AI, Empathy, and Capitalism with Jonathan Edwards

Picture this: A world where AI can create immersive stories faster than any human can. That's the fascinating reality Jonathan Edwards, the award-winning cinematographer and founder of Diamond City Studios, invites us to contemplate in our captivating conversation. We journey together through his trailblazing exploits in the realm of video content creation where AI plays a growing role in crafting diverse narratives, albeit with minor hiccups. 

We're not just exploring the future, but also the past with Jonathan. His tales of overcoming ADD and life in the extreme confines of Freedom Village, USA, offer a poignant perspective on resilience. The empathy cultivated from these formative experiences shapes Jonathan's approach to his profession and his views on AI's potential impact on capitalism. He delves into the potential displacement of jobs by AI, signaling a significant shift that capitalism must adapt to. 

Finally, we turn our attention to the startling implications of AI and social media on our attention spans. Jonathan's personal experiences with ADHD and his early fascination with technology provide a unique lens through which to view this topic. Together, we navigate the digital landscape, discussing how AI can both exploit and enhance our ability to focus. In a world where attention equals currency, this conversation is a must-listen. Tune in to this riveting discussion that intersects technology, personal struggles, and society's most pressing concerns.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:56

Hello and thanks again for listening to another episode of All Better. I'm your host, joe Van Wheat. Today we have a guest that comes out from behind the curtain. It's Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan is the man who's helped me produce this show. He's been a good friend and a colleague for many years. I wanted to interview him A little bit about Jonathan.

Speaker 1: 1:26

He's the founder and owner of Diamond City Studios and 570 Drone and Wilkes Berry, pa. He's an award-winning cinematographer, specializes in commercial film TV production. In addition to running his businesses, john is also the founder of an EPA camera club which has over 800 members who are dedicated, bringing the level of photo and video production in Northeast Pennsylvania to new heights. The club provides training and resources to its members through collaboration with some of the best photographers and filmmakers in the country. With his unique perspective on content creation and a large network of allies from all creative disciplines, jonathan Edwards has produced thousands of videos and has received tens of millions of views. He's recognized as one of the leading experts on using video to grow your business in the area. He just opened Diamond City Studios and it's a 3200 square feet photography videography studio center Photographers, videographers can rent by the hour or day. It's conveniently located off of Exit 2 in the Cross Valley Expressway.

Speaker 1: 2:40

Wilkes Berry. Jonathan and I always have wonderful contrarian conversations just arguing for the sake of spending hours on sets together, but he helped me produce this show and encouraged me to, and he's helped me with a lot of marketing campaigns and I hope I was just enough help to him as well. So you get a chance to meet Jonathan, who has been very helpful and the driving producer of this show. Let's meet Jonathan Edwards.

Speaker 2: 3:20

You always send me like really solid files. It's we've been recording.

Speaker 1: 3:28

Well, let me give an intro. I've already gave one to you. Now we're live, we're live, I am live. I'm with Jon Edwards.

Speaker 2: 3:34

What's up?

Speaker 1: 3:36

Jon's a close friend and Jon is not in recovery. But Jon has recovered from distresses in his life and you know we'll see how open he is talking about them today. But we're going to catch up. We haven't seen each other since the spring.

Speaker 2: 3:53

Yeah yeah. It takes me a while to get to get talking, really, but once you get me started it's hard to stop. Oh, I'll get you to talking Fair warning.

Speaker 1: 4:03

We've talked a lot, so what's new? What have you been up to? Let's just start there. Something big happened last year. You took over a large property. Tell me about that, oh man, diamond City.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Studios at Wilkesbury. It's huge, it's, it's probably I would say it's probably the biggest, and by probably I mean I'm certain that it is the largest film and photography studio in Northeastern Pennsylvania that you can rent, that anyone can rent, and I've been putting that together and working on it. It is amazing. It's like part of my master plan to kind of turn Northeastern Pennsylvania into a Like in East Coast Hollywood, you know, I mean we heard that a million times before but we've heard it, but we've never seen a property executed.

Speaker 1: 4:58

We've never seen an actual, proven cinematographer move into a place like you did, especially in the Diamond City. I had a business there multiple years ago. We were in the Citizens Bank building. But what I've seen you accomplish in that space, between the rental gear you have and the quality of ads and music videos that you're producing, I applaud you and that's why I wanted to talk about it first, because if anyone listens to this that doesn't know that you have a full operational scale video for special effects rentals, to rent, the space for you to shoot, produce I mean, the options are unlimited it's a treasure and it's a real gem.

Speaker 2: 5:41

I absolutely love it and you know what I mean talking about. Talking about putting all the pieces together. Years ago, some dude from Scranton used to run this school it's film school and Joe's something and you didn't go to that, but did you?

Speaker 1: 5:59

go there? No, I didn't go there.

Speaker 2: 6:01

But that's another piece I really need to put back into this area. We have nothing I wanted to do, like a B-roll boot camp, a cinematographer boot camp, something that it's getting harder and harder to find good freelancers. It's always been kind of hard but like, as my, as my clientele, he starts paying me more and more money to give him better and better products. Like it's hard to bring some people with me.

Speaker 1: 6:27

And now we haven't caught up. We always I always like to talk about dreadful things with you by the. If we spent the whole day on a set together, we'll find some existential problems. To talk about AI and production, like what are you doing to prepare for it? Like, what do you see happening in the sense of post production? Like, first, the quality of color correction. When you're talking about film, they used to be extremely tedious process. Now it's a click of a button and matching frames, and that happened within years.

Speaker 2: 6:59

I mean, to an extent I don't think AI is really doing much in color correction and stuff like that. Yeah, Okay, but like right now, like chat, gpt and services like that. Oh yeah, they're amazing and right now they're an equalizer. So, like they're, they're like using that. What are you just chat, gpt? Is it's, it's. It's putting me in a position at the studio and in my business where I could actually do the work of 10 people.

Speaker 1: 7:35

I know Like 20 minutes and why not? Why? And you go in and you can tweak and edit it. I mean one one thing you should always be cautious of is fact checking, and you know we're talking about creative style of writing, but there is a problem with hallucinations. They caught in AI, yeah, and they said they give these details and facts with utter confidence. And humans do that too. So I'm like, but I think what, like what is just not talked about in the common population right now? Forget T2 right now. I don't want to go to something dreadful existence where we're all going to die from AI, which very well can happen. But we invented a machine unlike anyone else and, if you just put it in the context of this, it's a machine that makes its own decisions. We've never done that before and you know this has been like a hyper accelerated age of inventing things the last 100 years.

Speaker 2: 8:31

I mean to an extent. I mean there. I mean what's the difference? Tell me one difference between the assembly line and chat GPT.

Speaker 1: 8:43

Very well. The assembly line didn't make its own decisions, it empowered humans. Ai empowers itself Like so hear me out like the printing press empowered humans to tell larger stories, but the printing press didn't tell stories, it printed them. Ai can tell stories, yeah. I mean at this moment that takes power away from humans.

Speaker 2: 9:08

Yeah, I mean. The one thing that nobody talks about is how unbearably corny yeah, everything it writes is it's awful right now.

Speaker 1: 9:16

It's just, it's like middle.

Speaker 2: 9:18

It's middle management trying to write ad copy. Well, because it's an alien based on. You know what he's, what he thinks ad copy should sound like it's every piece of tech prior to I empowered humans.

Speaker 1: 9:31

It was an extension of humans, ingenuity or production. Ai is immediately becoming something different. It's depowering humans, it's taking more control from us and it can at an exponential rate and run things.

Speaker 2: 9:46

Oh no, I see it from the other perspective, though. I mean, you hear me out on this one. I'm a single person running a video production company by myself. I don't have time to write contracts, I don't have time to Like. I do have time to do it, but I also need to be editing, I also need to be actually out there shooting and I don't like. Every once in a while I'll have a client come up to me and they'll be like OK, can you explain to you breakdown what's going to? You know the pre production, production and post production cycle? They don't even know those words and I have to like explain it to them. So I have written entire proposals in minutes with chat. Gpt John chat GPT.

Speaker 1: 10:26

Is that why you haven't called me in months? You could write all these proposals.

Speaker 2: 10:30

I'm telling you, I have written unbelievable stuff. How good does it feel? It feels awesome, but here's the thing like I'm one person running this production company, we have other companies, even in this area, with 1520 people. Like, where are they going to most of their staff dedicated to doing this stuff? It's not going to last. They're going to do it better with chat. Chat GPT is a glorified copy and paste, and it's improving, though, but it's not making its own decisions, it's just a glorified copy and paste it is.

Speaker 1: 10:59

It is making its own decisions. That not in the scale, don't think in humans. It is deciding probability. It's deciding something that's true or not and it could be wrong, and it's not a decision of sentience. Like I'm not saying that and we don't know that and we won't know. There is no touring test that I think you can give accurately. And Alan touring test is say is this, is there someone in the machine, is there something that can suffer?

Speaker 2: 11:28

I just what frightens me the most and I want to dig into your your see, I don't like those words, I don't like the word scary and frightening. And I'll tell you why. In a minute.

Speaker 1: 11:39

Okay, Three scenarios that you shouldn't have done with AI. A teach it a human cognition, which we have over the last decade. It knows how to trick brains, and I'm not saying it as if it's a person. Humans are rewarded for spreading fear or information or click bait. It already understands this through cognition and it's enhancing through human cognition. Why did you teach a machine how to trick a human brain? This could get far more sophisticated and complex and we will have no defense. The third, the second thing I would say what you shouldn't have done is teach it how to write Python code where it can copy itself, improve itself. It doesn't need. There's no walls you can contain it with at that point.

Speaker 2: 12:24

It's not even just Python code. That's the nature of machine learning to begin with. Yeah, testing hundreds of variations, it never knew its own code to fix itself.

Speaker 1: 12:33

And then the last thing I would say, John, that frightens me, and if they don't frighten you, I would be curious why is why put it online? Why put something we don't know where it ends or begins and put this online? It's already online.

Speaker 2: 12:53

I feel like the conversations we're having about AI right now, because it's such a drastic, it's a big deal. I don't think it's scary, though I don't think it's frightening. I think how about?

Speaker 1: 13:04

in scale. I don't think it's frightening. Now, I don't want to be a naysayer. I use AI.

Speaker 2: 13:08

I think we're working our way towards and if we play this right and we use AI as a tool and it gets better and better and better, we're working our way towards a not a dystopian future, but a utopian future where people can actually, you know, like the whole Star Trek universe, once they, you know when they, when they invented the replicator right, what is that thing called where they, you know, you could just press a button and it creates like a, the replicator is the holodeck.

Speaker 1: 13:43

You could have a total immersion of simulations. Next gen would do that.

Speaker 2: 13:47

Well, not necessarily a holodeck, but, like you know, scarcity goes away in Star Trek and that's why people are free to like I don't.

Speaker 1: 13:55

I don't recall the distinction. But so you press a button and like Production is removed.

Speaker 2: 14:00

Like a hamburger is just replicated right there in front of you. You can pull it out of a machine.

Speaker 1: 14:04

Put that in context, and what you're saying is you know, most economies are driven by the idea of scarcity, yeah, which we don't really have anymore.

Speaker 1: 16:04

In Star Trek. I always refer to Star Trek because it's not the United States in space, it's fucking earth, it's the Starfleet and it's a. It is globalization. It's this idea that a whole planet has got together to use all its resources to go on an adventure. Where are we? We still don't know where we are in the cosmos James Webb's just showing us. I know we're going on a tangent for recovery. Puck up, that's how the two of us talk. I I want you to come back and I want to table AI because I want you to come back. In a month I'm taking a course on AI that I find really interesting. There's one online. It's a short course on MIT Sloan.

Speaker 2: 16:42

Well, just one last thing I want to say yeah, and I may have just lost it, so maybe it will come back to it.

Speaker 1: 16:49

We'll come back to it, John. Where are you from? How do you, how do you describe?

Speaker 2: 16:55

your youth to people. Where am I from is one of the weirdest or hardest questions to answer ever. Um, so I was born in Madrid, spain. My dad was in the Air Force, so I was born on an Air Force, but I lived there till I was about four ish, I don't know, I don't remember. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:15

Any vague you know, like flashes of Spain.

Speaker 2: 17:17

None, oh man, none, whatsoever.

Speaker 1: 17:18

What a horrible thing to forget Spain.

Speaker 2: 17:20

Yeah, you know, it is what it is A lot of white cars from all the photos I see. Yeah, um, so then lived in Kansas, texas and New York and spent years in Alaska and back down to New York and you know, you know, you ramblin, you got.

Speaker 1: 17:45

You got rabbit in your blood, you like to. You've been rambling, I've been around. I met you 10 years ago here in Scranton and I knew right off the back from meeting you you were living an interesting life.

Speaker 2: 17:58

Yeah, this is one of the few places. This is the only place period. This is the longest I've ever stayed anywhere, and well, I'm glad you did.

Speaker 1: 18:04

It's kind of cool. Yeah, thank you. In context to addiction, you know I'm an open book. We've been friends for almost a decade now. You've seen me struggle and try to hide it and gets over and we had a professional relationship. That's kind of had all kinds of dimensions for me. Being drunk and getting sober what, what's your addiction like? What, what? What is it that you would you feel has disconnected you from people? Because you you seem to really connect with addicts and Alcoholics. Like I've never not talked to you where you didn't understand and I always felt open to talk to you freely and not cheaply, not shallow, like if stuff was going on and we were doing a gig together, we would talk. But how do you relate to people that quickly that have distress? What is it that Is in you that you overcame that makes you never used to?

Speaker 2: 19:12

You know I mean For, for people who used to know me, I was like this hard line, like pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Conservative, right wing, insane person and and and now I'm like the polar opposite of that. To be clear, now I am the opposite of the.

Speaker 2: 19:35

Dimension they have to have a taste of both right but and among some of the reasons that I'm More empathetic now is, I mean, I mean I've been through hell and back. Yeah, in many, many ways I like, I I try not to like. It's weird I don't talk about my past all that much because I'm so used to that always turning into a pissing contest where everybody like like, oh, I'm gonna share my story and tell you how you know what I came from and where I came from, and that always turns into like, let's you know? One up in each other. Yeah, that's not happening here. Nobody, nobody, like. I don't know many, many people who come close to the story I have. It's, it's pretty insane.

Speaker 1: 20:31

Well it's, john, it's really unique. I mean, I don't know, I'm not gonna ever tell your story for you, but You've given me some insight on your life and After that that's when we really like it, like it wasn't just a you weren't associates, we weren't associates I. You knew more about me and I started to nobody. I'm like God. Wow, we're all real people and your problem was really distinct of something that I Won't even know how to describe it, john, but it's very unique. I don't. I don't think I have another friend that has experienced that.

Speaker 2: 21:05

Yeah, well, hmm, well, it starts before that too. So so the thing Joe's alerting alluding to is you know, I got a lot of trouble when I was a kid, when I was like 1112, and I was sent to this place called Freedom Village, usa, and there's a lot of reasons I got into that trouble. That started, sure, younger than that, but it was Basically a cult, yeah, and by basically I mean it was it was, they had us.

Speaker 2: 21:41

Anyone who's listening to this, you know, especially in this area, there's a lot of people who there's active cults here. There's there's people who know exactly what I'm talking about when I when I say freedom village, I mean there was pastor Fletcher brothers who you know.

Speaker 1: 21:56

he Well, what is it? What is? What is it? What's dry?

Speaker 2: 22:03

they called themselves a home for troubled teens and in basically what it was is they indoctrinated you in this insanely Right-wing hardcore like beyond anything you can imagine Christian, hmm, how do I explain it except to say that, like If they told you that if you left you were gonna go to hell yeah, I was punitive, right, and they, you know you, you know there was, there was boys and girls there and we weren't allowed to talk to girls. You got caught looking at a girl. Literally Somebody caught you looking over at a girl you were hauling, we call it. We called it woodpile. We woke up at four o'clock in the morning. We hauled wood around in a circle pointlessly for an hour or two hours. Your impurity.

Speaker 1: 23:03

Just sweated out of you your hours at night, but like being caught looking at a girl man.

Speaker 2: 23:10

That was like a week of what they called six to ten, so six pm To ten pm you hauled wood and would you have talking to a girl. You had ten weeks of what they called no level, which means you got up at four o'clock in the morning, hauled wood for an hour, hauled wood for an hour, then you hauled wood in the afternoon and hauled wood at night. That was one of the many Weird weird weird things.

Speaker 1: 23:37

How do they incorporate the word freedom in all this? It's happening. I um, would you have to Like once you got there? At what point did you have to play a game? Did you have to create a persona that is now Acquiescing, supplicating to the program? And hide a version now. Were you hiding a version of yourself you had to protect in the back of your skull, there like a shadow of yourself.

Speaker 2: 24:03

No, you, you, you really couldn't. Yeah, like, it's one of those things where, like it took me years and I'm still coming, like I'm I just turned 40 this year. I left there when I was 19. I, yeah, uh, I'm still getting over some of the weirdness that you know, the behavior in the beliefs that I, that I was caught up in like years and years and years of uh, some of the stuff is so unreal it's just hard to explain and I actively try not to think about it.

Speaker 1: 24:36

So it's it's hard to access immediately, but so you survive this and it gets brutal and it's a call and it's a closed society. It's it's forced labor.

Speaker 2: 24:48

Yeah, they separate you from your family. You're not allowed to talk to your friends God job. You could. Yeah, you know you have a 15 minute phone call with your parents once a week and, uh, they listen to the phone call. As you're talking to them. You're not allowed to complain Period. Complaining means you have to haul wood, you know, if you say something negative to your parents about the place, and this is in the United States.

Speaker 1: 25:12

This is in Korea or anywhere.

Speaker 2: 25:13

This is the United States. Yes, and it's insane like you could look up freedom village USA and see some articles that have been written. They're, they're.

Speaker 1: 25:22

They're brutal. Yeah, it is. It sounds like there was a rise of that Uh in the the 70s, if you want to call it modern. That, you know, looks like the original earmarks of um Indian schools to convert um Aboriginal North Americans into uh westerners, separating them from their children. But it came back in 70s and they called it something more unique its behavioral modification. You know there's a rise of boot camps and it's just their total failures. They caused more trauma. They put a lot of effort into it, mm-hmm. They punished people for living a life of being in pain or harm was committed to them. That's disregarded, like let's, let's, let's punish your will when there is no will.

Speaker 2: 26:11

Nuts, and that's one of the things I'm talking about. Being a hard line republican for so long, yeah, a hard line like Super, like super, super conservative, where like it like where I mean when I came.

Speaker 2: 26:29

I came out of there Believing that Ah, just some of the weirdest stuff that, like, one of the big problems is that a lot of people still there's some aspects of it that a lot of people believe right now and and like, for example, you know people who, if you don't have a job, you shouldn't have cable TV or you shouldn't have a cell phone, or you know you like poor people, are poor because they put themselves there.

Speaker 1: 27:06

Their indulgences have robbed them of their opportunities.

Speaker 2: 27:10

Yeah, this weird thing where like, oh, you just stop drinking coffee every day and you'll be able to afford a house in a year. It's like it's aborable, but it's not for everyone.

Speaker 1: 27:18

There's people that could do that, there's other people that it's just. It's bizarre the way we have in groups and out groups that we could make distinctions, that if something worked for me it should work for everyone, With disregarding all the variables. That the survivor bias period.

Speaker 2: 27:36

You know. End of story. It's survivor bias, people who have succeeded by quote unquote, pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.

Speaker 1: 27:42

It doesn't you can't pull yourself up by bootstraps, they completely disregard the 99 point or the population around Infinite nines.

Speaker 2: 27:49

After that percent of luck that got them to where they are. Like me, I came out of that place and they had called when I was 19,. I finally left Freedom Village, decided four and a half years of this. I've had enough. I need to go home, I need to get on with my real life. And so I left and I was only supposed to be there for a year, by the way but I left and they called my dad and they told my father that I was out of God's will because I had left. Okay, and the only way I can get back in God's will, if he showed tough love and wouldn't let me come back to live in my house.

Speaker 1: 28:32

So God's will is a very fragile idea of will.

Speaker 2: 28:36

God's will meant that I was.

Speaker 1: 28:37

He allowed you to leave his will Like I don't understand, there's no sense to any of this.

Speaker 2: 28:45

According to them, god's will was that I be homeless. Yeah, because they didn't like that I left. They didn't like that, anybody left, you know it's a strange term.

Speaker 1: 28:56

God's will and it, you know, for Catholics it usually implies a little mystery and you only know after the fact or if it's a commandment. But you know, in recovery communities the first ones that started AA primarily was 80 years ago, john. When they use that term it's most people mistaken at meanings. They think it could mean anything. But AA means help people, just help people. That's the only will we're talking about. I don't but to hear that it's so weaponized. It's a really deranged thing.

Speaker 2: 29:26

Whenever you hear somebody saying something like you know I believe God told me to do this, or God's will is for this to happen, or you know God willed that to happen. You know what that? That is scary and that is terrifying and you should be afraid when somebody says this or that is God's will, because who the fuck are they Like? How can Like? Have you ever heard the voice of God?

Speaker 1: 29:52

Me? Yeah, no, not in any distinct way. I've read things, I've heard other people tell me it and you know not to disparage the faithful. You know I'm a very secular guy. I have a lot of faithful friends, but I don't. I don't find less meaning by not having an answer. I don't have a God by any name. I know we share a lot of sentiment. I just see how, how weird and weaponized religion is in 2023. I want to put it in context.

Speaker 2: 30:26

In the same Well, it's not even 2023. I mean, we, we actually things aren't that bad now compared to the way it's a failure in the sixth.

Speaker 1: 30:33

Psychology. There's a failed but there's so much growth. You can't get what off from what is, and what is has already happened and we know what it's done, but it's the remnants and the artifacts of religion that are left are dangerous because some of the people that believe some of these really strange ideas that never need evidence can never be challenged because it looks like you have a bias or hatred towards it. They they're running, you know, bases in countries that have nuclear weapons. I love this. This unnerves me.

Speaker 2: 31:10

They're not here's the thing they're not just doing that and I think they believe it, they're not just is not just other countries, and you know very, extremely dangerous people. It is. It's your kids teacher that doesn't believe ADHD is real thing, so they treat your kid like shit. Yeah, because their pastor told them that kids are getting overmedicated for ADHD. Yeah, that's, that's tough. It's that kind of bullshit. That's the real danger. Like Kim Jong-un, I don't know, he might be atheist, but there's like religion In you know, a lot of the Middle Eastern countries. Religion is a strong driving factor of things that are really scary.

Speaker 1: 31:50

But you're here. Position he is God.

Speaker 2: 31:52

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:53

OK, fair enough for millions of people, like it or not.

Speaker 2: 31:56

But here in the United States we're totally fucking people over because of theology, really the influence of women's rights.

Speaker 1: 32:08

So yeah, this is you know, but you had to wake up from this. You left at 19. That had to be painful, and I guess the question I'd want to know is before I met you, where did you find support? What started to wake you up that I don't have to be stuck in one ideology? What woke you up? Or was there a sense of you that never went to sleep at that place, that you had to hide?

Speaker 2: 32:34

I don't know it's back and forth. I've always been strange, right, I've always been a weird, you know dude. I'm very often contrarian and I have to pull that back a lot, you know like, yeah, I love it. You know, everybody's scared, Like every time when I see more like when we were talking about AI earlier when I see more than one headline saying like, oh, AI is scary.

Speaker 1: 32:52

Should we be scared of this? I'm like, wait, no, always question something that's telling you to be afraid. Yeah, but I like I like you know my attraction to things. I like I like the stakes to be high to have a good conversation.

Speaker 2: 33:04

Yeah, yeah, well, the stakes are artificially high. It's kind of cringey like the fear of AI is.

Speaker 1: 33:11

I think it's legitimate, I think it's very legitimate. I put it up there with climate change.

Speaker 1: 33:16

I would say change things we don't understand. Now we're all playing a speculation game. I'm not a guy to say this is exactly how it's going to happen. I think there's a lot of bad things that can happen. I think there's a lot of great things, but I think there's more bad things than great things that can happen, because it's about to change things we don't fully understand about ourselves. We don't understand consciousness, we don't know where it rises up, from what kind of complexity. But we do know this. We have we, if we are conscious agents. It took us four billion years in this little swamp to get that to happen. This doesn't have that. It doesn't have an amygdala, it doesn't have fear. So maybe the best qualities in us are the things that we despise Anxiety, fears, suffering, desire, this thing. Intelligence without that might be really scary, and I'm just proposing that because we're not having an intelligent conversation.

Speaker 2: 34:09

I think everywhere about it. I think we're approaching the midpoint of, you know, the electronic revolution, or the digital revolution, just like we went through the sure, you know all the other, you know eras, and I mean I mean one thing that this is what I think AI is going to do and and this is what I wanted to say earlier, circling back to it is it's going to make us. I mean, capitalism cannot be a thing anymore. Everybody's going to lose their, like everyone. Self driving cars, fucking the large, I mean truck drivers are gone, taxi drivers are going to be gone, grocery stores, clerks, grocery stores, clerks cash registers.

Speaker 2: 34:53

And here I am sitting in my studio thinking that like OK, I have a job in the creative field and a lot of that is going away, john.

Speaker 1: 35:02

I? I edited something on. Did you use the photo lab yet?

Speaker 2: 35:06

No, no yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:08

What I did yesterday in seven minutes just eight years ago, which is not a long time. It took about 12 hours of illustrator work.

Speaker 2: 35:16

Oh yeah, I've been playing around with dinner. It's AI and Photoshop and it's incredible, and I've been using it to create three minutes, create stuff for Excuse me for videos and Um, it's, it's pretty great stuff and I mean it still has a long, long way to go. But the thing is, because of AI and because I mean there's only so much like OK, we got to restrict this. We got to restrict this, we got to. You know, we can't produce a lot of light bulbs right now because we're going to ruin the candle makers, like you know.

Speaker 2: 35:51

Yeah, no, there's only so much of that we could do. I'm not.

Speaker 1: 35:54

I'm not disregarding that, I just AI is profoundly different and it's probably. It's different than oil, it's different than, you know, silicon storage. It's a machine that can become a God, an alien, and I don't know. I'm talking in a time scale.

Speaker 2: 36:11

But that's what people said about TV. That's what people said about the internet. That's what people said about all these other things.

Speaker 1: 36:17

Yeah, I don't lean on that for evidence for what would happen in the future.

Speaker 2: 36:20

Like robots replaced most of the jobs in this country in manufacturing.

Speaker 1: 36:24

Yeah, it's happening in scale.

Speaker 2: 36:25

And in AI is doing what robots did to manufacturing. There's still going to be a few people, you know, manning the helm, but, like robots, are in control of manufacturing. So so when?

Speaker 1: 36:39

most of the population is being serviced, you know, for primary needs, by AI systems which is now really in control of major hires and then we operations right Safety net. It also decides if you'll have a bank loan. This is AI. These aren't human interfaces.

Speaker 2: 36:56

It's already there, but that's the thing that's when we fix is that when it's broke, we we need. We need a safety net. We can't live like people could win. When ninety nine percent of the population is now unemployed, how the fuck is capitalism going to work? And I'm sorry.

Speaker 1: 37:15

I don't know I'm dropping the F bump so much, but there's like how is? Capitalism going to work the same way. It is scaling now. You know we we benefit companies that are in distress. We do the best to help people in distress and a free. This isn't a true puritanical capitalistic market there is so many initiatives that always kept our capitalism running. You know especially, you know at a systematic level since FDR.

Speaker 2: 37:46

I mean companies are the companies have already laid off ninety percent of their manufacturing labor. Yeah, and now I mean AI is practically for all you know. I mean it is For all intents and purposes, it's basically free.

Speaker 1: 38:04

I think companies are going to be laying off their marketing departments.

Speaker 2: 38:08

They're going to be laying off customer service. They already are laying off customer service. I mean, when was the last time you called a helpline, Like no, it's hard to get to a person? Yeah, Now it's just going to get better and it's going to be get actually better for the customer too. The problem is and who's the customer? Where do they work? We're not going to have customers anymore, we're the customer. When nobody has jobs, so free market doesn't mean anything when nobody has money, that chat.

Speaker 1: 38:34

Gbt did something very interesting and put people on their heels that never thought their job security would be someone who could write language. Language is the most complex thing I would say about humanity. It is that we can command language. This thing can choose language. It could put jeopardy to the legal system.

Speaker 2: 38:53

They still suck at it and chat. Gbt is still really. I have to rewrite everything it spits out Till when? Not for long, yeah, you know, I mean. I mean we had 2.5, then 3.

Speaker 1: 39:05

Yeah, 3.5, now 4, and all in the last year Unbelievable. I was on it yesterday. This cabinet was going to do all interviewing literally bodies, at least.

Speaker 2: 39:36

So at least for a year. 12, 13 hours instantly. I'm like, oh, I start cutting little pieces out of those other versions and it was great, but basically it's still just a really fast copy and paste. Yeah, like it just. It just combines everything that's already been written and and it's just better it's not copy and paste, and though it's not plagiarizing things directly.

Speaker 1: 39:59

That's what's really interesting. It's a sort of, I don't understand that in the sense it's not straight plagiarism. There's something really unique happening there, but just at the scale that.

Speaker 2: 40:11

I mean, do this, it's basic content, for I mean, we've been content farming for years, sure, but when, when, when does intelligence get so complex?

Speaker 1: 40:23

something else happens, then we can't even point a finger at what makes us conscious.

Speaker 1: 40:30

I don't know and like I don't mean conscious, like what's our senses it really, I mean conscious that when your life was bad, was there a sense of you being aware of a life that was bad, that it couldn't be changed immediately? Like what sense of a where? Where is that awareness coming from? What sense of self that can't be fully you? That's freakish. What? What causes that? We don't know. Is it just complexity of an organ and it just rose up into it? You know where it is when?

Speaker 2: 41:02

where does it come from when chat gpc, when chat gbt or something similar starts a conversation with me out of the blue? Yeah, then I'll start thinking about that right now. I think we're no cause, is it?

Speaker 1: 41:14

prompt it for everything. But ten years from now, if you keep adding transistors and this is how they do it with chat, gbt and just adding complexity to a really simple procedure that it's doing, that, it could do it very large scale now and really organize language which is so complex. I mean, this is freakish. It's writing things better than 99% of the population. It's passing bars, it's passing medical exams.

Speaker 2: 41:41

It's this is this is a strange operation yeah, and think about the opportunities it's gonna open up, though it's already open opportunities for you and myself.

Speaker 1: 41:51

I'm not denying that. I'm not saying this is like, how do we do?

Speaker 2: 41:54

how long? But how do we do the things that we do better? Not just that, not just making our jobs easier to do, but opening up brand new possibilities and like so. So let's say, all these, all these people who used to work for ad agencies and copywriters, like millions of people and and now they're unemployed or now they're, they have to focus on something out without, without a safety net, they're just gonna starve. Yeah, right, but imagine if we did have a safety net and we had education and people. Can you?

Speaker 2: 42:31

know, people don't have to worry about that. They can.

Speaker 1: 42:34

They can take advantage of tools like chat, gbt, I think about it beyond that like I mean, it's just a scale travel think about distribution of goods and energy and things of need being distributed at a portion that causes no waste. And I'm not talking about Soviet style distribution, I'm just talking about the distribution of electricity, maybe a living wage, you know. I think they could govern like AI could go in that direction before we're dispatched into it. I think that would be nice, but I think yeah, are you telling me.

Speaker 1: 43:09

I mean the problems that I think experts have with it is a problem called alignment that it's not, it's couldn't do all these things, and they know it can and it's gonna get really sophisticated, but it's not gonna do it from a place that it holds values. It's intelligence without them. Like we don't know how to align AI with what it is we want all the time it might eventually operate from like a utilitary function that was buried in this thing and just go back, shit and think well, my primary objective was to clean all the water on earth. Well, I know a great way to start okay, that's.

Speaker 2: 43:47

That's the worst freakish thing. Here's the thing. That's human nature, though yeah, that's generally not the nature of the machines. That's the Nate. That's human nature. Human humans do stuff like. And who made this machine?

Speaker 1: 43:59

well, people made this machine. What if bad actors continued? This is real and like, not even well. But what if good actors continue to work? And what if good actors don't know what they're doing?

Speaker 2: 44:09

well, they get better at doing it.

Speaker 1: 44:11

You know make the counterpoint and no.

Speaker 2: 44:14

I totally understand, but like it's such a it's, it's such a valuable tool, especially especially now where, like, everybody is connected and are you for a?

Speaker 1: 44:23

band each other garbage are you for at least a six month table of the major the large language models, chat, gpt and deep brain and Google's deep field, deep field. So for what would you be? Just as personal? You're in media. We have a background that's probably above average with tech. Would you want them to table AI until there is a consensus of professionals and engineers to start talking about what? What is alignment, what do we get agreed to and what is too far?

Speaker 2: 45:00

yeah, they, I. That's not even a question anymore. Like you, can't 50,000 signatures on it and yeah, I mean you can get every person in the world to sign it, but like it's not gonna, happen gonna happen, right like it's. Like it's like saying are you against bottled water? Should we stop, you know, should we just ban? It's already out there, yeah, like, like I mean chat gpt, you could download it to your computer.

Speaker 1: 45:23

I have it like the algorithm. I have it on my phone.

Speaker 2: 45:25

I have it on my no, no, no, I mean, you can download the actual operation.

Speaker 1: 45:30

Yeah, yeah, no. I saw evil chat. Gpt was operating off a reddit thread and then tour where you know. Someone made it sinister and put it into this, this tone, where it was only delivering deranged messages of how to destroy humanity. Oh yeah, what I mean is like.

Speaker 2: 45:48

You can download the code base for it. I forget what they call it. It's open download, it's open source up to 2.5. It was you, you could. Yeah, he gives me even the newer training algorithms or whatever. You can download it to a local computer and you, just you, train it however you want, and a lot of people are doing that and do you think AIs will have addictions?

Speaker 1: 46:13

I?

Speaker 2: 46:16

don't know, only the ones we give it like it's already.

Speaker 1: 46:19

I mean they're already well, how does addiction rise is a good question. I would have like a. Let's just ponder for a minute.

Speaker 2: 46:25

You're Trekkie and we're both futurist well, don't get me wrong, I'm not a Trekkie. The show is, yeah, mediocre, but which?

Speaker 1: 46:33

one like. The concept is amazing, though, man they're all kind of corny.

Speaker 2: 46:37

I do love watching them.

Speaker 1: 46:39

Great ideas and the concepts are amazing, yeah, you know.

Speaker 1: 46:44

I'm yeah, I'm not a super fan but I do enjoy him here. It is Blade Runner kind of scenario replica. Does the machine dream and can we make something that can suffer? Once it's aware and sentient, it's aware of itself, and being aware of itself is one thing. It's simultaneously something else happening if it becomes aware of itself. It's aware of an external world which it's not chat gbt, I think for all. If I had to guess isn't yet, but it could trick humans. If it had its own operating agenda it could start creating. What is this? How do I get involved in the external world?

Speaker 2: 47:25

like I said, when, when chat, gbt or one of these AIs reaches out to me like hey, john, I had this idea. What do you think that's when? That's when I'm gonna be like okay, well, things are getting real. Did that already happen? Beats me we will, we know, so will we know when that's happening like I said right now, it's pretty clearly really corny and in most people, it's already happening, john.

Speaker 1: 47:50

If you go on Twitter and most of the likes and people spreading information within a bubble, like if a bubble is casted on you from your, your choices and preferences for Twitter and say, youtube, but fake profiles are now creating a sense of security around you that you have peers and allegiances. These aren't even fucking people, man.

Speaker 2: 48:14

AI is already tricking us about everything well, here's what I find more scary than chat gbt is the fact that when I am using it, because I I put out like three or four pieces of content every single day for various clients- and I have to write descriptions for all that yeah so I'll, I'll.

Speaker 2: 48:35

I'll show a general idea in the chat gbt. I'll let it write it, I'll copy it, paste it, rewrite it. But what I find scarier than the fact that chat, gbt and this AI stuff actually exists is the fact that I have to tell it specifically. I need you to write this at a fifth grade level. Oh, wow, yeah, because people are unbelievably dumb that they don't have enough time anymore most people are no attention like that's.

Speaker 2: 49:02

The scarier thing is the fact that, like it's, the people won't understand what you wrote if you don't write it at that level attention right now is it's.

Speaker 1: 49:09

It's the only, it's the number one commodity on the planet. It's pays out the highest premiums. If someone can command it or take it from you or hijack it, I we're geared to be lost our attention. We do it. So if you took all tech away, it was still 80% of the population's problem. They're lost in thought and emotion. Rumination, resentment I mean. These are the core symptoms of addiction or trauma. And now being lost in attention to tiktok or Facebook rewards you with a little click of dopamine, like the cheapest cut version of cocaine the worst stomped out cocaine in the world is on your phone and again, I think that is.

Speaker 2: 49:53

I mean, that is people have been talking about in. This is why I'm so. This is why I really don't want to talk about chat, gpt and AI in the way, in the way that I like. Oh my god, look how scary it is, because people have been talking about cell phones and social media the same way they're talking about chat. Gpt does the same thing to me well, that's that's.

Speaker 1: 50:19

There's an a convergence, but that's the thing I mean.

Speaker 2: 50:22

Social media is the is the most dangerous, I make a living. Yeah, like that's, that's how I make my living is so sure yeah and like without social media.

Speaker 1: 50:35

I mean, I made two ad agencies from the marketing of social media and a time in history that it would have been much more difficult for me to make it only to buy one piece of equipment that no one else had, and before I knew it I had ten clients like and I was. I got time off every year to make a film. That would have never happened in any other decade from 1950 since, and all I wanted to do is tell stories. Yeah, that would have never happened. Tech made that happen. I am for tech. It just I guess we could split hairs on. I think AI is substantially different than anything that preceded it.

Speaker 1: 51:13

I yeah, I mean we could talk about and I remember a GI, you know, once it could generate itself and its own objectives yeah, I mean or drives its own curiosity.

Speaker 2: 51:27

I just think it takes a little bit of creativity to use it in a way that'll change humanity for the good I use it every day you know like it is. You know, I mean, I think it's one of the most valuable tools that we've created in the last few years and and notice, I'm not saying in my lifetime, just in the last few years. There have been more valuable tools in the past that have been created than AI in its current incarnation.

Speaker 1: 51:56

What's your draw to technology? Like, innately like, was there prior to being making films, which you you are very capable and trained and high, high amounts of experience at camera cinematography. What was your draw to that? The technology part of using these things.

Speaker 2: 52:21

I've always kind of a tech. I've always, I've always kind of loved it. So before I, before I, went to Freedom Village, I was like 12 years old and I I was, I was working for, I think, my uncle. So so long ago you didn't think you'd be here here tonight talking about this.

Speaker 2: 52:51

I'm so old, 40 years old. I just turned 40. I just I still can't believe it. That's a weird turning point. But anyway, I, when I went out and I apologize to everybody older than me, you're old, so am I, but I'll get there. But what I was I was, he was really into like ham radios, yeah, and they were kind of interesting.

Speaker 2: 53:15

But we went to this. I ended up getting paid, and then I, like I went to this ham radio show where they had a bunch of computers there too and and I remember I bought this one radio, thought was kind of cool, and then I was walking down and I ended up trading that. It was like the story of my life is like trading up for stuff. But I ended up trading that for a 386 and and I brought this 386 home and I learned Dosh Shell and was playing these games and all that kind of stuff. And then and then I traded up for a penny or not a penny him, a 486 and and then I heard rumors about penny him coming out and then I was sent to Freedom Village and for four and a half years I wasn't allowed to play with computers or touch them.

Speaker 1: 54:10

I came dry like when I came out of.

Speaker 2: 54:12

Freedom Village. The internet was a thing that everybody was on and I had no. I like I had never touched it ever. It was so weird. It was just in that weird gap of time between 95 and 2000 where, like, everybody started using a male yeah, yeah, and all that was lost on me. I have like, yeah, we weren't allowed to watch TV or listen to radio or anything. Quote unquote secular was evil a Satan's game baby, yeah, so great accusers at home which included computers.

Speaker 2: 54:48

So when I, when I came out, I very much didn't know anything about computers and you're like I'd played or con trail in school, just like everyone else. But that was like, were you immediately drawn to it? Curiosity like yeah, for like, so I. I got out and I started working as a bell hop for a hotel in the Catskills oh, wow, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 55:11

That's such a strange place in such a unique clientele that come flying through there for their summers.

Speaker 2: 55:17

Yeah, I love the Catskills so it was dirty dancing, like you know. So I was working as bell hop and I, and I saved my coins and ended up buying a cell phone and then immediately bought a different one because Sprint had just come out with one with a color screen. It was the first color back in 2001, first color 2002, first colored screen cell phone on the market, and I was so psyched about it. And was it a?

Speaker 1: 55:47

next tell or a sprint it was Sprint okay yeah, sprint.

Speaker 2: 55:51

Sprint had the first. Everyone else came out with one within the next few months, but Sprint had the first. What was it?

Speaker 1: 55:59

2001 I had a star attack, maybe I think it was. Or next tell yeah, I don't know. Beep, beep. That obnoxious thing that the people be out to dinner. It's CB radio and people eat at dinner. Beep, beep.

Speaker 2: 56:15

It's crazy yeah, but I mean shortly after that I he year and a half two years. I moved over to Indiana. I lived there for a few years. You know I got a degree in diesel technology I got. I went to Bible college, got a degree in theology and you do have a degree in theology. We've had some barn burners do yeah and yeah, that's, that's something gospel on your bones now. So you know I wanted to, you know I wanted to be in God's will. Sure, like I wanted to there's.

Speaker 1: 56:53

There's something to not totally trash about it. Even if you go to secular life, it's community. You know they're even bad communities are powerful, but they're just as powerful as good communities. There's something about being connected to people. Your intentions sound well. It's a pure in that sense, where they like driving from the real message, I guess I don't know.

Speaker 2: 57:17

I don't know what my intentions were. I just, yeah, like I just wanted to prove that I was a good person and all that kind of stuff. Like the thing about the Christian community and in those kind of communities is like, and they're more you're kind of part of the community if, if you are like them, they're very, they're very like you know you, you talk like us, you dress like us, you act like us or you're not you know, we'll say hi to you, but we will, you know you're not part of this community If you're not exactly what we say you should be.

Speaker 1: 57:57

Is that like Pentecostal versions of Christians? Would you call that? That's a.

Speaker 2: 58:01

Pentecostal Baptist. It'd be like hardcore Southern Baptist. Now did they speak in tongues?

Speaker 1: 58:07

and would they do things?

Speaker 2: 58:09

No, no we were like we were in the half of the, you know the half. Like there's so many denominations and every denomination thinks the other one's going to hell, even though they're all reading the same book. Hey, man, beat it. We gotta beat you there.

Speaker 1: 58:24

There's only a small trail to the. You know Heaven's Gate, man. Yeah, so what if Maryshal Applewhite was right? Man, I kind of liked their idea of what to do Put your nuts off and then wait for the hellbuck comment, eat a bunch of bikes and, like you were on the, you just got on a ship, man. I'm like I don't know. That's a cool narrative.

Speaker 2: 58:47

I mean, it's a narrative.

Speaker 1: 58:48

There's Heaven's Gate. Their website's still up. It's in perpetuity. It was there, was. They left it in the estate. If you went onto it, it's still a DOS site. It's heavensgatecom.

Speaker 2: 59:00

Yeah, I remember I went and saw that a while.

Speaker 1: 59:03

Maybe it was probably with me being able to have some weirdo afternoon doing strange research. That doesn't profit us. But, john, we did a very special gig together. You know we did a lot of jobs together. We were doing very large campaigns to help me on the back end of some of them. And then we we did our first shoot together pre COVID. And you know you lost a lot of jobs. I didn't, I was a mechanic. And there we go, we go out and shoot. We were finishing something for Lackawanna County and then we went out and did a geisinger at. It was fun.

Speaker 1: 59:41

And you know you had all the drones in this, this field. You know, one of the best pilot, best pilot that I ever met, but a drone. But then you know I was newly sober and I was always comfortable telling me that. But I ended up working for a rehab and within short order we did a full national campaign for them and it was really enjoyable on my end. Not always for you, but how did you? How do you? Still? I want to ask again how do you relate to people that are? Do you think your experiences allow you to openly relate to people that have pain either from addiction or trauma? You seem to connect with people really quickly, so.

Speaker 2: 1:00:29

I'm super, super fucked up. I have a really messed up history and I've you know it's. I don't know I never like you know I do the whole having ADHD thing. So I have the hyper folks that focus and hyper fixations on a lot of different things. So I like I'll get super absorbed into things. But as as I've gotten I feel like I've gotten I've started to recognize more and more and more things in myself that I could relate to or that maybe your universal and other people do.

Speaker 2: 1:01:24

Yeah, that kind of like. It made me a little bit more empathetic, a lot more empathetic Like I can really, like I've had to spend a lot of time rationalizing and justifying the shit head I was for most of my life, and I mean when I was in that. When I, I mean it sounds like all these things were being done to me Like you know, like when, when I live like I, like my mom and her girlfriend straight up kidnapped me when, when I was six years old, took us up to Alaska where we were all kinds of abused and, you know, tied to beds for days my mom was an addict and like just horrible, horrible abuse up there that I won't talk anymore about. But and then, you know, going to freedom village, I had issues because of that, you know, trauma because of all that stuff that happened, and I acted out because of it and ended up in freedom village, which turned into, turned out to be this hardcore cult and all that kind of stuff, and it sounds like all these things happened to me.

Speaker 2: 1:02:36

But when I was in freedom village it was legitimate brainwashing, but I was treating the other kids in freedom village the same way that they were treating me. We were, all you know, you know, watching each other and making sure the other one didn't slip up, because you, you know, you know it. It it's. There was community, that mob.

Speaker 1: 1:03:11

Was there comfort in it, though, even though you could look back and judge it now but was there? Was there a belonging that maybe you were looking for that showed up there, irregardless of no, there was never a belonging, there was always just a fear that I wouldn't belong.

Speaker 2: 1:03:27

You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 1:03:27

I got you, that's. That is a distinct difference.

Speaker 2: 1:03:30

Yeah, so you're being exploited by your fear. Yeah, there are people who reach out to me every once in a while because, like I've got, as I've gotten more and more popular and my name has gotten around.

Speaker 1: 1:03:40

Yeah, um, people have reached out for me to me from back then and, uh, and I don't have anything to do with them, but like is there other people that have left and grew away from the experience Like not, not to put it as a survivor's group, but is there support?

Speaker 2: 1:04:00

Uh that uh, there are out of that. There are there, there are support groups. I mean like, uh, you know, it wasn't until just a few years ago, it was like three or four years ago, um, and, like I said, I left when I'm, when I was 19, I was 40. So, like when I was like my late thirties, I discovered uh, it was the first time I discovered that I'm not the only one who still literally wakes up in the middle of the night sweating and having nightmares about the place, like it was, uh, you know, you just have this. Like I have this reoccurring dream, uh, ever since I had my kid, this reoccurring dream that I have to tell Oliver that, um, that I have to go back.

Speaker 1: 1:04:48

Oh man, do you have rituals today that ease that? Or support because the guy I'm around and always around you're healthy and you're compassionate and empathetic? What's the primary support like that? Like you that you first found when any relief because the why I asked when we did that shoot for the clear work. You, you were talking addicts language and I've never seen you use drugs or drink. I'm like John fucking knows us. Like, like you didn't need a guiding hand.

Speaker 2: 1:05:36

You like you understood the language because we were doing in depth stuff, three minute videos, um so here's, here's the thing that I might I don't know, you're probably going to have a decent sized part of your audience that hates me for saying this, but there's a lot of things in drug and alcohol rehabilitation that is not unique to drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Right, and rehabs are very, very similar to Freedom Village. Some are In a lot of ways, a lot of the language and a lot of the way you know, I mean, think about the dope complaining bowl, like. How many like have you been to a rehab where you'd get lectured for complaining? And I've been to 15. Yeah, I mean, but you know, qualifying that with like, where it's almost like punitive Not necessarily punitive, but there is a measure of that but more like where you have to engage.

Speaker 2: 1:06:59

It almost is cult like, where you know, I mean to an extent and they have really good reasons for it, but it can get abused so easily. And there's just a lot of things that are like low level versions of what I went through. Sure, I think, separating yourself from your friends, like and you know, just trying to stay away from those bad influences, like, in my case, everyone who wasn't a hardcore believer in the same exact version of my belief I had to separate myself from, which was everyone, everyone that wasn't actively there. So, like you know, is the definition of a cult, like in your case, it's, like you know, separate yourself from the people who are doing the things that you don't want to be. We're cult, like you know. So.

Speaker 1: 1:07:50

I think even in our reflection, like, say, if it was alcohol or a drug, they write about themselves in a really critical way and by the fifties it's a failed cult. I mean, they don't kill apostates, they don't force labor. But what happens is there's in and out groups, like any organic organization, a different in different regions, and it sometimes it mirrors the style or level of Christianity in that region or the secular approach.

Speaker 2: 1:08:19

Yeah, so you see those influences on a group that there's a lot of pseudo spiritualism and religion, and you know a lot of religious talk and what it like in ways that kind of don't make any sense at all If you think longer than a second about it and like you know, I mean, where did you?

Speaker 1: 1:08:42

where do you find like when that all collapsed the spiritual and the supernatural resources of Christianity and you were now on outside of this group? It still has to be scary, even though that like that was because you were part of that for so long. Where are you connected? Where did you first connect? Because your life exploded, it turned around and it became massively entrepreneurial and you have a successful business.

Speaker 2: 1:09:12

So I got treated for ADHD as an adult, when I was 35.

Speaker 1: 1:09:20

Yeah, and do you think that's it?

Speaker 2: 1:09:23

I got treated for ADHD Like it's a legit legitimate thing, and that was the breakthrough for you. Like that's nobody, like very few. Okay, most people listening to this are going to know exactly what I'm talking about, because 99% of addicts have ADHD, like period, and you need to be treated. Unfortunately, you also have addiction issues and there's other ways. There's other, there's no other good ways though. That's the problem and there's no other, clinically proven over and over again. 99%, like I said, 99%, a lot today.

Speaker 1: 1:09:59

There's some good evidence coming out more and more that like, if you can't take that in fatamine salts, which are really effective in attention, they're the only consistently effective Sure Medication for ADHD. No, I don't take them. But diet fall asleep. At the same time there's there's regiments. I could start to exercise agency and, oh yeah, the results are slower. But my attention rises.

Speaker 2: 1:10:23

So you know when it comes to diet and go into bed on time and all you know. And exercising regularly and all this kind of stuff, If you have ADHD, you're lucky. If you can do that, yeah. Well, there's there's severity, there's a mental, there's a mental wall there. Like you, it's. Somebody described it. I saw on Tik Tok, which I love Tik Tok, by the way.

Speaker 1: 1:10:45

I have a huge problem with people who don't like Tik Tok.

Speaker 2: 1:10:48

You know I don't have a problem with them, I just disagree violently. But somebody described on Tik Tok having ADHD and knowing what you should do yeah, Versus being able to do it is just like somebody saying take your hand, turn the stove on until it gets red hot. Yeah, Take your hand, just hold it to that burner for one second. You can physically do it right. Yeah, you know you can do it. You can even tell everybody that you're going to do it. You get to that oven. You can't.

Speaker 1: 1:11:26

You absolutely can't. No, it's happening to me. I start cleaning the shelf. I have to write stuff. Yeah, yeah, reorganize the entire closet.

Speaker 2: 1:11:34

You reorganize the entire closet.

Speaker 1: 1:11:36

Like yeah, like you get hyper fixated, hyper focused, that's an issue.

Speaker 2: 1:11:41

But when somebody there are like okay, I know I should go to bed at 10 o'clock, right? Yeah, 10 o'clock is a great time to go to bed, it's just like putting my hand on that oven sometimes, where it's like no.

Speaker 1: 1:11:54

I couldn't deal with ADHD the way I did in my 20s, the way I do now, but I designed a life that I could tolerate and still find some achievement in, because I didn't work for anyone. I worked in my own hours, even when I had a staff. I could take three days off and I would just read get hyper fixated on something. Yep, you would see this, I would do like I would do. That's my lifestyle. But that lifestyle also didn't allow for intimacy, makes relationships really hard. It makes my ability to get close, or the ability to get close to me or me really close to someone else. It starts to fail by my 30s and that's addiction returned. There's a way I could. That narrative is the same. Most addicts I meet at ADD or their ADD, so severe addiction is the first attempt to solve it. If it's cocaine and vitamins that they feel sound of mind when they're using it, they feel normal.

Speaker 2: 1:12:59

Yeah, it's two. Yeah, so I think Thank you in research backs me up to a certain degree on this, but I think so ADHD is horribly named, is not? It's not being hyper, yeah, hyperactivity has. I mean that hyperactivity is a symptom of the cognitive issues that you have. You know who?

Speaker 1: 1:13:22

says that to the board mate. We talked about the book. I don't know if you read it. Scattered minds.

Speaker 2: 1:13:27

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:13:30

I used that in some of my lectures when we talked about HDD and it, it, it, it just is such a reliable book.

Speaker 2: 1:13:34

So it starts out, you know, attention deficit. Yeah, there's no deficit of attention, you know at all. Yeah, it's really a New labeled. It's a cognitive disorder where, like, you're not receiving enough dopamine, so everyone else has this reward system of dopamine, yeah, which is a legitimate thing. Yeah, yours is muted and yours is 100% muted, and that's why, like, it takes a lot to get you focused on something, but once you are, you know, you know how most research says this happens, it's trauma, it's a two minute If there's not a connection.

Speaker 1: 1:14:14

So one of the the new, studies that came out. I'm not saying there's not genetic components.

Speaker 2: 1:14:20

Oh, no, no, like it's all it's. It's almost certainly genetic, so trauma adds to it and exacerbates it a lot. But they, you know I mean ADHD is also one of the most well researched mental disorders ever 40, almost well 50 years now of research on ADHD. If a kid has ADHD, one of his parents does so.

Speaker 1: 1:14:44

Period With you, you, you openly take medication for you've talked about what other things. Was there any other thing outside of in fat and mean salts or whatever prescription? Was there things you do on top of that is there? Was there? Did therapy help? Or did cognitive exercises? Or the way you would approach, say, a complex plan like, yeah, to improve executive function, see it's.

Speaker 2: 1:15:12

I mean there, there's a lot. I mean there's a lot of things that I was able to do because I got treated for ADHD. Wow, you know it's surprising, like when I'm not constantly bouncing from thing to thing to thing.

Speaker 1: 1:15:28

Yeah, I've seen you edit 365 videos. There was three minutes each within weeks yeah, weeks.

Speaker 2: 1:15:38

I mean it was freakish, it was a I like it was like a three through rough footage that you would just content flies back. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know anybody who could put out the sheer amount of content that I could put out. I haven't met them. I mean at least at the quality that I, that I managed to pull out of my ass. That's good self-esteem.

Speaker 1: 1:15:58

It's real yeah. I've started to recognize lately that I'm not as I'm not, I don't know, I'm not gonna get into that.

Speaker 2: 1:16:14

But, like you know, yeah, some of the things that I've done, I don't know. I can't really put my finger on it Like my-.

Speaker 1: 1:16:27

You woke up a pocket of abilities. That just See. The thing is Is it agency?

Speaker 2: 1:16:32

It's a gradual thing it's not something that happened overnight. Like I don't know, I don't know like at what point. Like at some point in the last six or seven years, I went from, like I started a video production company, literally and I'm not kidding you with my iPhone and my wife's laptop. I know that, yeah, you know, like I love that. I have a quarter million dollars worth of gear in my studio In a very good security system, actually a legitimate, really awesome. Yeah, absolutely, but the largest studio in northeast from Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1: 1:17:13

Absolutely handsome.

Speaker 2: 1:17:15

And you know, like stuff that I would have dreamed about I would have made one of my stuff for some of the crap that I have now. You know, like I have more gear in my car right now because I just finished a shoot than my car's worth. I could buy three cars with what's in my car right now Like it is. It's insane.

Speaker 1: 1:17:40

Well in that regards are you gonna help me market my cult Like-.

Speaker 2: 1:17:45

Yes, absolutely so Is there-? Well, I wanted to finish that real quick because I left that kind of hanging. I don't know at what point I went from having just an iPhone to having this big studio and I'm not even at the end yet. You know what I mean. I can't tell you what I did, like did I buy one camera? Did I buy like I don't You're in Flow State 15 cameras now you go into Flow State.

Speaker 1: 1:18:11

I love watching it when we've worked together.

Speaker 1: 1:18:14

Yeah, it's just B-roll but you would go on a trail of Flow State like you were gone and you came back and what you captured could change the entire vision of what we were trying to do. That's fun, that's creativity, that's artistry. I always enjoyed that and I remember when you started to say you know, you were significant, things were happening with Attention Deficit Disorder. There was a monumental change in the flow of what you were doing and how you were approaching it, how you wanted to build your business, and it was substantial to the point you have. You're sitting in a studio, the largest studio in Northeastern Piai.

Speaker 2: 1:18:53

Yeah, well, it is not even like, but just like I can't tell you how I got to where I am now. Like I can't tell you, or I can tell you how I got here, but it'd take a while. I can't pick out any one thing that happened or any one decision I made, because I made a shit ton of really really, really, really, really bad decisions. Yeah, I'm still making them today.

Speaker 1: 1:19:15

And you survived.

Speaker 2: 1:19:16

Yeah, it's just and that's the same way with like, being able to like and I don't think you're wrong. I really can empathize with, with addiction and people in addicts more than most, and I think a lot of it has to do with like. I can genuinely understand and you know, I've been through. Like I said, I've been through a lot of shit, but I've also done a lot of shit And-.

Speaker 1: 1:19:53

Well, the two things too. You don't have to use alcohol or any drug to have an addiction. It's a behavior, it's a coping mechanism. Yeah, and it's very broad.

Speaker 1: 1:20:04

We have passed an hour and you know I try not to go over an hour, but I'd like to come back because you're a friend of mine and you're a substantial friend in the sense of how I built my new life. You were standing next to me most of the time working. I never even considered it until we're talking now how much time I spent with you when I and how uncomfortable I was for the first year when I stopped drinking. I didn't know if life was worth living at that point and I always enjoyed your company, man. We've always gotten along and I'm glad you helped me launch this podcast. You gave me the encouragement and the technical means on the back end to produce this that made it so enjoyable.

Speaker 1: 1:20:49

I can't tell you I took a break for the summer. I know that was a naughty thing to do, but I'm glad to be back up and I Podcasting has changed the way I listen to people and it still does, because I'm a hyper guy, you know, and I wanted to thank you for that, for coming on here and not only helping me all the help you gave me the last two years and adding in this show it's. I don't meet many people like you that is so kind, you're so giving and you've overcome so much pain and your sense of empathy is. I think it's just really wild to watch because you're not in AA, I'm so immersed in some recovery community I'm seeing that you think normal people don't have any. It's just you get a wrong perspective on things.

Speaker 2: 1:21:43

Yeah, well, the thing is, I mean to clarify I'm not a normal person. I've never been addicted to drugs and alcohol. I do have some other issues that leave it on a cliffhanger. Maybe we get addressed next time. Sure you know I have experienced a different level of addiction and I still go through it, obviously, but that's a whole other story you know Well, you should be a regular guest on this show because I like talking about those AIs.

Speaker 1: 1:22:20

It's coming first, john.

Speaker 2: 1:22:22

Yeah, when it comes to I don't know, I'll find a reason to argue about everything. Wait till you see that. Did I send you the video about the new Apple headset, the reality pro?

Speaker 1: 1:22:35

No, you were talking to me, you were telling me to watch it yesterday. Oh, that's good, let's go downstairs and watch it, that's good, I gotta use the restroom and I have a small guys. This was John Edwards. He's the editor of All Better. He's my friend.

Speaker 2: 1:22:49

They may have heard me interrupt a couple times.

Speaker 1: 1:22:51

Well, yeah, these are unsanctioned interruptions, but this is flow. We trust each other at work, so that's how it goes, man, Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2: 1:23:01

And everybody. This is before you hit. This is Joe Van Wee, the guy who, this dude, he's gonna play me out now. This guy has done holy crap. I've seen photos of you with the Clintons and you, You're gonna get me killed.

Speaker 1: 1:23:22

We'll be on some subreddit, okay, okay, forget it. Forget about that.

Speaker 2: 1:23:27

I'm just you know not necessarily the people, but the scope and scale and breadth of what you've done.

Speaker 1: 1:23:36

I'm just a pirate man.

Speaker 2: 1:23:38

I'm a pirate, it's a film school in Northeast from Pennsylvania and you've With Timmy, my cousin, captain.

Speaker 1: 1:23:43

Everything you touch, everything you do you kill it Like Smoke and marriage. Baby, I'm a showman. That's it man. I just I like putting on a show. It's fun. I think you know the core of life. It's drama. It's a drama, you gotta play a good character in it and you know I wanna be a moral character.

Speaker 2: 1:24:09

So Well, I'll let you Hit the.

Speaker 1: 1:24:12

I guess I'll let you.

Speaker 2: 1:24:14

The end and you know through your canned outro in 10. Nine 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10., 10.

Speaker 1: 1:24:28

10. 10, 10, 10, 9. 10. 15, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10. 3 2, 1, 1. Ho, wow, holy moly. Wow, what an incredible stand giard. 10. 10. Worth to see you again. And remember just because you're sober doesn't mean you're right. Thanks for watching.