Situationships, Theft of Fire and being in a Thruple

Guest [00:00:00] You pretty much could only have a modern friendship on the fringes. It's when you have time to do activities with your friends, you know, is when you have friendship. And it's the same way I think, for sort of casual relationships. You can only do this when you have the overhead for this versus, you know, in my family where it's like, you know, s will have a big project this week and it's like, okay, well when five o'clock hits you're gonna have a hot meal and you know someone else is gonna be taking up laundry duty and you're gonna, you're gonna conquer this. And if you're just in situation ships where that only exists in your leisure time, you know, you don't have the support of a relationship. And then how does that, how does that grow?

Vance Crowe [00:00:43] I'm Jeremy Osh, a retirement community CEO, living in Eureka, Illinois. And you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we're having a conversation with Christine. That's right. I'm not sharing her last name because right before the camera started rolling, she said, you know, maybe it'd be better if we didn't use my last name. Some of the ideas I have are a little controversial and it's probably just better if it's a little bit difficult for people to find me. That's okay with me. I don't care as long as we come on and have a great conversation. But Christine was right. She talked about a lot of things that are not really okay to talk about in popular culture. Everything from how she's both a cyclist and a gun owner, but also about her life living as a throuple and her different views on the way that things like artificial intelligence is going to happen into the world. Christine had a lot of very interesting things to say, a novel perspective, and it was really fun to sit down and hear somebody that thinks so differently than other people. Just be able to explain her perspectives. We're gonna get to that interview in just a moment, but Christmas is almost here. If you've been thinking about a truly powerful gift for your loved ones, consider doing a legacy interview. Oftentimes the adult children of parents or grandparents can pool together their money and get a legacy interview. And if you get this in time for Christmas, we will send you a leather bound gift package that'll explains the gift to your loved one so that on Christmas morning they can open it up and know that you deeply want to preserve their stories so that future generations can know their family history.

Vance Crowe [00:02:24] If you'd like to learn more about getting a legacy interview for your loved one, go to Legacy Interviews dot com. Alright, without further ado, let's head to the interview with Christine. Christine, welcome to the podcast.

Guest [00:02:41] Thank you. Really excited to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:02:43] You know, you are a lot taller in person than, than you are online because I've seen you many times online and I expected you to be short.

Guest [00:02:51] You know, I'm not 40 pixels or whatever size a, a Twitter avatar is. I'm about five foot 11 in a bit, but you get to see me in heels that bring me very comfortably over six feet. So I like being tall. And it's very fun when people say, Hey, you're tall that I expected. 'cause it's just like, yes, I want to crush the world. You're

Vance Crowe [00:03:13] One of the rare people that has a bunch of Venn diagrams that when you look at 'em, you're like, that doesn't really make sense. I think one of the, the things that crystallizes that is you're a lover of bicycles and you are a proponent of guns. And I don't know if guns and bicycles go together, but it's a Venn diagram that usually doesn't overlap that much.

Guest [00:03:33] You know, it's funny, I was recently living in the Seattle area and there I carry typically in the four o'clock position and I assume most of your readership knows what that means, but it's sort of on your back, you know, right here. And when you ride a bicycle, your shirt sometimes rides up because you're leaning forward, et cetera, et cetera. And I sort of saw it as a, look, I'm doing community outreach. Look, fellow cyclists, gun ownership is normal. I'm one of you. And here I am, you know, carrying my bag full of organic groceries. Well sometimes organic. And that's just because those were sometimes on sale anyway. And then we moved over to the Spokane area and it's a little more conservative area. And there again, same thing happens and instead it's, hey, people who are driving next to me and see me cycling, I'm just like you, I own a pistol and here I am on a bicycle getting my groceries. Like, so it's, I, it's culturally there's not very much of an overlap, but I think there's a lot of sort of self-sufficiency involved in both. At least for me, you know, it's no, oh no, a tree has blocked the road. My car is stuck here because I could just pick up my bicycle and I can go around it. It's no, oh no, I hear this crazy thump from the downstairs. I'm helpless up here in my bedroom. Nope. I can investigate.

Vance Crowe [00:05:00] Yeah, it's an interesting thing because I like, I'm a supporter of guns. I, I learned when I was a really little kid how to shoot guns and then when I got older and wasn't moving around than I purchased guns, but I would almost never talk about them publicly. And you are very public about it.

Guest [00:05:17] I am very public about a lot of my opinions. It's one of these things where I certainly see the Overton window shifting. And I think that's very dangerous. And I think it's important for me to be vocal about these topics because I don't necessarily look like your typical gun owner. You know, I am a woman, I'm in software engineering, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And I wasn't particularly into guns until a number of years ago, but they've always sort of been vaguely like seen as good in my life. You know, I grew up with stories of my grandmother who, her father was a police inspector. She, I up up, he was a police fellow and there was a man who was harassing, I, I say euphemistically women in her neighborhood. And he calls her up one day and 'cause one of the things he was doing was including harassing them by phone. And she goes, you know what, how about you stop by tonight, six o'clock or whatever, you know? And her plan was, okay, my dad will be here, he'll find this guy, he'll arrest him, done. And he goes, no, I'm gonna head over now. So he arrives and she tells him to go away. He doesn't, she shoots him. Like, these are the stories I grew up with of women who were not victims. And I've had my own experiences of one time was going to a rest stop late at night and I see this guy making sort of weird eyes at me as he leaves the rest drop.

Guest [00:06:48] And I go in there and I, you know, spend a bit of extra time and I leave and he's waiting for me outside, starts walking towards me. And then so does my father who was on this trip with me, and the guy sees my six foot two, four, I dunno how tall my dad is, dad walking towards me and he just turns around and leaves. I don't know what would've happened if my father wasn't there. And I, I love my dad. I can't carry him around every second of every day. So yeah, it's, it's something that's near and dear to my heart. And I do things like, I tried to fight against gun control propositions in Washington state when I was living there. There's actually an amendment on a bad bill that passed that I made ever so slightly less bad because of my advocacy. But at the end of the day, I gave up, you know, one person can't go in against the will of Seattle. And my family actually relocated to Tennessee recently. One of the reasons being, it just, well, we're tired of the cold, we're tired of the smoke season, but it also just is a little more in line with our values.

Vance Crowe [00:07:55] Yeah. What do you mean by that? What's the difference between the values of Seattle and the values of Tennessee?

Guest [00:08:01] They're communists and, and I say this, having friends who are communists and I think they're sweet people, but just ultimately misinformed, you know, it's one of these things where every time communism is tried, there's mountains of skulls. And I'm not convinced that next time it try, it's tried, it's not gonna be the same. But there's also just, you know, it's,

Vance Crowe [00:08:24] They are literally communists. Like they, they, they say, oh, like they believe the state should control everything and oh, and dole it out.

Guest [00:08:31] Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, I like, I there, there's no, you know, you can have dinner parties where you discuss these topics, but nobody's, even then, nobody's gonna be changing anyone's minds. You can sort of help the other side, if you wanna call it that. See, oh look, there's not monsters on the other side. You know, they're people too. They just think that my way of implementing we, we might want the same things. We just have different ideas on how to implement it. You know, both me and Emily be both want human prosperity and we just have different opinions on how to get there. So in Tennessee, you know, there's a lot less, we want the government to tell us how to run our lives. And there's, especially in the neighborhood we moved into, there's a lot more community that we didn't see in Seattle. You know, the other week, three little girls from across the street popped over and we're like, Hey, do you have any kids for us to play with? No, we don't. Oh, can we get a tour of your house? Okay. So, you know, they come in our house, we give them a, a tour of the downstairs, bring them, bring them down to the basement because that's also our garage. So they get to sit in our Tesla and we're like, oh man, you know, I'm going crazy for that. And we didn't get that in, in Washington, you know, so it's, it's a place where community definitely still feels like a thing. You talk about anywhere people and somewhere people, and this, it feels like a place to be somewhere. It's so

Vance Crowe [00:10:02] What, so I just, earlier this week I was learning about anarchism and like, I think that at least the explanation Michael Malice was on with another anarchist. And I was like, I actually had never heard that explanation before. I always thought the anarchists were the people that are like, no government, I don't want any rules. Like let's just go have fun. And what he was basically saying was, you know, anarchism is actually a way that you are structuring relationships and you're saying we are going to work on things together as opposed to having a formal system put on top of us like a government. And where are you at on anarchism?

Guest [00:10:39] You know, it's, I'm in a weird place because my husband, he's an anarcho capitalist and I very much like having access to public libraries. So I am more the, I'm more of a libertarian, but have respect for the sort of anarcho capitalist philosophy. There's actually a organization in Chattanooga called the Agora, which is sort of an anarchist store and organization thing. And there it's, everyone sort of pays money into a bucket and you get sort of credits and then the organization goes and buys like vegetables and meats and

Vance Crowe [00:11:20] Things.

Guest [00:11:21] And then there's a shop you could go. And it's all very, like, when you're quote unquote shopping there, it's not real shopping. It's, I don't it, it's structured in some interesting way. I only learned about it recently from a local anarchist friend. So I both like it. But I also wonder how well it's scales, you know, it used to be that personal reputation mattered a lot, you know, and it's what you do is what mattered. It's like, oh yeah Bill, he's an asshole. But you know, when the cattle get out, you know, he's first on his horse helping wrangle them. And these days it's, oh, Bill's an asshole. Did you hear what he, you know, said about some minority group? And that's the only thing that matters and that's the only thing that gets boosted. And so because we live in an age where virtue is largely defined by words rather than actions, because our communication methods are largely focused on words and we're not sitting around at coffee shops talking about, man, it sucked when the cattle got out last week. Thank goodness Bill was there. I think that then translates into it being difficult to have an anarchist society. But I dunno,

Vance Crowe [00:12:35] It's really interesting to me that's a good description of it, that so much of our lives are now defined less by action, but more by words. I think that's entirely true. I think of all these Legacy Interviews I do. And one of the, a reporter called me, she wanted to do a story on this and she asked me like, what's something you've noticed about the, the way rural culture either was or is that's different than, and I was like, man, these people are so much more involved in their communities, like in their rotary groups or their city government or their volunteer fire department. And they're all doing things together. So they have so many more tangible interactions with people that aren't just, hey, look at these photos of these cookies that I made and let me share with you my skin cream recipe or what, whatever that is.

Guest [00:13:22] Which is

Vance Crowe [00:13:22] All just like much more self-focused rather than action focused.

Guest [00:13:27] Oh, absolutely. I think that's one of the grandest tragedies of our age. You know, there's, I'm gonna try to not talk about my husband too much, but a phrase he uses that he says is happiness comes from a feeling of accomplishment and a feeling of connection to other people. So something we like to do is we love to have people over for dinner. If you're listening to this, if you find yourself in Chattanooga, please find me. We'll love, love to have you over for dinner. And that's something where it's like, we cook a delicious meal. That's a feeling of accomplishment. We've got a interesting conversation over dinner. That's a feeling connection to other people and there's just so much atomization in today's society. You know, it's, yeah, this is, I, I know it's the end of the interview where you talk about an opinion that you think, you know, most other people wouldn't agree with you, but I'm just probably gonna share a number of those throughout this interview. And one of those is, I think it's both great. You know, I've certainly benefited from being able to have a full-time job and have my own salary and not be beholden to some one individual who isn't me. But I also think it's very sad that the modern family structure is largely dependent upon both people working because there's so much important invisible work that's been historically done by women, just because I do think the sexes are different and we've got different priorities and interests.

Guest [00:14:58] And if you're going to work in the morning and sitting around doing spreadsheets and then coming home, you're not gonna be organizing the meal train for Cindy who just, you know, came home from a really hard birth and can't cook and can't clean and you know, you're not gonna be able to organize all of these things that are important for community. And yes, we have some people who have the, I could say privilege, but who have, you know, one person staying home both throughout that larger community. You know, you can't organize things, things as well. There's this sort of existing structure that they could be tapped into that I really feel like we've lost.

Vance Crowe [00:15:40] There's no question in my mind and, and like in these Legacy Interviews, the the, I grew up in a family where my mom stayed home. It was natural, it was like what most of the kids that I grew up with, I don't know most, but a lot of them, they had moms that stayed at home.

Guest [00:15:55] But

Vance Crowe [00:15:55] Then when you get out into the wider world, you find out like that's actually not how it works. And there's definitely a period where you hear like, oh, women were finally freed to be able to get out of this. But a lot of the women I'm talking to, they loved being at home and they played a critical role in the husband who went on to become the CEO or the CFO of like helping him think through things and, and not just like getting his suit ready to be worn. Yeah. But like talking with him about office issues and having some kind of detached thing over and over and over again, people have said like, I couldn't have done this without my wife. And that atomization that's happened with, with women going back to work has radically changed. Like you had said, the way people interact with their community. Yeah,

Guest [00:16:38] Absolutely. My uncle, he's a CEO of a publicly traded company and he, his wife, she calls herself the CEO of the home and you know, I don't think he'd be able to do what he does without her teamwork and her assistance. You know, Devin, he wrote his book recently, theft of Fire Publishing next week. And he wouldn't have been able to do that without, you know, me and my co wife, sister, wife, there's really not a good term for it, you know? 'cause he's writing scenes and reading them to us and it's, you know, sometimes it's like, oh man, that's great. And sometimes it's like, oh, that was good. But, but yeah, it's, people talk about, I've heard the phrase that San Francisco startups are replacing mom, you know, you've got DoorDash to give you food, you've got TaskRabbit to come, you know, do small assorted tasks, you, et cetera, et cetera. But I think really what the San Francisco startup community is largely doing is replacing relationships. You know, that's, that's another thing about being in Tennessee in a less prosperous area. You know, people, you have to rely on each other. You know, if you need to get to the airport and it's two hours away and you're, you, you don't wanna pay for parking for a week. 'cause you go off to, you know, go to your grandmother's funeral and dealing with our estate, it costs a lot of money to go on Uber and get a two hour car rides. So, you know, you have friends, you've got neighbors, you've got community.

Guest [00:18:11] And I think that it's interesting that there's a very intangible element that is unavailable to the people who are richest. Not richest, but mid rich in our society. I think that the richest have a sort of additional latitude anyway, comp have not thought through these thoughts super well. But

Vance Crowe [00:18:38] I'm of the belief set that a large reason that this is happening is inflation. And that one of the largest things that the government takes from its people by, by saying, we're just gonna keep printing money, is that the value of your time spent working goes down. And the value of the time that you did work in the past has gone down. And so you need as, as the cost of living goes up and the more people that are engaged in the workplace wage just keep going down and the price of things keeps going up. And that a huge part of why we are a nuclear family is, is the, is and which is really funny, you know, we talk about the concept of atomization and nuclear family,

Guest [00:19:21] One

Vance Crowe [00:19:21] Of my good friends is Chinese. And he was like the, the idea that you even have a concept called the nuclear family where you're talking about mom, dad, and children is so foreign to the, to the Chinese that like the concept of being a nuclear family, something that small is like, like an insult. It's not a good thing.

Guest [00:19:40] Oh yeah. I went over there a number of, to Wuhan actually back in 2016. A friend, her family was from there. And it was so interesting to see just sort of like how the culture was different. How it's like, oh well, you know, obviously grandma and grandpa are gonna be raising the kid or like went on a weekend trip with her aunt and her aunt's coworkers, one of whom had a baby. And it's just sort of like, oh yeah, pass the baby around. You know? So different people hold it and watch after it. You know, here I've got friends who their child is like two years old. It's, you know, an acquaintance from Chicago way back in the day. I guess the kids like six now anyway. But the child had never been in the care of anyone but the mother for years of its life because she just barely didn't trust other people to hold her child. Which that sounds very exhausting. I don't, I, you know, I don't see how anyone could do that.

Vance Crowe [00:20:35] I think there's almost like when I started having kids, I started to realize like, kids play such an important functional role in bonding the community together. I take my daughter, my three-year-old to the grocery store and whereas before I would just be completely silent in the grocery store. I'd be listening to something and getting done when I needed to. But when you have a child, that child is interacting with people and making them smile and getting them to engage with her. And like kids are what bind a community together through just the innocence and the way that they interact.

Guest [00:21:08] Oh yeah. I totally see it. You know, and that's one of the things I remember the first time I went to Ireland, I was shocked because oh my gosh, we're at this like rural pub and there's like kids running around and there's alcohol here. Like, what is this? And it's like now it's like, oh yeah, this makes total sense. Like why should parents have to like sit home alone just because they happen to have a five year old's. Like, it doesn't,

Vance Crowe [00:21:28] I never thought about that. The fact that the, the 21-year-old rule for bars would really change how people interact with their kids and stuff if they bring 'em along. I never thought about that. Yeah.

Guest [00:21:37] And now, you know, it's just sort of a, it drives me absolutely insane to go places where people are bringing dogs to because I don't like seeing them in public. Like they're gross, this is a grocery store, why this, why is this dog here? Or this is a restaurant? Yes, it's a patio, but can you, it still has hair and anyway, but that's becoming increasingly approved of while the sort of public tolerance for children is going down, it's like, oh, you have a child, why are you daring to eat in a restaurant? Or, oh, well you must go spend 200 or whatever dollars on childcare so that you may attend my wedding. And it's like, isn't this about, you know, binding people's families together? Like it's, it's such a strange culture. But yeah, you're con sorry, the, something you said has been playing in the back of my mind, the idea of inflation reducing the value of past work. That's, that's so interesting. I hadn't seen it phrased that way. How it's almost like theft from one's past self.

Vance Crowe [00:22:41] Oh, a hundred percent. Right. And it, and it's like because you worked at a certain wage, right? And you put that time and you exchange either that time or that capital good. And now they're able to just throw more $500 into the monopoly bank and then be like, oh, well all the prices for everything is going up. So you thought you were making this much money, but now over time, that's all getting sucked away all the value.

Guest [00:23:05] Yeah, yeah. No, I'm, I'm very lucky in that I was raised to be financially conscious. You know, I, I grew up not too far from your studio over in West County and you know, so I, I started my IRA when I was 18 years old and you know, always save my allowance and et cetera. But I know so many people who they just sort of put their money in a savings account and they feel like they're being responsible and they are, you know, it's like great, you didn't spend your whole paycheck, but then the way the government is, they're just being robbed every day from,

Vance Crowe [00:23:38] One of my favorite questions to ask financial people is, alright, so do you, you know that putting money in your savings account just burns it away to inflation? Do you now teach your children to open a savings account? Like why would you do that? What, what positive And almost universally they're like, oh yes, it's very important to save. It's very important to save. And I'm like, maybe it is right. Or maybe it's important to teach a more nuanced lesson there because to save it in the current economy that we're in and in the foreseeable future is, is, I mean, I'm not saying you should go, you know, yolo spend your money, but like, it, it's putting it in a savings account is definitely not something we're teaching young people. Oh

Guest [00:24:17] Yeah. No, it's crazy. Like, you know, even five, 10 years ago when I was reading personal finance advice books, you know, I was talking about, oh yes, put your money in this kind of account and you're gonna get 5% returns, you know, money market counts. And then it's, you know, it's 2006 and I'm looking at returns on a money market account and I'm like, no, this is not what I'm getting in this type of account. It's return a bit. I think our money market account is getting like 4.5% hooray as it tries to meet, you know, 9% or whatever inflation. Yeah. But it's, you know, it's handy for, you know, the place where our cash sits for bills and such. But yeah, it's a lot of advice from the past doesn't apply very well. Like,

Vance Crowe [00:24:59] I think about bonds. Like that's, that's like, and if you think about even something as simple as putting your money in the stock market, I mean, most of the gains of the entire stock market are done by I think five companies or seven companies. And like, that's another whole part of the economy that really frustrates me because it now has become common knowledge. Like you should just be investing your money into the stock market. Like, well, the only reason you should be doing that is because it's the only thing that will keep up with inflation if you don't wanna be actively managing your money. If you don't want to be the type of person that's like buying a rental house or do doing, you know, like adding capital so that you can get the business to make money so people have to put their money into the stock market in order to avoid inflation. But maybe I don't want to to risk my money. Right? Yeah. The stock market is risk. And so this type of risk further inflations the, the, the calculation that regular people take about what their future will be.

Guest [00:25:59] Yeah, that's true. If it's 1945 and some time of low inflation in American history, I'll admit I'm not versed enough to pick a specific date. But, you know, it's like, okay, there's risks to the stock market and if I want to avoid that, I can just save it. But now it's like, nope, well you're just gonna be losing that way, so you're, you're forced into risk. So man, that's, that's a challenge. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:26:23] So something you said earlier about your family, which is makes you a little bit different is that you mentioned a sister wife. Yes. And you mentioned your husband. Explain what, what is your fa I actually don't know.

Guest [00:26:34] Yeah, no worries. You know, it's one of these things where there's a lot, I'd say my family is the most important thing to me about my life, but it's not the most interesting, you know, I'm sure your wife is the most important person in the world to you or maybe your daughter both together collectively. But you don't introduce yourself saying, hi, I'm Vance Crow, I'm married. It's like, oh, okay, good, happy for you. Right. You know, and it's, I just stumbled upon a relationship that works for me. You know, Devin, he is, I, I don't know how to describe him. I love him. He's amazing. He is an amazing talker. He's an, he's there, you know, s I'm just gonna refer to her by an initial just because I'm an insane deranged person and she's an absolute sweetheart that does not to be, need to be caught in my splash zone. But she is, she's just a wonderful person. You know, there's, there's a phrase we like to use that thriving is a team sport. And just for anything that's good in our life, it's, there's another person to make it a celebration. And for anything that's a challenge or a burden, there's an additional person to carry that weight. And there's a term some people use called poly, which I kind of hate because it applies to a million

Vance Crowe [00:27:58] As in like polyamorous

Guest [00:27:59] As in polyamorous, yeah. Which seems to apply to a million different varieties of relationships and the people who seem to be most outspoken about it, live lifestyles that are very dissimilar from ours. So it's not a term that sort of resonates with me, even though it's kind of an umbrella term that could apply to my family. But yeah, we're just a team and happy together. And

Vance Crowe [00:28:25] Did you come into the relationship that they already had? Or how did you guys all build into this? Yeah,

Guest [00:28:30] Yeah. So they were together for, gosh, a number of years before I showed up. At least six, I'm forgetting now, but Devin was someone who I had sort of vaguely known for many years. He used to do some writing online that I followed and I had started talking to him one day looking for some life advice. And then I went out to meet him and then I moved in. So, and then it's been

Vance Crowe [00:28:57] Great. Do you remember what the life advice you were looking for was?

Guest [00:29:00] Ah, just was unhappy with some things in my life and just had seen how he had good perspective on things and was helpful and just needed someone to talk to. And turns out I did needed more than someone to talk to. So yeah, it's,

Vance Crowe [00:29:18] So when you use this phrase sister wife,

Guest [00:29:21] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:29:21] That's something that's like, I know what each word means, but together what do they mean?

Guest [00:29:26] It means that, so I stole that from the old school Mormons modern day. They don't do that. And it's actually kind of funny 'cause my last employer largely was populated by LDS because it was headquartered in Utah and I was the person in the company with a sister wife. So always found that very funny. But it just means that, you know, we have the same husband and we aren't in a relationship together because we're not wired that way. But like, I would fight anyone who tries to harm her. So yeah, just, we're a team and we're building our lives together.

Vance Crowe [00:30:06] What is the part of this that's like a good question that you don't get asked, but people should about this way of coupling?

Guest [00:30:13] Hmm. What is a good question? You know, we're, we get, we get a good amount of questions and we say, you know, anything's fine as long as the questions end at the bedroom door, just like you would for any relationship. You know? 'cause who makes a family is sort of public knowledge, you know, we're going to some event together. Like clearly we are a family, but a question people don't ask much. How do you arrange gift giving at Christmas without making sure you're not both getting the same things but not spoiling what you're getting for each other, I suppose. And that is a question that we still don't have the best answer to, but it hasn't been an issue yet.

Vance Crowe [00:31:01] And your families, how did they adapt to this?

Guest [00:31:04] Well, my family is still none too happy. And it's, it's a learning process and I love my parents and they just care for me and my happiness and they, they worry about me being exploited or something. And so all I can do is just sort of show through the years, it's been over four years now that, hey, look, I'm happy and I'm thriving and I'm in love and I'm cared for as her family. They've, you know, they've been nothing but kind. We've gone over there multiple times for Thanksgiving. Her sister, absolute sweetheart have, you know, hung out with her multiple times and Devin's family, he, he didn't have the best childhood and cut connections before I was ever in the picture. So,

Vance Crowe [00:31:53] So when people like find out about you being in a, in like a, a throuple, is that what it's called?

Guest [00:32:02] Yeah, sure. Throuple triad. I think triads more fun because it sort of has some dangerous connotations.

Vance Crowe [00:32:06] Yeah, there you go. Is it something that they are like against or for or curious How does it go?

Guest [00:32:14] Yeah, you know, it's funny, it's a little bit of this sort of like red blue divide too, where you'd think that in the sort of blue areas they would be like, yeah, hurrah, hurrah. And I do think that we get sort of us in principle we are approved of, but us individually how we believe in personal liberty and firearms ownership and private property and et cetera. It's like, well, we don't really like you as individuals and if you were to go to a red area and just query a random person off the street and say, how do you think about, you know, what do you think about a man living with two wives? They'd be like, oh, that's, you know, horrible, you know, he shouldn't do that, blah, blah, blah. But then we have a conversation with someone, we meet them and it's like, oh, well clearly these people are fine. So it's a sort of the, the trope of, oh, people on the left love people in aggregate, but hate people as individuals and then people on the right, they hate people in a adv aggregate, but love people as individuals. That certainly seems true for us. We haven't really faced any particular discrimination. There are sometimes assumptions people make, which again, is one of the reasons why I don't associate with the poly term. It's actually so awkward. We went to this one book event a number of years ago, and there was someone I wanted to talk to because he'd had a decent Kickstarter and I wanted to ask him questions about it, blah, blah, blah, how does this work?

Guest [00:33:47] And we actually knew each other on Twitter. We ran in the same circles. And so I'm trying to talk to him and each time we start a conversation, he is very rapidly conversation, just sort of vanishes and, you know, it's, it's a convention. There's random brownie in motion. I think nothing of it. I find out months later that he thought that because I'm in this non-traditional family structure, that I'm in some sort of like open relationship and I'm trying to add him as a notch to my bedpost, which is just like, what if you're what I mean I, I'm guess I'm glad he could feel flattered in that way for some reason. But buddy, I just wanted Kickstarter advice, which fortunately exists elsewhere. So,

Vance Crowe [00:34:33] So society at some point, at least western society, like pushed polygamy out of the culture. You know, Mormons famously, you know, we're definitely like, people didn't like this. And the only way you can become a part of regular culture is to get rid of this aspect. Why do you think that culture pushed it out?

Guest [00:34:51] Well, I'll admit if everyone I, okay, so I do not wanna, as much as I love my family and I say, Hey, this works great for us, I also do not tell anyone else how to live their lives or what they should do, et cetera. And I, and I do admit that if this was more calmly accepted and like, or not accepted, more commonly practiced, I think it could be destabilizing to society. You know, it's young single men with no prospects of relationships are how your society destabilizes. Yeah. Either from the sort of Middle Eastern, these men have no access to women and they're all just sort of like rowdy. And now they're going to find purpose in other ways and blow themselves up. Or in a western society, these young men who call themselves incel and see no prospects for marriage and happiness are just going to check out of society and play video games so they can actually feel a sense of accomplishment in something and then aren't gonna be out there digging trenches and building companies and keeping our electrics, our electricity on. I think those, we already have that problem in America, and I think that if having multiple wives was more commonly practiced, then we would have that even more so. So

Vance Crowe [00:36:16] Yeah, I think so I remember in, in graduate school learning about a, a thing called the bear branches hypothesis, which is really that it only is a few generations after polygamy is in an area where you have so many unmarried males that they destabilize, they get into banditry, they get into fighting and all the things that you were describing and marriage being spread out among them is probably much better.

Guest [00:36:43] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:36:43] You mentioned this term, incel. Where do you see this in culture?

Guest [00:36:48] Well, I see it primarily online, which I inhabit probably far too much. But I see it both from, you know, a little, my, my Twitter sphere is interesting in that it, it sort of touches a lot of different communities. The quote unquote post rationalists, the gun community, a little bit of like, I don't know, just delightfully deranged people. Just, just all sorts. And I think there was a little bit of this sort of incel world sort of off on their own for a while, self-identifying as this. And then eventually sort of got attention and then now it's in common parlance. But where I see this is, it used to be that for young men, if you worked hard and dedicated yourself to something, society was set up in such a way that you could sort of default to win. Like it's not guaranteed, you know, you're not guaranteed happiness, you're not guaranteed anything in life. But there was sort of the well trod path of, you know what, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna be a mechanic like my dad and I'm gonna have my wife and our children and we're gonna get by and we're gonna be happy enough. You know? But now a lot of young men aren't seeing this and aren't experiencing it. And we've gone from a, both for men and women, you know, relationships not not being seen as something that anyone deserves. It's a, oh, how dare you think you deserve anything.

Guest [00:38:24] We just want you to work and do things and how dare you want anything in return. And so young men in particular are seeing this and are saying like, well, if people are saying I'm not do anything in return, I'm just, all I have is obligations, I'm not being told there's any rewards. Like, why should I fulfill these obligations? And, you know, combined with sort of the way that it's gotta be very hard to date nowadays, it's not a problem that I have had to face really, but it's got to be a challenge.

Vance Crowe [00:39:05] Something like 60% of men under the age of 25, like can go entire year without being touched by another person.

Guest [00:39:14] Oh. You

Vance Crowe [00:39:15] Know, like I just, I think about those kinds of things. Like at first when you hear this concept of incel, it's like a little bit of a joke. Like, oh guy, it's a very,

Guest [00:39:22] Very funny

Vance Crowe [00:39:22] Sound

Guest [00:39:23] Word.

Vance Crowe [00:39:23] Yeah. But then you start thinking about like, what would that life be like? Right. It would be like walking around in a bubble that, you know, you don't get touched, you don't get interacted with. And like, you know, like it's just a, it's something hard to wrap your mind around.

Guest [00:39:39] It is, you know, a while ago we were, we had popped over to Seattle as like a one last Torah, you know, before moving out to Tennessee. And you know, I was out one morning over by the, the pier area and it's like just early morning, had my coffee enjoying the sunlight and just sort of like, yay, enjoying myself. And this sort of older man walked up to me and he's like, you know what, you've just got a wonderful energy about you, you know, and blah, blah, blah. And he, he wanted to give me a hug. And so we hugged and you know, I continued on my day and that's not a thing that, I mean, I guess this random older man got a hug from a random stranger, but like men aren't wandering around getting hugged by people. No.

Vance Crowe [00:40:16] Uhuh.

Guest [00:40:18] So it's, yeah, I don't, I don't know what, it's one of these things where there's certainly a problem and I wish I knew what the solution was, but I hope there

Vance Crowe [00:40:30] Is one and it thinks like it's gonna get worse.

Guest [00:40:31] Oh, absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:40:32] A lot worse.

Guest [00:40:32] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:40:34] Do you see a rise in the type of coupling that you're doing? Do you think that this is going to increase?

Guest [00:40:40] I don't know. I know of other people who are in relationships like this, some publicly, some, Hey, yes, my family structure is like this, but we don't talk about it. And that seems very sad to me. You know, I love talking about how amazing my family is. And I very much so because of this, I very much understand the sort of like 1990s gays feeling trapped in a closet and it's like, oh yeah, I see you wanna be able to talk about your boyfriend or your husband or whatever. So I don't, I think that there's, yes, there's sort of our family structure where we're together and we're committed and we've got a home together and et cetera. But I think what's becoming even more common is this phrase I heard recently called a situation ship, where it's, you sort of have this nebulous situation with a person of your preferred sex and there's not really anything defined and there's not really any obligations to each other. And you're just kind of existing. And I can see how, especially in a place like New York where the gender ratios are insane. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:41:49] Are they?

Guest [00:41:50] Oh yeah. It's so if you are a single woman and you want a man, go to San Francisco because the gender ratios there are way more men. If you're a single man wanting a beautiful woman go to New York because the gender ratios there

Vance Crowe [00:42:04] Very much. That's hilarious. Very excuse female. That's super

Guest [00:42:06] Interesting. I know. I mean, so maybe that's the answer to this. All the sils just move to New York, you can afford it, I'm sure. So there it's sort of like a, without this sort of, hey, yes, we see what we bring to each other's lives and how we want to build a life together, blah, blah, blah. It's just sort of like, well, you know, we go out to dinner sometimes and see a show and maybe there's five other people doing this with this person, but you don't know. Like, I, I think the issue was less, oh, people indulging in lifestyles like mine and a little more this sort of prolonged almost high school style relationship.

Vance Crowe [00:42:45] It sounds awful to me. Like I, I re like when I was in my twenties, I had a lot of fun. I dated a bunch, you got to meet a bunch of people. But like once you get married, all of a sudden the stress of like, how's this gonna work? What's going on there? Oh, did I say the wrong thing? Or we like, whatever, all this stuff that goes on, it's all gone. Yeah.

Guest [00:43:04] Right. And

Vance Crowe [00:43:04] You have new problems, but like, it's not instability.

Guest [00:43:08] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:43:09] And like, I cannot imagine being in a situation ship where it's in, it's based on instability. It's like purposefully not.

Guest [00:43:17] Well, and I think too, so something that I think is very hard with modern friendships is that you pretty much could only have a modern friendship on the fringes. It's when you have time to do activities with your friends, you know, is when you have friendship. And it's the same way I think, for sort of casual relationships. You can only do this when you have the overhead for this. It's, oh, you know, I've got a big project at work this week. I'm, I don't have time to go on dates. You know, I'm not gonna see you Joe, Cindy, whoever. Versus, you know, in my family where it's like, you know, s will have a big project this week and it's like, okay, well when five o'clock hits you're gonna have a hot meal and you know, someone else is gonna be taking up laundry duty and you're gonna, you're gonna conquer this. And so how, if you're just in situations, ships where that only exists in your leisure time, you know, you don't have the support of a relationship. And then how does that, how does that grow? I don't know. I man, if you're listening to this and this is describing your life, I, I don't know what, I don't know what to say other than that. I'm sorry.

Vance Crowe [00:44:25] Yeah, it's gotta be, yeah. Any, anytime you have that instability. Well, you've talked about your husband a couple of times. He just finished a book and is about to publish.

Guest [00:44:36] Yes. It's actually, we're re recording this exactly one week from publication day. And I am, I'm absolutely deranged about this on Twitter. Like every other tweet is Theft of Fire by Devin Erickson publishing 1111 available for a Kindle pre-order now and more formats soon. But it's, it's so good. You know, the publishing industry is just incredibly broken these days. It's more about what books, the Big five publishing houses want people to read, what messages they want them to consume. And I think a lot of people feel very betrayed by a lot of books these days where you're reading it and it's just very clear that you're getting a message. And it could be a message you agree with, but if you want that, you, you, you're not signing up for that. You're signing up for a story and you just, if you disagree with it, you're sitting there listening to someone make arguments at you that you can't respond to. So it's like, what, why are you being subjected to this? So, I dunno, I'm, I'm super excited about theft of fire. Like obviously it's informed by his anarch capitalist beliefs in that it's a frontier society and space, so there's no set government, but it's not, Hey, let me write a 500 page treaties on how a space fairing society would work without government. It's about people and people wanting conflicting things and how those desires play off each other, and how a strange alien artifact on the edge of the solar system may change humanity forever.

Guest [00:46:17] I don't know, I'm, I'm terrible at the elevator pitch. I'm not the rider I, but I've been basically the publicist for this. You know, if you were ask him, what is your marketing plan? He says, my marketing plan is Christine, which is a heavy burden to carry. But I am, I'm honestly very proud of how I've sort of risen to this occasion. You know, I'm, I'm decently clever, I can learn things and I've learned a lot in this and I've, I'm very happy that I'm able to connect people with just a absolutely phenomenally written story that I know they're going to love. You know, Robert, Robert, Bob Martin, I don't know if you're gonna listen to this, but if you do, you know, I'm super glad you love Devin's story. You know, he's, he's the author of Clean Code, which is just insane to me that that guy's read this book. But yeah. Theft of Fire Publishing next week.

Vance Crowe [00:47:16] What do you wish you knew about publishing that you didn't know a few months ago?

Guest [00:47:21] You know, just tons of little, little things like getting a batch of ISBNs and getting those listed in certain places at certain times versus waiting. Or what I'd really wish I'd known is on Ingram Spark, the sell by date and the publishing date. Just sort of what those means. I totally messed up physical copy pre-orders, so that's why it's just lots of little things there. Something I still wish I knew was just sort of the best way to connect with like, reviewers and blog sites. It's all been very ad hoc. Like I'm almost taking like a sniper approach and I know there's got to be a sort of like big net approach to marketing and publications and stuff. I don't know what that is yet. So if anyone knows, feel free to tell me. But yeah, it's, it's hard because unlike music or a TV show or something, you know, if you produce that and you say, Hey, you know buddy, you wanna listen to the song, great. They can pop it into Spotify spy, spend three seconds listening, and either they like it or they don't. If you write a novel Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:48:28] It's a big commitment. That is a commitment. It's a big commitment. Yeah.

Guest [00:48:31] You know, and it's, it's, it's a lot to ask. You know, and that's one of the reasons why I've been primarily talking with people who I know love science fiction. 'cause it's, it's both an ask, but it's also a gift. It's, Hey, here's a way to spend 12 hours or however long, long it takes to read this with something that I know you're gonna love the experience of. And we live in an attention economy where even when it's, Hey, this is something you're gonna love, that's still a big ask. You know, 'cause there's video games, there's tv, there's sitting

Vance Crowe [00:49:04] Around, listen, yeah. If I didn't have a book club, I, there's no chance I would finish books because I do it where I'm like, I have to get this done by Sunday. 'cause Michael and Joseph and Christina, they're all gonna show up and they're gonna be like, what did you think Vance? And, and so like books are hard I think like, 'cause there's always that thing. It's easy to prioritize something else above it.

Guest [00:49:23] Yeah. I actually, oh man, I've so, and I actually have been to the book club a number of times and I've fallen off recently. I need to get back into that because I love it. It's so fun to be able to sit around and discuss, you know, the story and what it means to you. And I do feel like I'm maybe talk a little bit too much when I'm in there. So you're, you're welcome from the break of my voice. But yeah. You know, so I guess that's the other thing. How do I connect Devon's book with book clubs? I actually reached out to some random like space scientist who's starting a book club. I think they would love it.

Vance Crowe [00:49:53] You mentioned your weird Twitter following or like kinda worlds that you live in and one of them you mentioned was post rationalist.

Guest [00:50:00] Yeah, I know. Well, so I almost feel bad talking about it 'cause it feels almost like a secret club. I don't know how I ended up there.

Vance Crowe [00:50:08] Who are they, what is the, what does it mean to be post rationalist?

Guest [00:50:11] So it's, I feel bad for making it this legible, which is a word they use. But basically there is a blog called Star Slate Codex, which formed this sort of whole community around it called The Rationalists. You know, and they sort of liked to delve into a lot of intellectual thought experiments. And if you've heard the term rocos bas lisk, that's from that world. And you know, they talk about wireheading and all these things. And then a lot of people from that sort of went from this, if you, if you talk about things in a, if you attempt to approach things in a perfectly rationalist way, you can get to a lot of strange places. You've, you've had ala on your show and she is, you know, very much from that world. And she has some very fiery opinions, certainly fier than mine, that come from very much a place of trying to dissect the, dissect the human psyche and say, okay, we don't like eating dead people, but why they're a source of protein. And the sort of post rationalist thing is like, well actually there's sort of almost a alm I wanna say like metaphysical component to the human mind. That, and and they sort of accept that, you know, and then a lot of them delve a little more into spirituality and meditation and stuff, which I admit I'm not, I'm not a huge fan of the meditation things.

Guest [00:51:46] I'm, other people get value from it. It's never been for me.

Vance Crowe [00:51:51] But, so if I were gonna explain post rationalist from what I've heard you say. So these are the people that looked at this like hyper focus, like that star slate, star slate codex. He will go in and write like many thousands of words about something, not, not a small topic, but like on a topic and just really parse every single aspect of it being pretty aspy. Right. Very, very much like, I'm gonna deep dive it. And the post rationalists are saying, wait, wait, we've missed some j seis. Like some kind of like essence that's difficult to describe that we need to add into to all of this.

Guest [00:52:27] Yes, exactly. Yeah. There's, I love the author Terry prt and there's this line in one of his books where death is talking about, you know, grind humanity down and fi you know, put it through the finest sea, then show me, you know, one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. You know, these are concepts that don't physically exist, but they do exist. They're real. And so, yeah, exactly. It's sort of a, hey, there, there is more to the human experience than the purely rational. And a lot of it's just sort of like friendly vibing. You know, there's people who spend all their time on Twitter being like, Hey, let me tell you about how you're wrong about this specific topic. You know, often political and that's tedious. You are not gonna change anyone's mind with 240 characters. You're just wanting to shout into the void and feel angry and feel good because you're feeling angry. But this is just a little corner of Twitter where people are just sort of living their lives and having fun and you know, talking about things, but in a different way. And I dunno how to explain it, but I feel so lucky. Luck so lucky to sort of exist on the fringes of this community. I, I wanna say I'm not like most people they'll say like, am I, am I in this? I don't know. A lot of people I don't know. But it's, it's lovely people in a lovely little corner of Twitter that are just sort of vibing together and it's, it's addictively fun.

Vance Crowe [00:54:02] So I don't actually have a great segue for this, but I am curious to see what you think. Okay. I have been thinking a lot, I've talked about it before on the podcast about how many mind controlling drugs there are in the world. So

Guest [00:54:14] Everything

Vance Crowe [00:54:15] From SSRIs to, I would even suggest like birth control.

Guest [00:54:19] Mm. Where

Vance Crowe [00:54:20] Are you at on this subject?

Guest [00:54:22] You know what, it's a pity my purse is in the other room because I have in there something that my family doesn't think I should gift to you, but I want to. So I'm gonna see how you feel about this. It is a tin of cod liver.

Vance Crowe [00:54:35] Okay.

Guest [00:54:37] And I think this is a mind control device. It is super high in vitamin D. It is super high in iodine. And like when I eat it during the long winters, it's like I tangibly feel different the next day. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:54:50] I'm like, wow,

Guest [00:54:50] I feel better. So I think the number of mind control devices are out there are Yeah, absolutely vast. There's, it's interesting that you bring up birth control because I know a lot of people who are starting to say, actually this does like, have effects on mood and stuff and are sort of like shying away from that. Like not in a, I feel like traditionally a lot of these sort of people being against birth control was more from a, oh, this is bad for propriety and now there's a little bit more of a, well, actually the way the human body evolved is supposed to have these cycles and blah, blah blah.

Vance Crowe [00:55:28] Yeah. Low grade tell a woman her body is pregnant all the time. I mean, it literally changes what you can smell really, and like, oh yeah, yeah. I didn't know that one. So there's, there's this stuff that's like, one of the ways that you can tell attraction is that women can smell men. And like, they're like, oh, after they work out at the gym, they're like, ah, I like the smell. Or I'm totally repulsed by the smell. And they're finding out people that were on birth control maybe liked one that when they're off birth control, they're like, I hate it. Right. I don't like it. Yeah.

Guest [00:55:56] And

Vance Crowe [00:55:56] So there's definitely signaling going on there and it's one of those things that we're like, I mean, when I went out on Twitter and asked this question, that's why I'm asking you this nice safe place. People went berserk on me like, oh,

Guest [00:56:08] I believe it. Like how dare you want women to be pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:56:12] Right.

Guest [00:56:13] See, monster. Yeah. No, you know what? I've never personally delved into the more like explicitly mind altering things. You know, I've, I've never used, I, I use caffeine very regularly and then every quarter or so I'll drink, but the sort of weed and mushrooms and all those things has never, never appealed to me back. Getting

Vance Crowe [00:56:37] Off caffeine was a wild experience for me. And now I have a little bit of tea every now and then.

Guest [00:56:42] But

Vance Crowe [00:56:43] Like caffeine is one of those ones where if you bring it up with people, they get defensive. Like, I'm not trying to convince you to, to give up caffeine, but like when I quit drinking coffee, first off, I had these like wild dreams, like just totally insane. And I would describe it as the difference between looking up at the stars when you're in downtown versus looking at the stars when you're in the middle of the ocean or you're in Sub-Saharan Africa, right? Oh, you just look up and the stars are so much brighter. And I think part of that is just because you have the most vivid dreams when you're going through weird sleep cycles when your sleep's changing. Mm.

Guest [00:57:15] But that was

Vance Crowe [00:57:15] Definitely true for me was the caffeine. In fact, I would say the largest psychological change that's ever happened to me happened as a result of stopping coffee more than more than, you know, not having alcohol or caffeine or THC or any of those things. The way bigger one was caffeine for me.

Guest [00:57:34] Interesting. You know, a while ago I, I got tortured by the Department of Defense and by that I mean I participated in a sleep study that was financed by the Department of Defense.

Vance Crowe [00:57:44] Oh my God. Why? Why would anyone do that?

Guest [00:57:47] I wanted to, it's like in a controlled environment, I can see what it's like for me to go, what was it, 48 hours or something like that without sleep.

Vance Crowe [00:57:57] Oh my god. Maybe

Guest [00:57:58] It was 38. I forget. I forget what it was exactly. And I wanted to know because like we all worry about like shit's gonna hit the fan. You know, like it's a concern. Maybe. I mean there's probably not gonna be a hurricane in Tennessee, but maybe, I don't know. You never know what's gonna happen or maybe something bad happens. It's like, so as part of this study, there was both a driving test component and a shooting component. The shooting component was not quite shooting, it was like what they were testing was shoot or no shoot, like you're supposed to go, it says, oh go for target A and then you know, either A or B shows up and you know, you pull the trigger of like a literal gun that's been modified with like a laser. And I was like, this is perfect 'cause I wanna know if it's, I've been awake for 36 hours and I need to drive somewhere because you know, my cousin is dying. Am I gonna die in the process? And so it was fascinating and I actually need to call them up because they give you either placebo or they give you caffeine or they give you modafinil and I don't know which one I got and I can find out by calling them when the study is over. So I need to, I need to do that. But I actually did fine. So I'm kind of wondering, I kind of think I got the modafinil and so I definitely wanna like get ahold some some of that metaphorically and put it in our, I

Vance Crowe [00:59:14] Don't even, even what Modafinil

Guest [00:59:16] For. Yeah. For a while it was like the go-to hip productivity drug in San Francisco in that it just sort of like helps you stay awake and helps you stay focused. And I think long term it has some short term memory side effects maybe. So don't take it all the time. But it seems like it could be very handy in a, I need to be awake and focused situation.

Vance Crowe [00:59:47] There's no, I mean if I get up above, so when I was working on a ship, one of the first things you do during, they call it sea school, you spend an entire day and a half just learning about sleep. Oh.

Guest [00:59:56] And

Vance Crowe [00:59:57] It was really valuable to me because you find out like your body does these 45 minute sleep cycles. If you can't sleep for more than 45 minutes, then you should stop after 20. And like just all these things that you don't know about sleep that somebody should teach. But the reason they do this is because so many shipping accidents, like something like 90% of them come from people being deprived of sleep. And it was during this time that I realized like, oh no, I'm one of those people that like really needs to get to sleep on time and really needs to wake up on time. But like to go more, when I get above let's say 17 hours of being awake, like my body starts shutting down, I'm, I'm like not able to make good decisions.

Guest [01:00:38] Yeah. No, I mean, well, and it's great you recognize that about yourself. So you're not one of these people who you, like all humans can't make great decisions at 17 hours of sleep. But then you think, oh, I'm fine. I'm gonna go, you know, drive across country and then, you know, die. Yeah. So, but, but yeah. For your, your original question of like what sort of mind altering things are out there, I think there's tons and you know, I feel like what you were trying to get to is, does social media count? I don't know if that's where you're going going

Vance Crowe [01:01:09] For No, but it's an interesting thing. I think it is.

Guest [01:01:11] I think it is too. You

Vance Crowe [01:01:12] Know, I think it's a synthetic dopamine,

Guest [01:01:15] You know, 'cause you're sitting there, I mean that's what it's designed for. You're sitting there, you get the little heart icon and it's like, hooray. Someone liked my post. And then you're away from your phone and you're like, I wonder if I have any reactions on the things I posted. And then you're sitting there wanting to go check. And it's ver it's very interesting. You know, I sort of, I almost wonder if someday, just as now we can look on the past and say, man, remember when they put like arsenic in their food to make it more green or whatever they were doing.

Vance Crowe [01:01:43] Yeah. A lot more Coke in the, in the, in the Coca-Cola.

Guest [01:01:46] Yeah. And this is not a new idea at all. You know, Tristan Harris has been harping on this forever, right? About how we sort of, hopefully someday we'll have a more intentional look at the sort of attention economy that exists and not sort of allow third parties to hijack our brains in these ways. I don't think we're there yet in, in the sort of like this, like I think a lot of people will agree this is an issue, but I don't think we're yet to, the CFCs are in the ozone. What can we do to, you know, stop this stage?

Vance Crowe [01:02:29] Do you think there will be like a lobby group the same way there was for smoking and, and climate change? I mean, it seems like those things are driven by leftist ideologies that want to control you. So, you know, presumably you could come up with a creative way to control.

Guest [01:02:46] Yeah, I mean though I, you know, so many of, so many of these things, like you say, are, they are sort of these lobby groups that, you know, have their own solutions for things that aren't necessarily pro Vance crow the individual. And so I, I don't know, I, I'm sure there will be lobby groups and I'm not convinced that those lobby groups will actually have my individual interests at heart versus, you know. No,

Vance Crowe [01:03:12] It certainly won't. And where are you at on ai?

Guest [01:03:15] Oh, you know what, I'm, I'm both excited and worried. You know, have

Vance Crowe [01:03:21] You used it much?

Guest [01:03:22] A little bit. So even though I'm a software engineer, I am terrible at front end development. I just can't make things look good. So we outsourced Devon's website and it looks pretty, the code is terrible. It's absolute rubbish and I'm not gonna name who did it, but don't hire him. And so s and I have been going through and cleaning this up and then, but I've been a little more of a, oh well, you know, such and such needs to be fixed. And then she is using chat GPT to help her understand this code base. 'cause it's written in React. I've never used React before, so I hardly know what's going on there. And it's like, it's amazing because we've sort of developed this almost like project manager, like team leads, you know, individual contributor role for this. 'cause a lot of the stuff I'm doing is just sort of the publicity and that's not something I can outsource very well. And so I'm able to say like, Hey, you know, on our media tab we need X and Y. And she's able to go in there, figure it out. I mean it helps that she's smart and then just sort of use Chappy chat GPT to figure things out. And then when she has a problem that she can't figure out, she can come to me and then I can either look at it and fix it or I can look at it and say, I know bugger all about React. I don't know what's going on. So I'm gonna use chat GBT to ask my question and see the four different results and identify, okay, well this one will break everything just because I know that.

Guest [01:04:53] And then this one will actually work and then, you know, then fix the problem. So it's, I have, yes, I have so many thoughts on ai. You know, it's, I

Vance Crowe [01:05:02] Am staggered with somebody told me that you could upload a photograph and then have it start doing like parsing off of it. So you could have like a photo of a person or the photograph of an object and then you can say, now I want you to put this object in this other place. And it is so realistic that you're like, that is not the person that's in the photograph that I, that I put in there. But this is a totally nonexisting person that looks like a real person.

Guest [01:05:32] We are at an interesting stage where, you know, once upon a time humanity had knights and that was the best fighting unit, this man on this horse with armor and a sword. Like, how do you beat that? You can't. But to have a knight, you need this whole infrastructure. You need a guy hammering out his armor. You need people feeding his horse. You need this whole thing. So yes, knights are dangerous, but also they're very, they're hard to access. They're sort of, you know, they're ruled over by the king. And then we got guns and use of force was democratized. And now if you want to rule over the people, you don't just need to keep the one guy on a horse happy, you need to keep all the people happy. And so now I'm seeing a little bit of a similar thing with ai. We've had Photoshop for a long time. You know, you can find some very funny images online of people doing funny things with Photoshop. And to do that you need skills and you need time and you need software that costs non-zero dollars. But now, yeah, anyone can pop over to various AI tools that exist and put a picture of Joe Biden eating an upside, upside down hamburger and say, look at the silly way Joe Biden eats hamburgers, you know, sleepy Joe, what are you doing? Or worse, you know, obviously picking a very simple example and I, the next election is gonna be insane. You know, you, if you pop on Facebook, it's interesting to see so many, there's a lot of people who are making AI art and then sort of either intentionally or unintentionally passing it off as real.

Guest [01:07:12] There was this one person who was making art sort of very sweet, of just sort of old ladies being badass in various ways. Like, oh hey look, here's this, you know, very wrinkly woman and this nine foot tall crocheted cat she made, you know, clearly fake. And if you know what signs to look for, it's like, okay, clearly this is AI art. This is not a photo of someone's grandmother. And then you look at the comments and it's all these people saying how amazing it is and good for her and it's so sweet of her and they wish they could, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's, and it's on the one hand it's like, oh, this is, you know, people are being inspired and they're showing pictures of the little, you know, six foot tall cat they crocheted. But on the other hand, it's just very sad to see people fooled by something that's not real.

Vance Crowe [01:07:58] Well, I am fully on board with the, I will be fooled by this. And I think the way that it can happen is, imagine you're running a one minute clip of a presidential candidate talking about their platform, and then you use AI for five seconds of it and you categorically change the nature of what they were saying by just this small clip that would be really difficult to like discern. You've just been watching it, it looks, so there will have to be ways that people, I think it will be some kind of cryptographic signature that you'll say, this tweet is mine and the way you know it is, 'cause I put a a satoshi in there and I sent it to you. And that way we know that it's real.

Guest [01:08:37] Because

Vance Crowe [01:08:37] Without it, like everything's just too easy.

Guest [01:08:40] Yeah. It's, I I feel like, you know, 50 years from now, we're gonna look back on this period of until say about six months ago, starting from the, about the eighties, seventies or so, whereas this interesting information time where we slowly got access to all of the world's information, or at least a good portion of it, you know, and it could in some sense be real, obviously mi misinformation as a term. It's, it's existed forever, right? But like, there was this sort of very lucky information time where it's not like the 1920s and you hear about Rains of Frogs in Gena and it's like, oh man, those, that's crazy. But it's just people making things up very, very easily. And then we got to this time where it's, you know, we have ex you know, encyclopedias and blah blah, blah, and it's all you, you can on some level trust it even though your trust is informed by the, okay, this person might be just saying things to make me believe things, but if you see a photo, it's likely real, et cetera, et cetera. And we are rapidly getting to a point where, one, it's just so easy to create fake things that you can't, you can't trust anything you're gonna see or listen to or anything. But also it's, you know, I'm talking about using chat GBT to ask these technical questions about react to. And the information this is trained off of is people voluntarily going online saying, Hey, I faced this problem.

Guest [01:10:15] What do I do to fix it? And someone else saying, you know, do X, Y, Z. Like yes, it's based off the technical documentation, but it's also based on this sort of content that was created by individuals facing similar things. Creating this with the knowledge that, hey, I am going to be recognized via, you know, up votes or whatever for doing this 20 years from now when everyone's just using ll like large language models to ask their questions, where is the large language model getting its new training data

Vance Crowe [01:10:44] From it's turtles also all, all the way down, right? It's like you're using training data that the, that the AI created that then the AI created that. And

Guest [01:10:52] Yeah, it's how much of that is just gonna be hallucinations? 'cause it, it does hallucinate, you know, if you wanna ask it a question and it doesn't know the answer, it'll be like, oh yeah, you, you say, oh, where's the study on how many turtles you can stack, you know, safely before they topple over.

Vance Crowe [01:11:06] Yeah. It doesn't tell you, I don't know.

Guest [01:11:07] Yeah, it tells you, oh well the turtle stacking study by Vance Crowe in 2006 just makes, which was very frustrating to me. There's a story that I swear I read an Anth an anthology once where it's a future society. There's kids sitting in a classroom, it's a theocracy and they're reading the Bible except it's digital. And some kid is sitting there and he is reading a passage of it and he's like, I don't remember, you know, he's, he's like, this doesn't seem right. And it turns out at the end of the story that, you know, there the government is controlling what the Bible says, you know, any different day and it's changing up, blah, blah, blah. And other things happen. But it's a short story. I don't know what this, I don't know what it is. I don't remember what else happens. I don't know if I'm even remembering that correctly. And I was like, finally there's a technology that exists that will help me find it. So I typed all that in and it said, it is this story by this person published on this date in this anthology. And I was like, perfect. It wasn't, it made all that up. That person exists, that anthology exists. That person is not in that anthology. That story is not

Vance Crowe [01:12:12] Wow.

Guest [01:12:13] So that was very sad for me. That was, I yeah, that's,

Vance Crowe [01:12:16] Yeah, I was doing some relatively rudimentary like, hey, if, if somebody worked this many hours and you did it kind of cost accounting stuff and it's math got off and it just started like spiraling. Yeah.

Guest [01:12:29] You

Vance Crowe [01:12:29] Know, my buddy Rob Long always talks about how it's cursed in a way. Like, you think that you're getting it really close and maybe someday it'll be better, but right now you ask it to write something up and you're like, ah, that was close but not quite what I wanted, so I'm gonna give it a few more instructions. And then it moves even further away from what you want. And then you're like, oh, oh no. And then like the, the more you grab for it, the further it gets away. In particular on, I did Dolly for a while and now I use, what's the other one? Mid

Guest [01:12:56] Journey.

Vance Crowe [01:12:56] Mid journey and mid Journey. Like, it gets close, but the more I try and get it to be what I want just keeps going further and further and further away.

Guest [01:13:04] Yeah. That's why these people are able to craft like specific images versus like, oh, give me a picture of a crane playing baseball. Like I'm sure it can do that, but if it's, I want a specific, I have a specific vision of a crane playing baseball, I, I don't know if I could generate that. I, I admit I haven't done too much of the image generation stuff, but like there's certainly like an art and a craft to that and I see that being, you know, definitely a skill that people,

Vance Crowe [01:13:30] Oh I think kids will actually go to school and learn. Like I think it'll be a thing people will say, I can teach you how to get the best prompting, like prompts and prompt engineers. Yeah. Alright, well we've had a good time here, but you have a book that you need to get to the masses. Yes. So talk one more time about the book.

Guest [01:13:47] Okay, well the book is called Theft of Fire by Devin Erickson, E-R-I-K-S-E-N. It's about an asteroid mine who gets an opportunity that looks like a kick in the teeth. It's, it's science fiction, it's hard science fiction. It's not something that someone could write when they were 25 years old. It's taken a lifetime of experience to get to hear. It has an AI character that is just so delightful and so timely. You know, it seems like so much AI is either the Terminator, you know, destroy humanity or it's Pinocchio. I want to be a real boy. And Leila in here she is, she has her character arc. That is a coming of age story that is very much its own thing. So anyone who's interested in AI I think would love this story.

Vance Crowe [01:14:41] I really, and where can they go to get the book?

Guest [01:14:43] So right now, today it's available for pre-order on Kindle, but by the 11th it should be available everywhere. You can get physical copies ordered from Barnes and Noble. You can talk to your local bookshop and say, Hey, order this for me, TBD if it'll be popular enough to be, you know, stalked by people. I hope so. It's, you know. But yeah, they can go to devin erickson.com and there you can read a three chapter preview. You can go to the media section and see my lovely husband on television talking about his novel. You can find links to buy it. But yeah, so I guess devon erickson.com would be a good place to visit. And,

Vance Crowe [01:15:27] And if people wanted to find you on the wild world of Twitter,

Guest [01:15:31] Yes. If they wanted to find me on the wild world of Twitter, you can find me at at pasta price. Except the pasta has no a in the beginning because of character length constraints. So I'm a little bit hard to find, but not that hard to find. You found me somehow.

Vance Crowe [01:15:45] Well, Christine, this has been a long time coming. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Yeah,

Guest [01:15:49] It's been so fun.