0:00

Psychodatics can be a shortcut to

0:02

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0:04

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0:06

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0:08

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0:11

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0:13

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0:15

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0:17

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2:32

Quarris.1. Welcome

2:34

to F Center, the show which talks

2:36

about the technologies, projects and people driving decentralization

2:39

and the blockchain revolution. I'm Ryan Crane

2:41

and I'm today joined first of all

2:43

by Paul Kollhaas. He's

2:46

the co-founder and executive chairman of Molecule,

2:48

also a previous guest on his podcast.

2:52

They've been incubating a lot of

2:54

different initiatives around decentralized science, including

2:57

one related to psychedelics.

3:01

Then we also have here the father

3:03

of our most frequent guest, where we

3:05

have Demar Buterin, the father of italic

3:08

who's been a long-standing,

3:10

very active member of the Ethereum community

3:12

in many ways, and is also very

3:14

interested in people involved in the transformative

3:17

power of psychedelics, because that's going

3:19

to be our topic. Cool.

3:22

Well, thanks so much for joining

3:24

us today, guys. I mean,

3:26

maybe let's just start with a little bit of background. Maybe, Demar, do you

3:28

want to go first? Tell us a bit like what's

3:32

been your journey and how did

3:34

you end up here? You

3:36

have to give me some more

3:38

direction because otherwise, you know, like

3:40

what is really there, right? Like

3:43

I was born, I

3:45

grew up, I suffered

3:48

sometimes, and right now I'm here talking to

3:50

you guys, and it's exciting. And

3:53

I love their

3:55

ideas of decentralization, and psychedelics

3:57

is a fun topic, powerful

4:00

tool so excited to have this chat with

4:02

you guys. Okay,

4:05

perfect. I think that was a good kind of intro.

4:07

And what about you Paul? Maybe

4:14

to relate it specifically to the context of the

4:16

call, so I was born

4:18

as well. And again,

4:20

began growing up. I mean, supposedly, right? More

4:22

so. We

4:24

have something in common. So

4:27

I was born as well. And then growing up, I

4:29

spent a lot of time as a teenager in front

4:31

of my computer, as maybe

4:33

some of us did, playing World of

4:36

Warcraft, collecting interesting

4:38

herbs. I

4:40

was a shaman and a healer actually at World

4:42

of Warcraft. So very early on,

4:45

it was like fun and interesting to

4:47

combine things. And then spent a

4:49

lot of time in online Reddit forums as a teenager.

4:52

And many of these forums were dedicated

4:54

to different biohacking

4:56

topics, nootropics, but

4:58

among others also psychedelic

5:01

research. So probably at the age of 15 or

5:04

so, even though I hadn't done psychedelic yet,

5:06

I was on Arrow with, which

5:08

some of you may be familiar with,

5:10

which is one of the first kind

5:12

of open signs, trip report platforms on

5:15

psychedelic research. So

5:17

spent a lot of times in these forums looking

5:20

at different new emerging substances. And

5:24

then I think when I was 18, I

5:26

decided with a friend together to order a

5:28

few of them online. So back then, a

5:30

lot of research chemicals were still pretty openly

5:32

available in the Wide Web. These were all

5:35

legal research substances at the time. A

5:37

lot of it actually based on Alexander Sorgin's work. And

5:42

as I began looking outside of the psychedelic

5:44

research community as well, I would say there's

5:46

communities here that are looking at developing their

5:48

own HIV therapies because there's HIV patients, they

5:50

don't have access to anything that

5:53

actually treats them, or diabetic

5:55

patients, for example, that were looking at developing their

5:57

own insulin. And

6:00

so I found this really interesting. And I was like, I asked

6:02

myself as a teenager why these people here, and

6:04

I realized they simply hear, one, out of curiosity

6:06

in the case of psychedelics, but also maybe because

6:08

they're looking for a psychedelic therapy,

6:11

and maybe psychedelics aren't available

6:13

in their country or in their jurisdiction, which

6:15

is why they're online with internet strangers trying

6:17

to get access to something. But in

6:19

other cases, it was often just out of sheer need,

6:21

out of sheer necessity, because people couldn't afford insulin, or

6:24

they couldn't afford a specific cancer treatment, so we're

6:26

spending a lot of time online in online communities.

6:30

So found that really fascinating, and really as a

6:32

teenager, hey, here's a fundamental disconnect between what people

6:35

need, but then also the power of open source.

6:37

And then I went to university, studied economics, and

6:40

then during my studies, learned about

6:42

Bitcoin. This was about 2013, and started

6:44

diving into internet forms again,

6:48

but this time about back then, it was

6:50

still our cryptocurrency and our Bitcoin, and

6:53

our Bitcoin market, I think, and realized,

6:55

hey, there's a similar proliferation here of

6:58

open source ethos of

7:01

open source building. And then began looking

7:03

at open source software. I found

7:06

that really interesting, and noticed there's a lot of similarity

7:08

here in terms of what I was experiencing in those

7:10

early biohacking or psychedelic research

7:12

forms, and what I was experiencing

7:14

in these online forums. And

7:19

that's a part of the thesis that later on led me to,

7:21

yeah, to believe

7:23

in decentralized science and build what I do

7:25

with molecule. But maybe I felt like that

7:28

was a longer interest, or maybe I'll just give it a pause here and

7:30

hand it back to you, Ryan. Yeah,

7:32

yeah. No, thanks so much. Yeah,

7:35

maybe I feel like I also should add.

7:37

I mean, so personally, I remember when

7:39

I was an undergrad, I

7:42

somehow started reading about psychedelics, and I was

7:44

also super fascinated by it. And

7:46

I think by the idea of

7:48

the mind being, potentially being

7:51

so different on it, I remember reading all

7:53

of Timothy Leary, somehow the guy I

7:55

found very inspiring.

7:57

So he was one of these big psychedelics. leaders

7:59

in the 60s. He was a very radical guy.

8:02

He was very, I guess in

8:04

many ways, a bit similar to some of

8:06

the crypto philosophy in terms of really trying

8:08

to kind of, I think,

8:12

big political agenda around it too, because it felt

8:14

it was like this vehicle for

8:17

societal change. And

8:19

so I was very interested in then

8:21

and then, you know, later years, also

8:23

spent a decent amount of time exploring.

8:28

Exploring the mind, right, which includes

8:30

meditation, but also psychedelics and things

8:32

like that. So I'm excited for this conversation.

8:37

So maybe to make it more directly, also why

8:39

I reached out. So I've actually been looking forward

8:41

to having a conversation with you for

8:43

like a couple of years. I've always

8:45

been really curious about, specifically about

8:47

your relationship with psychedelics. I

8:49

went to EDCON Toronto in

8:52

2018, still like relatively early theorem

8:54

days. And I was having a conversation

8:56

with someone. Yeah,

8:59

I was having a conversation with someone about psychedelic research

9:01

and telling them about some of these early ideas I

9:03

had around like how can we use smart

9:06

contracts to essentially fund or

9:09

explore or proliferate psychedelic research. And

9:11

he mentioned that I should really

9:13

speak to you because

9:16

you had an intimate, intimate relationship

9:18

with also more

9:20

obscure psychedelics. And so when it's asking,

9:22

what is your personal relationship with

9:25

psychedelics through your life? They

9:29

entered my life pretty late. If

9:31

we speak about age, I

9:33

am about to get, I will

9:36

soon turn 52. So the

9:38

very first time I tried psychedelics was when

9:40

I was 42 10 years ago. And

9:43

my entry point like always had a

9:46

very curious mind and always

9:48

read a lot and it was awesome in terms

9:50

of learning. It was

9:52

my preferred way of seeking my

9:55

preferred way of destruction

9:57

myself from feeling

10:00

and living if you will. And one

10:02

particular book that I was reading at the

10:04

time was waking up by Sam Harris. And

10:08

a really good book, loved it. And

10:10

the book, the subtitle of the book

10:12

is spirituality without

10:15

religion. And for me, that

10:18

was very interesting to learn to

10:20

take to learn his perspective, because growing up

10:22

in the Soviet Union, I was

10:26

my programming

10:28

was that religion is awful.

10:31

It's all a sham. And, and

10:34

so growing up, for me, religion, spirituality

10:36

was one big bundle of bullshit. And

10:38

so this book gave me a slightly

10:41

more, you know, fine distinction

10:43

of those different types of bullshit,

10:46

if you will. But most interesting

10:48

in this book, there was a chapter about

10:50

psychedelics, right? And the way he was talking

10:52

about that was very eye opening, because I

10:54

grew up again, like, you know, my programming

10:56

was like, drugs, but

10:58

you know, they fry your

11:00

brain not touching anything besides

11:02

wine. Well, maybe a

11:04

few years before psychedelics, I also

11:07

started, you know, opened up to cannabis.

11:11

So cannabis, I don't consider psychedelic, but it's

11:13

related, right? So anyways, so

11:15

there was a chapter and in

11:18

this chapter, he basically said that

11:20

psychedelics can be a shortcut to

11:22

decades of meditation. And that really

11:24

picked my curiosity, like what drugs

11:26

they bet for you, meditation is

11:28

good for you, how does that

11:30

work? And after reading this book,

11:32

I did a lot of

11:34

reading research and listen to like, maybe

11:37

dozens of podcasts, read lots,

11:39

lots of books and eventually

11:42

realized, yeah, I've been brainwashed.

11:44

And this is a very interesting

11:46

tool for humans.

11:49

And eventually, I tried

11:51

my very first psychedelic, which was LSD. And

11:54

since then, the Romania

11:56

they experienced this and they were eye opening

11:58

and they gave me

12:00

very different perspective of what

12:04

humans are, what consciousness is, what

12:06

God is, everything, right? And my

12:09

personal story and if you

12:11

will the psychological trauma eventually

12:14

went away. So it was a really fascinating journey

12:17

in the last 10 years. Curious

12:21

you said like your personal

12:23

traumas went away. Is this

12:25

something you can like expand on? Sure,

12:28

and I mean obviously

12:30

any statements like this again

12:33

the bullshit because I Don't

12:37

even like the word trauma anymore, right? Because

12:39

the way I look at this is different

12:41

You know go into the forest and you

12:43

will see all these different trees, right? And

12:45

you look at this particular tree and you

12:47

can see oh, maybe this branch is broken.

12:49

Maybe this branch is Dried

12:51

up and you know lifeless is

12:54

the trauma, right? Or is

12:56

that a feature of this particular tree, right?

12:58

And the same with humans we

13:01

have our unique set of experiences

13:03

and They shape us

13:05

as individuals, right? And the human mind tries

13:08

to build a very simplistic story of this

13:10

cycle here This is me

13:12

and this is my trauma and if I

13:14

get rid of my trauma, then I will

13:17

be better authentic self You know, it's such

13:19

bullshit. But anyways, that's kind of the common

13:21

story And for

13:23

me personally for big chunk of

13:25

my life, there was a painful

13:28

story that I'm not lovable I'm

13:30

very awkward. I'm very whatever

13:33

physically attractive and not

13:35

loved by others and especially by

13:37

females and my trauma was kind

13:39

of connected to my mom and

13:43

at some point That thing disappeared

13:45

that was very fascinating like in all of

13:47

those stories just Went out

13:49

of the window and I was like, oh wow,

13:52

here's the same Reality and

13:54

they still have the

13:56

memories but those memories no longer

13:59

you know combined into that story and

14:01

the story of pain and the story

14:04

of suffering and for me and you

14:07

know blaming no it was just

14:09

like it became very

14:11

live all of my past

14:13

eventually became ephemeral if you will it's

14:16

there but it's no longer

14:18

seen as as

14:20

real in any way if you will just an

14:22

abstract story no

14:25

that's very beautiful I really appreciate you describing

14:28

sort of how the impact it had on

14:30

you and you know it's

14:32

a it's not like

14:35

again it's not like you do this and

14:37

then you become pure and

14:39

clear and you know suffer different

14:42

bullshit you're human stuff happens and

14:44

you know you get sick

14:46

people around you get sick sometimes they die

14:49

stuff happens you make money you

14:51

lose money really should happen like

14:54

I recently had a very

14:56

painful breakup and

15:00

it's been a lot of processing to

15:02

go through that and and

15:05

it was fascinating to observe how different

15:07

emotions go through this and they're like

15:10

oh I'm okay that's it's not a

15:12

problem you know I'm above this

15:14

but then deep waves of

15:16

sadness come and like wow

15:19

this is fucking killing me a

15:21

new story comes up right and then eventually I

15:23

had a couple of sessions

15:26

with some helpful tools and really

15:30

breaking down into deep

15:33

abandonment wound like you know

15:35

something pretty verbal and

15:37

there's no story but there was so

15:39

much crying and screaming and sobbing and

15:41

waiting like uncontrollable

15:44

unstoppable and and

15:47

the when the organism really gives into that

15:50

it stops being a problem he's just like

15:54

extremely intense and it

15:57

becomes extremely peaceful and beautiful

16:00

beautiful and it's just

16:02

amazing. It's like how

16:04

can that be, right? Like, you know, in

16:06

normal life we usually try to say

16:08

this is beautiful, this is ugly, this is positive,

16:11

this is negative, right? But it's

16:14

fascinating, right? Because life is not like

16:16

that. You can go through the deepest

16:18

devastating sorrow and

16:21

at the same time that's

16:23

beautiful and loving and compassionate

16:26

and peaceful at the same time and

16:28

angry. Yeah, that's

16:31

really beautiful, Dima. I

16:34

had a, first

16:36

of all, very sorry to hear that you had

16:39

to go through that experience recently, like breakups among

16:41

the hardest things that I think

16:43

we can experience as humans, both in

16:45

romantic relationships, even with friends or

16:49

partners in any way, shape or form.

16:51

I actually, I was

16:54

always really profoundly curious

16:56

to try ayahuasca in

16:59

my life and I've done a couple

17:02

of times so and

17:04

I think first, something

17:06

that I learned through actually working

17:08

with shamans and doing ayahuasca in

17:10

almost like a ritualist retreat like setting

17:13

is this big differentiation between psychedelics

17:16

as medicine and

17:19

psychedelics with a very clear intention and

17:21

then also psychedelics as like tools and

17:23

recreational tools expanding the mind of sounding

17:26

the consciousness, taking something at a festival

17:28

with friends or in whatever setting.

17:31

So the first time I went to

17:33

an ayahuasca retreat, I was coming out

17:35

of a four and a half year

17:37

extremely difficult relationship and I'd almost

17:40

like hit rock bottom from an

17:44

emotional standpoint but also like my

17:46

energy levels, my karma, and

17:50

so finally I felt that I had this

17:52

calling to do an ayahuasca retreat and

17:55

it was over new years and I was just like I

17:57

was looking up things to like online it was maybe like

17:59

a month before. I was originally wanting

18:01

to do a Vipassana retreat which is like

18:03

this 10-day silent meditation but

18:05

they're really hard to get into. You have to be

18:07

extremely committed and normally sign up three or four months

18:09

ahead and so I realized okay I'm

18:11

not going to be able to do a Vipassana so I'm

18:13

looking up for like what other kind of retreat could I

18:16

do over new years just to get myself into a better

18:18

headspace. And this is almost at a point where

18:20

like we were always coming out of

18:22

this relationship about we were about to

18:24

like move to separate continents and

18:27

also fundraising for my

18:30

second company. So extremely difficult

18:32

time and so I went and did this

18:35

retreat and actually

18:37

the first ceremony or the first time I took Ayahuasca I

18:39

felt I just fell asleep and

18:42

maybe to any listeners if you've never done

18:44

Ayahuasca, Ayahuasca can be very different for

18:47

different people and it's something it's almost from a

18:49

chemical biochemical composition it's something that has to build

18:51

up in your body. So Ayahuasca

18:53

is both composed of MAOIs and then

18:55

of DMT and the MAOI has to

18:57

get to a level where the DMT

18:59

can actually flood your brain and cross

19:01

the blood brain barrier efficiently. So

19:04

the second time I took it and my attention going

19:06

into this retreat was really to like find

19:09

peace or like find a way

19:11

forward with this very difficult

19:13

relationship and kind

19:15

of like liberate myself from it and

19:18

then it only took about 15 minutes at

19:20

the second ceremony and then

19:22

throughout the journey so to

19:25

speak with the medicine I

19:27

kind of relived all the experiences of

19:30

that relationship and I

19:32

think when we are in relationships we often protect

19:34

ourselves from the bad like we only especially in

19:36

a break we only want to see the positive

19:39

especially when the breakup happens to us as opposed to

19:41

like a mutual thing or like you're breaking up with

19:43

someone you only tend to want

19:45

to see the positive and you attach

19:47

yourself to it so strongly. Or only

19:49

the negative right depending on you know

19:51

circumstances right sometimes you get stuck in

19:53

the negative sometimes just in the positive.

19:55

Yeah absolutely only

19:58

yeah I think it goes. I'm

20:00

like an internal optimist by design. So

20:02

like whenever like, when I break

20:04

up like situations, I attach myself to like why this

20:06

was the best thing ever and then try to fix

20:09

it and save it. And so,

20:12

and so within the first 20 minutes of this, of the

20:14

trip, I kind of fell into this deep, the

20:17

steep journey of reliving almost every moment

20:19

of pain throughout the relationship and like

20:21

why breaking up was the right thing.

20:23

And then came out the other side,

20:26

being able to envision my future

20:28

life without this person in my life. And

20:31

yeah, I felt like to the earlier

20:33

point that you made, I felt like

20:36

I lived through years of

20:38

like, I was able to close with one,

20:40

just one of these sessions, like through years

20:42

of trauma and actually come out

20:44

where I felt a profound sense of gratitude for

20:46

the relationship, but like very ready to go on

20:50

this next stage of my life. And

20:53

yeah, so just wanted to share a really good day to

20:55

what you're saying. And also, I

20:58

think there's an interesting separation or differentiation

21:00

to make between psychedelics as medicine and

21:02

like, and the whole

21:05

going to ceremonies or going to retreat and then

21:07

also psychedelics, I think as

21:10

ways to expand consciousness in a recreational

21:12

setting or even

21:14

as different medicine tools. Well,

21:17

thank you so much for sharing that as well, Paul. Yeah,

21:20

I feel maybe I wanna share, I

21:23

feel for me, I think one of the things that

21:25

I think I felt with like, I think for me,

21:27

it was also like acid in the beginning when I

21:29

was maybe like 21, 22 or something. But

21:33

I think I had the experience of just

21:35

feeling very sort of like stuck

21:38

in my own like personality, right? I

21:40

felt like, man, I was

21:42

just sort of like trapped in there and

21:44

I would keep moving to different continent, different

21:46

country, because I was to try to find,

21:49

like to try to sort of find myself

21:51

in some new environment where nobody knew me.

21:54

And I feel like with psychedelics,

21:58

I think it sort of did, it's just so open. and

22:00

all this, the mind

22:02

is so vast and so

22:06

capable of like change as

22:08

well. What do you

22:11

guys think of the societal rule

22:13

that psychedelics maybe

22:16

have today or also like could have in

22:19

the future? So

22:22

I think if we actually dig back into like the

22:24

60s and 70s, I mean when psychedelics first... Actually,

22:27

I think it's interesting to look back even further.

22:30

I mean, I think psychedelics have been integrated into

22:32

like ancient societies and civilizations. I mean, there's many

22:34

theories that like there's like a what is it,

22:36

the stone ape theory that actually different

22:39

Neanderthals and like prehistoric humans

22:41

used to eat mushrooms

22:43

regularly. Then

22:46

I think psychedelics had a strong

22:48

role in like the Mayan and

22:50

Aztec empires. So like this kind

22:52

of also the

22:55

origins of Ayahuasca. And

22:57

then I think it was really around

23:00

the aftermath of the Second World War and

23:02

the Cold War and like when LSD was

23:04

discovered and different scientists were really

23:07

actively looking at psilocybin again or peyote

23:09

mushroom that actually the role

23:11

of psychedelics massively changed to be

23:13

viewed as something negative and bad.

23:17

Because I don't think people and then there was

23:19

this whole Vietnam war like you didn't want to

23:21

be the powers that be

23:23

didn't want the American public to wake up

23:25

or realize that there's this vast, this much

23:28

larger thing I think that surrounds us. And

23:31

I think probably around 2010 ish, I

23:33

feel like I feel like we've been slowly

23:35

breaking out of that again, meaning that psychedelics

23:38

today are much

23:40

more acceptable again and that there's I think

23:42

we're seeing like a research renaissance. I

23:45

actually think psychedelics within them if used in the

23:48

right way really have the power to

23:50

fundamentally cure things from, to fundamentally

23:53

cure specific mental

23:56

diseases or problems like chronic depression. I mean

23:58

there's so much data. emerging around

24:00

that. And

24:02

the molecule, so

24:04

something that I've often, or

24:07

like a phrase that often stuck with me, which

24:10

was from a Goldman Sachs analysis

24:12

of a large pharma company, they asked,

24:14

is curing patients a sustainable business

24:16

model? And in the context

24:18

of this, they were analyzing a drug,

24:21

I think, developed by Glaxosome's Pline, that was a

24:23

hepatitis C drug. And

24:26

so hepatitis C previously didn't have any cures,

24:29

it only had a treatment. So if you get hepatitis

24:31

C, you have hepatitis C for life. And

24:33

then they had various treatments on the market.

24:36

And so JSK developed this cure for hepatitis C, it's

24:39

like a six month pill that you take and then

24:41

you don't have it anymore. And

24:43

so Goldman was like, this is bad,

24:45

we shouldn't have developed that cure because

24:47

you're hurting your bottom line by

24:50

curing your recurring revenue. So

24:53

like you're destroying your recurring revenue. Based on

24:56

that, the company was downgraded. And

24:58

I think there's a CEO change, or there's

25:00

leadership change. And so

25:02

the capitalist system that we live

25:04

in today fundamentally disincentivizes cures, right?

25:06

We're all about recurring revenue, recurring

25:08

users. And I think

25:11

this is one problem in the way that

25:13

psychedelics are regarded because

25:16

they act too much like a cure. They

25:18

can be a cure for certain diseases, but

25:20

they can also actually get people to move

25:22

away from things like tobacco or alcohol

25:26

or even cannabis. And

25:28

so psychedelics aren't a very profitable business.

25:31

And because of that, I think their role

25:33

in society is still

25:37

very limited. And it's quite sad

25:39

that that is the case. It's

25:41

like, yeah, curious how that, if

25:44

that resonates with any of you. I

25:46

mean, you said capitalist system, but like, I don't

25:48

know, is it capitalist system? Because it feels actually

25:51

a little bit analogous to like, you know, the

25:53

financial system where basically you have a bunch of

25:55

like sort of incumbents

25:57

that are using regulation to. sort

26:00

of control this market and control the

26:02

incentives and keep things like

26:05

crypto out and be a viable

26:07

alternative. And I think it's kind of very

26:09

similar with the pharma studio

26:11

company and the medical system and medical

26:13

insurance and all of that just in

26:15

this kind of really bizarre. And

26:18

then you have this insane outcomes like in

26:20

the US where you have insanely

26:23

high healthcare costs that just seem to

26:26

be going up and up and then

26:28

life expectancy going down and the results

26:30

being so much worse than in

26:32

other countries. And you have like, you

26:35

know, medical debt, there's this massive issue, I think

26:37

like number one cause of bankruptcy and stuff like

26:39

that. So I feel it's kind of, and

26:42

I remember actually one thing I watched

26:45

some years ago. So

26:47

there's this documentary about, I

26:49

think it was like the first trial that

26:51

they did in the UK for

26:54

giving, I think

26:56

it was Psilocybin to people, like

26:59

depressed people. I think Imperial did that college

27:01

and then they did the documentary about it

27:03

where they followed the people in this trial

27:05

and you know, before they did interviews and

27:07

during and afterwards. And you

27:09

know, these were people who had been like depressed

27:11

for like, I think there had to be at

27:13

least 10 years depressed and then they had to

27:16

have had, you know, a whole bunch of other

27:18

types of treatments that all didn't work. And so

27:20

they were really like, really bad shape, right? Like

27:22

a lot of them completely locked off. And

27:25

then if you saw that documentary,

27:27

like the transformation that you saw in a

27:30

lot of these people was just

27:32

incredible, right? It's like they came alive again.

27:35

And then, but then it was also sort of

27:37

a sad ending, right? Because like, you know, for

27:39

example, I remember with one guy, he sort of

27:41

really came alive and

27:43

you know, the children of this

27:45

person were like, oh, for the first time,

27:47

it feels like I have a father again,

27:49

because he's actually kind of like here as opposed

27:52

to before you just wouldn't talk even like

27:54

it was just sort of there wandering around. And

27:57

then he kind of came back and he was there for

27:59

like months, three months, like all of a

28:01

sudden life and then you kind of gradually fell

28:04

back again and then you know it was sort

28:06

of like the sad thing in the documentary. It was

28:08

like well but you know this is a trial and

28:10

it's not legal so like there's nothing we can do

28:12

and I mean I hope that will

28:14

change and that this will actually become a viable

28:17

alternative that people can you know can

28:19

use to I mean

28:21

one is I guess address your mental issues but

28:24

then you know maybe also just explore their mind

28:26

and learn about themselves and

28:29

reality and grow as people.

28:33

And I want to throw in slightly

28:36

different perspective or maybe totally different

28:38

perspective right like

28:40

stepping back a little bit whenever

28:43

we look at society it's

28:47

an abstract idea here's me

28:49

here's society I know how it

28:51

is and I know that

28:53

this is wrong and this is good

28:55

you know and then from

28:57

that I come up with ideas that

29:00

society would be better this way. End

29:03

of the day when you look very

29:05

very closely into this and become very obvious

29:07

through meditation through say that it's very like

29:09

you know we feel

29:12

some emotions and some emotions are uncomfortable

29:14

and then we have ideas that if

29:17

circumstances around us change

29:20

then we will feel better and

29:22

then we have an idea that when

29:24

we feel better that uncertainty

29:26

has changed this means that the world is better and

29:29

it's very human and it's very dangerous and

29:32

I'll just throw a couple of examples at

29:34

you right like one of them is drug

29:36

war because yes when people

29:38

were very scared and

29:40

like drugs are

29:43

bad people are dying from them people

29:45

dying is obviously bad and they're drawing

29:47

from drugs blah blah blah and there is

29:49

the societal change that we deem to be

29:52

negative so we will solve

29:54

this problem we will fight drugs and

29:57

look at all the mess look at all

29:59

the manuals lost, look at all the

30:01

humans who suffered, look at all their people

30:04

incarcerated, right? So always our

30:06

simplistic solution coming from the

30:08

perspective like this is bad,

30:10

there is inherent danger, right? And the

30:12

second small example is I

30:15

grew up in the Soviet Union and the whole

30:17

history of the Soviet Union, you know, like, oh,

30:19

you know, there, this whole

30:21

terrorist empire was bad, then now

30:24

we will just like, take over

30:26

and build this socialistic system. And

30:28

you know what, that system was

30:30

absolute and total crap. Like

30:32

you know, absolute poverty,

30:34

corruption, very

30:37

inhuman and lots, I mean, lots of good

30:39

stuff, lots and lots of bad stuff, right?

30:42

So for me, it's always like

30:45

generalizing is very dangerous and then thinking

30:48

that what I think is right is

30:50

very, very dangerous, right? So I think

30:52

there the journey for each one of

30:54

us is always, it's

30:56

a journey about how I feel, right?

30:59

How I feel and then here

31:01

based on the emotions that we feel that we'll

31:03

have a range of options and when we look

31:05

at psychedelics, they're very, very

31:07

powerful tool that can affect

31:09

the human psyche, right? And

31:12

what does that mean for a particular

31:14

human? It might mean nothing. It

31:17

might mean that they, there's

31:20

less suffering in them. It might mean that

31:22

they go crazy or die, like all kinds

31:24

of outcomes, right? It's not like it's not

31:26

a silver bullet, like, wow, we

31:28

give people psychedelics to become better. Society

31:32

will change, right? But here's the thing,

31:34

there are conflicting human drives

31:36

in all of us, many of them, right?

31:38

And one of them, for example, is

31:40

that we want stability, we

31:42

want things to be the same, right?

31:45

Because they seem to be safer when there is no

31:47

change. And we try to find a

31:49

way like, okay, you know what, let's all follow this

31:51

rule, let's be this way. And this

31:53

way we will be safe, it will be okay, right?

31:55

Of course life doesn't work this way. Like, you know,

31:57

look at all these attempts, look at some of the

31:59

religions. that try to stick to

32:01

those fundamentalist ideas, like all

32:04

of these leads to disaster, right? They're

32:06

always moving forward, right? And it's inevitable.

32:08

And right now, I think that we're

32:10

going to face even faster rate of

32:13

change with AI and

32:15

crypto and everything else, right? So,

32:17

their question is how

32:19

do humans deal with change, right? That's a

32:21

fundamental question. And psychedelics is a

32:23

tool that on the one hand

32:26

can be very scary because it can

32:29

disrupt your

32:32

safe and normal functioning. It's

32:35

a tool that can help you adapt

32:37

to change environment, right? But

32:40

again, like, you know, it's not like

32:42

nothing is black and white, right? So

32:44

we're going to have to, whenever we

32:46

look at situation, again, when we think, oh,

32:48

I think that it would be better this

32:50

way. It's always a very dangerous

32:52

notion because things the way they are, because

32:55

of everything, right? Like, you

32:57

know, it's not like they are this way

33:00

because the cabal of alien lizards is directing

33:02

the earth to be better in this way.

33:04

Of course not. It's like, you know, it's

33:06

the infinity of different things, you know,

33:08

what's happening with the sun, with the weather,

33:11

with humans, with food, with, you know,

33:14

different countries and so on, right? And

33:16

all of that results in the current

33:18

environment, right? So then

33:20

we might have an idea

33:22

and we want to, we act, right? And

33:26

you know, our action will have consequences

33:28

and those consequences will be always

33:32

eternal and unlimited, right? And I look

33:34

at, let's begin, little

33:36

example, Ethereum, amazing

33:38

invention, amazing technology that brought

33:40

out so much potential for

33:42

humanity to better collaborate, cooperate

33:44

and so on, and

33:47

has unleashed so

33:50

much gambling, their ICOs

33:52

originally, then, you know, meme coins and

33:54

whatnot, and lots of people

33:57

who made money, lots of people who lost

33:59

tons of money. people who killed themselves, right?

34:01

So you can look at the theorem and

34:03

say, take a family and

34:06

somebody in their family lost all their

34:08

money, kill themselves, right? So they might

34:10

as well look at the theorem and

34:12

say, oh, it's because of this horrible

34:14

invention of Ethereum that my son or

34:16

my husband or whatever, they killed themselves.

34:18

So of course, the theorem is bad,

34:20

right? Because we're projecting our internal perspective.

34:23

So this is always a danger. So

34:25

anyways, that was my long speech to

34:28

contribute to your guys reflections.

34:31

I think that was an incredibly interesting perspective,

34:33

Dima. And it actually made me

34:35

think, I mean, I think permissionless

34:38

networks like Ethereum have a similar

34:40

level of permissionlessness as psychedelics do when they enter

34:42

the human body. It's like, it can be good,

34:45

it can be bad, it always depends on your

34:47

internal perspective. I

34:49

actually remember in the really early days of Ethereum,

34:53

this is like 2016,

34:56

one of the big concerns

34:58

around open permissionless smart contract

35:00

networks like Ethereum, there's

35:02

a huge concern that like someone might

35:04

post, for example, an assassination contract, where

35:07

like you could be paid a bounty

35:09

if you assassinated someone. And

35:11

like people were really scared about this as a

35:13

use case. I remember specifically like the Bitcoin cast

35:15

being like you can't enable this open permissionlessness with

35:18

smart contracts, like, and

35:20

then it's funny enough to that it never actually

35:22

happened. But like, like, of

35:24

course, bad things happen on chain over

35:26

time. But

35:29

yeah, maybe a follow up question. Do you think

35:31

so? I think we can look at the subjective

35:34

effects of

35:37

psychedelics, obviously, in the human body, and like

35:39

every everyone's experience is different. And you need

35:41

to carefully weigh the pros and cons as

35:43

you should carefully weigh the pros and cons

35:45

of engaging with any any smart contract on

35:47

a network. Do

35:50

you think access

35:53

to psychedelics itself should be

35:55

permissionless? Because today, we can

35:57

kind of consider it permissioned, right? In certain

35:59

certain countries it's completely forbidden. Like

36:03

kind of, yeah, like there's a firewall

36:05

almost on access to psychedelics and other

36:07

countries, there's a much larger access. Do

36:09

you think access

36:11

to psychedelics should be more permissionless? Awesome

36:15

question, right? And I

36:18

can never give you one answer to anything. I

36:20

have to give you a whole bunch of answers.

36:22

Like the first one I will tell you is

36:24

that I don't believe in the concept of should,

36:26

right? Because the

36:29

way things are, right? You look at CITIS

36:31

and there are obviously lots of people who

36:33

are concerned and scared, right? And then

36:35

you say, no, no, no, it's good. You

36:37

know, fuck your concerns, fuck

36:39

your fears. Well, you know, make psychedelics

36:41

available to everybody, right? So then you

36:45

think that you're meaning well,

36:47

right? But you also disregarding

36:49

the emotions of some humans who are on

36:51

that, right? So for me, it's not

36:54

about like, there's no objective should or

36:56

whatever. I can only tell how it feels to

36:58

me. I can tell

37:00

you that in Toronto, for example, we

37:02

now have few dozen mushroom shops. And

37:04

I think it's amazing. I

37:06

think it's awesome that now people who want to have access

37:09

to these powerful tools, they can have access to

37:11

this, right? I can

37:14

also tell you that for me personally

37:16

is the whole idea that

37:18

we tell people what is good and what

37:20

is bad is

37:22

very questionable, right? So I think that for

37:25

me inherently, every human has the

37:27

right to decide what is good and what is bad

37:29

for them. And of

37:31

course, it's like, again, it's not black and white.

37:33

What, so if they decide like Putin, that it's

37:35

good for Putin and for Russia to go invade

37:38

Ukraine and kill people in Ukraine. So

37:41

here's their, I mean, my perspective, right? It's

37:43

like, I think it's his right to feel

37:45

that way and to act that way. And

37:47

then it's my right to, you know,

37:50

feel differently and act in the opposite

37:52

way and support Ukraine and

37:55

so on, right? So it's not like, you know, this

37:58

is right and this is wrong, but this is like... Here's

38:00

that human's perspective. Here's my perspective. So

38:02

from my personal perspective, I

38:05

think there's a powerful tools. I would

38:07

like to see them more

38:09

available to humans everywhere

38:11

as well as People

38:14

when they become decriminalized right it becomes

38:16

much safer in terms of dosage in

38:19

terms of you know How

38:22

pure they are in terms of available

38:25

support in terms of

38:28

Normalization of everything right because it's very

38:30

interesting like you're actually and I want

38:32

to comment on the concept of normalization

38:34

right because Very often

38:36

when I talk to humans who are

38:38

going through some deep suffering like

38:41

let's say have a friend awesome

38:43

guy very creative and sometimes who

38:45

is suicidal right and sometimes

38:48

when He's feeling that

38:50

he reaches out right and and

38:52

I know that when I'm suffering quite often than

38:54

other people They want to help and

38:56

they like what you might don't feel this way. Don't

38:59

be sad and all that like guys

39:01

What the fuck I am sad why deny

39:03

that right? So when I talk to my

39:05

friend, I don't tell him

39:07

Oh, you should not feel suicidal. It's more

39:09

like oh, wow, you're feeling that

39:12

right and this is the reality and

39:15

It's very difficult and it's intense and this

39:17

is the stuff that happens to humans right

39:19

like, you know So it's not about like

39:21

saying that it should not be this way

39:24

it's about acknowledging that this

39:26

is how things are right because like when

39:28

there is a That's a

39:30

better. That's a best foundation than for

39:33

going anywhere is to player

39:35

is to clearly see that things are the way

39:37

they are right and they they are the way

39:40

they are for many

39:42

reasons some of them we Might

39:45

be able to send some of many

39:48

most of them. We're not able to

39:51

see right? That's

39:53

how I think about it Paul

39:56

you mentioned like I think there's

39:58

some some involvement in psychedelics

40:00

and the birth of molecules. Can

40:02

you talk about that? Oh,

40:07

yeah. Oh,

40:09

actually, this brings us back to the conversation

40:11

that we, or like kind of just my

40:14

personal introduction. Soon as 18, me

40:16

and a friend ordered a few psychedelic

40:19

research chemicals online. If

40:22

any of your listeners are more

40:24

into that, there was 4-H-O-M-E-T, 4-A-C-O-D-M-T,

40:26

and a compound called 2CE. And

40:31

me and my friend redoubled a little bit, but then

40:33

I kind of just kept these, it

40:35

was a very small amount, and I just kind of kept them in my

40:37

house for many years. And then

40:39

after I finished university, and

40:43

was already kind of working in crypto, so this

40:45

was like 2016, no, 2017 actually, late 2017. I

40:50

was working at Consensus and

40:52

spent a lot of time in those past

40:55

couple months, like looking at architectures of novel

40:57

protocols that were emerging. One

40:59

of them was actually Ocean Protocol, for instance,

41:01

but this was also the time that CryptoKitties

41:04

kind of blew up on chain. And

41:09

so it was a really interesting new time, I think, on

41:11

Ethereum. And I went

41:13

home, I was at

41:16

home, I think my parents are, I was

41:18

visiting kind of my hometown, which is in

41:20

Switzerland, and was

41:24

listening to classical music, like

41:27

Brian Eno and classical music, and

41:31

was on a, doing a 2CE trip, like

41:34

a relatively small amount, and

41:36

during that trip, at towards the three or four

41:38

hours in, I

41:40

developed such a profound appreciation

41:45

for having come into the

41:47

ownership of this

41:49

very rare, weird psychedelic. And I kind

41:51

of like, and if you've

41:53

noticed, so there's a whole 2CE range, or

41:57

2CE range, and these are

41:59

all phenethylamines. and are structurally

42:01

very similar to peyote or

42:03

mescaline. And so

42:05

Alexander Shulgin was a famous chemist in the

42:07

70s and 80s, he's been a renter of

42:09

MDMA, but he invented hundreds of other compounds.

42:12

He was actually at a, he was working at

42:15

a pharmaceutical company when he developed MDMA and

42:17

then had such a, like, thought this

42:20

was an absolute breakthrough. But

42:22

the company actually let him go because they're like, this is

42:24

too weird for us, you're too kooky. And

42:26

so he retreated and with his wife

42:28

and Shulgin together, they built up a kind

42:30

of like clandestine laboratory where

42:32

they began kind of just discovering hundreds

42:35

of new compounds. He published two books, one

42:37

is called Pecal. For an

42:39

ethyl means I've known and loved him, now there's called

42:41

Tecal which focuses on tryptamines. And

42:45

so out of this, there's this 2C range now, which

42:47

is similar to mescaline, but some of them are very

42:49

weird. They might work for like 20 or 30 hours.

42:52

Like it's very much not, these are not like commonly

42:55

known psychedelics. And so I do

42:57

this trip with 2C and doing my,

43:00

it's actually the first psychedelic I ever took in my life.

43:05

Me and my friend, back

43:07

then developed such a profound level of respect

43:09

for this particular substance because it's like, I

43:12

think when you read trip reports on

43:14

Arrow, it says like, really only for

43:16

experience, so I cannot tell me because

43:19

it's something that is extremely visually intense,

43:22

but then also very neutral. So

43:24

like, and

43:26

with neutral, I mean that most, many psychedelic

43:28

compounds have like, make you very emotional.

43:31

It's like you go, LSD

43:33

for me typically comes in like, almost like waves.

43:36

You go through different waves of intensity, of

43:38

emotion while you go through a trip.

43:40

And so 2C specifically is extremely neutral to

43:43

the point where you can almost look at yourself from

43:46

like a third party and analyze your

43:48

emotions in a very clinical way while

43:50

you're going through a trip. And

43:53

so I'm on this trip, it's

43:55

like 11 in the evening, I'm listening to

43:57

music and I think I was

43:59

having. of Red Rein as well. And I just come

44:01

to this point where I was thinking about my life, I

44:04

just worked through some things. And I come to

44:06

this point where I have this profound appreciation that I

44:08

somewhat through the internet got

44:11

the ownership of the super

44:13

rare substance and still had some of it. And I

44:15

was just like, wow, the internet is such an amazing

44:17

place. And then I was

44:19

like, wait, what if you began looking

44:21

at this from a smart contract perspective? And so

44:24

I knew I'd spent a lot of time in

44:26

these online communities. And these online

44:28

communities often... So if someone develops a

44:30

new psychedelic substance, it's actually very difficult

44:33

to get it. And

44:35

if you develop a new substance, in principle, it's always

44:37

legal, because it hasn't been described

44:39

in any kind of in any, yeah, in

44:41

any literature yet, but like it's just a

44:44

new substance. And what online

44:46

communities in typically do is they do something that is

44:48

called a group buy. So like

44:50

maybe, bride, you've read a new research paper from a university.

44:53

And you say, hey, guys, I found this new

44:55

thing. We should try this out. Who's interested? And

44:57

let's pull our money together. And

44:59

then maybe we can do a group buy,

45:02

because typically doing a custom synthesis of a

45:04

novel chemical compound is really expensive, it could

45:06

cost 100, maybe half a million dollars to

45:08

just get it produced. And

45:13

then I began thinking like, cool, what if you did this

45:15

through smart contracts, where like people could pull their money together.

45:18

And you could literally say, once enough money is

45:20

in there, a chemical manufacturer could come in, kind

45:23

of claim it as a bounty, and

45:25

then deliver the substance and then and then

45:27

participants could could distribute that substance. And

45:32

that was like, that was kind of

45:34

the origin of molecule. I

45:37

later on began realizing how that how that

45:39

is actually related to IP, how you need

45:41

to move IP on chain, how

45:43

IP is actually related to supply chains and

45:45

distribution. But yeah,

45:47

kind of that night, and like it came into

45:49

me like a lightning spark. And then I started

45:51

writing it down. And then I

45:54

essentially been building this organization ever since. But

45:56

that's like the origin. That's the origin story. And

45:59

I think it speaks. to the absolute

46:01

power that psychedelics have, I think,

46:03

in infusing ideas, in infusing us

46:05

with and infusing me

46:08

with energy, and I'm

46:11

trying to take Dima's philosophy

46:14

here of what they do to me specifically. So,

46:16

it really infuses me with ideas, with

46:18

energy, with resolution. And,

46:21

yeah, it's been an incredible journey

46:23

of exploring how I then

46:26

extrapolate this to research more generally, how we can

46:28

actually open up research in the same way that

46:30

smart contracts have opened up the

46:33

transfer of money, the transfer of ownership. I

46:36

want to ask, maybe

46:39

going a little bit different one, so

46:41

you said it's important for

46:43

IP to be on

46:45

chain. Why is that important?

46:50

Interesting question. I think

46:52

it's really, I'll see, why should money be on chain?

46:55

Why should it actually be on chain? We've got

46:58

the fiat currency system, it kind of works, I

47:00

can make my payments. And

47:03

I think the IP system is just as broken

47:05

as the central banking system. It

47:09

doesn't affect the transfer of wealth, or it

47:12

just actually affects the transfer of innovation

47:14

and how we transact or fund or

47:16

disseminate research openly to the public for

47:19

humanity. And so the patent system

47:22

was actually developed in the 18th century, and it

47:24

had a lot of, it had

47:26

a lot to do actually with

47:28

the history of colonialism. So

47:30

the patent system is deep leaning together

47:32

with colonialism and monetization. The

47:35

patent system had one big hard fork in the 1950s,

47:38

but since then the patent system has never

47:41

really evolved again. And it's the fundamental thing

47:43

that we use to act innovation

47:46

in. Patents

47:49

are generally created to incentivize innovation. So

47:52

like if I'm researching, for example, a

47:54

new treatment or a new

47:57

medical treatment, I should be able to get back the

47:59

money that I've invested into funding that

48:01

cure or that treatment. What

48:04

the patent system does in reality is

48:06

it really disincentivizes collaboration. It's often used

48:08

for price gouging and it

48:10

just creates monopolies because these big

48:13

pharmaceutical companies that we know as

48:15

paid monopolies today that fundamentally control what

48:17

comes on to the market. And so

48:19

I said earlier that like curating

48:22

patients is not a sustainable business model. There's

48:24

many cases, both anecdotal but

48:26

also discovered in literature, where

48:30

larger companies specifically suppress

48:34

innovation that might hurt their bottom

48:36

line, meaning that if I have

48:39

a cancer treatment on the market and someone has a

48:41

cancer cure, it might actually make sense for me to

48:43

buy that and then just kill it and make sure

48:45

it never sees the light of day. And

48:47

with patents, you can actually do that. So

48:50

the patent system I think that we have

48:52

today is really disincentivizes innovation for humanity in

48:55

a similar way that I think the

48:59

central banking system today disincentivizes

49:02

growth and the distribution of prosperity

49:04

to humanity. It actually centralizes wealth

49:07

within a few as we've seen with the

49:10

central banking policies of the last eight to 10 years,

49:12

specifically of the last four years. Again, if you look

49:14

at what inflation has done in terms of concentrated wealth,

49:17

yeah. And so why

49:19

is it important to take IP on

49:22

chain? So we fundamentally believe that permissionless

49:24

open IP that is

49:26

programmable, where you can actually

49:28

access the underlying data in an open fashion, would

49:31

make research and science

49:33

unstoppable, meaning that in the

49:35

current system, it might not make sense for

49:37

a group of companies that are collaborating in

49:39

a cabal to bring a

49:41

drug to market. If

49:43

the same drug or cure was published

49:45

on an open network, capital

49:48

would naturally allocate towards

49:50

that. If you look at on the open

49:52

network and you're like, okay, we have these

49:54

five treatments, but there's one cure, we should

49:56

all probably fund the cure. That makes the

49:58

most rational sense. So I

50:01

think in the same way that smart contracts

50:03

are unstoppable, I think IP should become unstoppable,

50:05

scientific research should become unstoppable. I

50:08

don't know if that analogy, did that analogy make

50:10

sense? I

50:12

think so. And I just wanted

50:14

to like, you know, one little tiny thing, you know,

50:17

what Paul was saying that

50:19

resonates a lot, right? And I

50:23

do think that, you know, having more

50:25

things on the public blockchain, the transparency

50:27

of that, the decentralized nature of that

50:31

resonates with me a lot. But anyway, it's like

50:33

one little thing that he said at some point,

50:35

he said about rational decision.

50:38

So here's my take. I

50:40

don't believe there are rational decisions. Not

50:42

such thing. Humans are not rational.

50:46

Their idea in the

50:48

human mind, or here's me and you know,

50:50

I took this, you know, options,

50:52

I consider them rationally and I made a

50:54

rational decision. That's an idea,

50:57

right? But why

50:59

were the options, the

51:01

options that there were? Why

51:03

was a particular option chosen? There's

51:06

nothing rational about it. It's absolutely

51:08

totally subjective to a particular human

51:10

existing in a particular context with

51:12

all of their programming and brainwashing

51:14

and patterns and the current desires

51:17

and you know, like, did

51:19

they see a lot of smiling people today? What

51:21

did they eat yesterday? How did they sleep? How

51:24

was the air and so on,

51:26

right? So anyways, like, that's

51:28

kind of small but important point that nothing

51:30

in the world is rational. Maybe

51:35

a follow up question on that. Do you

51:37

think if I tend to agree to

51:40

a lot of extent, I actually I studied economics. So

51:42

I think some of my thinking

51:44

always goes into like the direction of rational

51:46

markets. Do you

51:49

think there's rationality on chain in an

51:51

objective way? Do you think on chain,

51:53

people behave in a certain rational pattern?

51:55

No. No, okay. I

51:58

look at humans and humans just like. Like

52:01

yesterday a guy that I

52:03

know and he reached out to me

52:05

about Vitalik's recent article about fully

52:08

homomorphic encryption. You know, he reposted his

52:10

old article and the guy is asking

52:12

me, he is a smart guy, he

52:14

is an engineer, he is asking me,

52:16

Oh, Vitalik mentioned FHE, is that a

52:18

coin? Can they buy it? Right? Fucking,

52:20

you know, that's human for you,

52:22

right? And I'll

52:25

go in further, right? Because as

52:28

humans we constantly confuse

52:32

our model of the world with the

52:34

actual world. So the

52:36

actual world is unknowable,

52:39

the model of the world is the model

52:41

of the world, right? And it's like even

52:44

like the basic things like math, 1 plus

52:46

1 equals 2. What does that

52:48

mean? Right? You know, there are

52:50

no two objects in the universe, I mean there

52:52

are no objects in the universe, that's a separate

52:55

conversation, but there are no two identical objects in

52:57

the universe. You take two apples

52:59

and, you know, one apple and one apple

53:01

and one might be poisoned, one

53:03

might have worms, whatever, you take two

53:05

electrons, they have different spin and different

53:07

blah blah blah. And what does it

53:09

mean? 1 plus 1, you know, maybe

53:12

they combine and blow up the whole

53:14

city, you know, because of their fission,

53:17

fusion, whatever, nuclear. But

53:21

so, so yeah, we

53:23

as humans, we most of

53:25

the time we live in this abstract, you

53:27

know, world of rationality and concepts and models.

53:29

And we can see, you know, and that's

53:32

part of their reality, but we kind of

53:34

think that this is their reality, but it's,

53:37

it's an aspect of reality. We've

53:40

spoken about it quite a lot. Do

53:42

you feel like psychedelics have anything to

53:44

do with like the early origins of

53:46

Ethereum? And I just, a

53:48

community member inside out, he posted a

53:50

tweet, which is from Niraj K. Argoal,

53:53

which is like just a troll,

53:56

like a well-known crypto-tritter troll.

54:00

tweeted in 2017 that he says, pretty

54:03

sure the official drink of Ethereum is Soylent

54:05

mixed with Ayahuasca. Do

54:11

you have any opinion or like any experiences

54:13

or knowledge that you would share, like lore

54:15

that you like to share about like the

54:18

early history of Ethereum, the Ethereum foundation or

54:20

any other data products and psychedelics? It's

54:22

fascinating, right? It's like human

54:25

mind wants to find

54:27

the cause and the sect, right? And

54:30

for me, it's absolutely clear that causality

54:32

is a bullshit story because you can

54:34

create many different causality stories. They all

54:36

depend on the perspective. But specifically

54:39

to your question, how

54:41

do you answer that? Like, you know, their

54:44

original idea of Ethereum came up in

54:46

Vitalik, right? Vitalik wrote their original

54:48

white paper and Vitalik had

54:50

no idea about psychedelics, had no

54:52

exposure, no experience with them. His

54:56

white paper was based on his interaction with a

54:58

lot of people around the world,

55:00

right? And some of those people had experience

55:03

with psychedelics and all kinds of other things,

55:05

right? So that was

55:07

part of their input

55:10

into that, into the white paper of Ethereum,

55:12

right? And then their actual

55:14

realization of their idea of Ethereum

55:16

from the white paper, that took

55:18

lots and lots of amazing people

55:20

to actually execute on that and build

55:22

on that and make lots of mistakes and

55:25

whatnot. And there were many amazing people and

55:27

I don't like, let's take Vlad Zantheer, smart,

55:31

talented guy. And he was part

55:33

of, big part of some

55:35

of the early contributions to ideas

55:37

in Ethereum. And then Vlad is

55:39

really into, was as far as

55:41

I know deeply into psychedelics. So

55:44

they are there, but everything else. There

55:46

are also cats around people, right? And

55:49

there were birds and they were drinking

55:51

tea, right? Was the drinking of tea

55:53

that made the impact in creation for

55:55

Ethereum, right? It's all a bullshit human

55:57

story, but that's all that we have.

56:00

So do you want psychedelics to be important

56:02

in that creation? Sure. Why the fuck not?

56:06

Cats are important for sure. I can guarantee you that,

56:09

right? And many other things

56:11

like, you know, podcasts, highpods. Vitalik

56:13

heard about Bitcoin. For me, I've heard about

56:16

Bitcoin on the podcast from,

56:18

what's his name? I forgot the name of this

56:20

guy, but he's been running the security podcast. So

56:22

it was a security podcast called Security Now. Oh,

56:27

yeah. I did see that. Yeah.

56:30

You know, like, you know, why did I

56:32

listen to that? And it's

56:35

all connected, right? Yeah. It's

56:37

all one big quantum soup. And

56:39

then you want to like, you know, here's

56:41

my causality story. I will take this quantum

56:44

soup and then I will start here and

56:46

then I will go there, there, there. Oh,

56:48

wow. That's a nice story. This is how

56:50

this thing happened, right? Oh, and

56:52

now no, no, no, you're wrong. You know, I'll start

56:55

there and go there and like blah, blah, blah. Right.

56:57

And, you know, here's another story. Right. And now we're

56:59

arguing which story is right. Right. I'm saying

57:01

all of them and none of them and everything. I

57:05

want to ask you, Paul, so side,

57:07

because, because, yeah, because you guys have

57:10

sort of incubated different types of dolls,

57:12

you know, so like the ones I'm

57:14

aware of, right, is like Vita doll,

57:16

which is a focus on longevity. And

57:20

and there is hair doll. Right.

57:22

I think it's focused on like hair.

57:24

And then and then I

57:27

know I'm aware of Hina doll is

57:29

like focused on like reproductive health, women's

57:31

health. And

57:33

I don't know. There may be some others that

57:35

I'm not aware of. Right. But then there's also

57:37

a side doll is focused on psychedelics. Like what

57:39

does side doll do? So

57:43

that is mission is to kind of

57:45

like make psychedelic research and psychedelics by

57:48

definition themselves like open

57:50

and on the novelizable. So applying

57:52

like open science principles into into

57:55

psychedelic research and psychedelics

57:57

themselves have been I think we

57:59

talked about this earlier. even from a research and

58:01

academic perspective, quite taboo. And

58:04

even in online forums, I

58:06

think there are many online forums, for example, where

58:09

most people post anonymously, there's still like

58:11

this large stigma surrounding it. And

58:14

actually, maybe before we, and so one of

58:17

the core things that CIDA aims to do

58:19

is fund open psychedelic

58:21

research. There are

58:23

many really underfunded areas, underfunded

58:26

that like that could be facilitated and

58:28

do so in a community-centric way that is

58:30

on-chain native. CIDA

58:32

also supports psychedelic

58:34

art, for instance, from the Shipibo Kinibo

58:37

people, it's like a tribe in

58:39

the Amazon that administers ayahuasca and create sheet music,

58:42

which is really, and so trying to

58:44

build an intersection between psychedelic science, permissionless

58:47

innovation, and psychedelic art, and weave

58:49

that into like an on-chain type

58:52

of street. Oh, and then just

58:54

because you said quantum soup, Dima, we actually

58:56

have a down, also entering

58:59

kind of this flurry of innovation

59:01

that is focused on quantum biology.

59:04

They're building, it's a research team, the world's

59:06

preeminent quantum biology researcher, and they're looking at

59:08

how do we actually look exactly what is happening in

59:10

that quantum soup, but from a biological perspective, because there's

59:12

this big theory that quantum mechanics

59:14

are actually at play in the cell, and

59:17

it's the only reason that cells, that biological

59:19

cells actually work is due to quantum mechanics.

59:23

But one of the core things

59:25

that side out, sorry, weird side, we

59:27

had side Kevin, one

59:30

of the core things that side out used to do is build,

59:34

one community member has called it like a tornado cast

59:36

for trip reports, because

59:39

there's this huge stigma actually about how

59:41

we collect psychedelic research, and for

59:43

example, I probably wouldn't want to post a trip report that

59:46

I had about, because it could be associated

59:48

with me, I can get docked, and

59:51

so side out is really exploring how

59:53

should psychedelic subjective data, so

59:56

you said that really well, I think

59:58

psychedelic experiences are extremely subjective, try to

1:00:00

find causality. But I do

1:00:02

think the more data you collect on

1:00:04

something, the more causality you can infer

1:00:06

over the effects of a particular substance

1:00:08

or even about

1:00:11

consciousness itself. And

1:00:14

so what SADA was trying

1:00:16

to build at its core is

1:00:19

an open science platform that

1:00:21

is zero-knowledge proof protective, where

1:00:25

both academic researchers, clinical

1:00:27

researchers, can upload

1:00:29

data through study participants. So

1:00:31

this is now, Brian,

1:00:34

you mentioned a study that you'd read

1:00:37

about a psilocybin trial. So this could not

1:00:39

be actually used in the concept of psilocybin

1:00:41

trials. To that extent, SADA

1:00:45

is working with Robin Card Harris from

1:00:48

Imperial College, who's a super well-known psychedelic

1:00:50

researcher, and then a research called Balazs

1:00:52

Gedi, who works really closely with

1:00:55

him. He's now at UCSF. And

1:00:57

so we're building up this platform called OBSI, which

1:01:00

is, should be both for academic researchers, but

1:01:03

also for anon psychonauts. And

1:01:06

this then goes much more into like, how can

1:01:08

we create the arrow, like a

1:01:10

future arrow with? And

1:01:13

then if you wanna take that further, you

1:01:15

could then actually build, you could train a

1:01:17

crowd-owned LLM based on that data that is

1:01:19

emerging, and use that

1:01:21

to analyze the data, to

1:01:25

train an AI model that is community-owned and

1:01:27

community-first, that you

1:01:29

can now ask questions, maybe from your own

1:01:32

perspective, from your own causality of, are other

1:01:34

people having similar experiences? Can I

1:01:36

take this substance and combine it with this one? Has anyone done

1:01:38

this? And do so in a

1:01:40

safe and accessible

1:01:42

way that, yeah, that opens this

1:01:45

up to humanity. I think that could be

1:01:47

both, use both. So I

1:01:49

often find myself Googling, has anyone had similar experiences

1:01:51

with this, this, or this? And

1:01:53

I think actually collecting all that data, bringing it

1:01:55

together, and then also enabling a way for people

1:01:57

to safely share their, psychedelic

1:02:00

experiences could be

1:02:02

really valuable to humanity. I'm

1:02:04

saying could be not

1:02:07

should be because it's always my my own. Yeah,

1:02:09

my own sheuristic and I

1:02:12

just wanted to mention a couple of things that came up

1:02:14

in me as you were sharing this Sounds

1:02:16

like a pretty awesome idea. And I

1:02:19

think that it's very interesting because every

1:02:22

psychedelic experience, right It's

1:02:24

facilitated by this medicine, right? But

1:02:27

it's very much dependent on your

1:02:29

context On your consciousness

1:02:31

and your emotional state on you know things

1:02:33

around you and so on, right? So I

1:02:35

think it's that when we trying

1:02:37

to research this kind of thing we cannot just

1:02:39

say oh if me

1:02:42

human at this molecule How

1:02:46

do I predict what's going to happen when

1:02:48

I put this molecule into this organism, right?

1:02:50

The thing is like your organism your consciousness

1:02:52

is absolutely fucking unique So the question is

1:02:54

how can you then if

1:02:57

you will make it more scientific by

1:02:59

having a deeper Understanding of what are

1:03:01

their what's the emotional setup of this

1:03:03

organism, right? Like how do you do that under

1:03:05

all kinds of psychological tests and all kinds of

1:03:08

things? So this is a very important aspect of

1:03:10

this and the second one also, what is the

1:03:12

physical state of this organism, right? So what kind

1:03:14

of like, you know, and I hope that Thanks

1:03:17

to AI and many other tools. We will

1:03:20

also have better better access to Individualized

1:03:23

picture and understanding of this organism

1:03:25

like, you know my blood martyrs

1:03:27

my you know Salila

1:03:29

my you know peptides my gut bacteria

1:03:32

and so on right because like that

1:03:35

Otherwise it becomes like, you know We

1:03:37

can have really awesome idea about a

1:03:39

particular molecule and then give it to

1:03:41

two different people and one person has

1:03:43

an amazing experience And you know meets

1:03:45

God and the other person goes

1:03:47

crazy absolutely What

1:03:51

do you guys you guys feel like I mean

1:03:53

at this time right there's also a lot of

1:03:56

Interest around this concept of like, you

1:03:58

know network state Basically, new

1:04:01

types of communities,

1:04:05

bodies where people gather

1:04:07

together, create some kind

1:04:09

of governance structure, maybe have some

1:04:12

physical land, and basically try to

1:04:14

reinvent what we've had with nation

1:04:16

states where there's been basically almost

1:04:19

no innovation for a long time. It's basically impossible

1:04:21

to come in and say, hey, I'm going to

1:04:23

create a new state, and

1:04:25

I'm going to do it with totally

1:04:27

different rules. So I'm wondering,

1:04:29

do you guys feel like there's a big intersection

1:04:32

there and that that could kind of also be

1:04:34

one of the ways where maybe

1:04:36

psychedelics could end up having completely

1:04:38

different role in society? Let

1:04:42

me start with this, right? I think

1:04:45

on the one hand, it's a very

1:04:47

natural aspect of human evolution because thanks

1:04:50

to all the technologies that we have, it's

1:04:52

so much easier now for, I've never met

1:04:54

Paul, I've never met you, Brian. Actually,

1:04:56

you look familiar with, I think we've met

1:04:58

at some conference. But we're connecting and we're

1:05:00

talking about we have shared interest and we

1:05:07

feel more connected, right? And I

1:05:09

look at my daughter and she's in

1:05:11

this gaming community with Minecraft and she's

1:05:13

into watching anime and she's connecting with

1:05:15

a lot of humans. She's very smart

1:05:20

and has whole unique aspects

1:05:23

and she doesn't have friends

1:05:26

around her here, but she's connected with people

1:05:28

around the world, right? And I saw that

1:05:30

in Vitalik when Vitalik was growing up, and

1:05:33

then he became part of

1:05:35

Bitcoin community way before he even met

1:05:37

somebody in person, right? But by connecting

1:05:39

online and so on. So I think

1:05:41

that technologists, they do facilitate

1:05:43

this creation of new connections and new

1:05:45

kinds of communities and totally new ways.

1:05:47

That's for sure, right? But then I

1:05:50

also want to point to this, like,

1:05:52

again, the policy of the human mind

1:05:54

tries to idealize that and like, oh,

1:05:57

wow, I can find all the people

1:05:59

that But like the same thing that

1:06:01

I like, let's say Web 3 or psychedelics,

1:06:03

whatever, and we will create new communities. It

1:06:05

will be so awesome and I will be

1:06:07

so happy. Well, you know what? That community

1:06:10

will also be full of all kinds of

1:06:12

people. There will be some greedy assholes that

1:06:14

will fuck you up and there will be

1:06:16

some awesome people who will at some point

1:06:18

will go crazy and you will meet

1:06:21

the love of your life and then you will

1:06:23

lose. Like, you know, like the humanity of us

1:06:25

is not going away, right? So yes, new tools,

1:06:28

new types of communities. And

1:06:30

this is, I see this as a

1:06:33

natural evolution of human society and also

1:06:35

of us as humans, humans

1:06:37

constantly experimenting with stuff, right? That's what we do.

1:06:39

Like, oh, look at this mushroom. Let me eat

1:06:41

it. Oh, I'm dead. Oh,

1:06:43

no, I am not. You know, it's exciting, right?

1:06:46

So let's build this new community. So

1:06:48

it's amazing to look at all this

1:06:50

experiments and look at Zalu. Looks

1:06:53

like a really cool experiment. Look

1:06:55

at the theorem community and all the

1:06:57

DAWs and, you know, like meme coins,

1:06:59

right? Like, you know, the communities built

1:07:01

around that stuff and then

1:07:04

it was me. But who cares? You know, there

1:07:06

are lots of people who are excited and they

1:07:08

connect and they resonate and they try to make

1:07:10

money and they lose money and maybe

1:07:12

they lose money, but maybe they find the

1:07:14

love of their life, right? And

1:07:17

so on. So

1:07:19

that's my take. What do you think, Paul? I

1:07:23

would always lose all my money for the love of my life. Yeah,

1:07:27

I think love is the

1:07:30

ultimate trump card. I

1:07:32

think you can have lots of love

1:07:34

and be really poor, but like ultimately,

1:07:37

like no amount of money can get you love. But

1:07:41

I think on a more, on a

1:07:43

more jurisdictional level, I also

1:07:45

think network state experiments are really interesting. I

1:07:48

think actually, I think there's a similar, maybe

1:07:51

forget about network states for a second.

1:07:54

I think network states are

1:07:56

really interesting because they enable a form of

1:07:58

regulatory arbitrage that we haven't seen before. regulatory

1:08:00

openness that we haven't experienced before.

1:08:04

And there's a lot of regulatory arbitrage

1:08:06

in crypto, meaning that some people only

1:08:08

live in Switzerland or in Dubai or in

1:08:11

Singapore because it's where crypto can be freely

1:08:13

traded, transacted, or you can actually own it.

1:08:16

In other countries for many years, you couldn't even

1:08:18

get a bank account if

1:08:21

you wanted to get any kind of crypto assets out. And

1:08:24

the same is true with psychedelics, meaning

1:08:26

that in Canada, for instance, I think

1:08:28

I believe 5MU DMT is legalized. Then

1:08:30

you have Colorado, where I

1:08:33

think mushrooms are now legalized. And

1:08:35

lots of people go to Peru because you can

1:08:37

take ayahuasca there. Amsterdam had a similar role to

1:08:40

play in the past with truffles. And

1:08:42

so there's all of this, I think that in crypto, you

1:08:44

have a lot of regulatory arbitrage in terms of what you

1:08:46

can do. With psychedelics, you also have a lot of regulatory

1:08:48

arbitrage is what you can do. And

1:08:51

so enter the network state. I actually believe

1:08:53

one of the really strong roles of network

1:08:55

states can be like really clearly defining, we

1:08:58

are open to this arbitrage, or we

1:09:01

actually enable you to safely conduct, we

1:09:05

empower you to safely conduct crypto

1:09:07

transactions. We empower you to safely

1:09:09

conduct psychedelic research or safely

1:09:12

take psychedelics. And I

1:09:14

think this would actually be expanded to more and more things. I know

1:09:17

another network state, Vitalia, recently had a lot of,

1:09:20

or actually in Zizal, both Vitalians Zizal had

1:09:22

a big focus on longevity as well. And

1:09:25

in longevity research, you have a similar

1:09:27

problem, meaning that, for example, they're really

1:09:29

interesting longevity gene therapies. However, even administering

1:09:31

a gene therapy or running a trial

1:09:33

for gene therapy in the United States

1:09:35

is highly regulated. So I

1:09:37

think they have this little regulatory

1:09:39

arbitrage where in Roatan, now a

1:09:42

company called Minicircle, administers this

1:09:44

new gene therapy. It's a full statin

1:09:46

therapy. And initial

1:09:48

results, I met someone at a

1:09:51

conference in Dubai that had actually taken this therapy.

1:09:53

There's only been 300 people globally. He'd

1:09:55

taken the therapy and he was like, it's been absolutely life-changing.

1:09:58

And I think he's... He had medical

1:10:00

issues before, but he didn't take the therapy

1:10:02

specifically for that. He was just like this

1:10:04

longevity crack. And

1:10:08

he spoke extremely highly about this therapy and said

1:10:10

it was life-changing for him. He's in his early

1:10:12

30s. So it's not like that he's

1:10:14

that old yet. And again, this

1:10:16

really has to do with regulatory arbitrage. And

1:10:19

so I think network states can play extremely

1:10:21

powerful roles in enabling current

1:10:24

research to go more effective in enabling

1:10:26

more open access to people who want

1:10:28

crypto, psychedelics, or longevity therapies. I

1:10:31

think fundamentally give the people what they want. Why

1:10:33

do we have to live in a society where I can't do

1:10:35

what I want? As

1:10:37

long as I'm not hurting anyone, and as long

1:10:40

as I'm not posing any risks or arm other

1:10:42

than potentially to myself, I'm

1:10:44

allowed to smoke and drink alcohol, which kills

1:10:46

more people worldwide than anything else. But no,

1:10:48

I can't try this new experimental therapy. Or

1:10:51

I can't eat this mushroom. That doesn't make

1:10:53

any sense. And

1:10:56

so I think network states have a really powerful

1:10:58

potential role to play in that. What's

1:11:03

your opinion, Varn? Or any thoughts from you,

1:11:05

Duma? I

1:11:08

agree with you. And

1:11:11

I think it's certainly

1:11:13

as I rule in psychedelics, we can have that

1:11:15

rule there. Although I

1:11:17

feel psychedelics are maybe kind

1:11:19

of threatening to governments, but

1:11:22

not. I think

1:11:24

crypto is generally more threatening. And

1:11:28

I think crypto maybe needs network states even

1:11:30

more. I think especially if

1:11:32

you think of things like privacy, this is

1:11:35

something where I think there's just a complete...

1:11:38

The governments may be like, okay, you can

1:11:40

trade and speculate and stuff, but we want

1:11:43

to know exactly what you're doing. And we

1:11:45

want to control the ins and outs and

1:11:48

be able to shut things down. And if you're

1:11:50

going to try to do something, privacy focus, we're

1:11:52

going to come after you. So

1:11:55

I think that that feels like

1:11:57

something where what's the way out there?

1:12:00

One of the ways out I could see

1:12:02

is if you do have more of these

1:12:04

new states that are saying, hey,

1:12:06

we actually want to sort

1:12:08

of enshrine some of these rights

1:12:11

of people, which I

1:12:13

think historically some countries have done a

1:12:15

great job at, right? Like the US,

1:12:17

of course, with the Constitution has historically

1:12:20

done a great job at protecting people's

1:12:23

rights of Switzerland as well, right? I think we're

1:12:25

like privacy is something that's really held up high.

1:12:28

But I feel it's been kind of

1:12:30

getting, with the

1:12:33

technological changes, it feels

1:12:36

like these values kind of keep dropping

1:12:38

away. And I feel there's some

1:12:41

kind of need for like a rebirth, right? Where

1:12:43

someone says, OK, we're going to come and

1:12:45

define new rights

1:12:48

and protections that people should enjoy that

1:12:50

are actually like, in

1:12:53

many ways, similar to things that they were

1:12:55

in the past, but just like updated for

1:12:57

like the digital age and for the internet

1:12:59

and for blockchains and decentralization. I

1:13:04

really like that thinking and it actually just made me

1:13:06

wonder like why a network states like

1:13:08

why not put like constitutional level rights

1:13:10

into like, I guess

1:13:13

it's hard to enforce through a smart contract, but

1:13:15

actually, I've seen a lot of network state initiatives

1:13:17

essentially become these like little mini pop up conferences.

1:13:20

And I'm like, that's cool. But actually, like,

1:13:22

why not start at what should the Constitution

1:13:24

look like for a network state? And

1:13:27

I think then if you started combining it with actual

1:13:29

like on both on chain rights and potential off chain

1:13:31

rights, if such a network state actually had a piece

1:13:33

of land or was in a physical location, I

1:13:36

think that'd be really interesting. I

1:13:38

wonder, Brian, have you seen any experiments

1:13:41

like I know network states itself

1:13:43

is almost is almost becoming an area like in

1:13:46

the like a hot area in crypto. But I'm

1:13:48

curious if you've seen, you've seen anyone actually work

1:13:50

at what you've described like that Constitution. Yeah,

1:13:52

I'm not like super up to date on

1:13:55

like, you know, the latest thing in network states. But,

1:13:57

you know, for example, I did we did do podcasts.

1:14:00

has been a while too now, but

1:14:02

with, you know, it's project Nation

1:14:04

3, so that's basically

1:14:07

Louis Gwenday, who is one

1:14:09

of the co-founders of Eragon. And Eragon, of course,

1:14:11

I think was one of the first kind of

1:14:14

things where he was trying to do on-chain, like

1:14:18

basically trying to do DAWS, and they had

1:14:20

this idea also of like a court system.

1:14:23

And I think Nation 3 is really like,

1:14:25

is trying to do that, right? I think

1:14:27

that's one of the core things that trying

1:14:29

to have is this kind of like, you

1:14:31

know, on-chain legal system, where

1:14:33

then they can have, you know, different

1:14:36

kinds of values and ways to dispute,

1:14:39

handle disputes. And so yeah,

1:14:41

at least that's one I'm aware of, that's kind of

1:14:43

going in this direction. Cool.

1:14:47

Yeah, it's a good job with Louis. I haven't seen him, or

1:14:49

haven't seen him in a while. Cool.

1:14:52

Anything else you guys want to touch on? Can

1:14:56

I ask Dima just a question from our community?

1:15:00

What's your like favorite psychedelics out of

1:15:02

like the many that

1:15:05

exist and why? It's

1:15:09

hard to give one answer, right? Because

1:15:11

everything is very context specific, right? And

1:15:13

depends on what

1:15:15

your perceived intention, right?

1:15:20

Sometimes you

1:15:22

feel isolated and

1:15:24

alone, and then taking MDMA

1:15:27

can be amazing, right? Sometimes

1:15:31

you want to deal with some difficult

1:15:33

emotions. And then let's

1:15:37

say something like ketamine and 5-MEO can

1:15:39

be very opening, emotionally

1:15:41

opening combination. Sometimes you want

1:15:44

to meditate

1:15:46

deeply, all that, right? Like, so it's really

1:15:48

about the context. It's hard to pick one.

1:15:52

5-MEO, the GMT, right? It is a

1:15:54

very powerful tool that I have gotten

1:15:56

to appreciate more and

1:15:58

more. And it's

1:16:00

really awesome that it's not criminalized in

1:16:03

Canada, and it's actually available in those

1:16:05

mushroom stores there. And so

1:16:07

it's very powerful, right? So of course, it's

1:16:09

always very important that people approach things carefully

1:16:12

and gently, right? That's kind of one of

1:16:14

the big things, as I always

1:16:17

kind of like to say, that, you know, life will inevitably

1:16:20

fuck your heart. So why don't you

1:16:22

be gentle with yourself? And, you know,

1:16:24

because difficult stuff will happen

1:16:26

anywhere, right? It's a gentleness as an

1:16:28

important aspect of how

1:16:30

life is approached here now. So

1:16:33

yeah, there is that. But I mean,

1:16:35

2CB, I love 2CB. I think it's awesome,

1:16:37

even though I haven't taken it in

1:16:39

a long time. And there are so

1:16:41

many fun, cool things to play

1:16:43

with carefully, you know,

1:16:47

responsibly, if you will. And yeah. Thank

1:16:51

you so much for sharing that, Deimah, first of all. And

1:16:53

I'm personally also really

1:16:56

interested in 5MEO, and seeing much more

1:16:58

research should be funded. So people actually

1:17:00

know what use cases can I apply

1:17:02

5MEO DMT for, and like, what is

1:17:05

the data say, what people are experiencing?

1:17:09

I mean, so when people meet God, right?

1:17:12

Like, how the fuck do you measure that?

1:17:15

All right. On

1:17:17

the scale of one to 10, how much was,

1:17:20

you know, how deeply did you meet

1:17:22

God? But yes,

1:17:25

of course, human mind will find a way to

1:17:27

try to measure stuff. Yeah, I

1:17:29

was like, you know, 60% into

1:17:34

feeling like connecting with God.

1:17:39

Do you... I actually have an

1:17:41

interesting community question that might also be a nice way

1:17:43

to run it off. So

1:17:45

do you think that people need to

1:17:47

hang up the phone after they've gotten the message?

1:17:51

This is, I think, something that is often discussed in

1:17:53

psychedelics, is like, or do

1:17:55

you think there's a wider way to frame this? that

1:18:01

always, always, always the

1:18:04

only thing that happens is the only thing

1:18:06

that can happen, right?

1:18:08

So then we try to find a story that

1:18:10

describes and says, oh, I should

1:18:12

have or I should not have, but that's bullshit

1:18:14

because the only thing that happens is the thing

1:18:17

that happens, right? And,

1:18:19

you know, if you have an experience and

1:18:21

then sometimes

1:18:23

you're tempted like, wow, you know what,

1:18:26

I'll stay away from that for like,

1:18:28

you know, next year

1:18:30

at least. Like my first experience was 5

1:18:32

million, like, wow, not going to touch it

1:18:34

for a while. That was so powerful, right?

1:18:37

Sometimes it opens something and

1:18:39

then you want to continue going there. Sometimes

1:18:42

you're like, oh, you know what, like that was

1:18:44

awesome. And now I just want to, I don't

1:18:46

know, go to Vipassana and you know, Vipassana can

1:18:48

be very powerful experience too. So for me, there

1:18:51

is no answer to that, right? We want to find

1:18:53

the recipe, a recipe that will take us on

1:18:56

the prescribed path from where we are and we

1:18:58

are suffering and unhappy and not peaceful and we'll

1:19:00

get to and you know what, there is no

1:19:02

such path, right? Like, you know,

1:19:04

you only have this current moment and

1:19:06

the emotions of that and your

1:19:09

actions, right? So everything is

1:19:11

absolutely totally unique and subjective to you and

1:19:13

everybody, anybody had tells you that tells you

1:19:15

you should do this and you know, you

1:19:18

should not do this. And

1:19:20

I always say, thank you, but you know,

1:19:22

fuck you, like, because you've never lived this

1:19:25

consciousness, right? You've never been in the shoes

1:19:27

of this reality. You have

1:19:29

no idea, right? So I don't believe

1:19:31

in advice as such, you know, like

1:19:34

we can throw ideas, but you know what, most

1:19:36

of the time, a human

1:19:38

who is going through something difficult, I would

1:19:40

much rather give them a hug. I

1:19:42

would, you know, just like, you know, hug them,

1:19:45

give them a glass of tea or whatever.

1:19:48

They don't need my fucking advice. You know,

1:19:50

they will figure it out, right? But you

1:19:52

know, sometimes we feel disconnected and we feel

1:19:55

lost and you know, we feel unloved and all

1:19:57

of that. And you know what, let's

1:19:59

share this. the love that we have. Cool,

1:20:03

beautiful. Well, I think that's a good

1:20:05

place to maybe like enter this conversation.

1:20:07

Yeah. With the instruction

1:20:10

of like give someone a hug and

1:20:14

people will figure out their own thing. I

1:20:16

think that's generally true. Right. Yeah. Thanks guys.

1:20:19

That was really cool to chat. Yeah. Yeah.

1:20:22

No, thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks

1:20:24

Paul. Thanks Timo. It was really great to have

1:20:26

you on. Really enjoyed the conversation. It's a little

1:20:28

bit of a different podcast than we generally do.

1:20:31

But I think still kind of like

1:20:33

a lot of connections to decentralization and

1:20:35

I think all of the values that,

1:20:38

you know, people sort of try to

1:20:41

realize when working on these technologies or

1:20:43

exploring psychedelics. So thanks so much for

1:20:45

coming on. Yeah.

1:20:47

Thank you guys. Thank you

1:20:49

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1:20:53

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