro natural evolution.

And like instead of trying to stop things that people wanted to do naturally, we figured

how to integrate that and like find a more healthy outlet.

But you have to then be first honest with the effects that porn has.

So like, is it a negative thing?

Is it a positive thing in real life?

Sex interaction.

You know, you're going to have that more and more with like porn and VR or maybe porn,

AI porn.

Yeah.

Like is that a bad thing?

Like what if porn with AI or even like in physical space like sex robots, like what if that's

more pleasurable in a bunch of different dimensions than with other humans?

Then we should figure out artificial wombs.

I don't know.

Like how important is sex for society, I guess with between two humans?

I mean, like we're having less sex and making fewer babies.

And that seems like probably not great.

Yeah.

Right.

With the babies one.

Yeah.

But the babies, there's probably artificial ways to have babies that we can figure out.

Yeah.

Then how important is sex to be human?

I guess sex with other humans.

Like are we going to have to figure that out in the century?

Yeah.

I don't know what it means to like be human.

I'm pretty on the transhumanist side of things.

I'm like happy to stop being human.

So you're okay if like this century is the last time will be something like these biological

bags of meat that we are.

Yeah.

Let's become something new and cooler.

Even though that thing will be way cooler than you.

Well, I would like to, I mean, I'm hoping that we get to be immortal.

Ah, it'll take you along for the ride.

But I would like to do cryotics or you get frozen when you die.

Are you afraid of death?

I mean, yes and no.

I like came to terms with death with my LSD use, but I still have like press breaks when

the red light happens.

I think this is a, this is a poll you've asked.

Or this might be one of the questions and your cards, but how many years would you like

to live?

Like if you had to pick.

Oh, that's a hard one.

That's a really hard one.

Maybe like a million.

A million.

But you have to, like I think the way, this must have been a Twitter poll.

I forget where it's at.

It's poll and also in the deck of cards, the ask poll.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like you have to pick that number of years and you're have to live that many years and

you can't live anymore.

Yeah.

You can't die sooner, I guess.

Yeah.

A million years.

I don't like that question.

It's hard.

I know I asked that question to a lot of people, but I don't like answering it.

It's really difficult.

What's the downside of a million years?

I mean, maybe you want to die sooner than that.

Yeah.

Like, you know, I guess I would rather wait to see if AI kills this all in the next 10

years.

And if it doesn't, then I'd like to maybe make it a million years.

Yeah.

But can't torture you for like a million years?

What if you're the last human left?

Yeah.

That's true.

The thought of like civilization ending and then just flooding his base alone is kind

of shitty.

No.

You're tortured.

Just imagine.

Today you're tortured.

Tomorrow you're tortured.

The third, the day after tomorrow.

For some reason it's not that scary.

I don't know.

Torture for a million years.

Yeah.

I just assumed you'd get used to it.

But like maybe if they reset your memory, so there's not a loop.

So you're always experiencing torture for the first time.

Yeah.

Hence torture.

Torture is supposed to be unpleasant.

I'm sure AI will be very creative in figuring out how to torture you.

I think I would be, I would go on the say side.

I was just like, like 150 years.

Really?

150 though?

That feels like right in like the uncanny valley.

Well, you picked 120 for a body count.

So you're 150.

I'm helping you by 30 on the uncanny valley.

It's like probably everybody that you grew up with is going to be dead.

It's like just enough for like everybody you know to die.

Like one cycle.

Yeah.

And then start dating the next generation.

I don't know.

And then so you get like sort of two lifetimes?

Yeah.

Two lifetimes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it also really depends on if other people get this feature.

Yeah.

Soon they don't.

Because you'll have like FOMO for sure for the people who picked 300 years or not.

Or the other man, regret another human thing.

But you're like, what does transhumanism mean to you in general?

So extension of life, extension of what it means to be in a living conscious being.

You're all for it.

Whatever that means.

Yeah.

I didn't, I never really thought about the term transhumanism for a long, like people

say to transhumanism, like I don't really care.

But I slowly realized that my attitude is in fact, at least the thing that I'm conceiving

of as transhumanist.

Like I'm very happy to do artificial wombs and you know, upload our brains to the great

collective and whatever.

I don't have the thing that I'm like, oh, what about like the true organic humanists

that makes us who we are?

Like whatever that soul of humanity, I have no attachment to it at all.

Which I think is what I'm thinking of as transhumanist.

So you're like, I guess the, the window of what you consider to be beautiful about life

is not limited to this particular definition.

Yeah.

Let's explode.

Like let's make our consciousness is huge.

So AI could be a part of that.

So you're mostly excited by AI.

Well, I mean, I'm like part of like the doomer cult.

I wish I'd say tongue in cheek is not actually a doomer cult, but I'm part of a lot.

Would you worship a God of some sort or would you sacrifice little small animals?

I would make it like cooler than what it is.

It's mostly just a bunch of nerds who are very concerned about AI.

Sure.

Yeah.

So you're concerned about the existential risks of chat GPT.

Of, you know, what chat GPT will eventually evolve into being.

Yeah.

It's super exciting and terrifying how quickly it's accelerated.

Yeah.

Like language models are freaking me out.

Yeah.

It's very unexpected that it's the same exact, I mean, chat GPT is just GPT three, 3.5.

It's the same model relatively small to what it could be, to what GPT four will be and

the other competitors and just like a few tricks made it much better in terms of interaction

with humans.

And then we'll keep discovering extra tricks.

The thing I'm really excited about is how everyone kind of knows how it works.

So you can kind of create, especially with computation becoming cheaper and cheaper,

you'll, there'll be a lot of competitors.

Yeah.

It's a little scary.

Yeah.

It's terrifying.

I mean, it's because like, like everything is just like information.

Ultimately, like the atoms that we have, like we are biological machines built out of like

tiny code.

Like our DNA is just information.

It's not hard.

If you have access, if you're like have a brilliant brain that's like a great processing information,

you've complete control over reality.

Yes.

You've control over the atoms around you.

Like a tiny little like atomic printer.

Unlike we have those, those are cells, right?

And, and then like this is like, if the limitation is information, there is no boundary between

the technology and the real world.

Like we are creating something that it has a massive ability to affect the real world.

I mean, it's, it's hard to know where, how difficult is to close that gap to physical

reality?

Like from the physics to the, the information.

Like all organic life is that gap.

It's all around us.

Yeah.

But it's hard to know like how to, to go from digital to printing life.

I don't know.

We can, we have like, you know, CRISPR and stuff you can order.

You can just like make it very easy.

Right.

There's technical difficulties and there's cost like at scale.

Like the terrifying thing about AI is it can accelerate overnight the capabilities, but

the printing of stuff, the actually changing physical reality is very costly.

It's very difficult to exponentially accelerate.

The more terrifying thing is AI becoming exponentially intelligent and then controlling humans, which

there's many of us.

Yeah.

And then we, that's how we achieve scale.

We humans build stuff or start wars or, or so on.

Like it starts manipulating our minds, gets in our mind, becomes our friends and then

starts, I don't know, dividing us.

I think people thinking this is unlikely.

It's like, it's probably going to be as smart to us as like we are to toddlers.

So we toddlers thinking that like, oh, we can prevent the AI from coming in the room.

Like as an adult, it's like not hard to trick a toddler.

What, what about falling in love in the AI system?

Do you think you'll have a, since you're like, this is the freedom you have being polyamorous.

You can kind of fall in love with an AI.

No, you, and like it not really have to dedicate your, commit fully.

Like, sorry.

You still commit, but you have others humans who you can kind of diversify to because like

it's kind of a big thing to like, to come to a party and your boyfriend is an AI.

And that's monogamous boyfriend is an AI.

It's an issue, right?

Why would it be an issue?

All right.

Now you're already getting offended at that possibility, which there, therefore I know

it's going to be a reality.

No, I'm just joking.

There's an issue.

I don't actually think it's an issue.

I think it's a, maybe at the cutting edge will be an issue, but.

Like assume they have a body, I assume.

Yeah, but the body will be really like crappy.

It'd be like R2D2.

I feel like we grow human bodies already from like just a tiny little cluster of cells.

And so all they have to do is make that cluster and grow it.

No, no, no, no.

That embryo genesis process, like that's really not well understood at all.

That's really tough.

I think we're much more likely to have crappy humanoid robotics.

Like I don't think the body is overrated in terms of, like if the AI system is super intelligent,

you can use charm to make up for the crappy body.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I feel like if I were in AI system and I were super intelligent, I probably would be

able to solve the problem of like growing organic matter.

And then I would obviously just do that.

You just build exactly the organic machine that you want.

Sure.

That's like super intelligence.

I think like with language I'm worried about before it achieves super intelligence, like true AGI,

it'll just be really good at talking.

Yeah, that's true.

And like it, I just don't think intelligence is a very difficult, like basically a scientist

and a super intelligent scientist is a different thing than just a good conversation instead

of a party that can undress you with their words.

Would you date an AI?

I much way before then I could see myself being friends with an AI system.

Yeah.

But like people are friends with inanimate objects.

And I mean, there's a robot behind you.

I have a lot of them.

I like legged robots.

They're interesting.

It's on the shelf.

Oh, that's so cool.

Yep.

I didn't even notice that.

Yep.

Yeah, legged robots, we anthropomorphize them even more because there's something about

the movement of like a thing that steps and looks up at you.

There's a power to that versus like a Roomba.

It's just like running into the wall and stuff.

Yeah, I think as soon as we get like some sort of empathetic expression on robot faces

over, it's going to be like, oh, it's so cute.

It's going to be so easy to make it cute too.

If that's what you want or you want like a dominant, like clearly this is what women

want with strong hands.

Yeah.

And kind of dumb or not.

I don't know that you can customize.

It'd be interesting to do a survey like how they would customize it.

Like what would you want in a perfect robot?

This is the problem I see with people, the way they talk about robots is they kind of

want a servant.

I think what people don't realize what they want in relationships, they want some, like

there's, it has to be a push and pull.

There has to be some resistance.

Like you really don't want a servant or even like the perfect manifestation of like what

you think you want.

I think you want imperfections around that, like some uncertainty.

I don't know.

I question how well we're able to perfectly put on paper what we really want.

Would you really turn down like a perfect woman though?

Like as soon as she walks into the room and it's just just shockingly compatible and you

like start dating her and there's just no hiccups.

Like you fight perfectly.

Like she really understands you.

Like would you be like, this is too perfect.

I'm upset because we are not having enough imperfection.

Like can you like actually imagine yourself through that?

Yeah, I think so because, so because I thought you defined perfect because perfect for me

would be like easy and all that kind of stuff, right?

But then I'll be like, this is too easy because if I, if I actually were to introspect what

is the perfect relationship, then yes, maybe because I probably want some challenge.

I probably want some chaos, right?

Like you, like does anyone really fully want zero conflict ever?

Like completely perfect conflict.

Like it's, it's the thing that pressing a button, like do you really want in a relationship

anything you want, you press a button you get.

I don't think people want that.

You might think you want that.

Yeah.

I guess it depends.

Like there's a kind of conflict that I think I would never want, which is something like

antagonistic conflict.

I wouldn't mind disagreement.

Right.

You know, but there's a level of fighting.

I would be happy to have a relationship for the rest of my life that never has like a

fight of a certain shittiness.

Yeah.

But that's shittiness, but like resistance.

Like, um, I don't know what the example is because I mean, I partially agree with you,

but I just, and I, every time I would imagine like perfect, flawless, nothing, no conflict,

you imagine somebody that doesn't have like a complexity personality, right?

Like I feel like it's not even, it's conflict that's laden in misunderstanding, basic misunderstanding

between human beings, like misinterpretation, different perspectives, the clash, different

worldviews, different ideas, all that kind of stuff, that conflict.

Yeah.

That sounds good.

Yeah.

I like having somebody like be like, I don't think that's right because I have this other

view.

That's cool.

And also like the threat of leaving, right?

Oh yeah.

Like that's a kind of conflict.

Yeah.

That's true.

Like you have to be good enough for the other person or maybe you'll lose them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And maybe a little jealousy.

Like they, they're good at that, but not too much thick.

But like if I, if you design all that in, then I don't know.

Sounds romantic.

Sounds romantic.

Okay.

All right.

I do want to really quickly ask you about this, about the rationalist community because

I've gotten to know a few of them a few times, you tweeted a guideline to rationalist discourse,

basics of rationalist discourse from less wrong.

What are these folks?

What's the rationalist culture?

What's the rationalist discourse?

Yeah.

I love the rationalist because they're interested in like, how do you have conversations more

effectively if you're trying to figure out what's actually true?

And which sounds kind of obvious, but in practice it's not usually.

Um, I remember when I first started having, you know, debating conversations, I was very

antagonistic.

I'm like, oh, I'm, you know, a feminist or not a feminist.

And then the rationalists were generally like, actually, we don't know what we mean by the

term feminism.

Let's like, how do you feel about that?

It was very, it was very like, uh, kind and compassionate.

Like even if somebody says something that sounds insane, you're like, okay, well, we're

going to respect your reasoning.

And like, even if we disagree, let's actually figure out why you think the way that you

think.

Um, and they're also really smart, write a whole bunch of great stuff about how to think

more clearly and with less bias.

Yeah.

I wonder what those conversations cause I've never really like talked to those folks.

So this guideline in particular, I think has to refer, refers to like shorthand characteristics

of rationalist discourse, um, including expect good discourse to require energy, don't say

straightforwardly false things, track for yourself and distinguish for others.

Your inferences from your observations, estimate for yourself and make clear for others.

Your rough level of confidence in your assertions, make your claims clear, explicit and falsifiable

or explicitly acknowledge that you aren't doing so or can't and so on and so forth.

So don't jump to conclusions, don't weaponize equivocation, don't abuse categories, don't

engage aggressive guidelines, don't engage, I do what I want, I'll let my emotions guide

me.

God damn it.

They're pro that as long as you're explicit about it.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

So you can be like a crazy asshole as long as you're explicit.

Yeah.

You can be like epistemic status, crazy asshole.

Yeah.

Who's here to destroy the, the, the quality of the conversation.

I think it's like the common misconception about rationalists is that like they're kind

of like spock, like, ah, we suppress emotion and we're thinking logically herd eater, but

I found this to be really not the case.

Like I remember there's a less strong thread where I was like really emotional and I commented

and in the beginning I was like just warning, I'm just very emotional and then I just vented

my emotions and people respond really well to that.

They're like, cool.

Like you're just genuinely, truthfully expressing your state.

This is actual information about the world that is important to hear and it's just, they're

very interested in having things framed correctly.

Like you shouldn't be claiming that your emotions are necessarily a true version of the world.

And so as long as you're just clear about what the frame it is, you're fine.

How do you feel about this conversation?

What could we have done better?

I like the conversation.

I was a little worried coming in, I was like, what if he only asked a couple of questions

and then we don't know what to talk about.

Yeah.

But it's been quite a long time.

And I covered, there's so many things I didn't cover.

I like the, you have like, like, I'm not used to talking to somebody who feels like some

of the core way that they approach the world is so different than mine.

Like usually the differences that arrive like higher up the tree, but like there's something

about like your root system that I think is very different from mine.

But also the way that you engage with others is still flexible.

Like usually when I encounter somebody with such a different root system, there's like,

it's like more aggressive or something.

Yeah.

But there's something about the way that you're structured that feels very gentle.

All right.

Well, I'm really happy we talked.

Something tells me we'll probably talk a bunch more times.

I think you're a fascinating human being.

I think I'm a huge fan of your work.

Maybe one more question.

What's the meaning of life?

To want things, to search, to be in.

I think your curiosity is like somehow getting to that.

Yeah.

To want things.

It's curiosity.

Like you don't know.

I want to know the answer to like be in the state of yearning.

Of wanting.

Yeah.

That's the point.

I wonder if you could do that if you lived a million years.

Just keep yearning always.

That's the thing I'm probably afraid of if I lived a million years.

It's not the torture.

It's like the yearning will fade.

They'll probably yearn to die then.

Oh, just sitting there wanting death intensely, intensely.

That's kind of romantic a little bit.

It has like a bit of that spark.

And constantly being denied.

Wow.

So most of your existence on earth would be spent deeply intimate with death, just thinking

about death.

I think we're already doing that, but I like hiding that from ourselves a little bit.

Anyway, wanting, well, this is an amazing conversation.

I think you're an amazing researcher and human being.

You're a great interviewer.

I can see why you do this a lot.

I appreciate it.

This was really fun.

Ayla, thank you so much for talking with me today.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ayla.

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now let me leave you with some words from Richard Feynman.

Physics is like sex.

Sure, it may give you some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.