Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick w/ John Hill and Jesan Sorrells

0:02 All right, all right, all right, all right, all right. Let's get the show on the road. All right. Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast episode number 149Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by fellow K. Dick with John Hill aka Small Mountain in 3, 2, 1.

0:26 Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number 159. We will open our show today with a short yet iconic speech that resonates both as a naive warning and as a prescient prediction of humanity's future. And I'm thinking that future is just about 10 minutes from now. And I quote, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watch sea beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain.

1:17 Time to die. Close quote.

1:23 Combine that from Roy Batty with this little tidbit I recently pulled from a email newsletter list that I'm a part of that tracks trends. It was published in January of 2025 from a story on Forbes.com so take from this what you will, and I quote the CEO of one of the leading manufacturers of humanoid robots says it has signed a second commercial customer that is, quote, one of the biggest US Companies. Close quote Figure CEO Brett Adcock also said that he sees the potential to ship 100,000 humanoid robots over the next four years and said that figure is focused on two markets, commercial and home.

2:11 And I quote directly from Forbes quoting Figure CEO Brett Adcock, our newest customer is one of the biggest US companies, Adcock says in an update on LinkedIn it gives us potential to ship at high volumes, which will drive cost reduction and AI data collection between both customers. We believe there is a path to 100,000 robots over the next four years. Those as of January 2025, close quote 100,000 robots, humanoid robots no less, in commercial and home applications by 2029 or maybe 2030 at the latest.

2:48 Right? Oh, and by the way, these humanoid robots will be equipped with baseline large language model programming, in case any of you are wondering out there. Thus taking the next leap forward in seeking to solve the embodiment problem inherent in AI and robotics understanding. Since Alan Turing came up with the Turing Test back in the 1940s.

3:14 Our. Author today would only be surprised that it took all of us until about 2025 to arrive at the doorstep of our brave new world. With, of course, echoes of our cowardly old world. And that we got here without a major nuclear exchange and without colonies on the moon, without vacations to Mars or even interstellar exploration. No, no. We got here with 144 characters and people endlessly hot, taking each other about things that don't matter. We've seen things our author today would agree that he wouldn't believe.

3:55 Today on this episode of the podcast, we will recommending that leader. Recommending what leaders can do and what leaders can think and how leaders should behave in times of cynically delivered technological fantasies, fatalistic opportunism and endless denuding cultural slop by exploring insights provided for us from the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick. Leaders. We're soon going to find out the answer

4:30 to the title question

4:35 and we are going to be joined on the show today by our co host rejoining us from episode number 122. By the way, I've looked through it appears that he has been on at least seven episodes with us. So he's officially sort of getting ready to arc into that regular guest co host slot, working his way up past some other competitors like Libby Unger and Richard Messing. So that's good. He's got a goal now. And in episode number 122, we discuss Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Our guest host is with us today from an undisclosed location deep, deep in the heart of the American West.

5:19 John Hill, AKA Small Mountain. How you doing, John? I am loving my life right now. I'm on vacation, family road trip. We're in New Mexico. So that's as, that's as disclosed as we're going to get here. Right. Because I'm in the land of Enchantment. So come find me if you want to come hang out and. Yeah, I can, I, can I talk about my, my unique perspective on this or do you want to talk a. Little more about the book? No, go ahead, jump in. One thing I will say is. We. Are, because this book is still under vicious copyright, we are not going to be reading directly from the book today.

5:58 We will. Oh, okay. If you, if you, if you, if. We will be reading clips, pieces, little paragraphs here and there to make larger points, but we will be referencing and framing pieces of the book for folks just like we did on our introductory episode, episode number 158. I recommend you go back and listen to that before you listen to this, which frames some of the themes, the larger themes that we're going to be talking about today in our new, our new format where I do an intro episode by myself, and then I bring on a guest, and we sort of break this down a little bit larger level.

6:28 Cool. So we're doing that. This is part of the new format. Oh, yeah, that's right. You haven't, you haven't been around since the new format. Yeah, this is, this is the new, this is the new thing, John. Okay. Doing, doing a little bit of, kind of a little bit different thing. That way we could do a deeper dive into, into books. Plus, it also lightens the, the reading load on, on me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I. Whenever we first started talking about shows and episodes and everything, and you were showing me your schedule, I had a moment of like, how, how, like, I read a lot, you know, and you go ask my friends who don't read, and, like, in their perspective, I must be just, like, locked in a tomb 24 hours a day.

7:07 Right? But then I see your schedule of just, like, the stuff that. And I was like, oh, there's no way he keeps this. And we've known each other for a couple of years now, and you, like, this is the first year that you've had to, like, move anything, at least in, in my, in, you know, in relation to me, right? Well, I, I, I moved. So I will say this. I went from running eight books a month to running four books a month now. So I'm currently reading, just so that you know that y' all know, because these are all upcoming on the podcast.

7:39 I'm reading Empire of the Summer Moon, which is getting turned into a show written by Taylor Sheridan. So I'm kind of on a little bit of a little bit of a kick on that. Then I'm also reading B.H. liddell Hart's why Don't We Learn From History? That's going to be coming up in October. I'm about 75% through. We talked about this just before we hit record, about 75% through Martian Chronicles. And I started. Interesting enough, I started Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which we're going to read in June.

8:08 And I got to a point in Huxley where I had to get off the train. And I won't talk about why on this episode, but I had to get off the train with Huxley. I was just. I was done. I was like, I mean, I see where you're going, Aldous, but we're. We're finished here. We're good. We're good. So I'm curious, right? As a guy who has this show, right, and promotes this idea that, like, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Someone has gone through something similar, right? And you. And you spend a lot of time looking back at this.

8:38 And I'm also very aware that, like, we're not on topic at all, but I'm in vacation mode, so you just have to, like, wrangle me. So. So how do you deal with a book like that? Right? Like, you. You see, like, is it. When you can see where it's going, you're like, okay, like, I'm not going with you. Is it like. Like, how. When does Hay San decide that a book is not worth it? How does Hasan quit a book? Like, how. How do you go through that process? I'm very fascinated with how people grade reading, think about reading, quitting points, when to put down a book, and stuff like that.

9:12 Because life is just. I want to read everything. Life is just too short, though, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So for me, and this is just my. My perspective, your mileage will vary, right? You know, you're asking me the question. I host the show. So here we go.

9:33 If I reach a point in a book where it. The writer is postulating an idea where I can see the logical outcropping of that idea, and they're not. They're not. They're telegraphing sort of where they're going to be going. And I don't. I'm not in agreement with that idea, or I find that idea. And really, agreement's really a tenuous one because I can read a lot of things I do. I read a lot of things I don't agree with. So let's not really put too much stock into that. It's the idea that I find morally repugnant that violates my.

10:09 And we talked a little bit about morals and ethics before in Fahrenheit 451. And, you know, my morality is. Is. Is. Is influenced. Good, bad, ugly, or different? It's. It's influenced by how I perceive, not how I perceive. No, it is influenced by how I practice my Christianity. Okay. It's influenced by how I practice my religion. It just is. And I would be lying if I said it. It wasn't. I think most people do lie. You are being influenced by something that's a higher thing. You just don't know how to identify it.

10:40 Right. And you don't really know how to talk about it. So if I'm in a book and this is just me again, not everybody else, just me. If I'm in a book and. And I'm going along, I'm Bebopping along and I find something to be morally repugnant in there. And I can see that the author is sort of using this to make a larger point. I will say to myself and to the author, you know, I don't have to go down that road with you. I'm not required to now. I will tell you, it's taken me a long time to get to that point, you know, So I read Brave New World when I was probably 15 or 16 maybe, was the first time I interacted with that book.

11:22 And I was in a totally different stage of life. I had, you know, didn't have kids. I didn't have responsibilities. I read it in. In parallel to or right around the same time that I also read. I was reading the Stand by Stephen King. Oh, wow. So there's kind of a lot of things going on here together. I have not read either one of those books, but Melissa's a huge Stephen King fan, and she's like, hey, anytime you're ready. And she'll just kind of point to it. And I'm like, I know it's there, but, like, I'm not ready for it, you know, so.

11:57 So some of the worst excesses of COVID you will find in the Stand. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. It's. It's what, logically? No, it's one of those books that the first time I read it, it. And I was already, as you can imagine, I was already walking down the road to being jaded at 15. And that even led. I mean, that book even, you know, had the bottom dropping out of me, you know, because he nailed human patterns of behavior so accurately in that. And so particularly when all the rules are off, right?

12:37 When there's no more boundaries, no more restrictions, what are people actually going to do? How. How. What's the pattern, the typical pattern of human behavior? Then let's just logically push that forward. Huxley, on the other hand,

12:53 Brave New World focuses around hedonic pleasure and around what hedonism looks like. And how do we. How is that used for utopian ends by people who want to be in control and be in power? And you can see a lot of that in our own culture right now. Okay. And so where I have wound up, you know, 30 years later with kids and with a perspective on the hedonic culture, that's. It's probably counterculture and sort of where I go with all of that. I. I can't follow a quote unquote free thinker like Huxley.

13:35 He would say, I'm I'm captured by morality. Nietzsche would say a slave morality. I would disagree with Nietzsche too. I don't think he really understood what he's talking about there, but that's what he would say. And that's, and that's sort of where I go with Huxley. And so I'm having this philosophical battle with the author. And I do this, by the way, in every book that I read. Am I having this philosophical battle with this author? So I mentioned Empire of the Summer Moon, and that's another book there too, where I'm sort of having this philosophical battle with the author.

14:01 Yeah. When you first started to talk about your way of thinking around this, I was kind of confused for a moment, right? And then I was like, okay, but to put this into a business book context, right, because everybody's own business books and you do as well, right. So if I'm hearing you correctly, if, if, you know, even if it's like a very highly touted business book, right. If they're making the example use case off of,

14:25 you know, Hugh Hefner or Larry Flint or, you know, or, or anything in that realm, like, like, if that is the use case that's forming your thinking. We did. Like, like, like that's just where you called it is kind of what I'm hearing. Okay. Yeah, that's what I'm going to call the game. And that's for me, like, I'm not saying that that has to be for everybody. And you know what? Quite frankly, maybe the author gets to a different spot on the other end of it. And that's kind of my, that's kind of my, like, next question.

14:50 Right? Because, like, I, you know, I'm like you in my, in my own way of, like, I. Sometimes it's just too real. Like, sometimes it's just I don't, you know, I don't need to subject myself to this, you know, and stuff like that. But then on the other side of it, I am concerned about building an echo chamber, right? Of just having, you know, people around me believe what I believe and the books on my shelves that I really like because they just, you know, validate all my thinking that's already there in place and everything, you know, and it's weird because I try to, I try to have some balance to this stuff, right?

15:21 Like, I'll, I'll try to go finish a book that, like, I'm, like, struggling with or, you know, I'll, I'll go dive into a conversation with someone who I know is polar opposite of me just because, like, I can respect them enough that I can, you know, hear them out and leave it, you know. But you know, to me, I think that that's, I think that that is also dangerous, right? Of, you know, you know, there's line and stoicism of like the worst place you can be before you know who you are is in a crowd, right?

15:47 And then, and then the worst place to be after you know who you are is also in a crowd. It's also in a crowd.

15:54 So like, I don't know, I like it's Seneca or like Epictetus. I'm not sure which one it is. But like, I just think about that all the time because, like, man, I was hanging out in these crowds and I'm drinking from that Kool Aid and stuff like this, and now it's just like, I know to avoid those, those circles that like just don't serve me and everything else like that. But I also try to live by the idea that I should be challenged. My con, my, my blind spots, my conventions, my thinking and stuff like that.

16:17 Because I also think that it's easy to get complacent. So I think that there's multiple different ways to do that. And I think books, obviously, conversations with people who, to your point, are of opposing viewpoints or perspectives. I honestly, I don't, I never, and I don't want people listening to this to think that I'm a censorious person, because I'm not. I want everything published. Publish it all. That's why we have free speech. Absolutely should all. The government should take no position.

16:48 Don't get me started on government schools and government school run libraries. Don't get me started on that nonsense. Just don't. Government should take no position. Library should actually be funded by the public, or by the way, public by private individuals. Put whatever you want to put in there and let's move on. The responsibility for curating and quite frankly censoring ideas comes from not an overall institution. But quite frankly, and this is why you have free speech from the culture. Yeah, the culture will figure it out.

17:27 And what we see if we have robust free speech and robust book publishing, which is also why I'm opposed to some of the things going on with LLMs, I see a narrowing of view and a narrowing of thought that is supposed to be the majority. So I'll go back to Brave new world. Huxley's perspective on hedonistic pleasure has become the dominant perspective. And I say this with absolutely no. What do you call it? I'm not. I'm not. I'm not taking a position on this one way or another, whether this is a good or bad.

18:04 I'm just saying this is a fact. I think we can look around and see it. We also have enough examples of people of all different age brackets and ranges literally from cradle to grave being influenced around what their hedonic pleasures should be. And primarily, this is being driven by the cell phones. Okay. Yeah, okay. Huxley won the argument. Guys like me lost. We lost. It's fine. We lost. And by the way. By the way, I'm not saying by the way that the argument is. It's still ongoing. I'm merely saying that we lost the argument.

18:45 Now, does that mean that we shouldn't stop having it? No. Does that mean the discussion shouldn't still be going on? No, it will be, because people can't shut up about it. But. But we lost. And that's. And by the way, that's the thing that happens in culture. Culture decides who wins and loses, right? And that's very tough for us to deal with either side of the argument, right? And then we want. And then we want to. And then we want to dump it off into politics and make it a political thing, when in reality it's not.

19:10 It's a cultural thing. It is a cultural thing. Um, this is fascinating because I just read this other book, right? The. The. The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, and it. Oh, yeah, really? Really? This is my second book by him that I've dove into. The first one was Start with why, and a friend of recommended this one, and, man, it was so good, because I think it brings a lot of interesting perspective to the conversation you're having, right? Like that, like, culture is an ongoing game. It's not like a.

19:39 Like a. You know, and if you're trying to win at it, right, you're taking it out of this finite, kind of dense, beautiful tapestry and stuff like that, to use all these very weird, crunchy labels, because I'm in New Mexico and I'm allowed come after me if you don't like it, right? Versus this, like, okay, we lost the argument. Okay, well, like, hey, like, you know, but there's also these. These other trends and encounters to this whole thing, right? Because, like, you know, I think that maybe some of this freewheeling, you know, that we're dealing with now is.

20:09 Is kind of this, like, right, You. You put. You run it through the machine, right? And the tightening machine happens, right? And. Right? It's. It's the. It's the same reason why, like every preacher's kid has like an amazing college experience, you know, kind of thing. Right.

20:27 Well, to your point, and this is one of the reasons why I talk a little bit about the end of the fourth turning on this show. So I do think. I do believe more and more in historical cycles. Right, yeah, agreed, same. And so I do fundamentally believe that in 2025, when we're recording this together, that you and I are at the end of a particular 25 year cycle. I do believe it is wrapping up. Oh, okay, interesting. And I think the next cycle is going to. The players will have similar names or similar functions.

21:05 I should maybe say that similar mindsets, but. But different labels, those mindsets. Yeah. Well, no, no, I think even the mindsets are shifting around. I'm seeing signs. Mindsets. Mindsets are shifting around because these things start. And I actually talked about this, interestingly enough with, with Tom libby on episode 157 about Sitting Bull as well, brought up this point. But I think mindsets start at the center. I used to think they started at the edges in the places that we typically associate with culture, cultural dominance in this country.

21:38 So la, New York, dc. Right. I think. And we don't understand a vibe. Vibe shift. We don't understand a thing. A thing that's happened until. Right. I hate. Hate that term. But we. We don't understand a thing that's happened until we're outside of it. And so it's very hard to see it when we're in it. Well, it's just too easy to be like, this is the right way, because these are the decisions that I'm making and I've not died yet. Right. So it's like weird. It's this weird survivorship bias thing. Oh, man.

22:10 Beautiful book on this whole idea by. Is it to Live? Oh, yeah. To live, yeah. Oh, God, Phenomenal book. Right. And like, as a poker player and like, I spent a whole lot of time having to get really comfortable with the idea of, like, just because I made the decision doesn't make it right. And just make it right. Just because I won the hand doesn't mean that that's the way that I should play this hand again next time and next time and next time and next time and next time. Right, well. And you're not.

22:34 And you're not. Also not. You're also trying to not be blinded by a hindsight heuristic. Well, well. But the first thing that you have to acknowledge is that, like, hindsight is not the 2020 thing. That everyone is just going around talking about, like, hey, you know how perfect that is? Like, let's acknowledge the fact that, like, we got lucky, right? In most situations, you know, like most people, like when, when I talk about, like, poker with people that have never played poker before, and they're like.

22:57 And I'm like, oh, you're just thinking that this is like, well, you either one of your law won or lost. And that's the only decision making, right? Any hand of poker that plays to the, on average 18 different decision points in it, and every one of those decision points leads to a different reality at the end of the day. And sales conversations are remarkably similar. Let me just pitch you. Let me just see if you actually need any of these things that I do. But first, in your reality will change completely, right?

23:21 You have people and they're pushing their ideas and their agendas and their. But it's the same kind of, like, thing. But you have to think about probabilistic thinking. And then when I do this, what could happen? What is most likely to happen and then what never happens because we actually go out and test it, right? And people don't do this in sales, but I wish that they did because people would like salespeople a whole lot more. Right. If we actually, like, tested in, like, well, tested for benchmark, as opposed to just thinking that benchmarks were just pushy.

23:46 But everybody's sample size is too small. Oh, yeah. Oh, you know, we can't talk about. Hold on. We can talk about that. Like, we need 17 books on just this topic. And you would still have every one of your listeners be like, well, hey, son, I made three cold calls. Cold calling is dead because I didn't talk to anyone to book an appointment to close a deal. Oh, did you make them all in the last 10 minutes? Like, I, I mean, come. I mean, like, sample size and time duration are these two things that people are not thinking about when they're thinking about any of these.

24:17 Any of these things. And it's. Right. And so the question you have to ask is at a cultural level. So we talk about that in business. Yeah. At a cultural level. Let's scale this up to culture, right? So just in the United States, just let's keep it. The sample size to the, to the third of the continent that we're spread across. Let's just keep it to that for just a minute. Okay. 350. Approaching 350 million people on this continent. Right. Okay. Okay. And it terrifies me, like, like in those moments, you know, like, It's.

24:55 It's been so interesting to come up here because, like, I told some friends that I was coming to New Mexico on vacation. Like, oh, man, where are you going? I was like, well, we're going. And they were like, why? And I was like, because I just want to go explore. I don't know. I like the state. I think it's cool. I like mountains, you know, and I like not having to go all the way to Colorado. So what? And everyone was like, man, you should just go to Colorado or you should go to the. Like, everyone has an opinion and an idea.

25:19 Everything else like this. And I was just like, cool, I'm gonna go validate this for my own stuff. And you know what? We're having an amazing time. Like, my family loves thing. Like, my daughter's like, you know what? I could switch schools. And my wife was like, we could be outdoors. Like, everything is going according to plan. And if I listen to, like, all my friends that are like, man, why don't you just go to, like, LA or Vegas? Because I don't want to, guys. You know, so we're here and everyone is so delightfully weird in a way that doesn't really give a whole lot of space for.

25:47 Right? Yeah, just call that what it is. Sure. And. But then it's just this whole new perspective of all of this stuff, like, coming in and, like, you're allowed to do what you want, which is really nice and cool. But this is why I don't. This is why I don't work B2C, honestly. Right? There you go. Right? Because there's too many Cs, and every C has their own opinion, and every C thinks that their thing is unique to them, which I guess it is to them, but it's not. And the thing is, when you're a consumer, right, and you're just thinking about yourself and your own needs and everything else like this, it's super easy to be like, you know what?

26:25 Improvement can wait. Right? The diet. Oh, yeah. The change starts next week and everything else like that. And. Right. But like, in a business, there is. You're supposed to be working on something, right? And that's, that's why I don't, like, I don't want to go rattle the cages of people that are not ready for it to be rattled. Right? And that's a big thing of how I teach people of, like, if you're trying to force your way in, what happens after they say yes? Now you got to deliver under duress in high pressure environments.

26:50 And how excited are you to do that? Right? As opposed to going and finding someone and being like, hey, I had an idea. And they say, hey, that sounds like an interesting idea. I'd like to explore that with you. These are two different realities, right? And you can explore either one. And it's going to lead to you hating your business, hating your life, hating sales or anything else like this or it being manageable. Well, and that gets to this. Well, that gets back to my point about cycles, because we don't at a sociocultural level, because it's so complicated and the sample size is way the hell too big than the individual.

27:24 Just on our small sample size of the continent of North America and the population of the United States, okay, that is a hyper gigantic sample size for most people. Right. And so the dynamic at a sociocultural level of cycle shifting, you don't see that until you're outside of it, on the other end of it. And so when I say things like the chaos that has started, that started with September 11th is almost over or is over and now we have to prepare for something else, I will tell you, 99% of people look at me like I'm crazy because I'm not saying, I'm not saying that Aldous Huxley's brave New world hedonistic perspective on whatever pleasure isn't still going to be around.

28:09 I'm also not saying that Philip K. Dick, to go back to the book for just a second, that Philip K. Dick's perspective on robots, I mean, we just read from the future CEO who wants to have a hundred thousand humanoid robots walking around by 2030. I'm not saying that that isn't a possibility. And I'm not saying there will be a whole parade of horrors that will open up from that. I think there will be. But I think that the ways in which those are going to be dealt with are not going to be addressed or are not.

28:38 The ways in which those are going to be dealt with are not going to be the same ways with the same mindset as someone in the last historical cycle, the last historical spring in the America which was, you know, the 1940s, the end of World War II, going into the mid-60s. It's just not. You're not going to have silent generation people who saw their buddies, heads blown off in Okinawa, dealing with robots, bots. Yeah, it's very. And that's what we don't understand about, about historical cycles. That's what we don't get.

29:06 It's going to be people like you and me and our kids dealing with humanoid robots. Well, like, man, there's, I, I, I might have lived a whole life in the, in the time that you were talking through that, because I just started thinking about everything. You know, I started thinking about

29:23 that, like, this all starts with, like, innovation, like, what can we do? What is there, right? And to be clear, I'd not read this book before, and I have not read the Asimov books either, right? So some of the stuff I'm getting to appreciate, kind of new, right? My path into science fiction fantasy was, like, through, like, Gerald, which is like, you know, in, like, Heinlein and stuff like this. Heinlein. Heinlein. However you want to say it, it doesn't matter. But I was reading all that stuff, right?

29:47 And so I go to my brother and who, who was an Asimov fan, and I was like, hey, should I be reading Asimov? He's like, no, you're too young. Enjoy all this other stuff. And then I just haven't ever come back to it. But now I get to experience all this as, like, an adult who's, like, also living in versions of this, right? And it's delightful because it's not exactly that. It's not exactly what he's talking about in the book. But, like, I could see that, right? A couple of decisions going different ways, right?

30:10 Like in this, in this rich tapestry that we're talking about, decisive moments and everything. A couple little things going the other way. Like, you know, it's not crazy, right? But then what I think he does such a good job of in the book is just, like, how we would, how we would justify everything that we would justify that happens in this book. Oh, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, that, to me, is the most fascinating part of it. And this, this very interesting thing. It's like all the nerds are worried because the nerds are the people who read this book, these books, right?

30:41 But they're also the people that are going to be pushing to make them better and to make them improved and everything else like this. And then everyone else who's like, oh, it's not going to be a problem, are going to inherit this problem because they're also going to be the people that are pushing for all the advancement. I want it better. I want it better. I want it to do more. I want it to do more. Okay, cool. And then we're going to. And then inadvertently, it's going to tip the scales, and then there's money behind it, and then it's just like, in the book to where they're trying to, like, see, like, what can they get away with?

31:08 And it's such an interesting. And it's going to happen. It's absolutely going to happen. This is my first. This is my first beat on this book. The nerds want the technology. So the nerds all read Martian Chronicles when they were kids. The nerds all read. All read Philip K. Dick. And they all. Not just. Not just do androids dreamable as your sheep. I mean, they read the three stigmata of Palmer Eldrick. They read Scanner Darkly. They read all of it, right? And they mixed all this together with, to your point, the Trillion Dollar Company.

31:41 Like, even Elon has said he read science fiction. Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, all these guys, right? And they learned precisely the wrong lessons. And you can see this, and this is my first point. You can see this in the fact that there are no black people in the Jetsons.

32:02 So you had sent. Okay, so for those who listen to this, right, I'm going to provide a. Little bit of background context on that. Haysan sends over a script, right, with kind of his ideas and some of his thinking about the book and everything. And this is actually very helpful when you're a guest, right, because you kind of know where he's going and everything. I don't always read these things the moment he sends them over because I like to be a little unprepared because I like to be real on these things whenever I can.

32:29 And so I was reading this last night and I saw this line and I was like, interesting, because the day before yesterday we go to the local museum here, right? We're big museum nerds. And so we're hanging out in there and there's this huge science fiction area, right? Because we're in the land of nuclear warfare and everything else like this, you know, and they're talking about the science fiction inform the future or does the guessing inform the future kind of thing, right? Like, like chicken or the egg situation.

32:59 And it was very interesting because he was talking about a lot of these ideas, right? And

33:09 in the money just like ruins everything, which is like a very weird thing to say. Like as an entrepreneurial person and a guy running a business, and I've created this thing and I'm putting myself out there and everything. And I do have goals and aspirations of building this bigger, and I've got monetary goals and everything, but I'm also just hyper aware of how much money just blows everything out of proportion and just ruins things, right? And I also realize that it's there, right? Like, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta.

33:37 I mean, innovation. Innovation doesn't happen if there's not a way to monetize it. If there's not those ways of like, okay, what, what are these things? Then it's just like, then we have to have the really bad arguments of, like, the science matter, right? At least, at least now we can, like, you know, make a big push about science and innovation because we can tie it to capitalism and growth and cool things like that. But then all the stuff gets in the way. That gets in the way. Your scientists were so worried about whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think about whether or not they should.

34:06 Yeah, great line from Jurassic Park. Freaking Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum. There's no one. There's no. Okay, there's no one better for that part. No one better. Never want to sell me on the idea that there's any other actor on the planet who would have done that part better. That's why they brought it back, like five times in all of the ridiculous sequels. And they need to stop. Just, I've had enough of these mother effing dinosaurs on this mother effing plane. I've really had enough. The other day, and it was like.

34:35 It was like while they, While they were actually kind of talking about the fact that they're really good at recreating dinosaurs, what they've really gotten really good at is recreating the next worst dinosaur movie, of course,

34:51 which is just true. Like, like, oh, maybe this one will bring it. But no, no, no. Chris Pratt again. No, not happening. It's not happening. And we don't need her running around in her, like, high heels in a white. And somehow a miraculously white dress that never got a drop. I can't, I can't even. I can't even with it. I can't even stop at Hollywood. You go home, you're drunk.

35:15 No, I think you're. I think you're onto something. Because the thing about it is. So when I go to the museums, right? Or when I look at the cultural landscape surrounding all of these innovations and I listen to the kinds of discussions we're having now. Like, I read an article today on Substack from a guy who, who is a philosophy major, was a philosophy major in college, like, 40 years ago, and he's bringing up. And his point is valid, he's bringing up how AI and large language models don't have ethics built in and are now beginning to behave in ways that we would define if human beings were behaving in that way as evil, quote unquote.

35:59 Right, okay. Yeah. Now I'm not going to get into the whole, does an AI have autonomy? Does AI have free will? I'm not going to get into any of that. I don't care about any of that. My point with bringing this up is

36:13 we built the AI. That's fine. The people who built it were influenced by Asimov and Bradbury and Gibson and Heinlein and Dick. They were influenced by all those guys. Great, Cool. They learned all the wrong lessons because they didn't go to philosophy classes in college. They went to computer engineering classes in college and finance classes in college. Right, okay. Or if they did go to those philosophy classes, they immediately forgot everything the second they were out of there because it didn't mean anything to them.

36:53 And so when I walk into a museum or I read a book like do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I look at it and I go, the first thing that hits me is, for all the money in the world, it doesn't predict the civil rights movement. Oh, yeah, well, like. And so there is a counter. So I take the line from Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. There are other forces than just the evil ones in this world, 100%. And all those other forces are, are, are, are, are, are, are battling. And maybe this is a zero sum statement, I don't know, but they're battling in a cultural space for the minds and hearts of people.

37:34 And in general, what wins the minds and hearts of people is not technology. In general, what wins the minds and hearts of people are challenges and issues, which is what Dick gets to, I think, in his book so brilliantly. Challenges and issues of identity. And that is something that the nerds have no answer for because they don't care enough to think about it. Yeah, exactly. I, okay, so I, so I work in sales, right? You know this. But I don't know if people listen to your show, do or not. So I work in sales.

38:06 I'm a sales consultant and I get brought in to talk about sales improvement, sales coaching and sales training. And right now everyone is very enamored with the idea of an AI driven salesperson, right? And if you're really into sales, then you might have even be thinking about the term of like an aisdr. Right? And so an AISDR is essentially AI generated outbound outreach robocalls, right? And if we look at all the warranty calls that everyone just loves to get, right, what happens there? Right? Let's look at what happens when it's annoying enough because now all cell phones have the ability to route any kind of probable spam risk over to spam, right?

38:46 So what happens is we don't get. We don't fix the problem. We just create a really bad trash bin to put the furthest versions of it, right? Because think about it this way. If salespeople were taught to just be normal, consultative, solution focused and not held to such stupid goals that it puts you into a place of emotional need, we wouldn't have as many people trying to run game, trying to manipulate, obfuscate, manip. You know, all these things, all the bad labels and everything else, and we would just have people going around, hey, do you need my help?

39:17 Hey, we do these things. Hey, here's how we serve our clients and customers. Do you need these things? But people don't. People only recognize the bad aspects of selling, right? Every one of these people who hates the sales people, they have probably a financial advisor that they love working with, right? Who's a salesperson. They probably have bought a home from a real estate agent who's a salesperson and a doctor who's a salesperson, right? And so what, they're just thinking about, they're thinking about the.

39:45 The person in Walmart working the charter table right now. Like, like this is the new version of it. Because now even the car lot guys are getting a broader, wider pass because of Carvana and every. But, like, look at this, right? The technology's coming along to build room to avoid the parts that you don't want to hate or that you would hate. So you don't want to deal with a salesperson. Cool. Carvana, right? But what happens is when you let the nerds try to engineer the path, right? And we stop thinking about the humans on the other end of this thing is when we start getting very misaligned on should versus what does work, right?

40:22 And if you're around this stuff, right, There's a, there's, there's people talking about this idea that, like, you can have a sales process, which is the way that you want to sell. But, hey, let's appreciate their journey as the buyer, right? You've never even heard of a CRM technology before. You don't even know that you need one. Let me. Why would I show up on your doorstep and talk about the differences in five different top high, very, very high expensive CRMs in the place? Why would I? That doesn't make any sense.

40:47 But this is what people are doing all the Time, because they're very smart nerds and they're just thinking about the math of the problem, but they're not thinking about the individual chaos machine that is the human being and the range of how they're going to respond and react. Well, they are in one way, and this is something that I've said. I've even posted it on Facebook. I think you might have commented on it sometime within the last year, maybe year and a half. Because it's something that. It's a major insight that I think we all miss.

41:14 And let me be very clear. I like the nerds. The nerds are the reason I'm here. Same without the nerds, this podcast wouldn't be the people. Right? Yeah. That's the most important part of this thing, is that without sales training, for anyone who's listening to this, I mean, I thought that I was going to sales training to learn everything that everybody hates about salespeople. Right? Right. I thought, I'm here and my coach is like, hey, what if you didn't even try to play that game? What if you just found the people who wanted.

41:43 So, like, I'm. I'm even learning from these things, but culturally, I was being fed this idea that I can do it because other people can do it, but I'm going to use my powers for good. Which makes you the tyrant, right? Exactly right. That's right. You're the worst person. These nerds who were like, well, you know what? I don't want to do outreach. I don't want to bother people. So I'm going to create an AI bot. And then because everyone hates talking to AI bots, it only works, like, one time in a million.

42:08 So then I got to build a machine that'll let me do this 7 million times a day. Right. Like, and we're just working on the problem from the wrong ass end of the equation. As opposed to, like, what do you really like? Well, the reason. The reason we're working on it from the wrong end of the equation is because.

42:28 Marketers, Engineers, Marketers ruin everything. Well, marketers is one reason, but engineers, I don't disagree with that. I'm a marketer myself. And we do. We ruin everything. Engineers view all of the friction points. This is the point I made years ago on Facebook. They view all of those friction points as a bug to be algorithm away rather than as a feature. So here's the thing. A human being wants to buy, to your point, about real estate or about charter cable or about cars. I don't care what it is.

43:01 I used to sell real estate. I've done a lot of those things. At the end of the day, you can automate the entire process if you would like. You can, you absolutely can. And human beings, we're trying to figure this out for a while now. Oh, I know, they're all clients. Right. But at the point of sale, a human being still wants to see another human being. Not a humanoid robot, not. Not an empathy box. They want to see an actual human being. You think? Okay, you think it's two points? Okay, I think it's two points.

43:34 I think it's the beginning. Right. Because we did. I was on a project a couple of years ago and this was, you know, B2B technology, all this other stuff. Right. You know, doesn't really matter for this conversation, but we can talk about it if you want. Sure. And they were doing all automated outbound sequences. Everything is in a. Everything is done by machine and automations and everything. Nothing is done by hand, right. So I get brought in because they're not hitting their goals. And so I'm like, okay, what is our process?

43:59 What is our sequence? How do. How are we going to market? What are we doing here? And the phone call was like step seven, right? So there's like three LinkedIn things and all this email and everything else like this. And the phone call is happening so late. Now I'm an introverted person, but I have to ask the question because I'm trained in sales, why is the phone conversation happening so late in the sequence? Why aren't we leading with this? And they say, well John, it's different for us. And I say, okay, please tell me more.

44:25 Because everyone says this, please tell me why yours is different, right? And they say, well John, we work with major, major huge corporations. We're in fin tech, financial technology, right? Everyone has a phone tree and everyone has a voicemail. And I'm like, cool. And you know. And they don't have an answer for me. And I'm like, okay. I'm the nice coach. And I'm like, okay guys, so you guys think that if we do enough volume with your approach, we're going to hit the goal? Absolutely, John. We just got to do enough volume.

44:53 Cool. What does that volume look like? We have no idea. I'm like, okay, great. You have a month to find the volume. And then if we don't find the volume, we're going to do it my way. Because your leadership is concerned about Yalls way. Is that, does that sound fair? I'm going to Give you some time. And they were like, yeah, of course they miss the goal. First thing, we do calls first. And they're like, john, it's just a voicemail. I'm like, cool. Bridge to another channel, right? Stop expecting a sale.

45:16 Start a relationship, right? And so I'm like, hey, this is me. We've never had a conversation before. It was reaching out about these situations we hear about all the time. You'll need to call me back. I'm going to send you an email to see if this is even worth the conversation or not. And you know what happened? It was like a 1400% increase in their booking rate, which sounds really, really crazy, but like, when you're at one, you know, so like, so like any growth is, is really really, you know, when you're starting from like, nothing.

45:43 But it was just like. And I talked to more people that want to take that approach. They only want to put their humanity in there when they, when they see that there's an opening in interest in sales. If you're going to do it right, is about creating that interest. And if you don't know how to create interest the right way, you're stuck running this weird volume timing game that all these guys are trying to do over do out over here. So human first, to show that you're a human and have some human connection so you actually get seen as a human first before we get boxed in as a salesperson.

46:12 Oh, you just want to sell me. You just want to close me. You're just asking these questions because you don't care if I show you that I'm human first, I then get seen as a human first. And then if I have something to show you, we can talk about it. But all these guys that are trying to be like, okay, let's just keep this brass tax. I'm the wolf of not Wall street, but Electric Street. And we're just going to do SEO for you and everything. You're just going to buy these things from me. But just brass tacks, do you want this thing or not?

46:36 You're never gonna find the volume ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And like, I gotta say this just one more time because I am the most systematic laboratory nerd on the planet. And I'm still telling you that like leaning into the conversation has a, has it exponential quantified impact on your lift. And you're just scared, which is why you don't want to do it. That's why all these people are trying to build these massive engines, because they're scared and they're fearful and they don't want to change.

47:03 And that's exactly what is going to be the problem that's going to lead to all the problems with all these bots. Okay, let's talk about the bots. I'm glad you said that at the end. Let's talk about the bots. Talk about the bots. Let's talk about the bots. So. And actually, we should probably talk about a little bit about the. A little bit about the books. Let's talk a little about the book. So this is your first touch on this. I've seen both Blade Runner movies, both Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049.

47:31 Pick from that what you will, but I've seen both of them and I've. I've drawn certain conclusions from them. And so seeing the film and then touching on the Philip K. Dick book, I hadn't really, really read it. Okay, so you had not read the book, but you had seen them. I had seen the movies. Right. What was your perspective on the movies? Just seeing the movies without reading the material. So just seeing the movies without reading the material. Blade Runner as a film. Well, two things. One, Blade Runner as a film could never be made today.

48:05 And that's why Blade Runner 2049. Well, number one, that's why Blade Runner's sequel took so long to get up off the. Off the deck. But number two, that's also why, as a sequel, it kind of doesn't work, because the shift that has occurred since the original Blade Runner in culture, not in technology, in culture, the shift that has occurred doesn't support some of the idea. Right, right. Yeah. You know, I have a guess. I have a guess. I have a guess. This is where we're going. So hold on. Go ahead.

48:41 Okay. Okay. I think. Oh, okay. So is the newer movie so sensationalized and overblown and so big? Because we're kind of used to the idea of, like, AIs and robots and everything, because culturally, it's kind of just more interwoven. So they've got to make it a bigger conflict point. And it ruins the movie and the story.

49:01 Yes and no. Interesting. So they're, they're, they're trying to hold on to the aesthetic in the original Blade Runner. Okay. Yeah. Because that, I mean, it's, It's. I mean, it's iconic. I mean, it's iconic. It's. Yeah. Iconic aesthetic. And the people who, you know, Dennis Vilu. View. I cannot pronounce the guy's last name. Who directed Dune and is directing Dune or directed Dune 2. And I was directing Dune 3. That guy directed Sicario, which I just watched the other day. Great film. Great. Tough watch.

49:31 Tough watch, but a great film. You know, you. Guillermo del Toro, like, underrated actor. Like, I liked him. Right? But watching that. Yeah. Excuse me, Benicio del Toro. Yes, Del Toro. Guillermo del Toro is the director. Muffled. Yeah, but, like, watching that, because, you know, like, I've seen Snatch. I've seen this stuff, and I'm like, okay, cool. Like, he is that very interesting character. But then I'm like, oh, dude can be real dark. Okay. He. I loved it when he says to Emily Blunt, the things that you are going to see are going to offend your American eyes.

50:01 And he just walks out of the room. And I was like, yep, yep, you're exactly right. Get ready. And she couldn't. She couldn't. And then Josh Brolin is the CIA spook. Oh, yeah. He's phenomenal in that role. It's so good. Well, he actually. He actually. He might. I think he actually probably went and hung around some spooks because I've known some former CIA folks in my time, and they are literally exactly. That guy. Yeah. Just. That's. That guy. Yeah. You're just dead. It's wild. You're just. Just dead on.

50:31 Dead on. Application of that. And then all the Delta guys who are what they are. Delta guys are what they are. Anyway. No. So you look at Blade Runner 2049, and then you look at the original Blade Runner and see both. And I resisted, by the way, watching the sequel for a long time. I really did, because the other movie, to your point, is so iconic. But I had long ago come to the conclusion that we are already living in the future that Blade Runner promised, just with less pollution. Oh, so the Gray Dust, that's in.

51:05 That's in. Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep? Yeah. Okay. Like, we're fighting each other viciously about global warming, while China, of course, produces one new coal plant a week. But we're fighting viciously about global warming because, you know, we don't want that. Okay, That's. That's a plus. I'm not saying that that's a negative. That's a plus. We should be having that vicious fight about what we do with the environment. Cool. Have the arguments. Let's talk about it. But because of those arguments, because of how far that went, and by the way, Philip K. Dick died in 1982, so we didn't have a chance to see sort of all this sort of come.

51:40 Come to Fruition but because of regulation. Because of. To your point about capitalism, Capitalism being forced to be regulated. Right. By a governmental entity that doesn't care about capitalism. Yep. Cleaned up the environment, but it had nothing to say. So you don't have acid rainfall like in the original Blade Runner. Right. But nothing to say about. And this is. This is again, the point that I think Philip K. Dick makes nothing to say about the relationship between man and technology. Government is astonishingly silent on this, for the most part.

52:17 And private industry is astonishingly, to our point earlier, venal on all these areas. And so the venality Dick didn't. He got part of, but he thought the finality would come from government. That's why Deckard works for the government. He thought it would come from the government because he came out of a time in the 50s and 60s when government was the biggest problem and private industry was highly regulated coming out of World War II. So when he was a kid, the world he grew up in was the CEO married their secretary and didn't make more than X number of thousands of dollars a year.

52:50 And yet, if adjusted for inflation, the CEO made just as much then as the CEO makes now. Except they just hid because of unions. They just hid the money in different places. Okay, fine. So everybody looked like they were conforming, and everybody looked like they were the same culturally, which certain political parties in our country would like to go back to that visual look of conformity and are hidebound to that idea. By the way, Ray Bradbury wrote about this. This is where the Martian Chronicles and everything else that he ever wrote, Fahrenheit 451, came out of that sense of being hamstrung by conformity during a time that, again, certain political parties in this country would like to get back to where everybody looked the same.

53:32 Right. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Dick is writing as a countercultural, along with Heinlein, to a certain degree, writing as a counterculture, countercultural opposition. Right. To that idea. So he could project that forward into. Into the book. And that gets picked up in the movie quite brilliantly. The original braid runner that gets picked up quite brilliantly. Now, as a movie, it kind of falls apart in the third act. The original Blade Runner does. Okay. And it descends into this action movie trope because it's the 80s and they didn't really know where to go with it.

54:07 And so they had to. It's funny because my wife is a huge Harrison Ford fan and big reader and stuff like this, and so she was giving me some of the knowledge about the Backside of the book. Apparently he didn't want to make the movie. He got. No, he didn't. He got forced into a contract and apparently, like, was like a begrudging, like, unwilling hostage for most of the shooting in the. In the production of the movie and stuff like that, and has made no bones about it whenever anyone asks. Yeah, you know, him and Ridley Scott did not exactly see eye to eye on that set.

54:38 Yeah. So, like, you know, and I can imagine, because the book itself, to me, like, I have a lot of questions after the book ends, you know, like a lot, honestly, you know, which in my mind makes it a good book. Book. Right. Like, you know, it's supposed to have some momentum afterwards if it's just like, okay, I'm done. I'm never gonna think about this again. You know, you're probably lying to yourself if you tell. You tell yourself that you like it. But I, like, I'm excited to see it. I. I'm. I'm very interested to see how they talk about the chicken head stuff in the, in the movies, if they do it all, because I think that that was pro.

55:17 That. That seems probably the hardest thing to, to nail in a film. Yes. So

55:29 it is. It is visually referenced, but not verbally addressed. I'll frame it that way. Okay. So if you know what to look for or if you're primed to look for that in the visuals, you will see it in certain scenes, but it is not. And there's like, like junkie homeless behavior kind of stuff. Yeah. Okay. It's not directly referenced. Right. Because. Okay, so. So there were probably three things in, in the novel that were really hard to translate to film. So the first thing was, was the, was the, the destruction of people's IQ by the gray dust.

56:02 The chicken head piece. Yeah. The second piece was the lack of.

56:12 Shall we say, lack of geopolitical

56:19 anchoring that was in the book. Right. Because when Blade Runner came out, the movie came out in 1982, I mean, you're knee deep in the Cold War at that point. You just. You're just in it. Right. Gorbachev has not come along yet. I think that was at the time when. And so they're all kind of. Oh, that's fascinating. Right. Because like, whenever I was reading Heinlein in late 80s, early 90s at, like, I was. I. I read Heinlein too. Too early, I would say, like, I was probably 10, right. And my brother was like, oh, hey, stranger in a strange land.

56:52 And, you know, here's Body Dysmorphia. And transitioning consciousnesses into other sexes and everything, you know, so. But all of those books have kind of this weird vibe. It almost seems like. Of like I pick up the vibe that you're talking about that like government is the bad guy, which then kind of forces individual focus onto the individual. Right. And so then in all of these books, like Highline books and the, in the Philip K. Dick book, Philip K. Dick books, it seems like there's like this big divide between like almost like the, like the aware and the unaware.

57:24 Almost. Right. And you know, not for nothing, there's a. There's seems like there's a pretty big gap between those two circles and buckets of the population today. Right. People that are just like sitting at home watching the news and on the Internet and versus that are actually going out to. And being around people and seeing for their own eyes what is happening. Because like the whole buster part. Yeah, that I was like, right. But on, on some level that was redeeming a little bit of like, oh, okay, like, like it almost felt like in my head it was like too much of like a thing.

57:59 So like I'm like. I'm like, okay, like this doesn't make sense. So like in my head it was, it was, it was almost like hope that that that is what it was. And then whenever it was, I was like, I was. Oh, okay. But also a little convenient. Well, and, well, and then the third thing in the book. Well, so this ties into the third thing in the book, which is the mercerism. Okay, so mercerism does not. None of that is. I will just. Right now, none of that's referenced in the movie at all. Oh, to me, that's like the most interesting part.

58:27 And.

58:29 The thing that, that I think Philip K. Dick was trying to say with mercerism. Yes. He's making a point about religion in the opiate of the masses and the Marxist point and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, okay, I'm uninterested in that. The Marxist framing of that. I don't care. Or not that I don't care, but I'm dismissive of that for a whole variety of reasons. I think that that's. To surface an analysis of what he's trying to do here. He was working through, to your point about the divide between the people who are paying attention and the people who aren't.

59:02 He was working through the divide of the masses versus the elite for sure in that. But he was also working through social control, the role of hallucinogenics and the role of lsd. His own personal experiences with drugs. I mean, he talked about it in an interview that was published. Gosh. In the 1970s or might have been a speech, I think was an interview published in the 1970s where he talked about how a lot of his friends use drugs and wound up screwed up on drugs. And so he was not interested in expanding his mind in that kind of way.

59:43 Whereas you had. At the same time, folks, like, in 1982 is 10 years in, 10 years in on the founding of Apple Computers,

59:54 founded by a guy, Steve Jobs, who went to India and went traipsing around trying to expand his mind. And allegedly, according to him, anyway, went on an LSD trip and came up with Apple Computers. Oh, interesting. Okay. I've not heard this story. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the reason. You know why that the logo for Apple is Apple, right. Is an apple with a bite out of it. Yeah. Oh, it's because I'm Alan Turing. When he was. When he was prosecuted by the British government after World War II for being a homosexual, committed suicide by putting it either cyanide or arsenic, I can't remember which one.

1:00:39 But it was some kind of poison in an apple. And he, He. His body was found with an apple next to it with a bite taken out of it. Oh, interesting. Okay. Huh. And that's the reason for the Apple logo. Really? Yep. Man. Have I just been reading all, like the marketing virginized of all of this stuff of. You know, because, like, you gotta go back. You gotta go back and read what Steve actually said about it. Yeah. The marketers said afterward what he actually said. Yeah, yeah. Because, like, I was like, I. I listen to all these business books and read a bunch of business content and I just.

1:01:15 And I just heard a story that they were. They were shown this graphical interface. Oh, yeah, that did happen. Yeah. They went to IBM and. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, like. So like, all of that stuff is a start. Is a stuff that stands out in the business lore. Not. Not this other. Okay, so that's. Well, because. Because they don't. Because everybody, God bless folks in business, but they want to siphon off to the point about finance guys, Right. Who don't take philosophy classes. They want to partition off all that other stuff and just focus on the money.

1:01:44 Because the money seems clean and it seems pure and it seems as though it's unfettered. And of course, that's a lie and a deceit. And then it gets too big. Right. You know, like. And the fascinating thing is, like, why do we keep. Like, it almost feels like, you have to be willfully ignorant to like, not look at the 101 versions of this, like, getting in our way, like, over and over and over and over and over again, right? Like, I mean, like, it leads me to start thinking, and this is not helpful.

1:02:16 How many times do we have to go through this, like, version of this thing before we can be like, oh, hey, hey, hey, hey. We see that, we see that, right? Like, it was, it was like the weirdest moment of like, I remember. Like, I think anyone who's an adult right now can probably appreciate this. Like, before COVID right? You'd watch one of those movies like Contagion or, you know, any of that stuff, right? And it always has the same montage on the front end of it, right? Of like the news cycle, right?

1:02:43 And I, and I, and I could remember watching that as a kid and being like, hey, you know what? Like, no, no, no, not like, like that's all just drama. Like, people aren't really that dumb, you know. But then we fast forward to like, Covid and I'm just like, oh. Like, it's like, it's like this very weird moment of like, oh my God, the books are real. And then like, oh, wow, those people really had a really good grasp on humanity. Like, wow, you know, like that to me is the mind blowing part. Not. I made my piece with the fact that we can do this and I do a version of this and I'm probably not even paying attention to.

1:03:19 Because we're all humans and, you know, you can only be aware of so many things. But like, the people who don't even think that it could be somewhat similar are. I'm like, how would they are people. Who are consistently and repeatedly mugged by reality. I love this term. It's a term the conservatives sometimes use. To describe by reality. Mugged by reality. Describe liberals who switch from being liberal to being conservative. They say that a liberal is just a conservative that was mugged by reality.

1:03:46 Or conservative is just a liberal who was mugged by reality. That's it, right? And, and, and I like that idea of being mugged by reality because it is only. So I often say this in relation to people who are or, or have been in, in, in war zones, right? Regardless of how they got there, there's certain things that you can only learn when a bullet goes past your ear. And you could read all the books about it, you can watch all the movies, it doesn't matter. None of all that stuff fades into, into, into nonsense the second you almost die.

1:04:24 Or if you are in a traumatic. Any kind of trauma basically in your life. And I'm talking, like, real trauma. I'm not talking like, I didn't get an Uber to take me from the airport to my house. That isn't trauma. I'm not talking about, like, oh, you know, I'll even go stuff. I will for myself. I'm not talking about. Someone said some nasty name to me when I was walking down the street. Like, I'm not talking about that. That ain't trauma. That's just. Just whatever. That's just stupidity or ignorance or whatever.

1:04:52 That's being a human, dealing with other humans. All right? That's life. We used to call that life. No, real trauma is. And by the way, real trauma is. I went to the doctor because I found this weird thing on me, and I've been diagnosed with cancer. Now I gotta do it. I gotta deal with this. I was just talking to a lady in my town who. Small anecdote here. Lady who lives in my town. She had an office next door to mine in a previous location. I moved. I had seen her in a little over a year. I was sitting out on the.

1:05:22 On the. On the side. Well, not on the sidewalk, but on a bench. On the sidewalk, waiting for my food outside of a local restaurant. And she saw me. She walked across the street. She's like, hey, how you doing? And we were talking. I said, what's up with you? And she said, oh, I've been diagnosed with a pretty aggressive form of cancer. And. And I'm going to. She didn't say I'm going to die, but she said, I'm exploring treatment options for this right now and kind of going through this. I was walking through this with her, right?

1:05:49 And that's trauma. That's trauma, yeah. Like, friend of mine, very old friend of mine, he's another sales nerd, and he. We got connected over this nonprofit that was for, like, they were driving awareness around this cancer nonprofit. And we. We became friends after that. And one time he shared this thing with me. He goes. He goes. He goes. Every time I have an acre of pain, first thought is that I got cancer again, right? And, like, imagine, you know, you can't. You can't really know it until you go through it, right?

1:06:23 But then also, it's going to change how you think about it, right? Like, I mean, sometimes you can't. This is why it's so important that if you have never been in sales, do not think you can lead sales, because. Oh, yeah, no, you. You just you, you, you can't. And the people are just not going to believe you because they're going to be able to see through the, the facade, the fabrication, the take it to you, make it stuff, right? It. And just don't try. Like we're not, we're not great at it, you know, but also be open to going and experiencing these things before we take these hard line decisions.

1:06:55 Right? Like, exactly. Going back to the thing that we were talking about. Like, you and I have read all of these books, right? About everything that can go wrong. Right. Like, and I've read way more books about it going wrong than it being beneficial. Right. You know, kinda. Right. And there's also this, like, there's a sec. There's this kind of weird thing. There's this weird overlap with like martial arts thinking. Right. I don't train and I don't practice and I didn't put that time into that thing.

1:07:21 So that way I could go around with some weird inflated ego and everything else like this, right. I go there. So that way I'm, I'm trained and I'm practiced. But there's this weird shift that happens with every martial artist that gets to any kind of height, right? And you, and you've seen it, it, you have to go from that I want to be a badass to like, this is the way of life. This is how I approach my, my conflict, my thinking, my, my judgment and everything. And like you don't make it past the mid tier in anything without that shift happens.

1:07:53 Right. And so this is a weird thing. I don't talk about this a whole lot, but like now whenever there's anything I want to go learn. It used to be because I am this person, I am the nerd that thinks that it, well, if I just know the basic fundamentals, I'm going to be able to figure this thing out. Okay. And that's my normal, normal way of approaching everything. But I spent 10 years as a salesperson trying to think that I could find a way around the human connection and dealing with the humans and everything.

1:08:16 And I only found success whenever I stopped doing that kind of thing. So in every aspect, there's the version of reality that you think matters and then there's the higher level of it that everyone else is thinking about. Right. As a poker player, how do I win these pots? Okay, well, as a professional poker player, how do I lose the less. Right. As a, as a, as a beginner black, as a beginner martial arts student, how do I like, never get hit? Okay. Master, how do I go home? How do I make sure that I'm the one going home?

1:08:44 Right? Yeah. And. And more often than not, that means I don't need anything at all. You know what I'm saying? So the old enough to know better kind of thing, Right? To use that, like very old folksy wisdom and everything else like this. Right? Like, we're only old enough to know better because we've spent our time reading and consuming these ideas that everyone else was like, oh, this is just hyper nerdy, stupid. Oh, but robots, you guys can just like give me robots and they can do all this cold calling that I don't want to do.

1:09:13 And we just need to do 3,000 of these a day and we're like out of 00,0001%. And John, like, you're an injury. There's a better way to fix the problem. Guys, let me ask you a question with all this. No, because this is good. Let me ask you a question about all this. Please. Cheer ship. I'll allow it. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that.

1:09:39 Good on you. Thank you.

1:09:43 If the figure CEO Mr. Adcock is correct, right? If there will indeed. If he can indeed. And I don't know that he can. I think I. Number one, I think building a robot is incredibly difficult. Number two, I think embodying a robot that can even do just minimal menial tasks is also incredibly difficult. Then I think your third order level of difficulty is putting the object in the world and having it be accepted by other human beings. With all of our years of whether it's evolution or creationism, I don't care.

1:10:16 We've got stuff that that robot doesn't have. I don't care where you think it came from. We've got it. They don't. Okay? That's the difference between us and the monkeys. Okay? The Monk. We ain't putting the monkeys on the factory floor. Okay, so you've got three major first order problems there. You have to solve three major ones. And by the way, the AI does not solve for any of those three at all. I don't care how evil it is, I don't care how much it hallucinates, it doesn't solve for those problems.

1:10:43 It's also other problems, but not those three. Okay, let's say those three problems could be solved in the next four years.

1:10:53 You and I both live in or near a major city where one of these humanoid robots is probably going to show up. Yeah. More likely than not.

1:11:06 First, as a sales guy, let's start from here. And then let's move down the level. Okay. You want to put the worst version of him?

1:11:14 Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

1:11:19 How is sales going to sell to a robot? Let's start with that question. And by the way, not a bot. Beautiful question. Not a bot. I want to be very clear. Not a bot on a phone, disembodied somewhere. I mean, you show up at the building and the robot is the gatekeeper. Oh, well, oh, that's, that's the body problem. There you go. The embodiment problem. Well, that's what everybody wants, allegedly. Well, they, they think that they want that, right. Like, like one of the biggest lessons that I, that I learned as a, as a stuck, not high minded salesperson is very stuck, was that the idea is that the gatekeeper is not really there to tell you.

1:12:02 No, they're there to protect the time of the person who hired them. Right. Because sometimes, and people will talk about this sometimes the reason why they have a gatekeeper is because they're so excited to talk to you that they got to have someone there, you know, And I'm like, you know, and there. And that's true. Like some people are just so people oriented that they can't help themselves. Right? But I was like, gatekeepers are bad humans and all this stuff, right? Because I wasn't winning, you know.

1:12:26 And then the biggest change was whenever I started to make them like part of my approach, right. Hey, you probably see a thousand people looking exactly like me coming in here, trying to get time with a doctor and stuff like that. And I don't want to, I don't want to waste their time. Right? You probably got some pretty good insight into the doctor, what he likes and what he doesn't like, where his frustrations are with his outcomes, with his patients, with his time on the table. I'm curious, like, like, what do you think that that would look like?

1:12:54 Because I don't want to waste their time. Oh, I don't, I don't, I don't actually know. Or they would say like, okay, he, he hates this, but he likes this, right. And things like that. So whenever I made them part of my team, right. And treated them like a human, which they are, I had better outcomes. Right. And so now there is a very robotic version of a buying. It's called an rfq, right. Hey, we're going to go out to market and we don't know what in the hell we're actually looking for. So we're going to, we're going to do an RFQ and we're going to, and we're going to go to chat GPT.

1:13:29 We're going to have GPT create this RFQ for us, right? And because it's AI, it's going to know exactly what to do. And then essentially it's like, hey, invitation to waste your time. Oh yeah, right. Like, like that's what I get as a sales professional. I'm like, okay, cool. Would love to ask you a couple questions. No questions. You must fill it out and then we will select it. Okay, cool. I know where I'm at. You not ever make any decisions because you don't even know what's important to you. I'm gonna go find someone who's at least open to a con.

1:13:54 And so then right there I am making a judgment driven decision based upon my own experience as my time as a professional. Okay, but if you've not spent the time as a professional in that space, just hang out, right? Like, like that's just follow up. 17 touches of follow up and you know, start a newsletter, you know, and everything else like this that everyone else is pushing. But here's the thing. All of this stuff, all of this, all the marketing stuff is I think going to go out of the way because you know what you're not going to be able to do?

1:14:28 Indoctrinate an AI into your way of thinking. Right? So all these things of like, well, if we just, just, if we just give them a lead magnet and then they opt into our stuff, if we just keep sending the messaging, eventually they're going to start thinking about it. Yeah, okay, but here's the thing. You're not going to make the Apple guy go to PC. You're just not right in, like in, in reality. And if your gatekeeper is an AI that you teach it and tilt it to, like here's what you live through and here's what you don't.

1:14:55 You don't ever get in front of anybody unless they're confirming your own biases. Right? One of the things about salespeople that is so difficult is you're supposed to have an opinion, right? People hate us because they all think that we're going to do anything, be anything, say anything to get a deal. But the only people that are doing that are the people who have made a decision that they're only going to do this for a short period of time. So yeah, they only got to do it until like it really takes off and then they're going to go back to being their like normal regular selves.

1:15:21 But here's the thing I am a normal, regular self, and you either like it or you don't. I'm going to go find other people to talk to, you know, so it's like all of those little bitty shifts that come from time and grade of, like, really doing the work and realizing, hey, this is. This is the weirdest way to make my piece with this. But, like, I've lied to prospects and it still didn't close, so why would I just keep doing that to myself, right? Like, Like, I now have these facts that making myself uncomfortable and lying and, like, didn't actually change anything.

1:15:49 It just made me more uncomfortable. So, like, why would I continue to do that, right? You have to go through the experience and learn. And one of my favorite lines and, and this is one of my biggest concerns about this whole motion, right? And I'm going to butcher this line. You probably, you probably might know it in the. In the original form, but it's show me the person who cares about the. About the, the one in the volume of numbers. And that's a real human, right? It's around this idea that, like, you make a big enough sample size, it's impossible to care about the individuals, right?

1:16:22 There's a whole lot of room to extrapolate on that whole topic, right, when it comes to political and culture conversations and stuff like this, you know? But the same thing happens here, right? So if all these people, the first time an AI sabotages their business or does something that categorically harms their reality, they're then going to be a lot more concerned about it. But until then, you're just thinking about the positives. Okay, now, now, we saw this in chapter 10 of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep when Rick Deckard fails to kill retire the Android Luba Luft, who's posing as a.

1:16:58 As an opera singer, right? Great little framing there by Philip K. Dick also on that. But he, He. He's administering her the empathy test, the Voight comp test, and she doesn't like the questions. And so instead of answering the questions, she behaves as a human would, which I think of this in sales. She doesn't like the questions the salesperson is asking. I was gonna bring up the same. Thing, so you knew where I was going. And so. And so she calls a cop, which the cop is a robot or the cop is an Android.

1:17:29 The Android cop puts him, arrests him, takes him to this second police station in San Francisco that he's never seen before. And again, this is for me, the moment where sort of the bottom drops out of the plane, right? Yeah. And Deckard is having this existential crisis in an Android police station full of androids.

1:17:54 Maybe I'm the Android, right? And that maybe I'm the Android. Maybe I'm not real. Maybe I'm the one with a problem. Now, in our world today, many, many people, and we could argue about the genesis of where this comes from. I think it comes from the, the decline of meaning in, in Western society and specifically Western society, or generally in Western society, but specifically in American culture, we're struggling with meaning right now, and we have been for the last 15 years. And this is tied into identity and a whole bunch of other things.

1:18:26 I mean, you see this in, you see this in, in teenagers, most notoriously. Now, I was talking with a friend of mine who's a clinical, clinical psychologist, and he said the clinical studies are showing that a child forms their first political identity in ninth grade. It's starting as early as ninth grade now. He said it didn't start earlier than that. He's like, we started way later than that. Previously. He said it's because we're having an identity problem. We're having a meaning problem problem in our country.

1:18:57 Okay, I'll let you, based on that while I ask you this question. Well, I'm going to let you based on this, hold on. Based on that for just a minute. Hold, hold that thought in your head. So the question becomes,

1:19:11 how long will it be with these 100,000 humanoid robots before somebody says that robots have rights?

1:19:21 Well, in,

1:19:25 so A.I. the movie, the Spielberg movie with Jude Law. Right. I haven't seen in 20 years. Yeah. And my daughter is, you know, about to be 14 and we litter read widely. Right. You know, if we're like, hey, you know, give this a couple of years. But you know, we, we don't ever say like, this is not allowed. We try to give her some like, hey, when you're going through this, this will be more meaningful to, to you then. Yep. And you know, so part of me is very excited now about going back and re watching AI with her and watching the Will Smith iRobot.

1:19:58 Right? Because like, I remember watching that movie and like there's a scene in the bar where like, everything is so ungodly expensive. It's like, it's like $160 for like two beers and a pair of Chucks or something like this. And I remember watching it being like, no way. Well, like, hey, you know, I'm on vacation and the tourist traps aren't the only things that are expensive anymore, you know what I'm saying? Like, like, like we're living in this reality, right? And you can, I think it's very easy to like read the books and then when it's not perfect, completely dismiss any of the thinking of the, of, of the author of the book, of the story and everything.

1:20:35 And I think if you read enough, you see enough of those trends, enough of those patterns, enough of those things happening, and it's not ever exactly the same thing. But we can, if we're being really honest about it, if we can shelves our egos a little bit, man. We, we have a lot of room to just dismiss and go for the negative, right? And then you have people that know that and they, and they have those levers around negativity and hate and you know, creating one common opponent. So then, you know, like the playbook is so well known by the people who shouldn't have access to it.

1:21:11 It. Right. Like that's, that's the bigger concern for me over that because I, I'm more concerned that someone would start that whole thing just that way they have a battle to go fight against. More than it being like a real reasonable kind of discussion of like, hey, like it. The question is not do they have rights in my opinion, it's like at what stage should they, at what stage would it make sense for them to be in the situation? So that way we don't do well. They're never going to have rights ever.

1:21:43 Right? And then something changes, right? And then I, I don't, I don't know. It's a very interesting thing. I've got, I've got a lot of concern about it, you know, and I think that right now back to the earlier question. We can't, we can't even get a software that like all these softwares, that market being the best at all the things and not a one of them is they're good at one thing and then they're just packaging on, you know, all this other use case stuff so that way they can bump up their, their costs and everything.

1:22:11 I think we're going to have that, I think we're going to have potentially some androids capable of doing very basic tasks that are going to be very robotic and very clunky because all the people that are putting effort into empathy and emotion and communication, I don't think are really focused on like the body, right? So I think we're going to have these two very, very different tracks, right? The body people and then the conversational stuff. The, the Empathy stuff, the connection with the human.

1:22:36 And because I think that these will be very different packs or tracks when they try to bridge them together, it's going to be a bit of a nightmare. That's my thinking, on the. On that specific thing. So I think you. You're probably on to something. I think the. The reason I asked the question is because of the explosion in transgenderism over the last people identifying as transgender. Yep. And I'm not. I want to be very clear. I'm not getting. I'm not. I'm using it as merely a data point for extrapolating to a future pattern of behavior, because past performance does sometimes indicate future results.

1:23:16 But fascinating thing here, right? Like, I. Like, have you read Altered Carbon? Or have you seen the Netflix. I know the Netflix show. I have not. I haven't watched it, but I'm aware of what it is. The book was solid. Right. And. And it kind of exposes this idea, like, what if we can transfer consciousness into, like, other people? Right. What if we could live for forever, but the body wasn't meant to do so? Okay, great. What does that whole thing look like? Well, if it's not the body and it's just the consciousness, like, what happens if you can shift into another body and it's not your body?

1:23:46 Right. And, you know, it's. It's wild because it goes back to the whole main thing, like, do we give access to this? Do we ban books? Do we keep it off to the side? Do we give access to information? I was 11 years old when I read a Heinlein book about a guy who was in a car accident and gets his consciousness transfer transferred into a female's body. Right, Right. I was reading other science fiction books about telepaths that could take over bodies of other people, genderized or not, and everything else like that.

1:24:13 But so, because I was so, I guess, open to the idea in the science fiction format. Right. It doesn't offend me the way that it offends, like. Oh, and I'm not saying you. But there are people. Yeah, yeah. That this. That this idea offends. Right? Yeah, yeah. And I'm not asking from an offense perspective, because I think. Here's the thing. I think. I think that the bifurcation, the trifurcations will be along these lines.

1:24:42 You will for sure have people who will insist that a humanoid robot have rights, for sure. Even though it'll be very, very proven that it is all if this, then that. And they won't care. There's no ingenuity if you will. Right, right, right. They won't care. And I think there's going to be crossover between those people who insist that the robot has rights and people who are using. Let me be very blunt. And, and, and because they have a lot of kids listen to the show, so let me be blunt and baseline on this.

1:25:13 Who are using objects for base physical pleasure. Okay. There's gonna be crossover between those two groups. Immense crossover. Oh, okay. So, yeah, if I'm hearing you correctly, all the red pill incel folks who are going to see this as an outlet so that way they don't have to deal with. They're going to be the people who are both pushing and very much against. Yes. At the same time. That. Yeah, I. Yeah, I can see all the same time. All the same time. So that's one. That's one. This is my significant other.

1:25:46 And this is my toy. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So that's gonna be one group of people. Notoriously, the Joaquin Phoenix movie. Her. Right. Okay. It's gonna be those folks. I'm not that movie. Do you recommend it? I've seen the trailer for it and I, I thought it was kind of like a book that I was like, oh, I know where this is. That's a reality. I don't want to explain. I don't need to explore. That's fair. I need to explore that. I. I've had enough of my challenges in those spaces. I don't need to go down that road.

1:26:16 Thank you. Then you'll have another group of people. This is the second group. The second group of people will be those who are not supportive, but they're also not violently opposed. They're the wait and see people. I think that's. The vast majority of folks want to wait and see. Because if it's not in my town of name your place here, then it's. Not that big of a deal. It ain't that big a deal. That's something for those people in Chicago or Detroit or New York or LA or wherever. It could be a brave new world over there.

1:26:48 I'm still hanging out. Yeah. And they're taking the robot. That's like picking the corn, you know, Like. Like there's going to be.

1:26:56 I mean, like, I. I just don't think it's possible to not have a blind spot. Like, I really don't. And that's your third group of folks. So your third group of folks are going to be the people who are all the way. Well, they're all the way on the other end of the continuum. I think it's going to take while for the reflective people to shake out. And I think they'll probably shake out from a weird combination of these three groups. But you'll have your people all the way over on the other end of the spectrum who will say,

1:27:26 no, robots don't deserve rights. What the hell are we doing? And they're going to sabotage stuff left and right. Case in point, during the most recent LA riots, one of the more fascinating videos that I saw was of people who were riding against ICE raids in la destroying self driving vehicles in downtown la. That's your third group of people. And I feel like the third group in. And I'm trying to, I'm trying to look at trends and patterns and seeing if this like holds true as I zoom out on it. I think that the third group is where all the, all the, all the potential bad actors hide.

1:28:11 Oh yeah, for sure. So remember I said, remember the question I asked you, like, would you walk up to a building with a robot gatekeeper? The vast majority of people, by the way, will be in that middle group of. I don't know, I don't care. It's not an issue until it shows up to me. Right, right, right. When it shows up to you and you have to walk up there, the third group of people will be the people hiding in the car around the corner trying to get into the robot via wi fi to hack it. Yeah, exactly, right, exactly.

1:28:37 You know, or the 14 year old in Arkansas who has nothing to do but hack drones all day because he's bored. And by the way, I'm sorry ladies, it will be a he. It always is. I'm sorry, it just is. Yeah, because you know, there, there, there's going to be. Well, and then what'll happen is like, it's like, okay, cool, you have a robot gatekeeper. Here's our robot AI. Cold email bot. Bingo. And then, and then, and then there'll be a cultural answer of like harder, harder spam filters. Right? And then.

1:29:08 But like, what's fascinating to me is like as a salesperson, I analyze how this weird tit for tat, you know, we're gonna win. No, we're gonna win. We're gonna win. No, we're gonna win. Happens, you know, because it's like all the bad stuff that everyone hates about salespeople, most of it happens because most consumers are very uncomfortable being direct with salespeople. I'm not alone for you. I would never buy this. And you can waste your time if you want, but I'm pretty set y. Okay. And so if, if, you know, if, if it seems like a maybe, I'm supposed to follow up on a maybe.

1:29:46 Right? But if you could tell me, right, that, hey, and this is why I try to be very direct with people. Like if you cold call me for like lead gen. Hey, no, I'm not ever buying lead gen from anybody. Ever. Right? I, I don't believe in the time waste. I just don't. Right. So you can keep following up. I am telling you, I'm an Apple guy. You're trying to sell me PC products. It is a waste of time. Right, Right. I'm a vegan and you're trying to sell me on, on half a cow. Like, just stop. Like, like go find a better opportunity as opposed to thinking that you can force change minds.

1:30:18 Because that's just not how it works. But the people who don't do the job are not the people that are building the motions and building the strings and trying to find the shortcuts. Correct? Right. Well, and I mean, this is where Roy Batty's speech in the Tears in the Rain speech. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Shape we get ready for that, folks. I think, I think Philip K. Dick called it. There are going to be things in this next cyclical historical cycle around embodied. I hesitate to use the word intelligence.

1:30:53 Embodied computer. Algorithmic algorithm. Embodied algorithms. That's a better term, embodied algorithms. That you're not going to believe. And it's not going to be the embodied algorithms problem. This is sort of where I get to. It's going to be our problem. It's going to be a human problem. Okay? So let's, so let's just look at this reality for just a minute. I'm going to, I'm going to try to extrapolate this as we're talking about it, okay? You're a founder in this new world and there's, and there's robots, okay?

1:31:17 Because this happens now with salespeople. And they're like, you know what? I have a good idea. But like, I just can't seem to get anyone to buy, so I must just not be good at sales. So I'm gonna go hire a salesperson because salesperson can do this. Okay? So already your perception is screwed, right? That you were not enough versus understanding that how you communicate about your product and services is really the difference maker. Right? And also just basic expectations. Some people just aren't gonna buy.

1:31:45 Right? And so then what happens is they come along and then they're like, okay, great. I'm gonna hire a bunch of apartments setters, right? And like, okay, great. How many dolls do they have to do and everything, right? And they start doing these things. Now what happens is, because humans are humans, you have these battle royale situations, right? And some of these companies do, right? And financial services is major culprit of this, right? And SAS is becoming that way as well. It's kind of shifting a little bit in SaaS, but not quick enough in my opinion of like, hey, we're going to hire 30.

1:32:11 Most of you are going to quit, and that's fine because we just need the one and. And we'll be good. Okay? Imagine no one quits because they're all robots, right? And like, imagine your brand. Imagine your brand capital whenever you go out and you program 5,000, like, SDR AIs that are just going to bludgeon everybody in your market. Like, the stakes are going to be bigger for brands, I would say, right? Because eventually, if enough people quit from your sales team, you might be like, hey, maybe I'm part of the problem, right?

1:32:46 But if no one ever quits because they're all like these like, AI, yes men. Oh, yes, boss. Yes, boss. How much more can you do? Well, I don't know where. Okay, well, you know, can you. Can you make $3,000 a day versus just the 300? We'll figure out a way, boss. Right now it's duplicating itself, these things that are happening, you know, and so it's like that. That's gonna get. That's my, that's my number one concern as a sales professional. Not that I'm not going to have a job, but that, like, no one is going to ever hear anybody else out again.

1:33:18 Because everyone is just so thinking that, you know, oh, you're just the AI. You just want to sell me. All the rapport is fake, John. You just want to network with me so that way you can sell me. Actually, you're kind of jumping ahead a little bit because I don't know if you're tall enough to ride this ride well. And I, I think there will be a fourth group in there, which I kind of hold back a little bit on because I don't know where this fourth group is going to come from. I think there'll be a fourth group of folks, right?

1:33:43 So you'll have your, Your, Your crossover. These robots have rights slash baseline pleasure people of all kinds, by the way. Not just physical, but, okay, tied into identity and all that. Because all the, all the same entrepreneurs that are like, hey, why would I hire Americans when I can just like get Filipinos for $3 an hour? And it's okay because the cost of living is just so different. Like, I mean, there is the realm of cost of living differences and then there was the realm of you justifying being a cheap asshole or just.

1:34:10 Right. Just exploiting people for whatever. But now you can expl. But now you can exploit an object. Right? So it's all better. And they're not humans. Right, Because. Because that's the other concern. Right, because since I am the science fiction fantasy reader, right, like, is it beyond the realm of possibility that eventually, like a. More of a cyborg kind of thing of like, you know, like the neuro link and things like that, of it moving together and everything. Like, like at some point we're gonna have to have some really deep conversations about this and those conversations are going to be easier or harder.

1:34:47 Kind of like the civil rights movement based upon some of the decisions that we're making, I think in these early stages of this thing. Yeah, yeah. So I don't, I, I think those, I think those kinds of conversations are going to come up. I do not think they will come up in this next cyclical cycle that's going to start probably around 2030 or so, 2035 at the latest, and then run out, run out 20 years to 2055 or even 2060. It won't start until what I call the 21st century's version of the Summer of Love.

1:35:18 It'll be my kids in middle age that'll have. My youngest son, who's 8 in middle age, will have to deal with the answers to that question because we still have. To your point, we're right at the cusp of all of the nonsense. And so there's certain decisions that have to be made here that are going to, to your point about poker, lead to one of 18 different outcomes or a multiplicity downstream, you know, for, for. As pervasive as it is in my, in my inbox and in my. And in my feeds and my, in my world, if you will.

1:35:49 Like, we're still on the very much bleeding edge of most of this stuff in conversation, right? Oh, absolutely, yeah. Like most people don't know the difference between like an LLM and automation. No, they don't. You know, like, like at all. Well, well, when you walk around, this is that fourth group of people. So the fourth group of people. And I think that I keep going back to this idea that the fourth group of people are the ones that are going to keep the other three groups anchored because those other three groups are going to be, for lack of a better term, they're going to be a minority report.

1:36:19 The group that's going to. The group that's going to keep those other four groups anchored is going to be the same group of people that's always kept that other group of people anchored. And it's going to be the people that do not. I hate to. No, no, I don't hate to say this. All the people who live their lives online miss this. The vast majority of people that you need to engage with, you talk about sales that you need to engage with, are not in online spaces. And they do not care what happens there because their lives are still driven by human to human interaction from literally the time they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night.

1:37:05 Case in point, your garbage man. Case in point, your road crew. Case in point, your, your. Yeah, your, your. Well, to a certain degree, your academic educator in certain types of schooling situations. Okay, hold on a second. And those people, Those people are the ones. Those people are the people who will keep the other three groups anchored because they. Empathy box. There you go. That's the empathy box, right? It's that. Okay, so this is fascinating, right? I spend a lot of time online. Most of my business comes from my.

1:37:39 From my online network, if you will. I had a pretty good local network, but whenever I started my business, I had this moment of realizing that, like, I didn't want to be limited to just Fort Worth, Texas, because there wasn't enough business for me, right. And I didn't want to make compromises. I wanted to work with who I wanted to work with. So I started. Okay, this worked locally. Let's see if it works digitally, right? And so I just ran the same play in a digital format. And so most of a lot of my relationships are with people that I've never met in person before, right.

1:38:06 Which is kind of a weird version of the future to live in, right? It feels kind of High Line esque, right? Or, or Demolition Man. Right, right. Video calls like we're living that reality. And so it. There is this weird thing, right? So I bought this lathe off a guy off of Facebook Marketplace. Right. And it was, you know, in this, I mean, it was about an hour away. A friend of mine went, went with me because it's the real world and you know, you see the stories and everything else like this, you know, and also it's a big ass lathe.

1:38:33 I'm gonna have to put in the back of a truck and everything. So I take a friend with me, the guy had it listed for like 300 and everything. And we show up and I start talking about the fact that I'm new to this whole thing and then I don't know anything about this at all. And I'm brand new and I got to learn. I'm asking him questions and everything. The guy goes, let me knock a hundred dollars off of this thing because you're have to go buy some things that are essentially going to cost you about 100 bucks.

1:38:54 And I just want you to start, right? And for like three days I had this like half life of like humanity of like, man, there's some genuinely nice people out here, you know, so, you know, there's this weird kind of thing for myself of like, I'm trying to do more of that now of, you know, that's part of the reason for the road trip. Like let's just go hang around and be around some people, like some real actual people who probably have an agenda, but it doesn't start with how they're messaging me, you know what I'm saying?

1:39:22 And stuff like this. And so it's just been fascinating that as I have really great relationships with people that I've never met before, you and I have never met in person ever, right? Like, I have people that I've done five figure business deals with that don't, don't live on the same continent as me, right? But by that same token, I also know that like by, by choosing to spend time with humans. Oh, that connection is faster, it's richer, it's deeper. There's so much more to it in this, right? So it's one of those things to where don't get lured in by scale, right?

1:39:52 There is this messy aspect to it that is going to fundamentally change what, what your reality is. Right? And the nerds are the people who want to remove all the human connection, right? And, and I say this as a nerd who thought that in the beginning I could just brass tax my way through. Well, let me just build something that you can't say no to. Oh my God. Right? But I go back to this thing of, one of my favorite things is if you can ask the question, am I being narcissistic? You're fundamentally not.

1:40:21 Right? And I think about this like, like with, with AI and automation and everything else, like, why am I using this? Like am I am, you know, and it's weird in entrepreneurial circles, right? Because people talk about automation and be in virtual assistance and delegation and just delegate all the work that you don't want to do. Okay, like, at what standard? Because, like, I think. I think that's where the, where, where the line is going to be. What. What is your standard? And you're going to have all these people that are building very, very salesy, pushy sales robots that hate whenever a sales robot reaches out to them, but they think that they're completely justified as the tyrant.

1:40:59 Just like I did whenever I was thinking that, that my way was okay because I'm not using it for nefarious sins. It's all, it's all the. It's all these other guys that are the problem. We're going to have that on a much bigger scale because it's not going to be one person doing their own reach. It's one guy who owns 5,000 robots that are sending 3,000 messages a day. They're talking to other robots, sending him responses. Should we go into robot shorthand? Jeez.

1:41:26 Well, I've got to turn the corner here. Yeah. This has been a delightful conversation, though. This has been awesome. This is. This has been great. No, I gotta. Let me turn the corner here. Let's get ready to close.

1:41:40 Three things I think will absolutely be true in the upcoming fourth turning, and to John's point, or the first turning, we're going into a secular high. And I don't know what it's going to look like, I have no idea. But it will look different than the last secular high that we went through in the mid 20th century, that we all sort of hearken back to the high that Philip K. Dick was born into and Ray Bradbury was born into and Robert Heinlein was born into. And then that shaped them as they went into an awakening period.

1:42:08 And an awakening period always involves, at least in our country, it always involves an almost spiritual like or religious pursuit of a higher conscience. We saw that during the transcendental movement in the 19th century. And then we saw it 100 years later, which, by the way, led into the Civil War. And then we also see this a little bit later in the 1960s, which of course led into the civil rights movement in the 20th century and our own version of interseen civil strife. And I think it will arrive 100 years from now, right on time, in about 2060.

1:42:45 I won't be around maybe to see. Or if I will be around to see it, I'll be a very old man and no one will care what I have to say, but it will show up and how that war will be fought and who will have thoughts on that war? Well, those people are the sons and daughters of folks like myself and John who are having these conversations and thinking about these things right now. Based off of what we were reading from the last time we all went through this. I do believe fundamentally that human beings and.

1:43:23 And work done by humans, for humans, with other humans. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that ain't going nowhere where it's almost built. It's almost as if it was built into the structure of reality itself. And so far the engineers and the nerds have not been able to pull apart the structure of reality itself. They could barely understand the structure of reality itself, much less pull it apart. So we'll still have work. I'm not one of these people who believes that we'll have a bunch of people, surplus people floating around with nothing to do who will engage in civil strife.

1:43:53 I don't believe that for a moment people will find something to do. Even with all our robot helpers, I think we will also still have Christianity, Islam and Judaism. I don't think those are going away. And the reason why is because we. We need to have an eschatology of meaning. We need to have a structure of meaning that goes beyond the inevitable ceiling. I love this line that I wrote, the script that goes beyond the amenable ceiling that an art artificial transhuman paradigm will eventually hit.

1:44:24 I guarantee they will hit a ceiling. The cybernetics folks. To John's point, I do think there will be a rake Hertz Weil weird merging or at least a proposal for it of man and machine. And it will only look weird because it's not something that I'm used to. But that will be a proposal that will be put forth. It's already being put forth by several people. And I don't know if it will come in the form of a downloading of quote unquote consciousness. We already understand very little about consciousness, much less how it differs from an algorithm or is the same.

1:44:56 So the big three. The big three religions aren't going anywhere. And if you're not a religious person listening to this, I hate to tell you they're not going anywhere because they're containers of belief that have been around longer than the robots and longer than our current problems. They're sturdy for a reason. Then the third thing that will be true is that

1:45:22 there will be resistance to all of these changes. For sure that will be true. Some of it will Come in the form of. Of loud, obstreperous and grading objection like riots and people destroying the Waymos in la. And some will be very quiet and subtle, sort of like the Essenes back in the Old Testament inter period time, who in the Middle east,

1:45:56 mountains. And they created something called the Dead Sea Scrolls that showed up, you know, 2,000 years later. You'll have those folks, you'll have the preppers, what we would call in our time in America, the preppers. You'll have those folks who will say, no, I don't want to be involved in your world. I don't want to roll the dice and I don't want to play.

1:46:18 Those are going to be the things that are going to be consistent even through the next cycle with whatever is coming down the pike.

1:46:30 And so I remember the words from Ecclesiastes 1, not the thing that has been is a thing which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done. And of course, there is no new thing, no genuinely new thing under the sun.

1:46:50 Final thoughts. John, today on do androids dream of electric sheep? Actually, maybe that's the final question. Do androids dream of electric sheep?

1:47:06 I think that when they do, we need to be ready to have all those connecting conversations, because I think it's just a matter of time before we get to go do that. There. There was this very weird thing yesterday at the. At the museum, and I would love to just kind of talk about this. My daughter was going through it and she. And it was. It's called. It's called the Drake formula. Are you familiar with the Drake formula? Okay, so it's a science fiction formula. I don't know if it comes from science fiction books or just science and theory, but it's around the idea of.

1:47:36 It's a formula that you can kind of run yourself through, which kind of extrapolates whether or not you're optimistic or pessimistic about other intelligent life in the universe. Right. Are we alone or not? Right. And it was interesting because my daughter was going through it and it's telling her, like, hey, on average, we usually see one planet capable of bearing life in a. In a system. Right? And then it asks the question, what do you think? Just like 0.01% 01%, 01% on all these things. Right.

1:48:07 And I appreciated how, how it was framing the question. Right. It was talking about like, hey, you know, science shows that as soon as the environment was right on Earth, life started to move in that direction, scientifically speaking. Right. So bearing that in mind. Right? What do you think that if you have the right components for intelligent life just from a scientific perspective that you end up with this as a, as a product just like 0.01% right. And I'm like you're so fixated on humans as humans as humans in our specialty, our, our preciousness that it's leading you to like I think gauge a little low and of course this is a conversation that's very hard to have with a you know, 13 about to be 14 year old girl but it was just such as this beautiful thing like I am so optimistic about these things that it also makes me thoughtful and considerate about the conversations that are necessary around it as opposed to it's never going to happen, never going to happen.

1:49:07 Oh crap. How do I deal with this kind of situation?

1:49:17 And with that I'd like to thank you for listening to the leadership lessons for the Great Books podcast today. And with that, well hey, we're out.