In this episode of The Joe Rooz Show, Joe welcomes his first guest, Jake Giffin, a systems thinker and coach, who discusses his DSIX framework, which integrates scripture and modern psychology to help men reprogram their minds and reclaim leadership. They explore topics like identity, culture, and the challenges men face in today's society. The conversation delves into the importance of reprogramming the mind, the impact of cultural conditioning, and the significance of faith-based support systems. Jake shares insights from his journey in pest control and church planting, emphasizing resilience and the pursuit of purpose.
Later in the episode, Joe welcomes Landon Shumway, a software engineer and author, who explores the implications of AI and automation on society. They discuss the potential for AI to replace human labor, the concept of universal basic income, and the need for new economic systems that ensure prosperity is shared by all. Landon shares insights from his novel "We Can Be Perfect," co-authored with AI, which imagines a future where automationism offers a collective ownership model for automated production. The episode concludes with a reflection on the potential benefits and challenges of an AI-driven future.
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(00:04:20) Introduction and Housekeeping
(00:10:36) Guest Introduction: Jake Griffin
(00:15:26) The Role of Psychology and Faith
(00:26:36) Challenges in Pest Control and Medicine
(00:35:06) The DSIX Framework and Coaching
(00:41:36) Reprogramming the Mind
(00:50:36) Identity and Purpose in Modern Society
(01:02:36) Advice for Younger Generations
(01:07:54) Introduction to Landon Shumlee
(01:12:36) AI and the Future of Work
(01:24:36) Economic Systems and Automationism
(01:36:36) Potential Benefits of AI
(01:52:36) Challenges and Opportunities in AI Development
(02:03:36) Closing Thoughts and Future Prospects
- Wayne Rankin
- Rosanna Rankin
- Carolina Jimenez
[00:04:21]
Unknown:
Transmitting live from the asylum studios deep in the bowels of Southwest Texas, it's the Joe Rooz Show, the show where we talk about anything and everything where nothing is sacred, nothing is watered down, and nothing is PC.
[00:04:42] Unknown:
Alright. Hey, folks. This is Joe Rooz. It is nineteen zero three hours on 08/22/2025. And as always, we are coming to you live from the pimple on the backside of Texas, the beautiful city of Eagle Pass and doing the very best we can to bring you the best quality talk radio we could muster without all the bluster. Welcome to the Joe Rooz show. Alright. Hey. Intro music tonight by the Angelics. I wanna say thank you so much, guys, for allowing us to use the track. Really appreciate it. Alrighty. Folks, hope you guys had a enjoyable Thursday at least.
Don't let the voice fool you, I'm feeling a lot better. Definitely feeling a lot better here. So, looking forward to it. Had my final COVID test today, and, praise the Lord, it's negative, and that means I get to go back to work on Monday. So we're excited about that. Getting a little bit of cabin fever here. You should have seen some of the pictures I was sending people today. Heads wrapped in towel and head wrapped in towels and all kinds of stupid stuff. And then, of course, I get to mess around in the studio and then change things around as you can probably tell. You know, camera's a little different. Color texture's a little different. Everything's a little different. But, hey, that's alright. You know, it's it keeps me busy.
Tries to help me. It it, it it helps me think when I do these things. And to give you an update as well, we've been playing around with some, streaming software. So we we've been playing around with OBS. We've been playing out with Meld. Really, getting some progress with Meld. So we'll we'll be doing a a show with that, in the next couple of days, and we'll let you know how that all works out. So, thanks to the folks that have made that made that recommendation. It's really working out pretty well. Very simple to use, actually, where, you know, with OBS, it's a great platform. Don't get me wrong. But OBS is, like, you know, you had six or seven clicks just to do one thing that you do in two clicks, maybe three with with, Meld. So it's a little bit faster. I think it's a little bit easier, to to use if you're just a one man operation like we are here. But enough of that stuff, I digress. We do have two guests with us tonight. Really looking forward to getting into these, conversations tonight. And, but, of course, before we do that, we do have some just small housekeeping stuff that we need to do as usual. So if you would, just head over to our website, joeroos.com.
That's joeroos.com. When you get up there, just make sure you look for that contact section. Open up the web form. Let us know whatever's on your heart, whatever's on your mind. Any questions, comments, cares, concerns that you might have, any ideas or suggestions that you might have for guests or topics that you like to discuss, we always wanna hear from you and get your assessment on things, see what direction you guys wanna go. Also, if you don't wanna use the web form, totally fine by me. You can always email me directly at [email protected]. That's [email protected].
Also, don't forget to, head over to our support page. Why? Because this is a value for value show, and if you receive anything of value from what we're putting out here, all we're asking is that you return that value in the form of a donation. It could be your time, your talent, your treasure. It could be all three. It could be one of the three. It could be two of the three. It doesn't matter. We prefer all three, if possible. If you have the means to do it, that'd be great. We appreciate that. So, just head over to the website on the support page, and we'll get into more details about that in just a little bit.
Alright, folks. So I wanna tell you about our sponsor, Ezra Healing. Now on, on Tuesday, we had our show with the CEO of Ezra Healing, and I hope you guys found that to be interesting. It it's kinda different for me considering we talked about menopause. You know, I don't have to necessarily deal with that problem, but some of you guys do, and that's fine. That's okay. We forgive you for it, for making me have to talk about it, but we did. It's a good show. I thought it was a good show. So I hope you guys were able to check that out. But, our CEO of, Ezra the CEO of Ezra Healing is our sponsor. So we, we wanna tell you about what they're doing there. So Ezra Healing is a substantial part of the new wellness paradigm currently being born, in North America and around the globe. The global citizenry are no longer satisfied with the sick care version of so called health care. Band aid medicine, endlessly treating symptoms rather than the root causes must be abandoned as soon as possible.
Patient centric care has to be the priority. Would be nice if this thing worked. Right? My little screen here. It's gonna be fussy. We need to trans we need to we need to transition towards the do no harm model of private care that places humanity at the forefront of real health care and real wellness care. In this new model, your entire lifestyle is examined, analyzed to promote, and support the totality of your body's integrated systems. Ezra Healing is a solutions based health promotion and disease prevention grassroots movements group grassroots movement that is always evolving to best serve you and your family. Now, if you want more information about Ezra Healing, there's the link right there on the website, ezrahealing.com.
That's ezrahealing.com. So make sure you check it out. All right. Now, if you've been following along, you know that this is pretty much the time and point where we cut through all the noise, we dig into what's really shaping our lives, what's really shaping our culture and what's really shaping our future. Now, my guest tonight is someone who has lived the grind, built a business with his bare hands, and walked through the fire to discover to discover what really makes men tick. He's not a product of coaching mills or polished seminars. He's a systems thinker, a coach, and a voice who isn't afraid to expose the patterns behind the chaos.
Jake Griffin is the creator of the DSIX framework, a transformation system rooted in scripture and modern psychology that helps men reprogram their minds, reclaim their leadership, and scale business without losing their soul. He's the founder of the Hero Alliance, host of the Jake Griff the Jake Giffin podcast, and a man whose mission is to help leaders and families break free from cultural programming and align their lives with God's design. Tonight, we're gonna deep dive into identity, culture, politics, and purpose. This isn't a mode this isn't motivational fluff. This is about rewiring how you think and how you live.
Jake, welcome to the Joe Russo. It's great to have you here, my friend. That is a crazy introduction, my brother. Wow.
[00:11:51] Unknown:
Like that, With my bare hands even. I like the, I like the explanation of the menopause. I mean, I know you have women that list that watch your show, so it's, I know that you're really dealing with they're dealing with menopause. My wife currently is in perimenopause, so that's fun. Okay. You know, for you guys out there that are dealing with hopefully, you're not dealing. Are they dealing with mandopause? Is that a thing?
[00:12:17] Unknown:
Actually, it's, men go through andropause. That that I've learned. So, I've heard of it. Yeah. It's it was kind of new to me too, but, but yes, men go through, andropause. And, so I guess I guess that that's our excuse when we wanna get moody and we wanna get cranky and we wanna just, you know, kinda blow everybody off like like the ladies do when they get their symptoms of their menopause. Ezra Health teaching us all kinds of new stuff. That's cool. Hey. But, you know, honestly, though, they're they're a great bunch of people. I I've I've had some really good interactions with with the staff up there. They're fantastic. They really know their stuff, and, their CEO, Svetlana Rylkoff, she I don't know if you've heard the show or anything, but she's a former nurse up in British Columbia. She was fired because, she refused the COVID-nineteen mRNA vaccine and, or gene therapy, like I call it. Yeah.
So, so she was fired for that and then, through a series of other issues, you know, she stepped out and she created this this company called Ezra Healing and she's doing very well with it and she's helping a lot of people. So, we were really her. Really blessed. We I hosted her on a show one day. We just kinda really hit it off well, and, we talked about sponsoring. And she's she became one of our sponsors, and we appreciate that very much. That's very nice. Preventative men medicine, man. That is the
[00:13:44] Unknown:
that's the future. Right? I mean, once and and as soon as quantum computing becomes viable in the next maybe ten years or however long it's gonna take, quantum computing is gonna identify gene, customized gene medicine, like, within seconds.
[00:14:01] Unknown:
So everything's gonna be custom by the time that breaks out. So that's good. She's on the cutting edge, man. Good for you. Oh, yeah. Sure. And and the whole do no harm model of, of medicine really is important too. You know, treating the patient rather than, you know, the symptoms and and getting to the root cause of the problem rather than just dealing with the surface problems. It's it's really it's it's a great it's a great program that she she runs there, and I I think she's doing really good work. Isn't it interesting though that the med that modern medicine today
[00:14:29] Unknown:
is sworn to do no harm, and yet they have no clue as to what they're doing in regards to actual remedies or actual prevention for for sicknesses or diseases or anything else? It's like they've sworn to do no harm, but then they have, you know, a book full of, things that keep them from being sued Mhmm. You know, indemnifying them from any kind of damage. It's like, well, if you're sworn to do no harm, stand behind it. But Yeah. Exactly. I, yeah, I can go off on a I, you know, I spent last I spent a long a lot of time last year in in in the hospital get I was forced surgeries, surgeries last year, so I kinda know a little bit, like, so I can get on a soapbox and start Well, we we can we can promote
[00:15:20] Unknown:
that subject in a little bit if you like. Usually, I I like to ask, like, a first question. Maybe you wanna get into it with the first question. It's, you know, tell us something, most people don't know about you but should know about you. What they should know about it? Most people don't know I'm really good at ping pong. But,
[00:15:40] Unknown:
Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I had the, you know, I I had the, unfortunate fortunate back in the days, probably twenty something years ago now. I ended up doing federal time for something I didn't do. And I was in there I was in the I was inside for, you know, two and a half years. It was minimum security. It wasn't a big deal, but, me and a buddy found the ping pong table, started running drills, and, yeah, I got really good at ping pong. So Nice. Well, I federal tourism system.
[00:16:10] Unknown:
I was listening to to, one of your podcasts. Actually, I was I was watching it on YouTube, and, you you you had you had mentioned that you were talking to to another gentleman who'd also had spent some some time in jail, in prison. And, so I was listening to that. I was I was really fascinated, you know, by the stories that you you were sharing with them. And I was actually gonna ask you about those things a little bit later on, but, you know, we can get into that, you know, whenever you're ready.
[00:16:39] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, whenever I mean, I so what people should know about me? I don't know what they should know about me. They don't know that I'm good at ping pong. I'm probably a little rusty now, so you know? But within a week on a table, I'd probably be able to compete with anybody that's at least a little less than professional.
[00:16:56] Unknown:
Okay. So I used to play I used to play racquetball, which is not exactly the same thing as ping pong, unless you wanna count yourself as being a ping pong ball bouncing off the four walls in racquetball. But, racquetball I I loved racquetball. Racquetball was always me. So, and I've tried my hand at ping pong. I'm I'm not gonna say I was good at it. I had my moments, but I I can't say that I was consistently good at it. I was definitely better at the the racquetball.
[00:17:21] Unknown:
It is like anything else, whether you're doing a racquet sport or handball or any any kind of sport, anything that takes not even hand eye coordination, anything that is developing habits requires repetition. And so you know? And, you know, if you're disciplined enough upfront to run your drills and to think about running not just playing ping pong. Right? It's not just about, let's get on a table and play, and then in twenty years, we'll be really good. It's about you know, in this particular case, it was, can I backhand straight down the line? Can I go cross court? Can I forehand? And we did a lot of those types of drills so many times that we were you know, you get to a to a point where you can call your shots.
It becomes automatic. A lot a lot of why we make decisions the way that we do as as human beings is is because we've trained our flesh. We've trained ourselves to make those types of decisions over and over again. Ping pong is no different.
[00:18:21] Unknown:
Yeah. So what's your, what's your go to beverage to help you unwind at the end of the day?
[00:18:27] Unknown:
I drink milk, dude. I like I like milk. Yeah. They, first, I used I Everybody I've asked that question to, nobody said milk ever. That's that's the first. Yeah. I like milk. I drink milk pretty much every night. That's my it's like habitual. If I start running out of milk, I I kinda panic for some reason. I'm not sure why. I used to enjoy it, especially in the summertime, if it got when it gets really hot like it is today, I used to really enjoy, like, a Heineken or or a beer. Mhmm. But the hospital last year murdered one of my kidneys, and so I'm trying to preserve the one I have left
[00:19:08] Unknown:
I gotcha. By not by not drinking. So I gotcha. I gotcha. Well, milk does do a body good. That's that's at least what they tell us. And It does. Yep. And, and I and I know what you mean about milk, you know, running, running low on milk. I don't know if it's because of my grandmother. You know, grandmother went through the depression era and all that stuff. But as soon as, as soon as I'm down to like a half a gallon of milk, I'm panicking, but I gotta get to the store and get some more. And I have to have at least at least two gallons of milk in the fridge at all times. Oh, yeah. How old are you? I am 54.
[00:19:41] Unknown:
Yeah. So we're so here so here's interesting. Because I'm 52. I just turned 52 a couple days ago, and we're of the same era, and and we're suffering the same panic or or discomfort when we're running out of milk. And and I think it coincides with that with that brilliant milk campaign they did thirty years ago. Right. Yes. Got Milk. Right? And That's right. Yes. You got the their panic there's a panic, and that was, that's there, man.
[00:20:14] Unknown:
I forgot about that. I I I the Got Milk campaigns. Yes. They got us. Like, I I remember the face on the on the milk the milk carton. I I I remember the milk that does your body good, but I didn't remember that one. That was in that's good. That's good. Yeah. There's
[00:20:28] Unknown:
yeah. There's that that one, you know, the one where the guy had just eaten a big piece of chocolate cake and then he was on the radio show. He was gonna win a bunch of cash or something. But but he had a face full of cake and he couldn't wash it down. He'd and he he didn't have any milk. He lost out on a bunch of cash. So I think that goes through my mind every time my milk gets low. That's true. I don't know who's gonna I don't know who's gonna call me and tell me, hey, man. If you can answer this stupid question, I got a million dollars for you. I mean, now I'm I'm programmed. That's great.
[00:21:00] Unknown:
And so I I was looking over your your information on PodMatch, and, it says that you built your first business in pest control, which which is really honestly an industry a lot of people overlook. They shouldn't because it's an important part. It's an important industry. What did those what did those years teach you about your leadership and resilience and faith?
[00:21:20] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, I'm still building it. I mean, it's still it's still ongoing. And so what it taught me what what it's teaching me about resilience and faith, what's teaching me about resilience is there's a lot of suffering any business that you're gonna start. There's you go into it most of the time, you go into it with these rose colored glasses. You know, you see some of these some of these guys that you worked for, and and I've worked for a lot of smart smart people. I've also worked for a lot of dumb people. And so you see the dumb people doing pretty well, and you think, well, I can I could do that at least half as you know, I could probably do it at least half as well as they're doing it?
And, when you so you start your own business thinking, well, I'm gonna be you know, I'll be fine, and then you start learning all the stuff you didn't know before you got into it. And, those things tend to be expensive surprises, honestly. And so, when I started this in 02/2016, Halo Home Services in 02/2016, it was rodent exclusions, doing doing rodent exclusions in a in a way. It's hard to innovate in this industry because, you know, it's been around for so long. The nice thing is that most of it is aging, and so most of the guys that are in it are doing it like they like their grandfathers did it. Right. So they're still, like, setting traps and kinda doing that in order to get the the recurring services. Right? So if I stop by your house every month and check traps for $60, then then that's a service. But if I seal up all the openings and keep the rats from getting into your house, well, that's a remedy.
And while that remedy costs more than the trapping initially, long term, it's much cheaper. It's not a great it's important for the homeowner. Right? So in our model, we we stick with if it's aesthetically pleasing and it's functional. So whatever we do can't distract from the look of the house. Okay. So a lot of people put up haphazard screens or ugly foams or whatever. You know, the problem with what we do is it's so good that there's no reoccurring revenue. So one of the things that you learn in business is why chiropractors never fix you, why doctors never fix you, why pharmaceutical companies don't wanna fix you. It's because as soon as you're fixed, your your source of revenue dries up. Right.
[00:23:54] Unknown:
And so we're you know? It's interesting that you said that because that's exactly what we were talking about, with the do no harm model. Mhmm. You know, it it it's a point that I bring up regularly, especially with the doctors. It's like you go to the doctor because you have high blood pressure. They put you on a medication, which really you don't need to you shouldn't have to be on forever. I mean, it should be just a stop gap to help you get to a healthier lifestyle. So you don't need the medication, but yet that medication has side effects that require another medication, and that medication has side effects that require another medication. And it's just a constant cycle. And and, of course, the pharmaceutical companies are the first ones there with the with the solution to your problem, which is another medical and it's just a vicious cycle and it's it's just exactly like what you said, you know, at revenue stream that they depend on that the count on and that they want to keep keep flowing in because if you're healthy.
[00:24:47] Unknown:
Well more nefarious than that because, you know, in in my industry, in the pest control industry, you know, we get a lot of our we get a lot of our chemicals, you know, from places like Dow. Right. Right. Dow, I think, is the same company that makes ibuprofen. You know? And so they're so from from beginning to end, the you have chemical companies that are creating these things that on one side are doing a great service. Right? Like, if you get rid of the fleas that are feeding on the rats, then then you mitigate disease. That's important. Right? It's a it's an important role your pest control company is doing. If they're doing it responsibly, it's important. But at the same time, those chemicals get into if they're not used properly or even if even when they're used properly, sometimes they'll get into the water source or sometimes they'll get into the air. Sometimes they'll affect the house around them, then that causes some kind of physiological response Right. That then the same company that made the chemical sells you the pharmaceutical that will try to keep that physiological response at bay without actually fixing it. Yeah. So it's a it's kind of a it's I say it's nefarious. I don't know if they're doing it on purpose, but it's it's at very at very least, it's kind of a subconsequence of having good pest control and good chemicals on one hand. Yeah. You end up getting sick or contaminating the world on the other. You gotta be careful. But
[00:26:21] Unknown:
Yeah. Oh, for sure. But I I don't know. I see. I I I I become so jaded ever since ever since, 2020
[00:26:30] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:26:30] Unknown:
That, I don't trust them at all. And I think that everything they did that they do, at least at the ground level is, with with intent to do harm. And and it's Yeah. You know, to to keep you going. So it's one of those things. Call me call me a conspiracy theorist if if you like. I I don't mind. It's okay. Well, I'm with you on it. I I'm I'm with you on it. And since 2020
[00:26:53] Unknown:
and and even before then, I was kind of a big advocate for what's considered, integrated pest management, which is habitat modification, changes in the environment, removal of food sources or moisture, things like that in order to mitigate the pest. But, and we even do a lot of that now. That's kinda what we specialize in, and we've moved towards more readily over the last several years to natural remedies or non, nonhazardous chemicals. There's some instances where you just get an outbreak of ants and you just wanna eliminate the entire colony on the property. Well, you know, you you break out the big guns for that. So, you know, but we use we try to use some of the more natural stuff, try to like, probably what, Ezra Health is doing with, with with preventative medicine. You know, we're trying to go through houses and seal up the openings and make sure, ants and roaches and things can't get in and then deal with the situations in the yard to make sure that, you know, they don't maybe the they'll find a better house next door, you know, with a with an unkept yard. So, you know, we're doing, you know, we're doing our best not to use as many chemicals and get people sick as possible.
[00:28:14] Unknown:
Yeah. I I work in a nursing facility at my regular job, and, we have pest control services on a monthly basis, so on and so forth. And and it it's similar to that as well. I mean, they they have to be so careful about what they're putting down, and it has to be, you know, specifically made to go into a nursing facility for for other contraindications and so on and so forth. It's a complicated business, to be honest with you. I mean, people think it's just you go out there with a can of bug spray, you spray stuff. It's it's it's really very it's not it's not an easy business to be in. I I have a good friend of mine who's, out here in in Eagle Pass who's, in in pest control, as as this is business.
And, I I see I see the aggravation that he goes through at times. But, Yeah. It's rough. Yeah. But, Jake, so you you you know, you didn't go to seminary. You you didn't study under any kind of real mastermind or anything like that. You basically got to where you are today through just slugging it out real world grit. What was the turning point where your personal struggles turned into a mission to help other men?
[00:29:11] Unknown:
Yeah. More well, I went to bible college, but I didn't, yeah, I didn't go to seminary. You know, I'd always had there's always been an you know, even when I was a kid, I was like, am I gonna be a psychologist? Maybe I'll be a psycho I like helping people. Mhmm. I like I like the brain. It's fascinating to me. Every the reason people do what they do, the behaviors, all that is super fascinating. It's and so I've always been fascinated in that. I looked at I looked at ministry as being kind of the avenue by which to fulfill that on even a deeper level, on a spiritual level, but that never, you know, that never materialized for one reason or another. I didn't have a high enough degree or whatever it was.
And so, you know, we went went 02/2005. The wife and I went to Palmdale to plant a church. Palmdale's High Desert Los Angeles to plant a church. Didn't quite go as well as we thought it would have gone. It's kind of like the the rose colored glasses you start businesses with. Right? You're gonna like, we're gonna start a church, and it's just gonna be massive, and it's gonna be beautiful. It wasn't it was none of those things. And so that was, the longest three years in Palmdale of our life was, you know, learning the disappointment of trying to start something that just never took off. And as a result of that move, I kinda derailed my ministry career, and that's when I got into the termite pest control business.
Well, I had been in sales for, you know, several years before that, even before my ministry, before anything else. And so, you know, when I got into the termite business, I got in there as a business developer, sales manager type. And so, you know, I started doing that, and that was it. And it was off to off to the races. So everything I touched at the and, you know, if anybody's ever heard of orange oil as for a termite treatment, I was I was happily a part a small part of making that popular here at least in Southern California. And so, that was a wild ride.
While doing that, I we were making this transition, I think, culturally, from this selling features and benefits to hard closing sales, the overcoming objections, and just being kinda really hard about it, you know, the the pop up collar and the gold chain and the you know, that kind of stuff. We're making the transition from that kind of sale to more of a consultative sale, and we got involved in integrating what's called transactional analysis in in our sales process. Transactional analysis is a form of psychology developed by Eric Berne in the sixties and seventies.
Phenomenal. I could teach you all about it if you want. But, so we were integrating sales with in it with transactional analysis, and it was working phenomenally. And we we made that into a management you know, there's management associated with that, and developing people in that way, and it was turning out really great. Then a buddy of mine, boss actually at that company heard about neurolinguistic programming. And once I got my teeth into that, I was like, this is ridiculous. The you know, it's, like, really about performance, about mastery. You know, it really has depth and understanding not just communication, but understanding how people process information, how they're executing, situations in their life I see. And why they do negative behaviors versus positive behaviors and vice versa. And so when I started studying that, I was like, this is this is great. And I'd and then I started building sales teams on top of that, right, with and and coaching salespeople while building other termite companies since since 2005 till, you know, 2016 or whatever. And so everything I was fixing with salespeople was based on what I learned in transactional analysis and NLP.
And then it was probably maybe five years ago when I when I was looking at all these forms of psychology and just kind of reading through a lot of things, and I that it dawned on me that a lot of these people are not they don't agree. Right? Like, if you took 50 psychologists and you put them in a room and you said, hey. How do we fix this problem? They'd all have they'd have 50 different ideas of how to fix the problem. And so that got me thinking, well, what what if the neurolinguistic programming what if the transactional analysis what if all these things are not what if they're not true, and how would I know if they're true or not? And so then I decided to start comparing those things with what the Bible has to say about the mind, what the Bible has to say about psychology. It doesn't use the word psychology, obviously, but it uses mind, thought, reason, consider.
It uses mindful speak. Right. Yep. And I thought, why wouldn't I consult the one that invented psychology, right, as to how to balance all these out. So then I start comparing the two or the three or four things that I was kinda analyzing at the time, and I took out you know, I basically said if if it doesn't contradict the Bible, I'll use it. Mhmm. If it's supported by the Bible, I'll definitely use it. Right. And that that's what that's what ends up being the d six, d six program or the d six form of coaching that I use now. That's, d six stands for it's the day that God made man in his image.
Mhmm. That that was the purest day that that was that was the purest moment that we were, you know, the relationship we had with God before the fall. Right. That is the that is the purest day. That's when we are given the mandate to dominate the animal land and subdue, subdue anything that grows and then multiply what God has given us. And so, so yeah. So d six was born from from basically that that comparison of those those systems.
[00:35:47] Unknown:
That's great. You know, I I just wanna go back to something you said. Now you you plant you worked on planting churches. Now I I I've had the privilege of helping a young missionary, when I was living in New York, plant a church on Staten Island. So I know it's a it's a very, very hard thing to do. It's not it's not something we could just, you know, you would just wake up one day and say, okay, well, I'm gonna do this and it's gonna be, you know, a success. And it and it and it automatically is. I remember, walking, knocking door to door with this, with this young man, you know, trying to get people to come to church.
And, I'll never forget when, he was going out of town and he made the, he made the mistake that most young preachers do is he told his congregation he was gonna be out of town. You never do that. If you listen, if you're a preacher and you're listening, don't ever tell your group that you're gonna be out of town because they won't come to church. Alright. So he had asked me if I would if I would preach for him for the two services on a Sunday for him. Mhmm. And I said, yeah, sure. I'll do that. No problem. And, and I I got to the church and I I opened everything up and I and I'm sitting there and nobody showed up. So, you know, it was it was the funniest thing in the world to me anyway. I laughed, and I had texted him, and I said, Hey, Dave, did you tell them you were gonna be in town or no? He goes, Oh, no, yeah. I told him I would be out of town for two weeks.
Yeah. Answer right there. But, you know, you're right though. You know, planting a church is not the easiest thing in the world. You go into it with the rose colored glasses. You go in there, you're thinking that I am gonna change the world with my little church here. And it is the hardest, one of the hardest things to do. I don't know if you know about me. I went to, I went to Bible school myself. I served as associate pastor of a church up in New York for a little bit. I go to a great church down here. I've taught the Bible. I I used to do a Bible study podcast on Sundays. I teach Bible on this show. So, so I I know what you're talking about. The Bible is an incredibly important book, and I and I say it repeatedly over and over and over again that the Bible is the single greatest textbook on any subject that you need to study.
If you want a if you want a textbook about politics, you study the Bible. Because what's the Bible about? The Bible is about who's gonna run who. Who was gonna rule who, who's gonna govern who. You want a book about, you wanna know about a textbook about, biology. Your Bible has your biology. You want a, you want a textbook about botany, your Bible's a book about agriculture. Yep. Everything, everything that you could possibly imagine that you could think of humanly speaking is in that Bible. Now, do I profess to know exactly where it all is? No. I can't, I wouldn't be able to tell you that, but I know it's there.
Yeah. And if I look for it, I'll find it. So Yeah. It won't tell you things like, you know, how to split an atom or or or what a what a cell is or anything, but but to anything that is pertaining to real life stuff. Yeah. Absolutely. But you know something? I think that if you study it long enough and deep enough, you might find that that an the answer to that question about a cell. No.
[00:38:55] Unknown:
You know? I that's how that's how much faith I put in the word of God. So I've known some yeah. I've known guys to do that. Yeah. Well, you know, we're not all crazy. I would say tongue in I would say tongue in cheek. I've had even professors that I felt, like, stared at the pages a little too long. You know? Sure. There was a there was a pastor. You might you might remember him. He's he's, he's he's gone to be with the lord now, but, Chuck Missler was one of those guys. Super intelligent. Man, he was he was a brilliant guy, but he could see stuff in a text that that no offense to him or or his legacy, but, you know, you know, like, We used to call that preaching in the cracks.
Yeah. Yeah. You're preaching yeah. That's good. Yeah. You're preaching in the cracks for sure. Yeah. I've been I've been fortunate to be part of, I think, three three church plants. That's awesome. Yeah. And they're hard, man. Yeah. They're they're hard, especially if you're going especially if you're going into it with, like, this mindset of, I wanna build I wanna, you know, I wanna start something where a lot of people come to. It's very easy to get off off mission when you're when you're kinda in that scenario. You know, you always wanna be focused. Like, I'm part of a church now.
There's probably 1,500 people in this church. Wow. And and the leadership of the church is still laser focused on mission. How getting people saved, getting people baptized, serving the community, loving people, that is that is you know, they're not stopping. They we're, you know, we're planting other churches. We're doing a lot of other things, and that's that is a hard trait to find in some of the guy especially some of the guys I've worked with. It's it's and myself included, it's easy to get your focus off that central mission.
[00:40:50] Unknown:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The the church that I'm part of out here is, is is incredibly missions minded and which I I love. Not only does the church support, I can't even tell you how many missionaries the church supports, but our pastor himself and his family each individually support missionaries, on their own outside of the church, and he's such an encouragement to get other people to do that as well. I've done that myself. But, when I first moved here to Texas, one of the first things I did is I, is I grabbed a bunch of tracts and, I went door to door.
Yep. Knocking, Hey, I'm new in the neighborhood. This is where I live. Here's my name. Here's my phone number. I wanna start a Bible study. If you're interested, come on over. It's my, at my house and all that stuff. And I had three people show up, but it was but it was fine. It was three people showed up. We had a great time, enjoyed the fellowship around the word of God, got them placed in a in a good bible believing church, and and just, Lord willing, as far as I know, they're still there. Yep. You know, so it it's, it's, you know, serving the Lord in that respect is great. And, and and we're way off the subject here, but, so let let me try let me try to bring that back because I can't believe it's already '22.
So you said that the mind is programmable, but most men are running someone else's code. Yep. What do you mean by that?
[00:42:07] Unknown:
Well, think about, you know, think about the first time you experienced anything. Right? Whether it was, let's say, conflict at home. I'll give you an example. Somebody who somebody who's young and, you know, maybe six, seven years old gets left home alone. There's no food in the house, and he or she is really hungry. Mhmm. They've never been in that situation before, and they're trying to figure out how to navigate this. And they're somewhat emotionally heightened because they're alone and they're a little kid, and they're hungry and they're looking for food.
That that can be pretty emotionally impactful to a lot of people, and so you search for you know, there there's a panic, like a scarcity programming that jumps in that says, hey, man. You're alone, and you have no food. You don't know when you're gonna get food again. This is a major problem. And and as a kid or even as adults, sometimes we can allow those stories to spiral until we're in a full blown panic. Mhmm. Well, in those moments, you're you're taking in some program. Your body, your mind is figuring out what is going to work. Of all the options I have right now, what is going to work? And then you say, well, I think I could probably scrape a couple crackers together. I think I saw some crackers fall underneath a a cabinet once or something, and you go on and you look.
Well, you fast forward now 15, and you're three hundred pounds and you have a and you have an eating problem. Mhmm. Where does that eating problem come from? And it when you talk to some of these guys, they're going and you kinda dig a little to figure out what what they're eating for, oftentimes, in this particular case at least, you would find that they have, a panic like we do with milk. They eat when they can. They eat when they feel a little bit hungry because they don't know they don't wanna wait until they're too hungry because by that time, there might not be any food.
Right? And then what? And so they play the story in their head where they say, I gotta eat as soon as I feel a little bit of pain, and so they develop an eating habit. It's you know, Pavlov did this thing this interesting conditioning response with with the dog. I if you guys probably may if your audience knows a thing where, Ivan Pavlov, he does he discovers conditioning. He rings a bell. He feeds a dog a treat, rings a bell, feeds a dog, rings a bell, feeds a dog, and and until at which point over and over again, the dog will start salivating just by him ringing the bell. Right. And so we and so it dawns on him in in in this experiment that we train our flesh to expect a certain reward when a certain stimulus is applied.
So for the dog, it was ringing the bell equals I get a treat. Mhmm. For a, let's say, for a man who maybe grows up in the midst of a sexually abusive, family or he gets addicted to porn or something early on, and he trains himself that when life gets stressful, I can I can watch porn, and I could do this, or I could do that, and that'll make me feel better? So every time he gets stressed out, that's what he runs to. Right. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. So he trains his body to expect that response, but there's the problem. It's not just stress now because when he's he's activated or he's triggered by stress, fine. But now he's not just triggered by stress. He's triggered by any woman walking down the street. He's triggered by any stiff breeze that goes by his I mean, like, you know, I've known guys that were so deep in this that they had multiple triggers.
It's not just the bell for a treat. There's a thousand different things that would trigger the same response. Right. And so you can you can go back to the origin of that on on many occasions. You can kinda go back to what is the trigger for this specific response, and you can re and you can reprogram the trigger.
[00:46:50] Unknown:
What does it actually look like to reprogram your mind as a Christian?
[00:46:54] Unknown:
Well, in Romans 12 tells us to to be transformed. We will be transformed, from from this old man, from the man of darkness, from the man of sin, and to the man that Christ is. Right? That's the renewing of your mind. Yeah. By the renewing of our mind. And so first of all, I think what you what we need to do is identify those things that trigger us. What is causing us to sin? Because we're no longer bound by it. Mhmm. Right? We died with Christ on the cross. The sin we're no longer slaves to sin. And and to the extent that you are a slave to sin and you cannot help it is to the extent that you may need to question whether or not you've had a full on a full conversion or not. Right. Like, are you spiritually alive or are you not? Because slaves to sin are not we sin now as a choice or as a condition of our flesh.
Mhmm. And so if we're willing to, we need to identify those areas. And, you know, when you you ask, how do we reprogram as a Christian? Well, identify the trigger, subject that trigger to a new response. So if the guy is looking at a lady and immediately he feels this flood of whatever that makes him want to do whatever he normally does. I assume this is a PG show, so we'll keep it PG. Instead of doing that, we then reprogram him to when he sees a woman that's not his wife, specifically when he's not his wife, he looks at that woman as a soul created in the image of God, worthy of dignity and respect and not as an idol to be worshiped or to give your energy to and not as some object that you can rub one out to. That's it's not it's not loving towards her That's right. Treating her like an object.
It's not loving towards God because you're telling God, hey. What you've given me and my wife isn't enough. Mhmm. Right? It's not it's so you're not loving God with all your heart, soul, your mind, and your strength, and you're not loving your neighbor, I e, that woman, as yourself.
[00:49:12] Unknown:
That's right. So
[00:49:14] Unknown:
we identify the triggers, and then we instead of going, oh, man. That chick's hot. We go, oh, that chick is made in the image of God. And then sometimes depending on how quickly that response or what that gap is, there's a trigger, and then there's a response, and then there's a gap in between. It's a response gap. If you've re if you've just rehearsed the same response over and over and over again, that response gap gets shorter and shorter. So you to the point where, let's say let's say you have an anger issue and you get angry when you're driving. Well, you know, the first time you did that, you were driving, somebody cut you off, and you were like, how do I respond to this?
So that gap is long. And then you decided at the end of that gap, I'm gonna start throwing sign language and cussing at them and freaking out. And then so that rewards you because you get some dopamine. You can endure you get adrenaline. You get all these things going through your body, so you get the reward. Right. The more you do that, the shorter that gap gets. So now when somebody cuts you off on the street, you don't think about how I'm gonna respond. You just do it. F you, buddy. And now you're a rage monster, and you don't know why you're a rage monster. It's developed over now several years, and you don't know how to control yourself because that gap is so tight.
So we train guys how to expand that gap, give themselves a little bit more time to respond, and then we embed a a new response, something that's more honoring to the Lord, something that's going to encourage love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, self control, like Galatians tells us Mhmm. As opposed to rage and anger.
[00:51:04] Unknown:
Yeah. That makes sense. Then, yeah, it does. The the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. It's almost like a conditioned response too, the the way it's we make it sound like. It's like, you know, you you get conditioned to respond in that quick quick, you know, derogatory way, and then you're you're then you're you're training them to to, I guess, I don't wanna say decommission or or or or or you're Reprogram. Reprogram. Yeah. There you go. You're you're reprogrammed and it I guess, not everybody responds the same though to it. Right? It sometimes people take a little bit longer than others to respond to it.
[00:51:42] Unknown:
Yeah. And and somewhat depends. That's some some part of the beginning work as we're kind of figuring out what motivational strategies people use, what their values and beliefs are, who they believe that they are. You know, oftentimes, you get a guy in, you know, in your in your office or in a coaching scenario, And I say and I and I would I ask a lot of guys this. I go, who are you? And they say, well, I'm just a wretched sinner, you know, saved by grace. And while that sounds pious and it sounds humble and it sounds whatever it's supposed to sound in Christian circles Right. Putting that word just in there ties your identity to just being a sinner.
And so I think in part, helping people realign their identity with who god says that they are helps them readjust their beliefs, helps them with their capabilities. This the new capabilities that we install, adjust their adjust the way that they conduct themselves, and then their new conduct creates different conditions. And so instead of saying, well, I'm just a sinner, you go, well, I'll grant you that you're you're a sinner, but you're not just a sinner. Right? That's God saved you so that you would you're a saint that sins.
Mhmm. You're not a sinner that saints. Right? You're not somebody that accidentally does something right. Right? You're a you're a new creation in Christ. Something's gotta you know, when we look at second Corinthians five and he tells us that we're a new creation in Christ, all things the old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. And you still hold on to that identity that I'm still just a worthless sinner. Then that passage means nothing. Mhmm. We are something new. We have control, and we can kinda we can not all like, you know, this is a lifetime journey.
Right? We we don't know exactly what triggers are tied to the responses. Sometimes those triggers surprise us. You know? It it's a tone from your wife. You just would can you at least take out the trash? Right? That's a kind of an overdramatization of of how she would say it, but that could really irritate you. Like, hey. What are you talking at least take out the trash. What are you talking to, lady?
[00:54:15] Unknown:
Right. No. Yeah. For I I yeah. Exactly. It's the tone that that can that can trigger it. And it might be an unintentional, tone too. It could be For sure. Something is something has bug been bugging her all day and and she's just frustrated and then comes out that way. And then but but then it's what makes it worse is how you contend you you might respond to it. Mhmm. You know? Are you gonna respond to it and by flying off a handle, or are you gonna respond to it in a gentle way and say, you know, I got it. I'll take care of it right now, you know, or and just let it slide. Yeah. Well, and if you don't know how to manage that that stimulus response gap That's right. Yeah.
[00:54:53] Unknown:
Then then you're you're it it's gonna be very difficult. If you're just used to flying off the handle as soon as she has attitude with you,
[00:55:00] Unknown:
well, in that that's gonna get tougher and tougher. But you know? So What is the first? I think it's Proverbs fifteen one. Instead of soft answer, turneth away wrath. Yeah.
[00:55:09] Unknown:
So, yes. So it's a long way of answering your question, like, how are we programmed? We're we're programmed in every way. Culture is programming us. TV is programming us. The things we listen to are are programming us. We're programming ourselves by how we reward ourselves for what we want. Right? It's like Yeah. Saturday nights come, I eat a pineapple ice cream. Why? Because it's hot, and that's what I've programmed my body to expect on Saturday night.
[00:55:37] Unknown:
And I guess there there are some other and to use that example too, there are some people who go worse than that. Some people are programmed that, you know, all week long, I don't touch this, but tonight, I'm cracking that bottle.
[00:55:48] Unknown:
Yep. Right. It's Friday night. It's Friday night. Friday night is bender night. Like, it's you're not gonna see me till Sunday evening. It's some you're right. Yeah. So some peep and the more you reward your flesh because there is a very there's a distinct there's deeds of the flesh. You know, the more you reward the deeds of the flesh it's interesting in in Romans six, Paul talks about how he was alive apart from the law, but when the the law came, sin came alive and he died. Right? He's talking about he says, because sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, aroused in me coveting of every kind. Mhmm. And so what I get from that passage is that sin not only can recognize opportunities, but sin can seize upon them Yeah.
And addict you to these certain and and addict you to these patterns. So it's not just a flesh programming. It is a flesh programming that is being encouraged, if you will, by the sin nature that still resides in the flesh.
[00:56:54] Unknown:
Now you've worked with a lot of guys that, you know, for the most part, you know, successful on the outside, but that's struggling internally. Why why do you why do you think so many Christian men feel empty inside despite having it all? You know, the quote unquote having it all. Yeah. It
[00:57:14] Unknown:
that's tough. I mean, they're some of them are dealing with things like they're, you know, they're still trying to please their parents. Mhmm. Right? Their dad was never satisfied. Their dad was, you know, like, riding them real hard. Or, you know, some guys are afraid they're gonna if they fail, they're gonna disappoint their wife or, you know, they're afraid that somebody's gonna look at them oddly. You know, we don't like to confess our sins to our brothers because we're afraid to look weak or afraid to look like we don't have it together. It's Oh, yeah. It's a prideful it's a prideful response for sure. But, you know, when let's say in regards to their wives, they don't wanna look like a failure. They don't wanna let their wives down. That's a that's an honorable kind of stance. I mean, that's not that's not bad except that they don't have any outlet by which they sit around and and actually, you know, open up to somebody. Maybe it's not your wife. Maybe you need to find a coach or maybe a group of men that you can hang out with and say, here's what I'm struggling with. I absolutely hate people when I drive, and I don't you know, whatever it is. You know? Yeah. And and and be able to to be able not to vent.
Forget venting. Venting only releases, adrenaline and endorphins and all kinds of things that get you addicted to venting. Eventually, you just become some guy that shows up to the party and brings everybody down because they're no fun to be around. Mhmm. Right? Because you got so addicted to venting. We're so we're not talking about venting. We're just talking about being honest, open, transparent, having real good fellowship that, you know, you can leave baggage behind and and not let that affect your family or your business. You know, and I I think that's that's that's one reason why I think,
[00:59:01] Unknown:
men's groups in churches are so important. Yep. My my church here doesn't doesn't do it as frequently as I would like them to. But, the church that I was AP ing in back in New York, we would have a weekly men's fellowship. And, actually it was twice a week. It was, Thursday night, we had a men's Bible study. And then on Saturdays, we had a men's breakfast. Mhmm. And one of the guys in the church would cook and we'd all sit over there and complain about his cooking. And and then we'd have we'd have bible study at the same time, you know, so like two bible studies in the week just for the guys. And it was an opportunity just for the guys to sit there and and and just emote, you know, just let everything out and just talk and and that iron sharpeneth iron, you know, you just you you spend that time together in in those kind of groups and that's why it's so important. So work like that you do, like, I think that's such important work to do, you know, is is to is to give a guy an opportunity to to open up, to show his emotions because I guarantee you things that bother me, bother you, bother just like anybody else, just like the whole milk thing, right? Yeah.
You think you're the only one in the world with that problem, but you know what? No. There are other people in the world with that problem. I know it's a silly example, but still, the point is is that, you know, it's important to have that type of support and that type of fellowship. Mhmm. That is it's critical in in your walk with the Lord. If you don't have that Yep. In your walk with the Lord, you're gonna stumble and fall.
[01:00:40] Unknown:
Yeah. You know? Well, and real quick and real quick, I know we're running short on time, but it it's important to not to let the ghosts in your life dictate how you behave. Yeah. I was coming to that too. Yeah. Some of these guys have their dad in their head saying, hey, boy. We don't talk about our feelings. We don't discuss this stuff with with other people. Right. And so as soon as they start opening up, they hear their dad's voice telling them to be quiet. Yeah. No. It it's it's a it's a tough it's a tough
[01:01:09] Unknown:
being a guy is not the easiest thing in the world. I know there are so many expectations on you. Even even in this woke generation where they encourage you to be more in touch with your feelings and so on and so forth. Yeah. Deep down inside, a man naturally is not gonna be like that. He is going to tough it out. He's gonna do what he has to do to take care of his family, his responsibilities, his obligations. And, you know, and and, unfortunately, the support's really not there a lot of times. And, that's why, you know, I I I appreciate groups like that, and and and programs that you do. Yeah. Thanks. There there are there are many out there for sure, but not all of them are are with your not all of them are are good for everybody. You have to find the right one that's for you. Yeah. Amen. And I would all I always advocate that if someone's looking for some kind of a men's help group or or an encouragement type of group, look for something faith based. Yep. Because I think that's where you're gonna get the most realistic evaluation of what it is that you're dealing with because you're looking at it from, not just your perspective as the as the group leadership, you're looking at it from a biblical perspective, how God sees it and how because God is the one who created you. He gave you these feelings. He gave you these things that you're dealing with, and he knows the answer to the problem. Yep.
So, I know we're we're pressed up for time here. So, man, I gotta I gotta change my schedule so we can we can talk more about these things.
[01:02:34] Unknown:
Let me I could talk about this stuff all night, bro. Oh, me. No. So could I, bro? I I really could.
[01:02:39] Unknown:
So I'm gonna ask you just two more quick questions. Okay? Sure. So if if you could address the the younger generation of men right now, what is one warning that you would or or encouragement that you would wanna give them?
[01:02:52] Unknown:
I would say this is gonna be this is gonna be hard. I'll make this short, but it's gonna be super to the point. Do not I would say this. Do not train your flesh to expect sexual gratification from anything other than being in the presence of your wife.
[01:03:11] Unknown:
Great point. That was Great point. And and it's it's very timely too because somebody I know had asked me that question because her 13 or 14 year old son Mhmm. Asked her that question, and she wasn't sure how to answer that question. And I answered it very similar to what you did. So that is that that's great, and I I appreciate that. Alright. So I would love to have you back on the show at some point so we can actually get into the other stuff that I have for you. So let's let's get in touch with each other afterwards, and let's work something out. So where can the audience go to find out more about you and your work and and Everything I'm doing right now is at jakegifin.com. You can go there and peruse and make yourself at home. Alright. Outstanding. And I know we have it in our show notes on the audio and the video feed. So, so just, folks, make sure you check them out. Alright. Jake Giffin. Everywhere else at at Jacob pretty much everywhere else at at Jake Giffin dot, at Jake Giffin. So Okay. Outstanding. We'll get that all in the show notes as well. Jake, thank you so much for being with us. Appreciate it. Take care. God bless you. You too. Alright, folks. Jake Giffin. Make sure you check him out. He has some great, great work.
Alright. So, we're gonna take a little bit of a break here. And then when we come back, it'll be about a a two minutes, two minute and fifty second break. Alright. How about that for accuracy? Two minute fifty second break, we'll be back. And, don't forget, folks, this is a live show weeknights, 7PM central time. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share it with your friends, your family, and your followers. That way, you'll help us to spread out what we're doing here. And, we really would appreciate if you would, hit that like button, especially because it helps with the algorithm and gets us trending on the, on, on Youboob and and, and Rumble and and all the other platforms that we're streaming on right now. Alright. So we'll be back right after this. This is The Joe Ruse Show, and we will be back shortly. Stay with us.
Up and down, counting out, smiling through the taste of blood in my own mouth. I got bruises and broken bones, and hide her I was born to be too dire A naked rider Don't throw that towel just yet Don't cash in that last bit. Because I hit order when I'm tired. I'm a fighter. I get you. Alrighty, folks. First hour is in the books on this Friday afternoon, evening here in Eagle Pass, Texas. It is great to be with you guys here. Hope you guys enjoyed the first hour with Jake Giffen. Man, I had so many more questions to go with him. I can't believe that the hour flew by as fast as it did, but you know what? That's that's how it goes.
That's how it goes sometimes. Good conversations. They seem to fly by. That's alright. Waiting in the wings right now is our second hour guest, Landon Chumlee. We're bringing him on here momentarily. But first, folks, I wanna tell you about Podholm. Podholm.fm. Podholm is my audio host platform for the podcast version of the show. And Podhome is the most modern and easy to use podcast hosting platform you're gonna get anywhere. You can use Podhome to publish your episodes, enhance your audio, automatically generate transcripts, chapters, titles, show notes, and more. You can even broadcast your podcast live, and you can even do that through a website that they will provide for you, or you could download the code and use it on your own. You can use their player on your own website if you chose to do it that way.
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And, Barry who puts all the work into it and he does a great job. We're gonna get him on the show here, here, very soon. It's been a while since we spoke to him. So we're gonna do that very, very soon. And then, again, you're gonna love it folks. Podhome.fm, podhome.fm. Check them out. All right. So, sorry about, drinking a lot of water. You know, I was, I felt fine all day up until about an hour before the show. And all of a sudden my voice started going. I started getting stuffy again in the nose. So I took some cold meds, and they're drying me out. So that's why I'm drinking so much tonight. So forgive me for that.
Alright. But, our second guest tonight, Landon Shumway, lives right at the intersection of technology and human purpose. He's a software engineer who uses AI daily in his work. He's also the author of We Can Be Perfect, The Paradox of Progress, a novel written with AI that explores what happens when automation eliminates the need for human labor. Through his book and his research, Landon dives into questions most of us are just beginning to wrestle with, like what happens to a society when millions of jobs vanish? How do we redefine purpose when survival no longer requires work?
And is there a way to design a new economic system where prosperity is shared by all, not just a wealthy few? This isn't just theory. Landon has lived the tension of AI replacing human output, and his work pushes us to imagine both the dangers and the possibilities of a fully automated future. Landon, welcome to the show, man. Great to be here. Yeah. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. So, what's what's something about you that most people don't know that should?
[01:12:56] Unknown:
Oh, man. So I grew up in the suburbs of Phoenix, and I used to be a skater punk. So I would go to skate park all the time. And, Yeah. Like, it's interest I don't skate much now, but, like, I find that it still helps me, like, with my balance all these years later. Like, I got two little kids. They're always trying to knock me over, and I still like all the, skills I developed. Staying on a board helps a lot when you're, wrestling with kids. But, yeah, that's probably something a lot of people don't know about me. So So you have you have two kids? You don't look like you're old enough to have two kids. Oh, yeah. Thanks. I appreciate it. Yeah. I got a six year old and a and a three year old. So, yeah, they keep me on my toes for sure. Three year old might be a little bit young for this, but what about the six year old? You got them on a skateboard yet or what?
We actually yeah. I have an electric skateboard that will ride around the park once in a while. It's just like you control it with your hands, and then it pushes around. Yeah. He
[01:13:56] Unknown:
we've taken a couple good falls on it, but, yeah. He he enjoys doing that. So It's alright. You fall down, you get back up. That's right. That's right. That's right. So, alright. So what's your what's your go to beverage at the end of the day to help you unwind?
[01:14:09] Unknown:
Oh, man. I like to make smoothies and stuff. I do a lot of just, like, banana smoothies. Yeah. Like, that's an interesting question. Yeah. That's probably it. Yeah. Just smoothies.
[01:14:25] Unknown:
You know, I don't I don't mean to laugh, but it's it's to me, it's just so funny that out of all the questions that we come up with for the show, I always ask those first two questions, always, to everybody. And everybody stumbles over those two questions.
[01:14:40] Unknown:
Yeah. It's it's a good one. Like, it makes you yeah. Like, it really, checks a person out. Like, it's not something you prepare for, so it's a good one to throw at them. So I gotcha. And plus,
[01:14:51] Unknown:
smoothies. That's so tonight, folks, I don't know if you realize this tonight, but tonight, we've had two completely unexpected and different answers from any other guest that I've asked that question for the, Jake said that he he drinks his drink is milk.
[01:15:08] Unknown:
Okay.
[01:15:09] Unknown:
And you're with a smoothie. The you're the only two people that that I've asked that question to on the show that have answered like that. Usually, like What's the go to? Yeah. What are the Usually, everybody says water. You know. Boring. Just kidding. Nobody's, brave enough to say that they crack open the vodka or the bourbon or the whiskey can do that. They've had that kind of a week and they need to take the edge off. Right. Right. But, but my go to has always been, bourbons. I love bourbon. Bourbon and a cigar, that's a good way to end the week, especially if I didn't kill anybody during the course of the week. Yeah.
And we're pretty good. It's like the victory dance. Yeah. But, since I've been sick, I've just been sucking down the green tea with honey and lime. Right. And sparkling water. So
[01:16:00] Unknown:
Right. Hey, that works.
[01:16:01] Unknown:
Mhmm. Although, I grabbed the wrong one. I grabbed the one that has the, it's mineral water, so it's little, has that little calcium or salt in it. So it's drying me out more than what I want. No, man. Dehydrate yourself. I thought I grabbed the right one, but I didn't. So, so tell us a little bit about you first. What led you to become a software engineer and how long have you been in the field?
[01:16:26] Unknown:
Yeah. So I've always been interested in, AI actually. As a kid, I grew up watching shows like Star Trek, which I think a lot of people in the STEM field obviously were inspired, by that show. But, yeah, like, it really resonated with me, this idea that, like, technology could help improve humanity. And I've definitely seen that in my career where I've been able to build tools that is crazy. Like, I write it myself, but then it goes on to be used by hundreds of thousands of people, you know, which is pretty remarkable when you think about that. Like, one individual, if they have, you know, the ability, like, in the determination, we can build things that improve life for everybody.
So that's kinda what got me in the field. And I've been in the industry about six years now. I'm a certified Amazon solutions architect. So a lot of people don't know this about Amazon, but, obviously, they have their storefront where you go buy stuff. But another big industry they have is a cloud cloud hosting platform, where, I mean, they're raking in big bucks through that. And so, yeah, so I specialize in architect building architectures, in that space. And it's been really great. Like, I feel really fortunate that most days I get to go to work and, like, really enjoy what I'm doing. And, I definitely recognize that as a privilege.
But, yeah, that got me into, obviously, when AI started getting really big. Right? ChatGPT has been almost three years ago now. And I knew right away, like, this was going to revolutionize, the industry. The fact that it like, I could give it an English phrase of, like, what I wanted it to do, and it can give me code was fascinating. Right? That's just mind blowing. And, over the last three years, it's just gotten really good. It's gotten every year, like, they come out with a new model, and it just gets better and better. And, it's gotten to the point now, like, in my current position, Right? I'll have a task that normally would have taken me a week to knock out just by hand on my own. And leveraging AI, I can get that same task done within an eight hour workday, which is absolutely insane. Right?
And so, yeah, like, over the last couple of years, I've I was the early adopter of this technology, and I definitely see where it's going. And it just leaves this question burning in the back of my mind, like, okay. So what happens when I don't have to do much at all where it can just do it, with very little intervention for me as a as a human? And that really sparked some interesting questions, that I started to explore as an author. So I I do writing on the side, obviously. And as I was looking obviously, there's been a huge impact creative wise, like image generation. Right? We've had the technology for a couple years now where it could just generate images on the spot. And that's impacted a lot of artists, a lot of freelancers that otherwise, you know, I'd be going to a human to, like, get artwork done for things. And now I can just go straight to a tool like ChatGPT and, take the human out of the loop.
That's really remarkable in a lot of ways, but it's also kinda scary too because people depend on their ability to work for their livelihood. Yeah. And, and as I was looking at this problem of, like like, on one side, we're really excited about this because it's, oh, it's so cool. Like, look at all these things it could do. And yet there's this feeling in the back of our minds, like, what's this gonna mean for people that we're taking out of the loop of just needing human labor to get things done. Yeah. And, that was one of the thing questions I wanted to explore, with this novel that, I coauthored with AI.
And the reason I coauthored it was I wanted to explore as a creative medium. Right? There's a lot of, what we call in the industry AI slot, where people will just put in low quality of effort. The AI will spit something out, and then they'll just publish it, right, on Amazon or whatever. And, it's not good. It's not creative. It's kinda soulless content that's just regurgitating, what's been said before.
[01:20:43] Unknown:
And sometimes you can tell when you're reading something that's that's been AI generated. You you you kinda get the feeling that, you know, just that that coldness behind it. Yeah. There's no emotion to it. Yeah. It's very yeah. It's robotic, which is, you know, is fitting because it was written by a machine.
[01:20:59] Unknown:
And I wanted to explore this idea, like, okay. So what if we didn't just use it to churn out soulless content? What if, we could actually use it to amplify our ability to create? And artists do this. You know, graphic designers, I I know several people in the industry that, when they use the technology correctly, it enhances their ability to create, and which is, you know, how it should be. And so I wanted to explore this in the context of writing a novel, where could I use this technology to really create an experience for a reader that just amplifies what you would normally get, you know, for reading a standard novel.
And as I was working as I've been working with the technology, it has just blown my mind how it's first of all, advanced, because I started this project about a year and a half ago. And, the models that were out then, they're pretty advanced, but, there were still some like, as I was working with it, it was definitely difficult. I'd have to massage a lot of the output that had come through with my own thoughts and creativity. But over the last year, the models that they've been coming out with have significantly increased the quality of, the pros that it can generate when you give it a good prompt. I think it a big part of it a big lesson I've learned from this is AI is really just a mirror. It reflects our intentions and our effort that we prompt it with.
And if we use that, we could use that for good. Right? Like, if we prompt it to, I know right now in my field, a lot of people are using apps to, use AI to create things that just weren't possible before that could really help, people, like, with special needs and disabled, individuals. And I think that's really cool. And so but a part of that is we have to use it for the right reasons because Right. At the same time, you know, we can also use it to develop pathogens. We could use it to develop weapons. We could strap it to robots with guns. You know? So there's just all these concerns of what are we gonna build with this?
And, that was robot with gut with guns, and I thought of the Terminator. Yeah. Right? And that's where we all go. Like, whenever you think, like, oh, AI, Skynet. It's gonna take over. It's gonna replace us.
[01:23:16] Unknown:
And Well, there is a Skynet.
[01:23:18] Unknown:
Yeah. Like The government does have Skynet, and that's what it and that's what it's called. They they actually call that? Okay. I have Just go. I'll have to go read up on that. Yeah. You should. Yeah. And it's like it's it's a shame because, like, there's all this potential of, like, all the good things we could do with it. But at the same time, if you could do good things with it's just a tool. Like, if you could do good things with it, you can also do bad things with it. Right. And so I think one of the reasons I wrote this novel is I wanted to ask the question, where are we heading as a future in our society with this technology? Because the technology is not going away.
I talked to a lot of people. I'm like, oh, it's just it's hype. Like, it's not gonna it's gonna blow over. It's a bubble. And that may be true in the short term. Right? Like, it may be that tools like ChatTpT won't completely replace, all of human labor. Right? But you have to think of the technology kinda like the Internet. Right? If we go back to the nineties when the Internet was first coming out and you had all these, like, cat images and, like, these random rainbow websites. And nobody really knew, like, what was gonna happen with this technology. It was just kinda, oh, that's weird, but interesting. And now look at every facet of our lives revolves around, social media and podcasts and, yeah, like, consuming content.
And all that was made possible because of the beginnings of the Internet, right, that we've built on top of as a platform. And I think we seriously have to consider as a society the same is gonna be true for AI. So even if AI like, there's a lot of stuff we can't do right now. There's a lot of limitations, but it's gonna be on this platform that we're gonna build technology within the next ten, twenty years. That's just gonna blow us away. Like, just never seen before unprecedented. And so that leaves us with a question, what are we gonna do with that? Right? Because if it's we get to a point where millions of jobs are being replaced by AI, how are we going to account for those individuals that, you know, they're healthy, capable adults, but they just there's no place for them in the market.
Right? Because, the the technology can do it at a cheaper rate, and it can do it much faster than a human can. Right. And I wanted to explore some of those ideas of okay. Like, right now, I think if you ask most people, like, how are we gonna sort this out if everybody loses their job? Well, let me ask you this. Like, how how could you see humanity, like, dealing with a crisis like that where everybody's just having their job replaced?
[01:25:52] Unknown:
It's a great question. Yeah. It it it's a great question. You you would of of course, you'd automatically assume that there would be some government program that's gonna get put into place where they'll it'll be supportive. But eventually, though, you know, if people aren't generating revenue to support those things
[01:26:11] Unknown:
Where is it coming from? Right. Right. Exactly. You can't you can't keep printing money. Exactly. And that's As much as much as the government would like to. Right. Right. Yeah. Because then you just, yeah, end up with hyperinflation. And, and that's the biggest issue. So right now, like, I think if you ask most people in the field who have been looking into this problem space, they're gonna argue for something like a universal basic income. So for anyone who's not familiar with that concept, it's the idea that the government is going to subsidize people that are incapable of working. Everybody gets a minimum basic income.
And, obviously, we saw, like, an example of that with the pandemic, right, where people were getting, checks to try to hold off the issue of they couldn't work because we were all locked down. Right? Right. And,
[01:26:54] Unknown:
and, obviously, that generated a lot of debt for the country. And so but, yeah, like, a lot of people look at universal basic income as it generated a lot I don't mean to interrupt you. I'm sorry. No. Go for it. Not only did it generate a lot of debt for the country, but it also, made a lot of people
[01:27:08] Unknown:
not want to go back to work because they were getting more by staying home than they were by actually going to work. Yes. Right. And that's, yeah, that's a sad, I think, telling sign of the market of just the fact that people are under such poor conditions that, yeah, it's it's they don't even wanna go back to work. And right. And so it's an interesting problem because with universal basic income, right, like, it's very hand wavy. People say, oh, the government will just send text to everybody. It's like, okay. Like you brought up, how are they gonna fund that? Right? And they'll say, well, they'll tax the rich. Like, the rich will be owning all this technology, all this AI. It'll be generating this wealth. We just tax the rich and then, comes in through the government. Well, there's, obviously, like, there's a lot of problems with that, and we don't have to get into all of them. But, like, at the core of it, the biggest issue with universal basic income that I see is that it doesn't address the problem that you as an individual will have no ownership over anything.
You will be completely dependent on the government for your livelihood. 02/1930.
[01:28:12] Unknown:
Yeah. Agenda 02/1930. I'm sorry. That's that the the WEF has been talking about that for some years now, and and their their mantra is by 02/1930, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
[01:28:23] Unknown:
Yeah. And,
[01:28:25] Unknown:
you know, something will We have companies like BlackRock and Blackstone, all of them, they're buying up all these properties that have been mysteriously damaged, you know, from all these supposed natural disaster that just spark up out of nowhere, then they come swooping in, they buy all this stuff dirt cheap, they build, rentals, and they're just renting out to people. You know, it's it's it's right there in front of your face. Yeah. Absolutely. And yeah. And the individual has no ownership over anything.
[01:28:54] Unknown:
And, it's really it sets us up for failure. And so the idea, like, with universal basic income, that's just gonna, ex exacerbate the problem significantly, because you'll be completely dependent on the whims of the government to determine how much you're gonna get, what resources
[01:29:12] Unknown:
And if they implement these social credit scores and they do it like a a a CBDC, and that that which is, you know, if if you're not familiar with people who are listening and aren't familiar with it, you know, central bank digital currencies where the government is in control of that. And if if you I'm sure you're familiar with the term wrongthink. If you get if you if you are accused of wrongthink and they could just shut your your your electronic wallet off and you can't buy anything, you can't sell anything, you can't you won't be able to pay your bills, put food on your table, take care of your medical expenses or anything like that because they control your means to do that. Yeah. That's a January 2030. And that's the reality we're heading to right now. If we don't explore alternatives
[01:29:54] Unknown:
for individuals, again, at the, just lower income levels, we have to explore alternatives for how could we as a society share ownership over this wealth that AI is gonna generate. And so that was one of the questions I wanted to tackle in writing this novel is how could we because, like, you have utopian ideas like Star Trek where, like, we just don't use money anymore. Right? And it's like, okay. That's nice. But how do you realistically you need a medium of exchange between parties, in order to, have that trust, that, you're not no one's gonna screw each other over it. And so I wanted to, in this novel, really take a hard look at like, let's seriously consider what would an alternative economic system look like, not based on, just, the oligarchy only stuff. Because if every you know, if, the top owns all the resources of AI and they're faster and cheaper to work, where does that leave the rest of us?
And so my answer to this, like, as I've been looking and working on this novel, the term I came up with is automationism, which in a nutshell, it's the way to describe is it's collective ownership of automated production. Okay. And the whole concept behind it is you have collective ownership with your community where AI is the means of production. They manage all the labor with minimum minimal human oversight to, you know, make sure things keep running. And what got really interesting as I was exploring this idea is, I was like, okay. So, ideally, like, if you're gonna share stuff with the community, you want it to be small. Like, you want it to be because there's limitations in, like, human communication, how much we can coordinate with, like, how many people, before it just gets kinda, you know, difficult. And that's that's one of the biggest issues with government. Right? It's just so big, and there's so many branches, and there's so many, like, channels of communication people have to go through to get anything done. It makes it really difficult to make decisions to that actually benefit society. Because by the time they make decisions, like, it's, you know, it's too late. It's the layers of bureaucracy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a real problem. And it's it's just one of the limitations of human biology. Right? Like, we can only, the more channels of communication you gotta go through, it's just going to drastically drag out the time it takes to get things done. And so okay. So let's explore, you know, can we make it, this community, like, smaller, and have this collective ownership concept?
And so from this, I came up with this idea of, a cell. And you could think of a cell as, like it's kinda like a mix between a publicly traded company and a town, where you as a a shareholder, you're also a member of the community. Okay? And so you run an industry, whether it's agricultural or manufacturing. Right? There's something that you as a community, you are co owners over this, means of production. And AI is running the the labor costs. So and all the the profits that are generated by that industry flow into the, co owners of, the cell.
And it's interesting because, we actually see this today. This isn't just, kinda pie in the sky kind of stuff. We actually see this in several examples. This one I drew from when I was writing this was, the idea of, Native American casinos. So I don't know if you've never ever been out, like, on a reservation and, like, gone to a casino out there. Yeah. I haven't been out in here. Yeah. And they're all over. And what's really interesting about now every tribe's different in how they allocate the resources that's generated from it. But, there are several tribes that they'll take the profits that are generated by those casinos. And because the tribe is co owners of the land that the casino is based on, they will share the profits between all those members of the tribe.
And, actually, I know some people really close that, they were able to leave work as a result of this, and they just they get these payments, from the profit sharing. And so this was really fascinating because it's like, okay. So if AI is replacing human labor and we're not you know, we could try to cling to this idea, like, well, humans might beat robots out of something. Right? And and who knows? It could be twenty years. It could be fifty years. But I believe, personally, eventually, the technology will get to the point that robots could probably do most of what people can do from a physical labor standpoint. And so if we're heading that way, then the question becomes, okay, is there a way that we can still provide an income for individuals even though they're not able to or it's not reasonable for them to trade time for money? Because that's the biggest asset that most of us have, you know, in the working class.
You know, we don't have any capital to, like, retire off of anything. So our biggest asset is time. Right? We're trading time for money to keep a roof over our heads of food on the table, all those stuff you mentioned. And so what gets interesting though, obviously, with AI, when it can do it faster and cheaper, now time, the one resource that we in the working class had is now just, flooded with, it's just not a hot commodity anymore. Right? Because as supply goes up, the value of, that resource, goes down. And so if that is the direction we're heading in, then the question becomes, okay. So can we think of a way where individuals and citizens can still make an income without having to trade that time for money? And the only way you're gonna do that right? I think anybody who works in passive income understands this is you have to own something.
Right? You have to have ownership of something that is generating an income, and you take a portion of that. Yeah. And so I think, yeah, at a core, like, it comes down to, can we, as a society, envision this ability for us to share resources as we always teach our kids. Right? Like, it's great to share. But, like, to actually take that concept and start applying it at an economic scale where, what's really interesting is, right, so if you have these individual cells, they have their industries, they're producing some sort of good or service, and that gets exchanged in the global market for money, which then gets distributed to the individuals, the members of the cell. But what's interesting is you can start building on top of these little building blocks to create, like, a network of cells where now we're sharing co ownership not just of our industry and our goods, but we have you know, you can have a sister network that they have industry and goods, and we can now trade resources in a way that's beneficial for everybody.
And, because there's that trust there, like, it reduces, the overhead of, money. And that's where you start, like, really looking into kind of a Star Trek like situation where if everyone's co owners of everything in a legal way that, can be, you know, enforce trust between the parties, that's where you start looking at that kind of scenario where money is not as critical, you know, as it was before because now we have laws in place and resource sharing between these networks that, we can do these kind of things. But yeah. Like so that was kinda the core idea that I was exploring in the novel. And as I've been, like, going through that, it's it's definitely not feasible now. Right? Like, the technology is not there where AI can't just do everything that we're doing. But we still have to ask those questions because it's coming. Right? It's on the horizon.
And we don't know when. Right? It could be again, it might not be in our lifetimes. Like, maybe the bubble is just so big and it just turns out, like, maybe it replaces, you know, certain white collar jobs, but, you know, maybe just robotics. There's, like, this hurdle. You know, we've been doing self driving cars for over a decade now, and we're just still not there. Right? It's getting it gets a little bit closer every time, but there's just these huge hurdles to where we can just let it take the wheel. But even though it's not here yet, I think we can still start asking those questions of what kind of future do we wanna build for us and our kids? You know?
Do we wanna head down the route where the government just controls all the means of, income, because we're now without employment? Or can we see an alternative to, be able to co own and and share resources together, as communities? Anyway,
[01:38:48] Unknown:
that's, that's a high level of some of the concepts that I I explore there. Now what made you decide to write a book instead of just a white paper on this?
[01:38:56] Unknown:
I wanted to explore it from the emotional aspect of, this is what's gonna happen if we don't ask these questions. So, like, one of the characters in the novel, she lives in Los Angeles, post. Like, all this has taken place. AI has replaced most human labor, and she's a basic. She's, her and her family, they just live off of UBI. They get the payments every month, And she finds she has no purpose. Like, what do you do when there's, like, no job for her to, like, go pursue? And, like, she's trying to get into college, but, like, in the future, like, who's gonna offer student loans when
[01:39:37] Unknown:
AI just can do it for way cheaper and immediately? I don't have to wait for you to get a bachelor's degree. No. A line a line from a Star Trek movie just popped in my head when you said that. Yeah. And that is from the first movie. Do you remember, when they when they encountered V'Ger, the question was, is this all that I am? Is there nothing more? Right. I I tend to think that might be start that that would probably be a question that a lot of people would start asking themselves.
[01:40:04] Unknown:
Yeah. Like, who am I if especially because so much of our life is revolved around work. I work full time. I put forty hours in for my job, and it's and it's a big part of my life. Like, I've developed a I put a lot of time into developing these skills. Mhmm. And You have to spend more time at the workplace than you do at home with your families. Yeah. And that's mind blowing. Right? It's just it's absolutely insane. And, like, I work from home, and it's just crazy to me that most of my life is spent I work I have a little room, like, in my house, some little office space, and it's just like, that is my life. Like, I'm just sitting in these four walls, and, I'm just staring at a screen all day, and I'm writing code.
And, again, like, there's a lot of things I enjoy about the job, but still, that blows my mind that, like, the this little time that we have on this planet, like, most of it is just consumed by needing to provide for ourselves so that we don't starve and that we get a roof over our heads. And in the future, I think people are gonna look back and be like, that's crazy. That's crazy that you had to, like, work that much just so you didn't starve, just so that you, like, didn't have to be homeless. You know? I think that's gonna be like, we look back at, like, the feudal era. Like, man, how do people do that? And, like Right. This could be the same with us. Like, they're gonna look back and be like, man, how did they do that? That's crazy.
But there's a flip side of that too because because so much of our our life is, like, put into work, what happens when that's kinda taken away? Like, where do we derive our purpose? And for some people, that might be really easy. It's like, oh, I have my passion projects. Like or my family. I'm gonna spend time with my family or my pets or I'm gonna travel. Right? Some people, that's easy answer. But I think for a lot of people, more than who'd care to admit, like, they derive their value and their meaning in life from getting to go to their nine to five, like, getting to go to work.
[01:42:02] Unknown:
Yeah. We we had this I told you earlier that I I worked for New York City for twenty five years. And, you know, one of the things that we always would joke about when I first started the job, you didn't really joke about it when it came my turn to leave, was that how many people actually that we knew that retired. And because they were so used to getting up, going to work every day, doing the job every day, having some kind of a something to fulfill them throughout the course of the day, ended up passing away shortly after retirement because they they didn't have they didn't have that purpose anymore. They didn't feel that purpose, and they just deteriorated. Now, can you directly put a correlation between the two? No. I don't think you can really do that. But it just seems awfully coincidental when you know about five or six people that have done that, that's happened to. That's why when I retired, I said, I'm going to pick up a little job someplace and get my foot moving. Right. You know, but but yeah. No. I I just said that in agreement with with with what you said. You know? Yeah. I think people need to have some type some type of outlet to to to and and what are you gonna have? A whole generation of podcasters? You know, people sitting around behind a microphone. Right. Right. You know, I mean, it's that's just not gonna work. You know, people need to be productive. People were made that way. Yeah. You know, I don't know what your religious beliefs are and, you know, that's that's fine.
But, you know, I I read scripture and, you know, in the very first book of of my Bible, it says that God created man to work. And he said, six days thou shalt labor. You know? And by the sword of thy brow, you know? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's what I face. So I love my face too. So, it's a big difference. Yeah. That's true. So so, you know, so it's it's so we're built to work. We're built to be functional. We're built to do something. We can't just sit there.
[01:44:06] Unknown:
Right. You know? And And we also derive joy out of it. Right? Like, that we can't anyway. And that's the thing that's the thing that's so kind of crazy about our current economic system is that so many people are productive for what I'm gonna I won't say the wrong reason. Right? Because it's it's honorable to provide for yourself and your family. Mhmm. But it's just a shame. Like, there's this really great book that's, like, BS jobs. And this guy talks about how so many people, they don't actually do anything. Like, they go to work just to collect a paycheck, because they have to. We have to have money in our current economic system, to be able to get the things that we need.
I myself, I worked in a position like that for a year. I was with a Fortune 500 company, and they just they needed to hire people, and they hired they brought me on. They said, like, oh, we have all this stuff for you to do. I get on, and, like, I was a button I was a paper pusher. And I was just like, what am I doing here? And I was making the crazy part is I was making more money than I've ever made in any other position, as a contractor. And I'm just like the inefficiencies of our system where we create these jobs because we need jobs, but, like, we're not actually doing anything fulfilling. So where's the disconnect? Like, why why can't we figure that out? You know? And I think a lot of it has to do with, again, this idea that, we we have to have money. Right? Money but money is just a it's an idea. It's a tool that we came up with to establish trust between two parties. Like, so that if I'm gonna buy something from you, I need something that I could then turn around and buy what else whatever else I need. Right?
And we don't know each other. Right? Like, there's just too many people on the planet, so we can't, yeah, we have to establish trust somehow. And for most of human history, that's been, you know, fiat currency through a centralized government. But what's really interesting, and this is another thing I go into my novel, is we're on the verge of looking at alternative forms of currency, of, you know, crypto Mhmm. Where I'm now enforcing trust not by a government saying trust me, bro, but by the fact that I have mathematics, I have cryptography, I have a ledger that is agreed upon by every interested party that is trading on this this, exchange.
And that really opens some interesting doors for us as a society where and, obviously, the government's terrified about this. They go to great lengths to try to, dissuade people from, you know, being able to set up stuff like this. But in the future, we can imagine groups and collectives that share, resources completely outside of the US dollar. It's just not a fact. Now, obviously, if they trade with external parties from their internal community, they'll they'll exchange it for whatever fiat currencies they need to. But it gets really interesting because now, I can establish that trust with my community without the need for, a huge centralized government to tell me what I can and cannot buy. You know?
And that, I think, mixed with AI is gonna open up some really fascinating if we if we can ask those questions of what we wanna build with this, it can, open some really interesting doors for us as a, as a society to operate, in a way that's been unprecedented. Because until now, like, the only way you could establish trust is you had to have a third party, again, saying, trust me, bro. Like, this currency is great. And so, yeah, it'll be it'll be really interesting, to see to see where that goes. But
[01:47:39] Unknown:
How how how fast do you think it's gonna take before this AI auto automation starts really wiping out entire industries?
[01:47:49] Unknown:
It's a really good question. I will say with the limit so from my vantage point, right, as a software engineer, there are a lot of limitations with, large language models in particular. So tools like ChatGPT that really prevent it. It they're really huge hurdles. And the biggest one is, hallucinations. So anyone who's not familiar with this concept is this idea that, the AI can tell you stuff that's just total BS. Mhmm. And it can tell you really convincingly, like, that, yeah, this is true, but it's not. And the reason it's really fascinating, it's just a limitation of the technology where it has to say something.
It has to output something. And so when you're prompting it for questions that it doesn't have sufficient training data on or it's maybe like a weird, space that it hasn't like, the data doesn't really connect, it's just gonna make something up. And, and people do that too. I like to joke, like, humans do that too. Right? Like, sometimes, like Sure. We like to oh, yeah. Sure. But just think of how many people actually
[01:48:55] Unknown:
go to something like like, like Grok or Mhmm. Or ChatGPT. And whatever it spits out, they take as well, that's fact. Right. Without doing anything to go check it to make sure that they got it right. Even though there are the disclaimers on on I I I on both that says, you know, we get it wrong sometimes. Yep.
[01:49:16] Unknown:
Do you know? How many people actually just take that as gospel and say, okay. That well, well, AI said it, so it must be true. Yeah. I just read a story. It was fascinating. This, like, six year old guy, he was looking to replace salt in his diet. So he asked you how to eat b t, hey. How can I replace salt? And it gave him a substitute. I'm not a chemical guy, so I don't remember. It's like potassium bromide or something, which is used in insecticides. Yeah. Yeah. And the guy didn't fact check it, and he had been taking it for, like, three months, and he ended up poisoning himself. I think he survived, but, you know, he had to go to the hospital. Okay. And it's just like, that's the danger of, like, if you don't fact check what this thing's telling you. And this happens in my work too a lot. Right? I will tell it, hey. Here's the architecture I have. I need you to build something like this. And it gets me most of the way there.
But the parts where it gets wrong, it's dangerously wrong. Like, the things that could really blow up the system and do some damage. And so, yeah, that, going back to your original question. Right? Until we find a way to overcome that particular hurdle, at least reduce the frequency in which it occurs, which is gonna be a huge challenge. Because, again, it's all based on the training data that the model has in it. So Mhmm. If we're building new tools that we've never done before, because now we have AI and we're trying to get into a new space, I think it's gonna get harder and harder for the model to keep up. That this that's just my intuition. I could be wrong. But, but, again, it comes down to until we reduce this, hallucination effect in these models, that's gonna be a huge hurdle, which is good, honestly, for society. It gives us time to, again, ask these questions. Let's figure out what we're gonna do with this, before it happens. Right? Because we don't wanna be caught in the middle of it and be like, oh, we should probably figure out like, millions of people losing jobs. We should we should probably figure out, you know, how we're gonna, help people make, you know, a living.
But, yeah, if I was to guess off the top of my head, like, I I don't think they're insurmountable hurdles. And what's gonna again, it comes back to my Internet analogy. Today, like, we just see it, and we're like, that's cool. Like but ten years from now, right, the things we're gonna build on top of that is gonna blow our minds. And you're gonna have new forms of models. Like, again, ChatGPT is a what's called a large language model. You're gonna have new breakthroughs of different types of models that do different things. They have different limitations. And what ends up happening is you're gonna have these things working in tandem, and they're gonna go back and forth and share knowledge and insights to then increase their ability to perform in industries. And that's where we're gonna and it could happen really fast. That's the dangerous part or not dangerous, but just kinda nerve wracking thing is, technology is an exponential curve.
Right? And we see this in the last couple decades. Like, we're way more productive now than we were, you know, twenty, thirty years ago. Mhmm. And that's just gonna keep growing exponentially. And so that's where it gets a little nerve wracking because we could be saying, oh, maybe ten years from now, maybe they have a breakthrough in three years from now that we're just not expecting. They found some new way to mix the models together. And now all of a sudden, they can do, you know, most of white collar jobs. And that's yeah. So time will tell. There's obviously no way to know because, obviously, if it's a breakthrough, we're not gonna see it coming.
But it all comes back to my point that we have to take the time to ask those questions of how we're gonna use it. Well, until they have AI robots actually doing plumbing work, you're always gonna need a plumber. Yeah. And honestly, that may be where we head to. I definitely see white collar jobs more at risk because it could be done through a screen, You know? Whereas anything in the physical world that requires skills, physical skills, that's gonna be much, much harder to replicate within robotics. Although they're they're, you know, they're working on it. Right? They're not gonna stop. That's the crazy part. Right? Like, even though today we laugh and, like, oh, yeah. The robots just fall down. They can't do much.
I mean, it's it's just a matter of time. But you're absolutely right. Like, I may get to the point where I'm out of a job software wise, and I go being a carpenter or something, you know, go work with my hands. But, yeah, but time will tell. Eventually, you know, I do see robotics getting to the point that blue collar work will also be replaceable. So I don't I don't think there's any major hurdle that's gonna keep any job safe that that I can think of. So we've we've kind of already talked about some of the things that people
[01:53:49] Unknown:
would be afraid of with an AI driven future. But, and a lot of those fears are justified without a doubt. But on the flip side, do you think there's anything that we could be excited about with a society that that where where work really is maybe optional, not necessarily completely abandoned?
[01:54:09] Unknown:
Yeah. Absolutely. Not, so, like, in my novel. Right? So I mentioned one of the characters. Right? She grows up in a UBI based America. But then there's the other side of the equation where there's this automationist society, and it follows, kind of what does it look like there when people are sharing those resources. And one of the biggest benefits, in my opinion, is health care. Because if we can get technology to the point that you have doctors and nurses that are, you know, robotic, and, again, it could be way off in the future, but, you know, eventually, I think we'll get there. Like, if unless we just blow ourselves up. Like, eventually, technology will get to the point that, your health care provider could be robotic, and they could diagnose things way more accurate than a human doctor can. And that's really exciting. Right? Because I I I don't know about you, but, like, I've seen a lot of issues with health care in in America.
I've kinda like, in my own family, like, I've had some issues where, kinda got screwed over, you know, by the system. Like, we pay for these insurance premiums, and then they just kick you to the curb, you know, and it's just totally it's corrupt. It's a scam, but we don't have alternatives because, like, I can't just not have insurance. And then I have some major medical, you know, I'll go bankrupt. I think that's, like, one of the biggest causes of bankruptcy in America right now is just health care, which is ridiculous. Like, there's no reason why we can't, find a way to make that reasonable, you know, for for everybody to afford. We have the technology.
We have the resources. And so I think one of the biggest benefits I see with this technology is is health care. Because when we co own these resources as I talked about, like, you can imagine a cell, like, not only do they co own the industry, but they also co own the local medical facilities. And if I get sick or, like, I need to go in for care, I don't have to think, oh, how much is this gonna cost me? It's like I'm a coowner. Like, I I can go in, get the care that I need, and the labor is paid for by the automation. That's what's so fascinating. Right? Because like any other economic system or any other social structure before, if you were going to have somebody pay for the late or, like, if you're gonna exploit the labor, you had to do that through slavery. Right? Like, because somebody has to pay the price for people to benefit from work.
Mhmm. But we're reaching this unprecedented space where now it's not a person that's doing the work to help you recover. You know? It's it's a machine. It's an intelligent machine that can, again, diagnose you, treat you, do all these things that you need. It has the resources available to give you the care that you need, everybody the care that they need. And for me, that's super exciting because I want my kids to grow up in a world where they're not afraid to have to go get, like, a check or, you know, like, go to the doctor because, you know, they're not feeling good. Or they have, like, like, issue where they gotta go to the emergency room and, like, like, how am I gonna afford this? I I kinda I look for the day that people can not have to ask that question to go get the medical care that they need because that's just it's a shame. It's a shame that we're at that point. And I do think we can make it better.
[01:57:24] Unknown:
Well, I think we're at that point now. I think there are a lot of people right now that that weigh the weigh the bet weigh the benefit of actually going to the doctor and having to deal with the insurance issues, the premiums, the payments, and so on and so forth. I mean, how many times have you been to the doctor where you've used your insurance and then a few weeks later you get a bill in the mail because your insurance only paid $50 on a bill that was $700 Yeah. You know? And now you gotta come up with this additional money to pay even though you're paying every month to get into, you know, for the insurance. Another subject I know altogether.
[01:57:58] Unknown:
Sure. Sure. I mean but, again, these are the questions we have to ask, because they're not gonna get better by themselves. Right? And I think the other thing is, like, we have to remember that we as the people, like, we in this country, we have more power than we think we do. It's just a matter of coordination. That's where it gets difficult. Right? Because we have to be able to coordinate. And I the Internet has gone a long way to lower the barrier that people like you and me, like, we're having this conversation now. Other people, they can have those conversations to figure out, like, how can we make this better? But we have to have those conversations. We have to talk about that. Because if we don't, it's not gonna get better.
There's no incentive. Capital the thing that's interesting about capitalism is it's not good or bad. It's amoral. It's a framework in which humans, decide how we're gonna share resources. Mhmm. And the biggest kind of blind spot that I see with capitalism is it only values a human life so far as that life can generate capital. Right? Like Interesting. And that's that's really what it comes down to. If you cannot generate capital in the lens of capitalism, you're worthless. But this gives a huge oversight, which has been just a huge gap within humanity for since the beginning of time, which is who bears responsibility for the individuals that cannot generate capital through no fault of their own. Right? You have children, the elderly, disabled people, in the future, people that are replaced by AI.
Mhmm. You have all these people that, like, through the lens of capitalism, if you cannot generate capital, you're deemed worthless, Which first of all is super depressing, like, if that was true, which it's not. And we all know that. But we are working under the incentives of a system that has deemed that is the measuring stick by which we determine the value of life.
[01:59:54] Unknown:
Are you familiar with the with the gentleman by the name of and I use the word gentleman in a loose context. Okay. Yuval Noah Harari?
[02:00:03] Unknown:
Yes.
[02:00:04] Unknown:
Yeah. He wrote the book Sapiens, I believe. Right? Is that Yeah. He he was in one of his books. I I actually today, I I wasn't really paying attention to it. And I just you know, you do you ever just, like, put the TV on in the background and it's just running? You're just not really watching it. It's just playing. Right. Well, I saw he was doing an interview on a podcast, and, this show that I was watching was running a clip of that, and he was talking exactly the same thing that you and I are talking about right now. Those people whose jobs are are removed and their purpose is removed because of AI.
And I wasn't exactly too thrilled with the response that he got because then he basically said that those people are no longer worth anything in society. And and of course, you know, Harari and that crowd, they're they're in they're very much interested in transhumanism. And they are very interested in depopulation. And, so so they'll look they'll look for any excuse whatsoever to to to lop off a couple of million people. There there no no qualms about that. And I don't say that flippantly either. I'm being unfortunately very serious. Right. So he was talking about the exact same thing that you and I are talking about right now. What about those people who have had AI take their jobs. Now, well, okay. So we retrain them, so then they become cashiers at like say Walmart. I think that was the example he used. But then you have AI takes that job.
Right? So you go from a skilled labor to unskilled labor to what at that point? Right. Right. You know, that's I think that's a very, very scary prospect.
[02:01:48] Unknown:
Yeah. It is. And it's a shame that the answer to so many people is, yeah, You're worthless now. Tough luck. And that is just ridiculous because the technology is there to make life better for everybody. Mhmm. And so anybody who answers that, it's it's so fascinating to me, like, human nature. Right? Like, as long as you're not the one that's being screwed over, it's like, you know, let's let's do that. Let's do that. I'm so sorry for you. But the reality is that life does have value outside of capital. Anyone says different, like, probably not gonna like hanging around you because, like, if you just see money as a means to an end, like, your life's gonna be pretty shallow because there's just so much more to this existence than, this idea that I have to be productive. I have to generate capital in order to be valuable as an individual.
And quite frankly, that is gonna get challenged, by and it's gotta be by us. It's gotta be by the people who don't own the automation. But the only way to fight against such a, like, idea is you gotta unite. Like, you have to find a way to share those resources, so that we can be self sustaining. Right? Because it one of the biggest things about, like, a cell is it's a self sustaining economic unit. They generate all the profits they need for all the members that belong to it. And then from that, like, everybody's provided for. And now your value as an individual is no longer coupled to your ability to generate income.
And I'm I'm hopeful that we could figure that out. I I don't know how widespread it would be. I don't know if, something like that would scale. I think there's a lot of challenges to it for sure, which I explore in the book. But I think it's still even if it's not automationism, right, there are alternatives. Like, capitalism, like, it started somewhere. Right? It didn't it hasn't been around forever, and it's not gonna last forever. It just can't. Especially, AI is gonna challenge everything that we've assumed about, the value of of human labor.
And so we have to find an alternative to, make that make sense or else somebody is gonna define that for us. And, that's kind of future I wanna avoid.
[02:04:12] Unknown:
Well, we we've talked about a lot of pretty heavy, heavy issues tonight, so I don't wanna end the show on a on a downer. So, who's someone that you respect right now? What are they doing that inspires you?
[02:04:24] Unknown:
Oh, man. That's a really good question. Someone that really inspires me, actually, believe it or not, is, Jordan Peterson. I've I've followed a lot. It's very device he's a divisive individual, right, depending on what side he's on. But he his work helped me a lot when I was, like, you know, years ago. Like, I picked up his book, 12 rules for life. And it is it's a great book. And it was amazing to me how just reading words off of a page could alter my mindset of what I was capable of achieving and and what's worth striving for. And, honestly, that has inspired me a lot as a writer to explore, like, you know, even though it's just words on a page, if it can inspire, like, a new generation to think differently than what we're doing learn from our mistakes and build something better, I think that's really powerful. And so, anyway, definitely somebody that's, been influenced in my life.
[02:05:23] Unknown:
Outstanding. Alright. So where can the audience go to get some more information about you, get your book, follow you around?
[02:05:29] Unknown:
Yeah. So, again, the book is called We Can Be Perfect, The Paradox of Progress. It's available for preorder now on Amazon. I actually have a sample of the first chapter. I think can I put this in the chat right here? Do all your viewers see? Yeah. Or if you wanna put it down, but if you could put in the comments after oh, I didn't see we had chats. Oh my goodness. Look at that. Yeah. I'll just put it here if anyone has access to that. Yeah. Go right ahead. That's a little link that takes you to a free sample of the first chapter. You can read it, and, find out where to preorder it through that.
And, yeah. Again, it comes out November 4, and, super excited to just see what people think about it. So Alright.
[02:06:10] Unknown:
Outstanding. Why is that up on the screen there? I don't know. But okay. I don't long as they don't see it, that's good. Okay. Alright. So, Landon, thank you again for spending the night with us. I really appreciate it. This This has been great information. And to the folks in the chat, I'm sorry I didn't get to it. I didn't realize I had the chat window closed. But, all of the information that we talked about tonight, locations, books, Amazon, we'll put all those links in the show notes. I think I have your website in the in the show notes. I don't think I have the Amazon link, so I'll make sure that gets in there. Yeah. I'll make sure you got it too. No. I have it, actually. Oh, okay. Great. It's on the it's on the PodMatch page. So Oh, perfect. So I'll just grab it. I can grab it from there. It's not not a problem at all. And, I I would really encourage you to check it out. Check out the book. It's really interesting. The the little bit of the first chapter that I looked at was fascinating.
So please check it out. This is a really important subject matter too. I mean, folks, this is this is the future and it's here now. You know, we need to pay attention to these things and ask these questions. And like Landon said, we have to keep talking about these things. It's incredibly important to do that. Landon, thank you so much for being with us tonight. Have a great night and we look forward to getting you back on again another time. Awesome. Sounds great. Thank you, Joe. It's been great. Okay. Got it. All right, folks. Let's go let's go wrap this thing up here. So, just a couple of quick announcements. Don't forget to sign up the programming announcements email list that we have going on on the website.
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[02:11:47] Unknown:
Happy
Transmitting live from the asylum studios deep in the bowels of Southwest Texas, it's the Joe Rooz Show, the show where we talk about anything and everything where nothing is sacred, nothing is watered down, and nothing is PC.
[00:04:42] Unknown:
Alright. Hey, folks. This is Joe Rooz. It is nineteen zero three hours on 08/22/2025. And as always, we are coming to you live from the pimple on the backside of Texas, the beautiful city of Eagle Pass and doing the very best we can to bring you the best quality talk radio we could muster without all the bluster. Welcome to the Joe Rooz show. Alright. Hey. Intro music tonight by the Angelics. I wanna say thank you so much, guys, for allowing us to use the track. Really appreciate it. Alrighty. Folks, hope you guys had a enjoyable Thursday at least.
Don't let the voice fool you, I'm feeling a lot better. Definitely feeling a lot better here. So, looking forward to it. Had my final COVID test today, and, praise the Lord, it's negative, and that means I get to go back to work on Monday. So we're excited about that. Getting a little bit of cabin fever here. You should have seen some of the pictures I was sending people today. Heads wrapped in towel and head wrapped in towels and all kinds of stupid stuff. And then, of course, I get to mess around in the studio and then change things around as you can probably tell. You know, camera's a little different. Color texture's a little different. Everything's a little different. But, hey, that's alright. You know, it's it keeps me busy.
Tries to help me. It it, it it helps me think when I do these things. And to give you an update as well, we've been playing around with some, streaming software. So we we've been playing around with OBS. We've been playing out with Meld. Really, getting some progress with Meld. So we'll we'll be doing a a show with that, in the next couple of days, and we'll let you know how that all works out. So, thanks to the folks that have made that made that recommendation. It's really working out pretty well. Very simple to use, actually, where, you know, with OBS, it's a great platform. Don't get me wrong. But OBS is, like, you know, you had six or seven clicks just to do one thing that you do in two clicks, maybe three with with, Meld. So it's a little bit faster. I think it's a little bit easier, to to use if you're just a one man operation like we are here. But enough of that stuff, I digress. We do have two guests with us tonight. Really looking forward to getting into these, conversations tonight. And, but, of course, before we do that, we do have some just small housekeeping stuff that we need to do as usual. So if you would, just head over to our website, joeroos.com.
That's joeroos.com. When you get up there, just make sure you look for that contact section. Open up the web form. Let us know whatever's on your heart, whatever's on your mind. Any questions, comments, cares, concerns that you might have, any ideas or suggestions that you might have for guests or topics that you like to discuss, we always wanna hear from you and get your assessment on things, see what direction you guys wanna go. Also, if you don't wanna use the web form, totally fine by me. You can always email me directly at [email protected]. That's [email protected].
Also, don't forget to, head over to our support page. Why? Because this is a value for value show, and if you receive anything of value from what we're putting out here, all we're asking is that you return that value in the form of a donation. It could be your time, your talent, your treasure. It could be all three. It could be one of the three. It could be two of the three. It doesn't matter. We prefer all three, if possible. If you have the means to do it, that'd be great. We appreciate that. So, just head over to the website on the support page, and we'll get into more details about that in just a little bit.
Alright, folks. So I wanna tell you about our sponsor, Ezra Healing. Now on, on Tuesday, we had our show with the CEO of Ezra Healing, and I hope you guys found that to be interesting. It it's kinda different for me considering we talked about menopause. You know, I don't have to necessarily deal with that problem, but some of you guys do, and that's fine. That's okay. We forgive you for it, for making me have to talk about it, but we did. It's a good show. I thought it was a good show. So I hope you guys were able to check that out. But, our CEO of, Ezra the CEO of Ezra Healing is our sponsor. So we, we wanna tell you about what they're doing there. So Ezra Healing is a substantial part of the new wellness paradigm currently being born, in North America and around the globe. The global citizenry are no longer satisfied with the sick care version of so called health care. Band aid medicine, endlessly treating symptoms rather than the root causes must be abandoned as soon as possible.
Patient centric care has to be the priority. Would be nice if this thing worked. Right? My little screen here. It's gonna be fussy. We need to trans we need to we need to transition towards the do no harm model of private care that places humanity at the forefront of real health care and real wellness care. In this new model, your entire lifestyle is examined, analyzed to promote, and support the totality of your body's integrated systems. Ezra Healing is a solutions based health promotion and disease prevention grassroots movements group grassroots movement that is always evolving to best serve you and your family. Now, if you want more information about Ezra Healing, there's the link right there on the website, ezrahealing.com.
That's ezrahealing.com. So make sure you check it out. All right. Now, if you've been following along, you know that this is pretty much the time and point where we cut through all the noise, we dig into what's really shaping our lives, what's really shaping our culture and what's really shaping our future. Now, my guest tonight is someone who has lived the grind, built a business with his bare hands, and walked through the fire to discover to discover what really makes men tick. He's not a product of coaching mills or polished seminars. He's a systems thinker, a coach, and a voice who isn't afraid to expose the patterns behind the chaos.
Jake Griffin is the creator of the DSIX framework, a transformation system rooted in scripture and modern psychology that helps men reprogram their minds, reclaim their leadership, and scale business without losing their soul. He's the founder of the Hero Alliance, host of the Jake Griff the Jake Giffin podcast, and a man whose mission is to help leaders and families break free from cultural programming and align their lives with God's design. Tonight, we're gonna deep dive into identity, culture, politics, and purpose. This isn't a mode this isn't motivational fluff. This is about rewiring how you think and how you live.
Jake, welcome to the Joe Russo. It's great to have you here, my friend. That is a crazy introduction, my brother. Wow.
[00:11:51] Unknown:
Like that, With my bare hands even. I like the, I like the explanation of the menopause. I mean, I know you have women that list that watch your show, so it's, I know that you're really dealing with they're dealing with menopause. My wife currently is in perimenopause, so that's fun. Okay. You know, for you guys out there that are dealing with hopefully, you're not dealing. Are they dealing with mandopause? Is that a thing?
[00:12:17] Unknown:
Actually, it's, men go through andropause. That that I've learned. So, I've heard of it. Yeah. It's it was kind of new to me too, but, but yes, men go through, andropause. And, so I guess I guess that that's our excuse when we wanna get moody and we wanna get cranky and we wanna just, you know, kinda blow everybody off like like the ladies do when they get their symptoms of their menopause. Ezra Health teaching us all kinds of new stuff. That's cool. Hey. But, you know, honestly, though, they're they're a great bunch of people. I I've I've had some really good interactions with with the staff up there. They're fantastic. They really know their stuff, and, their CEO, Svetlana Rylkoff, she I don't know if you've heard the show or anything, but she's a former nurse up in British Columbia. She was fired because, she refused the COVID-nineteen mRNA vaccine and, or gene therapy, like I call it. Yeah.
So, so she was fired for that and then, through a series of other issues, you know, she stepped out and she created this this company called Ezra Healing and she's doing very well with it and she's helping a lot of people. So, we were really her. Really blessed. We I hosted her on a show one day. We just kinda really hit it off well, and, we talked about sponsoring. And she's she became one of our sponsors, and we appreciate that very much. That's very nice. Preventative men medicine, man. That is the
[00:13:44] Unknown:
that's the future. Right? I mean, once and and as soon as quantum computing becomes viable in the next maybe ten years or however long it's gonna take, quantum computing is gonna identify gene, customized gene medicine, like, within seconds.
[00:14:01] Unknown:
So everything's gonna be custom by the time that breaks out. So that's good. She's on the cutting edge, man. Good for you. Oh, yeah. Sure. And and the whole do no harm model of, of medicine really is important too. You know, treating the patient rather than, you know, the symptoms and and getting to the root cause of the problem rather than just dealing with the surface problems. It's it's really it's it's a great it's a great program that she she runs there, and I I think she's doing really good work. Isn't it interesting though that the med that modern medicine today
[00:14:29] Unknown:
is sworn to do no harm, and yet they have no clue as to what they're doing in regards to actual remedies or actual prevention for for sicknesses or diseases or anything else? It's like they've sworn to do no harm, but then they have, you know, a book full of, things that keep them from being sued Mhmm. You know, indemnifying them from any kind of damage. It's like, well, if you're sworn to do no harm, stand behind it. But Yeah. Exactly. I, yeah, I can go off on a I, you know, I spent last I spent a long a lot of time last year in in in the hospital get I was forced surgeries, surgeries last year, so I kinda know a little bit, like, so I can get on a soapbox and start Well, we we can we can promote
[00:15:20] Unknown:
that subject in a little bit if you like. Usually, I I like to ask, like, a first question. Maybe you wanna get into it with the first question. It's, you know, tell us something, most people don't know about you but should know about you. What they should know about it? Most people don't know I'm really good at ping pong. But,
[00:15:40] Unknown:
Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I had the, you know, I I had the, unfortunate fortunate back in the days, probably twenty something years ago now. I ended up doing federal time for something I didn't do. And I was in there I was in the I was inside for, you know, two and a half years. It was minimum security. It wasn't a big deal, but, me and a buddy found the ping pong table, started running drills, and, yeah, I got really good at ping pong. So Nice. Well, I federal tourism system.
[00:16:10] Unknown:
I was listening to to, one of your podcasts. Actually, I was I was watching it on YouTube, and, you you you had you had mentioned that you were talking to to another gentleman who'd also had spent some some time in jail, in prison. And, so I was listening to that. I was I was really fascinated, you know, by the stories that you you were sharing with them. And I was actually gonna ask you about those things a little bit later on, but, you know, we can get into that, you know, whenever you're ready.
[00:16:39] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, whenever I mean, I so what people should know about me? I don't know what they should know about me. They don't know that I'm good at ping pong. I'm probably a little rusty now, so you know? But within a week on a table, I'd probably be able to compete with anybody that's at least a little less than professional.
[00:16:56] Unknown:
Okay. So I used to play I used to play racquetball, which is not exactly the same thing as ping pong, unless you wanna count yourself as being a ping pong ball bouncing off the four walls in racquetball. But, racquetball I I loved racquetball. Racquetball was always me. So, and I've tried my hand at ping pong. I'm I'm not gonna say I was good at it. I had my moments, but I I can't say that I was consistently good at it. I was definitely better at the the racquetball.
[00:17:21] Unknown:
It is like anything else, whether you're doing a racquet sport or handball or any any kind of sport, anything that takes not even hand eye coordination, anything that is developing habits requires repetition. And so you know? And, you know, if you're disciplined enough upfront to run your drills and to think about running not just playing ping pong. Right? It's not just about, let's get on a table and play, and then in twenty years, we'll be really good. It's about you know, in this particular case, it was, can I backhand straight down the line? Can I go cross court? Can I forehand? And we did a lot of those types of drills so many times that we were you know, you get to a to a point where you can call your shots.
It becomes automatic. A lot a lot of why we make decisions the way that we do as as human beings is is because we've trained our flesh. We've trained ourselves to make those types of decisions over and over again. Ping pong is no different.
[00:18:21] Unknown:
Yeah. So what's your, what's your go to beverage to help you unwind at the end of the day?
[00:18:27] Unknown:
I drink milk, dude. I like I like milk. Yeah. They, first, I used I Everybody I've asked that question to, nobody said milk ever. That's that's the first. Yeah. I like milk. I drink milk pretty much every night. That's my it's like habitual. If I start running out of milk, I I kinda panic for some reason. I'm not sure why. I used to enjoy it, especially in the summertime, if it got when it gets really hot like it is today, I used to really enjoy, like, a Heineken or or a beer. Mhmm. But the hospital last year murdered one of my kidneys, and so I'm trying to preserve the one I have left
[00:19:08] Unknown:
I gotcha. By not by not drinking. So I gotcha. I gotcha. Well, milk does do a body good. That's that's at least what they tell us. And It does. Yep. And, and I and I know what you mean about milk, you know, running, running low on milk. I don't know if it's because of my grandmother. You know, grandmother went through the depression era and all that stuff. But as soon as, as soon as I'm down to like a half a gallon of milk, I'm panicking, but I gotta get to the store and get some more. And I have to have at least at least two gallons of milk in the fridge at all times. Oh, yeah. How old are you? I am 54.
[00:19:41] Unknown:
Yeah. So we're so here so here's interesting. Because I'm 52. I just turned 52 a couple days ago, and we're of the same era, and and we're suffering the same panic or or discomfort when we're running out of milk. And and I think it coincides with that with that brilliant milk campaign they did thirty years ago. Right. Yes. Got Milk. Right? And That's right. Yes. You got the their panic there's a panic, and that was, that's there, man.
[00:20:14] Unknown:
I forgot about that. I I I the Got Milk campaigns. Yes. They got us. Like, I I remember the face on the on the milk the milk carton. I I I remember the milk that does your body good, but I didn't remember that one. That was in that's good. That's good. Yeah. There's
[00:20:28] Unknown:
yeah. There's that that one, you know, the one where the guy had just eaten a big piece of chocolate cake and then he was on the radio show. He was gonna win a bunch of cash or something. But but he had a face full of cake and he couldn't wash it down. He'd and he he didn't have any milk. He lost out on a bunch of cash. So I think that goes through my mind every time my milk gets low. That's true. I don't know who's gonna I don't know who's gonna call me and tell me, hey, man. If you can answer this stupid question, I got a million dollars for you. I mean, now I'm I'm programmed. That's great.
[00:21:00] Unknown:
And so I I was looking over your your information on PodMatch, and, it says that you built your first business in pest control, which which is really honestly an industry a lot of people overlook. They shouldn't because it's an important part. It's an important industry. What did those what did those years teach you about your leadership and resilience and faith?
[00:21:20] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, I'm still building it. I mean, it's still it's still ongoing. And so what it taught me what what it's teaching me about resilience and faith, what's teaching me about resilience is there's a lot of suffering any business that you're gonna start. There's you go into it most of the time, you go into it with these rose colored glasses. You know, you see some of these some of these guys that you worked for, and and I've worked for a lot of smart smart people. I've also worked for a lot of dumb people. And so you see the dumb people doing pretty well, and you think, well, I can I could do that at least half as you know, I could probably do it at least half as well as they're doing it?
And, when you so you start your own business thinking, well, I'm gonna be you know, I'll be fine, and then you start learning all the stuff you didn't know before you got into it. And, those things tend to be expensive surprises, honestly. And so, when I started this in 02/2016, Halo Home Services in 02/2016, it was rodent exclusions, doing doing rodent exclusions in a in a way. It's hard to innovate in this industry because, you know, it's been around for so long. The nice thing is that most of it is aging, and so most of the guys that are in it are doing it like they like their grandfathers did it. Right. So they're still, like, setting traps and kinda doing that in order to get the the recurring services. Right? So if I stop by your house every month and check traps for $60, then then that's a service. But if I seal up all the openings and keep the rats from getting into your house, well, that's a remedy.
And while that remedy costs more than the trapping initially, long term, it's much cheaper. It's not a great it's important for the homeowner. Right? So in our model, we we stick with if it's aesthetically pleasing and it's functional. So whatever we do can't distract from the look of the house. Okay. So a lot of people put up haphazard screens or ugly foams or whatever. You know, the problem with what we do is it's so good that there's no reoccurring revenue. So one of the things that you learn in business is why chiropractors never fix you, why doctors never fix you, why pharmaceutical companies don't wanna fix you. It's because as soon as you're fixed, your your source of revenue dries up. Right.
[00:23:54] Unknown:
And so we're you know? It's interesting that you said that because that's exactly what we were talking about, with the do no harm model. Mhmm. You know, it it it's a point that I bring up regularly, especially with the doctors. It's like you go to the doctor because you have high blood pressure. They put you on a medication, which really you don't need to you shouldn't have to be on forever. I mean, it should be just a stop gap to help you get to a healthier lifestyle. So you don't need the medication, but yet that medication has side effects that require another medication, and that medication has side effects that require another medication. And it's just a constant cycle. And and, of course, the pharmaceutical companies are the first ones there with the with the solution to your problem, which is another medical and it's just a vicious cycle and it's it's just exactly like what you said, you know, at revenue stream that they depend on that the count on and that they want to keep keep flowing in because if you're healthy.
[00:24:47] Unknown:
Well more nefarious than that because, you know, in in my industry, in the pest control industry, you know, we get a lot of our we get a lot of our chemicals, you know, from places like Dow. Right. Right. Dow, I think, is the same company that makes ibuprofen. You know? And so they're so from from beginning to end, the you have chemical companies that are creating these things that on one side are doing a great service. Right? Like, if you get rid of the fleas that are feeding on the rats, then then you mitigate disease. That's important. Right? It's a it's an important role your pest control company is doing. If they're doing it responsibly, it's important. But at the same time, those chemicals get into if they're not used properly or even if even when they're used properly, sometimes they'll get into the water source or sometimes they'll get into the air. Sometimes they'll affect the house around them, then that causes some kind of physiological response Right. That then the same company that made the chemical sells you the pharmaceutical that will try to keep that physiological response at bay without actually fixing it. Yeah. So it's a it's kind of a it's I say it's nefarious. I don't know if they're doing it on purpose, but it's it's at very at very least, it's kind of a subconsequence of having good pest control and good chemicals on one hand. Yeah. You end up getting sick or contaminating the world on the other. You gotta be careful. But
[00:26:21] Unknown:
Yeah. Oh, for sure. But I I don't know. I see. I I I I become so jaded ever since ever since, 2020
[00:26:30] Unknown:
Yeah.
[00:26:30] Unknown:
That, I don't trust them at all. And I think that everything they did that they do, at least at the ground level is, with with intent to do harm. And and it's Yeah. You know, to to keep you going. So it's one of those things. Call me call me a conspiracy theorist if if you like. I I don't mind. It's okay. Well, I'm with you on it. I I'm I'm with you on it. And since 2020
[00:26:53] Unknown:
and and even before then, I was kind of a big advocate for what's considered, integrated pest management, which is habitat modification, changes in the environment, removal of food sources or moisture, things like that in order to mitigate the pest. But, and we even do a lot of that now. That's kinda what we specialize in, and we've moved towards more readily over the last several years to natural remedies or non, nonhazardous chemicals. There's some instances where you just get an outbreak of ants and you just wanna eliminate the entire colony on the property. Well, you know, you you break out the big guns for that. So, you know, but we use we try to use some of the more natural stuff, try to like, probably what, Ezra Health is doing with, with with preventative medicine. You know, we're trying to go through houses and seal up the openings and make sure, ants and roaches and things can't get in and then deal with the situations in the yard to make sure that, you know, they don't maybe the they'll find a better house next door, you know, with a with an unkept yard. So, you know, we're doing, you know, we're doing our best not to use as many chemicals and get people sick as possible.
[00:28:14] Unknown:
Yeah. I I work in a nursing facility at my regular job, and, we have pest control services on a monthly basis, so on and so forth. And and it it's similar to that as well. I mean, they they have to be so careful about what they're putting down, and it has to be, you know, specifically made to go into a nursing facility for for other contraindications and so on and so forth. It's a complicated business, to be honest with you. I mean, people think it's just you go out there with a can of bug spray, you spray stuff. It's it's it's really very it's not it's not an easy business to be in. I I have a good friend of mine who's, out here in in Eagle Pass who's, in in pest control, as as this is business.
And, I I see I see the aggravation that he goes through at times. But, Yeah. It's rough. Yeah. But, Jake, so you you you know, you didn't go to seminary. You you didn't study under any kind of real mastermind or anything like that. You basically got to where you are today through just slugging it out real world grit. What was the turning point where your personal struggles turned into a mission to help other men?
[00:29:11] Unknown:
Yeah. More well, I went to bible college, but I didn't, yeah, I didn't go to seminary. You know, I'd always had there's always been an you know, even when I was a kid, I was like, am I gonna be a psychologist? Maybe I'll be a psycho I like helping people. Mhmm. I like I like the brain. It's fascinating to me. Every the reason people do what they do, the behaviors, all that is super fascinating. It's and so I've always been fascinated in that. I looked at I looked at ministry as being kind of the avenue by which to fulfill that on even a deeper level, on a spiritual level, but that never, you know, that never materialized for one reason or another. I didn't have a high enough degree or whatever it was.
And so, you know, we went went 02/2005. The wife and I went to Palmdale to plant a church. Palmdale's High Desert Los Angeles to plant a church. Didn't quite go as well as we thought it would have gone. It's kind of like the the rose colored glasses you start businesses with. Right? You're gonna like, we're gonna start a church, and it's just gonna be massive, and it's gonna be beautiful. It wasn't it was none of those things. And so that was, the longest three years in Palmdale of our life was, you know, learning the disappointment of trying to start something that just never took off. And as a result of that move, I kinda derailed my ministry career, and that's when I got into the termite pest control business.
Well, I had been in sales for, you know, several years before that, even before my ministry, before anything else. And so, you know, when I got into the termite business, I got in there as a business developer, sales manager type. And so, you know, I started doing that, and that was it. And it was off to off to the races. So everything I touched at the and, you know, if anybody's ever heard of orange oil as for a termite treatment, I was I was happily a part a small part of making that popular here at least in Southern California. And so, that was a wild ride.
While doing that, I we were making this transition, I think, culturally, from this selling features and benefits to hard closing sales, the overcoming objections, and just being kinda really hard about it, you know, the the pop up collar and the gold chain and the you know, that kind of stuff. We're making the transition from that kind of sale to more of a consultative sale, and we got involved in integrating what's called transactional analysis in in our sales process. Transactional analysis is a form of psychology developed by Eric Berne in the sixties and seventies.
Phenomenal. I could teach you all about it if you want. But, so we were integrating sales with in it with transactional analysis, and it was working phenomenally. And we we made that into a management you know, there's management associated with that, and developing people in that way, and it was turning out really great. Then a buddy of mine, boss actually at that company heard about neurolinguistic programming. And once I got my teeth into that, I was like, this is ridiculous. The you know, it's, like, really about performance, about mastery. You know, it really has depth and understanding not just communication, but understanding how people process information, how they're executing, situations in their life I see. And why they do negative behaviors versus positive behaviors and vice versa. And so when I started studying that, I was like, this is this is great. And I'd and then I started building sales teams on top of that, right, with and and coaching salespeople while building other termite companies since since 2005 till, you know, 2016 or whatever. And so everything I was fixing with salespeople was based on what I learned in transactional analysis and NLP.
And then it was probably maybe five years ago when I when I was looking at all these forms of psychology and just kind of reading through a lot of things, and I that it dawned on me that a lot of these people are not they don't agree. Right? Like, if you took 50 psychologists and you put them in a room and you said, hey. How do we fix this problem? They'd all have they'd have 50 different ideas of how to fix the problem. And so that got me thinking, well, what what if the neurolinguistic programming what if the transactional analysis what if all these things are not what if they're not true, and how would I know if they're true or not? And so then I decided to start comparing those things with what the Bible has to say about the mind, what the Bible has to say about psychology. It doesn't use the word psychology, obviously, but it uses mind, thought, reason, consider.
It uses mindful speak. Right. Yep. And I thought, why wouldn't I consult the one that invented psychology, right, as to how to balance all these out. So then I start comparing the two or the three or four things that I was kinda analyzing at the time, and I took out you know, I basically said if if it doesn't contradict the Bible, I'll use it. Mhmm. If it's supported by the Bible, I'll definitely use it. Right. And that that's what that's what ends up being the d six, d six program or the d six form of coaching that I use now. That's, d six stands for it's the day that God made man in his image.
Mhmm. That that was the purest day that that was that was the purest moment that we were, you know, the relationship we had with God before the fall. Right. That is the that is the purest day. That's when we are given the mandate to dominate the animal land and subdue, subdue anything that grows and then multiply what God has given us. And so, so yeah. So d six was born from from basically that that comparison of those those systems.
[00:35:47] Unknown:
That's great. You know, I I just wanna go back to something you said. Now you you plant you worked on planting churches. Now I I I've had the privilege of helping a young missionary, when I was living in New York, plant a church on Staten Island. So I know it's a it's a very, very hard thing to do. It's not it's not something we could just, you know, you would just wake up one day and say, okay, well, I'm gonna do this and it's gonna be, you know, a success. And it and it and it automatically is. I remember, walking, knocking door to door with this, with this young man, you know, trying to get people to come to church.
And, I'll never forget when, he was going out of town and he made the, he made the mistake that most young preachers do is he told his congregation he was gonna be out of town. You never do that. If you listen, if you're a preacher and you're listening, don't ever tell your group that you're gonna be out of town because they won't come to church. Alright. So he had asked me if I would if I would preach for him for the two services on a Sunday for him. Mhmm. And I said, yeah, sure. I'll do that. No problem. And, and I I got to the church and I I opened everything up and I and I'm sitting there and nobody showed up. So, you know, it was it was the funniest thing in the world to me anyway. I laughed, and I had texted him, and I said, Hey, Dave, did you tell them you were gonna be in town or no? He goes, Oh, no, yeah. I told him I would be out of town for two weeks.
Yeah. Answer right there. But, you know, you're right though. You know, planting a church is not the easiest thing in the world. You go into it with the rose colored glasses. You go in there, you're thinking that I am gonna change the world with my little church here. And it is the hardest, one of the hardest things to do. I don't know if you know about me. I went to, I went to Bible school myself. I served as associate pastor of a church up in New York for a little bit. I go to a great church down here. I've taught the Bible. I I used to do a Bible study podcast on Sundays. I teach Bible on this show. So, so I I know what you're talking about. The Bible is an incredibly important book, and I and I say it repeatedly over and over and over again that the Bible is the single greatest textbook on any subject that you need to study.
If you want a if you want a textbook about politics, you study the Bible. Because what's the Bible about? The Bible is about who's gonna run who. Who was gonna rule who, who's gonna govern who. You want a book about, you wanna know about a textbook about, biology. Your Bible has your biology. You want a, you want a textbook about botany, your Bible's a book about agriculture. Yep. Everything, everything that you could possibly imagine that you could think of humanly speaking is in that Bible. Now, do I profess to know exactly where it all is? No. I can't, I wouldn't be able to tell you that, but I know it's there.
Yeah. And if I look for it, I'll find it. So Yeah. It won't tell you things like, you know, how to split an atom or or or what a what a cell is or anything, but but to anything that is pertaining to real life stuff. Yeah. Absolutely. But you know something? I think that if you study it long enough and deep enough, you might find that that an the answer to that question about a cell. No.
[00:38:55] Unknown:
You know? I that's how that's how much faith I put in the word of God. So I've known some yeah. I've known guys to do that. Yeah. Well, you know, we're not all crazy. I would say tongue in I would say tongue in cheek. I've had even professors that I felt, like, stared at the pages a little too long. You know? Sure. There was a there was a pastor. You might you might remember him. He's he's, he's he's gone to be with the lord now, but, Chuck Missler was one of those guys. Super intelligent. Man, he was he was a brilliant guy, but he could see stuff in a text that that no offense to him or or his legacy, but, you know, you know, like, We used to call that preaching in the cracks.
Yeah. Yeah. You're preaching yeah. That's good. Yeah. You're preaching in the cracks for sure. Yeah. I've been I've been fortunate to be part of, I think, three three church plants. That's awesome. Yeah. And they're hard, man. Yeah. They're they're hard, especially if you're going especially if you're going into it with, like, this mindset of, I wanna build I wanna, you know, I wanna start something where a lot of people come to. It's very easy to get off off mission when you're when you're kinda in that scenario. You know, you always wanna be focused. Like, I'm part of a church now.
There's probably 1,500 people in this church. Wow. And and the leadership of the church is still laser focused on mission. How getting people saved, getting people baptized, serving the community, loving people, that is that is you know, they're not stopping. They we're, you know, we're planting other churches. We're doing a lot of other things, and that's that is a hard trait to find in some of the guy especially some of the guys I've worked with. It's it's and myself included, it's easy to get your focus off that central mission.
[00:40:50] Unknown:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The the church that I'm part of out here is, is is incredibly missions minded and which I I love. Not only does the church support, I can't even tell you how many missionaries the church supports, but our pastor himself and his family each individually support missionaries, on their own outside of the church, and he's such an encouragement to get other people to do that as well. I've done that myself. But, when I first moved here to Texas, one of the first things I did is I, is I grabbed a bunch of tracts and, I went door to door.
Yep. Knocking, Hey, I'm new in the neighborhood. This is where I live. Here's my name. Here's my phone number. I wanna start a Bible study. If you're interested, come on over. It's my, at my house and all that stuff. And I had three people show up, but it was but it was fine. It was three people showed up. We had a great time, enjoyed the fellowship around the word of God, got them placed in a in a good bible believing church, and and just, Lord willing, as far as I know, they're still there. Yep. You know, so it it's, it's, you know, serving the Lord in that respect is great. And, and and we're way off the subject here, but, so let let me try let me try to bring that back because I can't believe it's already '22.
So you said that the mind is programmable, but most men are running someone else's code. Yep. What do you mean by that?
[00:42:07] Unknown:
Well, think about, you know, think about the first time you experienced anything. Right? Whether it was, let's say, conflict at home. I'll give you an example. Somebody who somebody who's young and, you know, maybe six, seven years old gets left home alone. There's no food in the house, and he or she is really hungry. Mhmm. They've never been in that situation before, and they're trying to figure out how to navigate this. And they're somewhat emotionally heightened because they're alone and they're a little kid, and they're hungry and they're looking for food.
That that can be pretty emotionally impactful to a lot of people, and so you search for you know, there there's a panic, like a scarcity programming that jumps in that says, hey, man. You're alone, and you have no food. You don't know when you're gonna get food again. This is a major problem. And and as a kid or even as adults, sometimes we can allow those stories to spiral until we're in a full blown panic. Mhmm. Well, in those moments, you're you're taking in some program. Your body, your mind is figuring out what is going to work. Of all the options I have right now, what is going to work? And then you say, well, I think I could probably scrape a couple crackers together. I think I saw some crackers fall underneath a a cabinet once or something, and you go on and you look.
Well, you fast forward now 15, and you're three hundred pounds and you have a and you have an eating problem. Mhmm. Where does that eating problem come from? And it when you talk to some of these guys, they're going and you kinda dig a little to figure out what what they're eating for, oftentimes, in this particular case at least, you would find that they have, a panic like we do with milk. They eat when they can. They eat when they feel a little bit hungry because they don't know they don't wanna wait until they're too hungry because by that time, there might not be any food.
Right? And then what? And so they play the story in their head where they say, I gotta eat as soon as I feel a little bit of pain, and so they develop an eating habit. It's you know, Pavlov did this thing this interesting conditioning response with with the dog. I if you guys probably may if your audience knows a thing where, Ivan Pavlov, he does he discovers conditioning. He rings a bell. He feeds a dog a treat, rings a bell, feeds a dog, rings a bell, feeds a dog, and and until at which point over and over again, the dog will start salivating just by him ringing the bell. Right. And so we and so it dawns on him in in in this experiment that we train our flesh to expect a certain reward when a certain stimulus is applied.
So for the dog, it was ringing the bell equals I get a treat. Mhmm. For a, let's say, for a man who maybe grows up in the midst of a sexually abusive, family or he gets addicted to porn or something early on, and he trains himself that when life gets stressful, I can I can watch porn, and I could do this, or I could do that, and that'll make me feel better? So every time he gets stressed out, that's what he runs to. Right. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. So he trains his body to expect that response, but there's the problem. It's not just stress now because when he's he's activated or he's triggered by stress, fine. But now he's not just triggered by stress. He's triggered by any woman walking down the street. He's triggered by any stiff breeze that goes by his I mean, like, you know, I've known guys that were so deep in this that they had multiple triggers.
It's not just the bell for a treat. There's a thousand different things that would trigger the same response. Right. And so you can you can go back to the origin of that on on many occasions. You can kinda go back to what is the trigger for this specific response, and you can re and you can reprogram the trigger.
[00:46:50] Unknown:
What does it actually look like to reprogram your mind as a Christian?
[00:46:54] Unknown:
Well, in Romans 12 tells us to to be transformed. We will be transformed, from from this old man, from the man of darkness, from the man of sin, and to the man that Christ is. Right? That's the renewing of your mind. Yeah. By the renewing of our mind. And so first of all, I think what you what we need to do is identify those things that trigger us. What is causing us to sin? Because we're no longer bound by it. Mhmm. Right? We died with Christ on the cross. The sin we're no longer slaves to sin. And and to the extent that you are a slave to sin and you cannot help it is to the extent that you may need to question whether or not you've had a full on a full conversion or not. Right. Like, are you spiritually alive or are you not? Because slaves to sin are not we sin now as a choice or as a condition of our flesh.
Mhmm. And so if we're willing to, we need to identify those areas. And, you know, when you you ask, how do we reprogram as a Christian? Well, identify the trigger, subject that trigger to a new response. So if the guy is looking at a lady and immediately he feels this flood of whatever that makes him want to do whatever he normally does. I assume this is a PG show, so we'll keep it PG. Instead of doing that, we then reprogram him to when he sees a woman that's not his wife, specifically when he's not his wife, he looks at that woman as a soul created in the image of God, worthy of dignity and respect and not as an idol to be worshiped or to give your energy to and not as some object that you can rub one out to. That's it's not it's not loving towards her That's right. Treating her like an object.
It's not loving towards God because you're telling God, hey. What you've given me and my wife isn't enough. Mhmm. Right? It's not it's so you're not loving God with all your heart, soul, your mind, and your strength, and you're not loving your neighbor, I e, that woman, as yourself.
[00:49:12] Unknown:
That's right. So
[00:49:14] Unknown:
we identify the triggers, and then we instead of going, oh, man. That chick's hot. We go, oh, that chick is made in the image of God. And then sometimes depending on how quickly that response or what that gap is, there's a trigger, and then there's a response, and then there's a gap in between. It's a response gap. If you've re if you've just rehearsed the same response over and over and over again, that response gap gets shorter and shorter. So you to the point where, let's say let's say you have an anger issue and you get angry when you're driving. Well, you know, the first time you did that, you were driving, somebody cut you off, and you were like, how do I respond to this?
So that gap is long. And then you decided at the end of that gap, I'm gonna start throwing sign language and cussing at them and freaking out. And then so that rewards you because you get some dopamine. You can endure you get adrenaline. You get all these things going through your body, so you get the reward. Right. The more you do that, the shorter that gap gets. So now when somebody cuts you off on the street, you don't think about how I'm gonna respond. You just do it. F you, buddy. And now you're a rage monster, and you don't know why you're a rage monster. It's developed over now several years, and you don't know how to control yourself because that gap is so tight.
So we train guys how to expand that gap, give themselves a little bit more time to respond, and then we embed a a new response, something that's more honoring to the Lord, something that's going to encourage love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, self control, like Galatians tells us Mhmm. As opposed to rage and anger.
[00:51:04] Unknown:
Yeah. That makes sense. Then, yeah, it does. The the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. It's almost like a conditioned response too, the the way it's we make it sound like. It's like, you know, you you get conditioned to respond in that quick quick, you know, derogatory way, and then you're you're then you're you're training them to to, I guess, I don't wanna say decommission or or or or or you're Reprogram. Reprogram. Yeah. There you go. You're you're reprogrammed and it I guess, not everybody responds the same though to it. Right? It sometimes people take a little bit longer than others to respond to it.
[00:51:42] Unknown:
Yeah. And and somewhat depends. That's some some part of the beginning work as we're kind of figuring out what motivational strategies people use, what their values and beliefs are, who they believe that they are. You know, oftentimes, you get a guy in, you know, in your in your office or in a coaching scenario, And I say and I and I would I ask a lot of guys this. I go, who are you? And they say, well, I'm just a wretched sinner, you know, saved by grace. And while that sounds pious and it sounds humble and it sounds whatever it's supposed to sound in Christian circles Right. Putting that word just in there ties your identity to just being a sinner.
And so I think in part, helping people realign their identity with who god says that they are helps them readjust their beliefs, helps them with their capabilities. This the new capabilities that we install, adjust their adjust the way that they conduct themselves, and then their new conduct creates different conditions. And so instead of saying, well, I'm just a sinner, you go, well, I'll grant you that you're you're a sinner, but you're not just a sinner. Right? That's God saved you so that you would you're a saint that sins.
Mhmm. You're not a sinner that saints. Right? You're not somebody that accidentally does something right. Right? You're a you're a new creation in Christ. Something's gotta you know, when we look at second Corinthians five and he tells us that we're a new creation in Christ, all things the old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. And you still hold on to that identity that I'm still just a worthless sinner. Then that passage means nothing. Mhmm. We are something new. We have control, and we can kinda we can not all like, you know, this is a lifetime journey.
Right? We we don't know exactly what triggers are tied to the responses. Sometimes those triggers surprise us. You know? It it's a tone from your wife. You just would can you at least take out the trash? Right? That's a kind of an overdramatization of of how she would say it, but that could really irritate you. Like, hey. What are you talking at least take out the trash. What are you talking to, lady?
[00:54:15] Unknown:
Right. No. Yeah. For I I yeah. Exactly. It's the tone that that can that can trigger it. And it might be an unintentional, tone too. It could be For sure. Something is something has bug been bugging her all day and and she's just frustrated and then comes out that way. And then but but then it's what makes it worse is how you contend you you might respond to it. Mhmm. You know? Are you gonna respond to it and by flying off a handle, or are you gonna respond to it in a gentle way and say, you know, I got it. I'll take care of it right now, you know, or and just let it slide. Yeah. Well, and if you don't know how to manage that that stimulus response gap That's right. Yeah.
[00:54:53] Unknown:
Then then you're you're it it's gonna be very difficult. If you're just used to flying off the handle as soon as she has attitude with you,
[00:55:00] Unknown:
well, in that that's gonna get tougher and tougher. But you know? So What is the first? I think it's Proverbs fifteen one. Instead of soft answer, turneth away wrath. Yeah.
[00:55:09] Unknown:
So, yes. So it's a long way of answering your question, like, how are we programmed? We're we're programmed in every way. Culture is programming us. TV is programming us. The things we listen to are are programming us. We're programming ourselves by how we reward ourselves for what we want. Right? It's like Yeah. Saturday nights come, I eat a pineapple ice cream. Why? Because it's hot, and that's what I've programmed my body to expect on Saturday night.
[00:55:37] Unknown:
And I guess there there are some other and to use that example too, there are some people who go worse than that. Some people are programmed that, you know, all week long, I don't touch this, but tonight, I'm cracking that bottle.
[00:55:48] Unknown:
Yep. Right. It's Friday night. It's Friday night. Friday night is bender night. Like, it's you're not gonna see me till Sunday evening. It's some you're right. Yeah. So some peep and the more you reward your flesh because there is a very there's a distinct there's deeds of the flesh. You know, the more you reward the deeds of the flesh it's interesting in in Romans six, Paul talks about how he was alive apart from the law, but when the the law came, sin came alive and he died. Right? He's talking about he says, because sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, aroused in me coveting of every kind. Mhmm. And so what I get from that passage is that sin not only can recognize opportunities, but sin can seize upon them Yeah.
And addict you to these certain and and addict you to these patterns. So it's not just a flesh programming. It is a flesh programming that is being encouraged, if you will, by the sin nature that still resides in the flesh.
[00:56:54] Unknown:
Now you've worked with a lot of guys that, you know, for the most part, you know, successful on the outside, but that's struggling internally. Why why do you why do you think so many Christian men feel empty inside despite having it all? You know, the quote unquote having it all. Yeah. It
[00:57:14] Unknown:
that's tough. I mean, they're some of them are dealing with things like they're, you know, they're still trying to please their parents. Mhmm. Right? Their dad was never satisfied. Their dad was, you know, like, riding them real hard. Or, you know, some guys are afraid they're gonna if they fail, they're gonna disappoint their wife or, you know, they're afraid that somebody's gonna look at them oddly. You know, we don't like to confess our sins to our brothers because we're afraid to look weak or afraid to look like we don't have it together. It's Oh, yeah. It's a prideful it's a prideful response for sure. But, you know, when let's say in regards to their wives, they don't wanna look like a failure. They don't wanna let their wives down. That's a that's an honorable kind of stance. I mean, that's not that's not bad except that they don't have any outlet by which they sit around and and actually, you know, open up to somebody. Maybe it's not your wife. Maybe you need to find a coach or maybe a group of men that you can hang out with and say, here's what I'm struggling with. I absolutely hate people when I drive, and I don't you know, whatever it is. You know? Yeah. And and and be able to to be able not to vent.
Forget venting. Venting only releases, adrenaline and endorphins and all kinds of things that get you addicted to venting. Eventually, you just become some guy that shows up to the party and brings everybody down because they're no fun to be around. Mhmm. Right? Because you got so addicted to venting. We're so we're not talking about venting. We're just talking about being honest, open, transparent, having real good fellowship that, you know, you can leave baggage behind and and not let that affect your family or your business. You know, and I I think that's that's that's one reason why I think,
[00:59:01] Unknown:
men's groups in churches are so important. Yep. My my church here doesn't doesn't do it as frequently as I would like them to. But, the church that I was AP ing in back in New York, we would have a weekly men's fellowship. And, actually it was twice a week. It was, Thursday night, we had a men's Bible study. And then on Saturdays, we had a men's breakfast. Mhmm. And one of the guys in the church would cook and we'd all sit over there and complain about his cooking. And and then we'd have we'd have bible study at the same time, you know, so like two bible studies in the week just for the guys. And it was an opportunity just for the guys to sit there and and and just emote, you know, just let everything out and just talk and and that iron sharpeneth iron, you know, you just you you spend that time together in in those kind of groups and that's why it's so important. So work like that you do, like, I think that's such important work to do, you know, is is to is to give a guy an opportunity to to open up, to show his emotions because I guarantee you things that bother me, bother you, bother just like anybody else, just like the whole milk thing, right? Yeah.
You think you're the only one in the world with that problem, but you know what? No. There are other people in the world with that problem. I know it's a silly example, but still, the point is is that, you know, it's important to have that type of support and that type of fellowship. Mhmm. That is it's critical in in your walk with the Lord. If you don't have that Yep. In your walk with the Lord, you're gonna stumble and fall.
[01:00:40] Unknown:
Yeah. You know? Well, and real quick and real quick, I know we're running short on time, but it it's important to not to let the ghosts in your life dictate how you behave. Yeah. I was coming to that too. Yeah. Some of these guys have their dad in their head saying, hey, boy. We don't talk about our feelings. We don't discuss this stuff with with other people. Right. And so as soon as they start opening up, they hear their dad's voice telling them to be quiet. Yeah. No. It it's it's a it's a tough it's a tough
[01:01:09] Unknown:
being a guy is not the easiest thing in the world. I know there are so many expectations on you. Even even in this woke generation where they encourage you to be more in touch with your feelings and so on and so forth. Yeah. Deep down inside, a man naturally is not gonna be like that. He is going to tough it out. He's gonna do what he has to do to take care of his family, his responsibilities, his obligations. And, you know, and and, unfortunately, the support's really not there a lot of times. And, that's why, you know, I I I appreciate groups like that, and and and programs that you do. Yeah. Thanks. There there are there are many out there for sure, but not all of them are are with your not all of them are are good for everybody. You have to find the right one that's for you. Yeah. Amen. And I would all I always advocate that if someone's looking for some kind of a men's help group or or an encouragement type of group, look for something faith based. Yep. Because I think that's where you're gonna get the most realistic evaluation of what it is that you're dealing with because you're looking at it from, not just your perspective as the as the group leadership, you're looking at it from a biblical perspective, how God sees it and how because God is the one who created you. He gave you these feelings. He gave you these things that you're dealing with, and he knows the answer to the problem. Yep.
So, I know we're we're pressed up for time here. So, man, I gotta I gotta change my schedule so we can we can talk more about these things.
[01:02:34] Unknown:
Let me I could talk about this stuff all night, bro. Oh, me. No. So could I, bro? I I really could.
[01:02:39] Unknown:
So I'm gonna ask you just two more quick questions. Okay? Sure. So if if you could address the the younger generation of men right now, what is one warning that you would or or encouragement that you would wanna give them?
[01:02:52] Unknown:
I would say this is gonna be this is gonna be hard. I'll make this short, but it's gonna be super to the point. Do not I would say this. Do not train your flesh to expect sexual gratification from anything other than being in the presence of your wife.
[01:03:11] Unknown:
Great point. That was Great point. And and it's it's very timely too because somebody I know had asked me that question because her 13 or 14 year old son Mhmm. Asked her that question, and she wasn't sure how to answer that question. And I answered it very similar to what you did. So that is that that's great, and I I appreciate that. Alright. So I would love to have you back on the show at some point so we can actually get into the other stuff that I have for you. So let's let's get in touch with each other afterwards, and let's work something out. So where can the audience go to find out more about you and your work and and Everything I'm doing right now is at jakegifin.com. You can go there and peruse and make yourself at home. Alright. Outstanding. And I know we have it in our show notes on the audio and the video feed. So, so just, folks, make sure you check them out. Alright. Jake Giffin. Everywhere else at at Jacob pretty much everywhere else at at Jake Giffin dot, at Jake Giffin. So Okay. Outstanding. We'll get that all in the show notes as well. Jake, thank you so much for being with us. Appreciate it. Take care. God bless you. You too. Alright, folks. Jake Giffin. Make sure you check him out. He has some great, great work.
Alright. So, we're gonna take a little bit of a break here. And then when we come back, it'll be about a a two minutes, two minute and fifty second break. Alright. How about that for accuracy? Two minute fifty second break, we'll be back. And, don't forget, folks, this is a live show weeknights, 7PM central time. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share it with your friends, your family, and your followers. That way, you'll help us to spread out what we're doing here. And, we really would appreciate if you would, hit that like button, especially because it helps with the algorithm and gets us trending on the, on, on Youboob and and, and Rumble and and all the other platforms that we're streaming on right now. Alright. So we'll be back right after this. This is The Joe Ruse Show, and we will be back shortly. Stay with us.
Up and down, counting out, smiling through the taste of blood in my own mouth. I got bruises and broken bones, and hide her I was born to be too dire A naked rider Don't throw that towel just yet Don't cash in that last bit. Because I hit order when I'm tired. I'm a fighter. I get you. Alrighty, folks. First hour is in the books on this Friday afternoon, evening here in Eagle Pass, Texas. It is great to be with you guys here. Hope you guys enjoyed the first hour with Jake Giffen. Man, I had so many more questions to go with him. I can't believe that the hour flew by as fast as it did, but you know what? That's that's how it goes.
That's how it goes sometimes. Good conversations. They seem to fly by. That's alright. Waiting in the wings right now is our second hour guest, Landon Chumlee. We're bringing him on here momentarily. But first, folks, I wanna tell you about Podholm. Podholm.fm. Podholm is my audio host platform for the podcast version of the show. And Podhome is the most modern and easy to use podcast hosting platform you're gonna get anywhere. You can use Podhome to publish your episodes, enhance your audio, automatically generate transcripts, chapters, titles, show notes, and more. You can even broadcast your podcast live, and you can even do that through a website that they will provide for you, or you could download the code and use it on your own. You can use their player on your own website if you chose to do it that way.
Pod home is a all you need in one spot hosting platform. Now I've used other platforms, some of the bigger names, and, I'm not gonna tell you who it who it is, but I've used two others prior to coming over to Podholm. And for the amount of money that I was paying those, I get infinitely more services and better service with podholm.fm. Now you can head over to podhome.fm and sign up. You get thirty days free, and then it's $15.99 a month after that. And, folks, I'm I promise you, you could shop around to any of the other platforms, the host platforms, and you will not get everything that Pod Home is offering you for that much money.
Okay? You will be paying at least double, maybe three times as much. So check out podhome.fm. That's podhome.fm. You get thirty days free, and then you get $15.99 a month after that, and everything is included that you could possibly need to have a great podcast. It's almost it's literally almost like having an entire team working with you on your show when it's really not. That's how good podhome.fm is. So check them out. And, heard today that their, their their PodHome app is actually going to be released very, very soon. They're PodHome player. It's not for the, it's not for the management of the of the pod of the podcast, but it's actually the Pod Home player. And, I have been fortunate enough to be part of the beta program on that. It is a great app. You are gonna love it. It's currently waiting approval right now in the Apple Store. Android's on the way. So, keep your eyes out for that and check it out. It's a free download and, you're gonna love it. I think it's a great app.
And, Barry who puts all the work into it and he does a great job. We're gonna get him on the show here, here, very soon. It's been a while since we spoke to him. So we're gonna do that very, very soon. And then, again, you're gonna love it folks. Podhome.fm, podhome.fm. Check them out. All right. So, sorry about, drinking a lot of water. You know, I was, I felt fine all day up until about an hour before the show. And all of a sudden my voice started going. I started getting stuffy again in the nose. So I took some cold meds, and they're drying me out. So that's why I'm drinking so much tonight. So forgive me for that.
Alright. But, our second guest tonight, Landon Shumway, lives right at the intersection of technology and human purpose. He's a software engineer who uses AI daily in his work. He's also the author of We Can Be Perfect, The Paradox of Progress, a novel written with AI that explores what happens when automation eliminates the need for human labor. Through his book and his research, Landon dives into questions most of us are just beginning to wrestle with, like what happens to a society when millions of jobs vanish? How do we redefine purpose when survival no longer requires work?
And is there a way to design a new economic system where prosperity is shared by all, not just a wealthy few? This isn't just theory. Landon has lived the tension of AI replacing human output, and his work pushes us to imagine both the dangers and the possibilities of a fully automated future. Landon, welcome to the show, man. Great to be here. Yeah. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. So, what's what's something about you that most people don't know that should?
[01:12:56] Unknown:
Oh, man. So I grew up in the suburbs of Phoenix, and I used to be a skater punk. So I would go to skate park all the time. And, Yeah. Like, it's interest I don't skate much now, but, like, I find that it still helps me, like, with my balance all these years later. Like, I got two little kids. They're always trying to knock me over, and I still like all the, skills I developed. Staying on a board helps a lot when you're, wrestling with kids. But, yeah, that's probably something a lot of people don't know about me. So So you have you have two kids? You don't look like you're old enough to have two kids. Oh, yeah. Thanks. I appreciate it. Yeah. I got a six year old and a and a three year old. So, yeah, they keep me on my toes for sure. Three year old might be a little bit young for this, but what about the six year old? You got them on a skateboard yet or what?
We actually yeah. I have an electric skateboard that will ride around the park once in a while. It's just like you control it with your hands, and then it pushes around. Yeah. He
[01:13:56] Unknown:
we've taken a couple good falls on it, but, yeah. He he enjoys doing that. So It's alright. You fall down, you get back up. That's right. That's right. That's right. So, alright. So what's your what's your go to beverage at the end of the day to help you unwind?
[01:14:09] Unknown:
Oh, man. I like to make smoothies and stuff. I do a lot of just, like, banana smoothies. Yeah. Like, that's an interesting question. Yeah. That's probably it. Yeah. Just smoothies.
[01:14:25] Unknown:
You know, I don't I don't mean to laugh, but it's it's to me, it's just so funny that out of all the questions that we come up with for the show, I always ask those first two questions, always, to everybody. And everybody stumbles over those two questions.
[01:14:40] Unknown:
Yeah. It's it's a good one. Like, it makes you yeah. Like, it really, checks a person out. Like, it's not something you prepare for, so it's a good one to throw at them. So I gotcha. And plus,
[01:14:51] Unknown:
smoothies. That's so tonight, folks, I don't know if you realize this tonight, but tonight, we've had two completely unexpected and different answers from any other guest that I've asked that question for the, Jake said that he he drinks his drink is milk.
[01:15:08] Unknown:
Okay.
[01:15:09] Unknown:
And you're with a smoothie. The you're the only two people that that I've asked that question to on the show that have answered like that. Usually, like What's the go to? Yeah. What are the Usually, everybody says water. You know. Boring. Just kidding. Nobody's, brave enough to say that they crack open the vodka or the bourbon or the whiskey can do that. They've had that kind of a week and they need to take the edge off. Right. Right. But, but my go to has always been, bourbons. I love bourbon. Bourbon and a cigar, that's a good way to end the week, especially if I didn't kill anybody during the course of the week. Yeah.
And we're pretty good. It's like the victory dance. Yeah. But, since I've been sick, I've just been sucking down the green tea with honey and lime. Right. And sparkling water. So
[01:16:00] Unknown:
Right. Hey, that works.
[01:16:01] Unknown:
Mhmm. Although, I grabbed the wrong one. I grabbed the one that has the, it's mineral water, so it's little, has that little calcium or salt in it. So it's drying me out more than what I want. No, man. Dehydrate yourself. I thought I grabbed the right one, but I didn't. So, so tell us a little bit about you first. What led you to become a software engineer and how long have you been in the field?
[01:16:26] Unknown:
Yeah. So I've always been interested in, AI actually. As a kid, I grew up watching shows like Star Trek, which I think a lot of people in the STEM field obviously were inspired, by that show. But, yeah, like, it really resonated with me, this idea that, like, technology could help improve humanity. And I've definitely seen that in my career where I've been able to build tools that is crazy. Like, I write it myself, but then it goes on to be used by hundreds of thousands of people, you know, which is pretty remarkable when you think about that. Like, one individual, if they have, you know, the ability, like, in the determination, we can build things that improve life for everybody.
So that's kinda what got me in the field. And I've been in the industry about six years now. I'm a certified Amazon solutions architect. So a lot of people don't know this about Amazon, but, obviously, they have their storefront where you go buy stuff. But another big industry they have is a cloud cloud hosting platform, where, I mean, they're raking in big bucks through that. And so, yeah, so I specialize in architect building architectures, in that space. And it's been really great. Like, I feel really fortunate that most days I get to go to work and, like, really enjoy what I'm doing. And, I definitely recognize that as a privilege.
But, yeah, that got me into, obviously, when AI started getting really big. Right? ChatGPT has been almost three years ago now. And I knew right away, like, this was going to revolutionize, the industry. The fact that it like, I could give it an English phrase of, like, what I wanted it to do, and it can give me code was fascinating. Right? That's just mind blowing. And, over the last three years, it's just gotten really good. It's gotten every year, like, they come out with a new model, and it just gets better and better. And, it's gotten to the point now, like, in my current position, Right? I'll have a task that normally would have taken me a week to knock out just by hand on my own. And leveraging AI, I can get that same task done within an eight hour workday, which is absolutely insane. Right?
And so, yeah, like, over the last couple of years, I've I was the early adopter of this technology, and I definitely see where it's going. And it just leaves this question burning in the back of my mind, like, okay. So what happens when I don't have to do much at all where it can just do it, with very little intervention for me as a as a human? And that really sparked some interesting questions, that I started to explore as an author. So I I do writing on the side, obviously. And as I was looking obviously, there's been a huge impact creative wise, like image generation. Right? We've had the technology for a couple years now where it could just generate images on the spot. And that's impacted a lot of artists, a lot of freelancers that otherwise, you know, I'd be going to a human to, like, get artwork done for things. And now I can just go straight to a tool like ChatGPT and, take the human out of the loop.
That's really remarkable in a lot of ways, but it's also kinda scary too because people depend on their ability to work for their livelihood. Yeah. And, and as I was looking at this problem of, like like, on one side, we're really excited about this because it's, oh, it's so cool. Like, look at all these things it could do. And yet there's this feeling in the back of our minds, like, what's this gonna mean for people that we're taking out of the loop of just needing human labor to get things done. Yeah. And, that was one of the thing questions I wanted to explore, with this novel that, I coauthored with AI.
And the reason I coauthored it was I wanted to explore as a creative medium. Right? There's a lot of, what we call in the industry AI slot, where people will just put in low quality of effort. The AI will spit something out, and then they'll just publish it, right, on Amazon or whatever. And, it's not good. It's not creative. It's kinda soulless content that's just regurgitating, what's been said before.
[01:20:43] Unknown:
And sometimes you can tell when you're reading something that's that's been AI generated. You you you kinda get the feeling that, you know, just that that coldness behind it. Yeah. There's no emotion to it. Yeah. It's very yeah. It's robotic, which is, you know, is fitting because it was written by a machine.
[01:20:59] Unknown:
And I wanted to explore this idea, like, okay. So what if we didn't just use it to churn out soulless content? What if, we could actually use it to amplify our ability to create? And artists do this. You know, graphic designers, I I know several people in the industry that, when they use the technology correctly, it enhances their ability to create, and which is, you know, how it should be. And so I wanted to explore this in the context of writing a novel, where could I use this technology to really create an experience for a reader that just amplifies what you would normally get, you know, for reading a standard novel.
And as I was working as I've been working with the technology, it has just blown my mind how it's first of all, advanced, because I started this project about a year and a half ago. And, the models that were out then, they're pretty advanced, but, there were still some like, as I was working with it, it was definitely difficult. I'd have to massage a lot of the output that had come through with my own thoughts and creativity. But over the last year, the models that they've been coming out with have significantly increased the quality of, the pros that it can generate when you give it a good prompt. I think it a big part of it a big lesson I've learned from this is AI is really just a mirror. It reflects our intentions and our effort that we prompt it with.
And if we use that, we could use that for good. Right? Like, if we prompt it to, I know right now in my field, a lot of people are using apps to, use AI to create things that just weren't possible before that could really help, people, like, with special needs and disabled, individuals. And I think that's really cool. And so but a part of that is we have to use it for the right reasons because Right. At the same time, you know, we can also use it to develop pathogens. We could use it to develop weapons. We could strap it to robots with guns. You know? So there's just all these concerns of what are we gonna build with this?
And, that was robot with gut with guns, and I thought of the Terminator. Yeah. Right? And that's where we all go. Like, whenever you think, like, oh, AI, Skynet. It's gonna take over. It's gonna replace us.
[01:23:16] Unknown:
And Well, there is a Skynet.
[01:23:18] Unknown:
Yeah. Like The government does have Skynet, and that's what it and that's what it's called. They they actually call that? Okay. I have Just go. I'll have to go read up on that. Yeah. You should. Yeah. And it's like it's it's a shame because, like, there's all this potential of, like, all the good things we could do with it. But at the same time, if you could do good things with it's just a tool. Like, if you could do good things with it, you can also do bad things with it. Right. And so I think one of the reasons I wrote this novel is I wanted to ask the question, where are we heading as a future in our society with this technology? Because the technology is not going away.
I talked to a lot of people. I'm like, oh, it's just it's hype. Like, it's not gonna it's gonna blow over. It's a bubble. And that may be true in the short term. Right? Like, it may be that tools like ChatTpT won't completely replace, all of human labor. Right? But you have to think of the technology kinda like the Internet. Right? If we go back to the nineties when the Internet was first coming out and you had all these, like, cat images and, like, these random rainbow websites. And nobody really knew, like, what was gonna happen with this technology. It was just kinda, oh, that's weird, but interesting. And now look at every facet of our lives revolves around, social media and podcasts and, yeah, like, consuming content.
And all that was made possible because of the beginnings of the Internet, right, that we've built on top of as a platform. And I think we seriously have to consider as a society the same is gonna be true for AI. So even if AI like, there's a lot of stuff we can't do right now. There's a lot of limitations, but it's gonna be on this platform that we're gonna build technology within the next ten, twenty years. That's just gonna blow us away. Like, just never seen before unprecedented. And so that leaves us with a question, what are we gonna do with that? Right? Because if it's we get to a point where millions of jobs are being replaced by AI, how are we going to account for those individuals that, you know, they're healthy, capable adults, but they just there's no place for them in the market.
Right? Because, the the technology can do it at a cheaper rate, and it can do it much faster than a human can. Right. And I wanted to explore some of those ideas of okay. Like, right now, I think if you ask most people, like, how are we gonna sort this out if everybody loses their job? Well, let me ask you this. Like, how how could you see humanity, like, dealing with a crisis like that where everybody's just having their job replaced?
[01:25:52] Unknown:
It's a great question. Yeah. It it it's a great question. You you would of of course, you'd automatically assume that there would be some government program that's gonna get put into place where they'll it'll be supportive. But eventually, though, you know, if people aren't generating revenue to support those things
[01:26:11] Unknown:
Where is it coming from? Right. Right. Exactly. You can't you can't keep printing money. Exactly. And that's As much as much as the government would like to. Right. Right. Yeah. Because then you just, yeah, end up with hyperinflation. And, and that's the biggest issue. So right now, like, I think if you ask most people in the field who have been looking into this problem space, they're gonna argue for something like a universal basic income. So for anyone who's not familiar with that concept, it's the idea that the government is going to subsidize people that are incapable of working. Everybody gets a minimum basic income.
And, obviously, we saw, like, an example of that with the pandemic, right, where people were getting, checks to try to hold off the issue of they couldn't work because we were all locked down. Right? Right. And,
[01:26:54] Unknown:
and, obviously, that generated a lot of debt for the country. And so but, yeah, like, a lot of people look at universal basic income as it generated a lot I don't mean to interrupt you. I'm sorry. No. Go for it. Not only did it generate a lot of debt for the country, but it also, made a lot of people
[01:27:08] Unknown:
not want to go back to work because they were getting more by staying home than they were by actually going to work. Yes. Right. And that's, yeah, that's a sad, I think, telling sign of the market of just the fact that people are under such poor conditions that, yeah, it's it's they don't even wanna go back to work. And right. And so it's an interesting problem because with universal basic income, right, like, it's very hand wavy. People say, oh, the government will just send text to everybody. It's like, okay. Like you brought up, how are they gonna fund that? Right? And they'll say, well, they'll tax the rich. Like, the rich will be owning all this technology, all this AI. It'll be generating this wealth. We just tax the rich and then, comes in through the government. Well, there's, obviously, like, there's a lot of problems with that, and we don't have to get into all of them. But, like, at the core of it, the biggest issue with universal basic income that I see is that it doesn't address the problem that you as an individual will have no ownership over anything.
You will be completely dependent on the government for your livelihood. 02/1930.
[01:28:12] Unknown:
Yeah. Agenda 02/1930. I'm sorry. That's that the the WEF has been talking about that for some years now, and and their their mantra is by 02/1930, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
[01:28:23] Unknown:
Yeah. And,
[01:28:25] Unknown:
you know, something will We have companies like BlackRock and Blackstone, all of them, they're buying up all these properties that have been mysteriously damaged, you know, from all these supposed natural disaster that just spark up out of nowhere, then they come swooping in, they buy all this stuff dirt cheap, they build, rentals, and they're just renting out to people. You know, it's it's it's right there in front of your face. Yeah. Absolutely. And yeah. And the individual has no ownership over anything.
[01:28:54] Unknown:
And, it's really it sets us up for failure. And so the idea, like, with universal basic income, that's just gonna, ex exacerbate the problem significantly, because you'll be completely dependent on the whims of the government to determine how much you're gonna get, what resources
[01:29:12] Unknown:
And if they implement these social credit scores and they do it like a a a CBDC, and that that which is, you know, if if you're not familiar with people who are listening and aren't familiar with it, you know, central bank digital currencies where the government is in control of that. And if if you I'm sure you're familiar with the term wrongthink. If you get if you if you are accused of wrongthink and they could just shut your your your electronic wallet off and you can't buy anything, you can't sell anything, you can't you won't be able to pay your bills, put food on your table, take care of your medical expenses or anything like that because they control your means to do that. Yeah. That's a January 2030. And that's the reality we're heading to right now. If we don't explore alternatives
[01:29:54] Unknown:
for individuals, again, at the, just lower income levels, we have to explore alternatives for how could we as a society share ownership over this wealth that AI is gonna generate. And so that was one of the questions I wanted to tackle in writing this novel is how could we because, like, you have utopian ideas like Star Trek where, like, we just don't use money anymore. Right? And it's like, okay. That's nice. But how do you realistically you need a medium of exchange between parties, in order to, have that trust, that, you're not no one's gonna screw each other over it. And so I wanted to, in this novel, really take a hard look at like, let's seriously consider what would an alternative economic system look like, not based on, just, the oligarchy only stuff. Because if every you know, if, the top owns all the resources of AI and they're faster and cheaper to work, where does that leave the rest of us?
And so my answer to this, like, as I've been looking and working on this novel, the term I came up with is automationism, which in a nutshell, it's the way to describe is it's collective ownership of automated production. Okay. And the whole concept behind it is you have collective ownership with your community where AI is the means of production. They manage all the labor with minimum minimal human oversight to, you know, make sure things keep running. And what got really interesting as I was exploring this idea is, I was like, okay. So, ideally, like, if you're gonna share stuff with the community, you want it to be small. Like, you want it to be because there's limitations in, like, human communication, how much we can coordinate with, like, how many people, before it just gets kinda, you know, difficult. And that's that's one of the biggest issues with government. Right? It's just so big, and there's so many branches, and there's so many, like, channels of communication people have to go through to get anything done. It makes it really difficult to make decisions to that actually benefit society. Because by the time they make decisions, like, it's, you know, it's too late. It's the layers of bureaucracy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a real problem. And it's it's just one of the limitations of human biology. Right? Like, we can only, the more channels of communication you gotta go through, it's just going to drastically drag out the time it takes to get things done. And so okay. So let's explore, you know, can we make it, this community, like, smaller, and have this collective ownership concept?
And so from this, I came up with this idea of, a cell. And you could think of a cell as, like it's kinda like a mix between a publicly traded company and a town, where you as a a shareholder, you're also a member of the community. Okay? And so you run an industry, whether it's agricultural or manufacturing. Right? There's something that you as a community, you are co owners over this, means of production. And AI is running the the labor costs. So and all the the profits that are generated by that industry flow into the, co owners of, the cell.
And it's interesting because, we actually see this today. This isn't just, kinda pie in the sky kind of stuff. We actually see this in several examples. This one I drew from when I was writing this was, the idea of, Native American casinos. So I don't know if you've never ever been out, like, on a reservation and, like, gone to a casino out there. Yeah. I haven't been out in here. Yeah. And they're all over. And what's really interesting about now every tribe's different in how they allocate the resources that's generated from it. But, there are several tribes that they'll take the profits that are generated by those casinos. And because the tribe is co owners of the land that the casino is based on, they will share the profits between all those members of the tribe.
And, actually, I know some people really close that, they were able to leave work as a result of this, and they just they get these payments, from the profit sharing. And so this was really fascinating because it's like, okay. So if AI is replacing human labor and we're not you know, we could try to cling to this idea, like, well, humans might beat robots out of something. Right? And and who knows? It could be twenty years. It could be fifty years. But I believe, personally, eventually, the technology will get to the point that robots could probably do most of what people can do from a physical labor standpoint. And so if we're heading that way, then the question becomes, okay, is there a way that we can still provide an income for individuals even though they're not able to or it's not reasonable for them to trade time for money? Because that's the biggest asset that most of us have, you know, in the working class.
You know, we don't have any capital to, like, retire off of anything. So our biggest asset is time. Right? We're trading time for money to keep a roof over our heads of food on the table, all those stuff you mentioned. And so what gets interesting though, obviously, with AI, when it can do it faster and cheaper, now time, the one resource that we in the working class had is now just, flooded with, it's just not a hot commodity anymore. Right? Because as supply goes up, the value of, that resource, goes down. And so if that is the direction we're heading in, then the question becomes, okay. So can we think of a way where individuals and citizens can still make an income without having to trade that time for money? And the only way you're gonna do that right? I think anybody who works in passive income understands this is you have to own something.
Right? You have to have ownership of something that is generating an income, and you take a portion of that. Yeah. And so I think, yeah, at a core, like, it comes down to, can we, as a society, envision this ability for us to share resources as we always teach our kids. Right? Like, it's great to share. But, like, to actually take that concept and start applying it at an economic scale where, what's really interesting is, right, so if you have these individual cells, they have their industries, they're producing some sort of good or service, and that gets exchanged in the global market for money, which then gets distributed to the individuals, the members of the cell. But what's interesting is you can start building on top of these little building blocks to create, like, a network of cells where now we're sharing co ownership not just of our industry and our goods, but we have you know, you can have a sister network that they have industry and goods, and we can now trade resources in a way that's beneficial for everybody.
And, because there's that trust there, like, it reduces, the overhead of, money. And that's where you start, like, really looking into kind of a Star Trek like situation where if everyone's co owners of everything in a legal way that, can be, you know, enforce trust between the parties, that's where you start looking at that kind of scenario where money is not as critical, you know, as it was before because now we have laws in place and resource sharing between these networks that, we can do these kind of things. But yeah. Like so that was kinda the core idea that I was exploring in the novel. And as I've been, like, going through that, it's it's definitely not feasible now. Right? Like, the technology is not there where AI can't just do everything that we're doing. But we still have to ask those questions because it's coming. Right? It's on the horizon.
And we don't know when. Right? It could be again, it might not be in our lifetimes. Like, maybe the bubble is just so big and it just turns out, like, maybe it replaces, you know, certain white collar jobs, but, you know, maybe just robotics. There's, like, this hurdle. You know, we've been doing self driving cars for over a decade now, and we're just still not there. Right? It's getting it gets a little bit closer every time, but there's just these huge hurdles to where we can just let it take the wheel. But even though it's not here yet, I think we can still start asking those questions of what kind of future do we wanna build for us and our kids? You know?
Do we wanna head down the route where the government just controls all the means of, income, because we're now without employment? Or can we see an alternative to, be able to co own and and share resources together, as communities? Anyway,
[01:38:48] Unknown:
that's, that's a high level of some of the concepts that I I explore there. Now what made you decide to write a book instead of just a white paper on this?
[01:38:56] Unknown:
I wanted to explore it from the emotional aspect of, this is what's gonna happen if we don't ask these questions. So, like, one of the characters in the novel, she lives in Los Angeles, post. Like, all this has taken place. AI has replaced most human labor, and she's a basic. She's, her and her family, they just live off of UBI. They get the payments every month, And she finds she has no purpose. Like, what do you do when there's, like, no job for her to, like, go pursue? And, like, she's trying to get into college, but, like, in the future, like, who's gonna offer student loans when
[01:39:37] Unknown:
AI just can do it for way cheaper and immediately? I don't have to wait for you to get a bachelor's degree. No. A line a line from a Star Trek movie just popped in my head when you said that. Yeah. And that is from the first movie. Do you remember, when they when they encountered V'Ger, the question was, is this all that I am? Is there nothing more? Right. I I tend to think that might be start that that would probably be a question that a lot of people would start asking themselves.
[01:40:04] Unknown:
Yeah. Like, who am I if especially because so much of our life is revolved around work. I work full time. I put forty hours in for my job, and it's and it's a big part of my life. Like, I've developed a I put a lot of time into developing these skills. Mhmm. And You have to spend more time at the workplace than you do at home with your families. Yeah. And that's mind blowing. Right? It's just it's absolutely insane. And, like, I work from home, and it's just crazy to me that most of my life is spent I work I have a little room, like, in my house, some little office space, and it's just like, that is my life. Like, I'm just sitting in these four walls, and, I'm just staring at a screen all day, and I'm writing code.
And, again, like, there's a lot of things I enjoy about the job, but still, that blows my mind that, like, the this little time that we have on this planet, like, most of it is just consumed by needing to provide for ourselves so that we don't starve and that we get a roof over our heads. And in the future, I think people are gonna look back and be like, that's crazy. That's crazy that you had to, like, work that much just so you didn't starve, just so that you, like, didn't have to be homeless. You know? I think that's gonna be like, we look back at, like, the feudal era. Like, man, how do people do that? And, like Right. This could be the same with us. Like, they're gonna look back and be like, man, how did they do that? That's crazy.
But there's a flip side of that too because because so much of our our life is, like, put into work, what happens when that's kinda taken away? Like, where do we derive our purpose? And for some people, that might be really easy. It's like, oh, I have my passion projects. Like or my family. I'm gonna spend time with my family or my pets or I'm gonna travel. Right? Some people, that's easy answer. But I think for a lot of people, more than who'd care to admit, like, they derive their value and their meaning in life from getting to go to their nine to five, like, getting to go to work.
[01:42:02] Unknown:
Yeah. We we had this I told you earlier that I I worked for New York City for twenty five years. And, you know, one of the things that we always would joke about when I first started the job, you didn't really joke about it when it came my turn to leave, was that how many people actually that we knew that retired. And because they were so used to getting up, going to work every day, doing the job every day, having some kind of a something to fulfill them throughout the course of the day, ended up passing away shortly after retirement because they they didn't have they didn't have that purpose anymore. They didn't feel that purpose, and they just deteriorated. Now, can you directly put a correlation between the two? No. I don't think you can really do that. But it just seems awfully coincidental when you know about five or six people that have done that, that's happened to. That's why when I retired, I said, I'm going to pick up a little job someplace and get my foot moving. Right. You know, but but yeah. No. I I just said that in agreement with with with what you said. You know? Yeah. I think people need to have some type some type of outlet to to to and and what are you gonna have? A whole generation of podcasters? You know, people sitting around behind a microphone. Right. Right. You know, I mean, it's that's just not gonna work. You know, people need to be productive. People were made that way. Yeah. You know, I don't know what your religious beliefs are and, you know, that's that's fine.
But, you know, I I read scripture and, you know, in the very first book of of my Bible, it says that God created man to work. And he said, six days thou shalt labor. You know? And by the sword of thy brow, you know? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's what I face. So I love my face too. So, it's a big difference. Yeah. That's true. So so, you know, so it's it's so we're built to work. We're built to be functional. We're built to do something. We can't just sit there.
[01:44:06] Unknown:
Right. You know? And And we also derive joy out of it. Right? Like, that we can't anyway. And that's the thing that's the thing that's so kind of crazy about our current economic system is that so many people are productive for what I'm gonna I won't say the wrong reason. Right? Because it's it's honorable to provide for yourself and your family. Mhmm. But it's just a shame. Like, there's this really great book that's, like, BS jobs. And this guy talks about how so many people, they don't actually do anything. Like, they go to work just to collect a paycheck, because they have to. We have to have money in our current economic system, to be able to get the things that we need.
I myself, I worked in a position like that for a year. I was with a Fortune 500 company, and they just they needed to hire people, and they hired they brought me on. They said, like, oh, we have all this stuff for you to do. I get on, and, like, I was a button I was a paper pusher. And I was just like, what am I doing here? And I was making the crazy part is I was making more money than I've ever made in any other position, as a contractor. And I'm just like the inefficiencies of our system where we create these jobs because we need jobs, but, like, we're not actually doing anything fulfilling. So where's the disconnect? Like, why why can't we figure that out? You know? And I think a lot of it has to do with, again, this idea that, we we have to have money. Right? Money but money is just a it's an idea. It's a tool that we came up with to establish trust between two parties. Like, so that if I'm gonna buy something from you, I need something that I could then turn around and buy what else whatever else I need. Right?
And we don't know each other. Right? Like, there's just too many people on the planet, so we can't, yeah, we have to establish trust somehow. And for most of human history, that's been, you know, fiat currency through a centralized government. But what's really interesting, and this is another thing I go into my novel, is we're on the verge of looking at alternative forms of currency, of, you know, crypto Mhmm. Where I'm now enforcing trust not by a government saying trust me, bro, but by the fact that I have mathematics, I have cryptography, I have a ledger that is agreed upon by every interested party that is trading on this this, exchange.
And that really opens some interesting doors for us as a society where and, obviously, the government's terrified about this. They go to great lengths to try to, dissuade people from, you know, being able to set up stuff like this. But in the future, we can imagine groups and collectives that share, resources completely outside of the US dollar. It's just not a fact. Now, obviously, if they trade with external parties from their internal community, they'll they'll exchange it for whatever fiat currencies they need to. But it gets really interesting because now, I can establish that trust with my community without the need for, a huge centralized government to tell me what I can and cannot buy. You know?
And that, I think, mixed with AI is gonna open up some really fascinating if we if we can ask those questions of what we wanna build with this, it can, open some really interesting doors for us as a, as a society to operate, in a way that's been unprecedented. Because until now, like, the only way you could establish trust is you had to have a third party, again, saying, trust me, bro. Like, this currency is great. And so, yeah, it'll be it'll be really interesting, to see to see where that goes. But
[01:47:39] Unknown:
How how how fast do you think it's gonna take before this AI auto automation starts really wiping out entire industries?
[01:47:49] Unknown:
It's a really good question. I will say with the limit so from my vantage point, right, as a software engineer, there are a lot of limitations with, large language models in particular. So tools like ChatGPT that really prevent it. It they're really huge hurdles. And the biggest one is, hallucinations. So anyone who's not familiar with this concept is this idea that, the AI can tell you stuff that's just total BS. Mhmm. And it can tell you really convincingly, like, that, yeah, this is true, but it's not. And the reason it's really fascinating, it's just a limitation of the technology where it has to say something.
It has to output something. And so when you're prompting it for questions that it doesn't have sufficient training data on or it's maybe like a weird, space that it hasn't like, the data doesn't really connect, it's just gonna make something up. And, and people do that too. I like to joke, like, humans do that too. Right? Like, sometimes, like Sure. We like to oh, yeah. Sure. But just think of how many people actually
[01:48:55] Unknown:
go to something like like, like Grok or Mhmm. Or ChatGPT. And whatever it spits out, they take as well, that's fact. Right. Without doing anything to go check it to make sure that they got it right. Even though there are the disclaimers on on I I I on both that says, you know, we get it wrong sometimes. Yep.
[01:49:16] Unknown:
Do you know? How many people actually just take that as gospel and say, okay. That well, well, AI said it, so it must be true. Yeah. I just read a story. It was fascinating. This, like, six year old guy, he was looking to replace salt in his diet. So he asked you how to eat b t, hey. How can I replace salt? And it gave him a substitute. I'm not a chemical guy, so I don't remember. It's like potassium bromide or something, which is used in insecticides. Yeah. Yeah. And the guy didn't fact check it, and he had been taking it for, like, three months, and he ended up poisoning himself. I think he survived, but, you know, he had to go to the hospital. Okay. And it's just like, that's the danger of, like, if you don't fact check what this thing's telling you. And this happens in my work too a lot. Right? I will tell it, hey. Here's the architecture I have. I need you to build something like this. And it gets me most of the way there.
But the parts where it gets wrong, it's dangerously wrong. Like, the things that could really blow up the system and do some damage. And so, yeah, that, going back to your original question. Right? Until we find a way to overcome that particular hurdle, at least reduce the frequency in which it occurs, which is gonna be a huge challenge. Because, again, it's all based on the training data that the model has in it. So Mhmm. If we're building new tools that we've never done before, because now we have AI and we're trying to get into a new space, I think it's gonna get harder and harder for the model to keep up. That this that's just my intuition. I could be wrong. But, but, again, it comes down to until we reduce this, hallucination effect in these models, that's gonna be a huge hurdle, which is good, honestly, for society. It gives us time to, again, ask these questions. Let's figure out what we're gonna do with this, before it happens. Right? Because we don't wanna be caught in the middle of it and be like, oh, we should probably figure out like, millions of people losing jobs. We should we should probably figure out, you know, how we're gonna, help people make, you know, a living.
But, yeah, if I was to guess off the top of my head, like, I I don't think they're insurmountable hurdles. And what's gonna again, it comes back to my Internet analogy. Today, like, we just see it, and we're like, that's cool. Like but ten years from now, right, the things we're gonna build on top of that is gonna blow our minds. And you're gonna have new forms of models. Like, again, ChatGPT is a what's called a large language model. You're gonna have new breakthroughs of different types of models that do different things. They have different limitations. And what ends up happening is you're gonna have these things working in tandem, and they're gonna go back and forth and share knowledge and insights to then increase their ability to perform in industries. And that's where we're gonna and it could happen really fast. That's the dangerous part or not dangerous, but just kinda nerve wracking thing is, technology is an exponential curve.
Right? And we see this in the last couple decades. Like, we're way more productive now than we were, you know, twenty, thirty years ago. Mhmm. And that's just gonna keep growing exponentially. And so that's where it gets a little nerve wracking because we could be saying, oh, maybe ten years from now, maybe they have a breakthrough in three years from now that we're just not expecting. They found some new way to mix the models together. And now all of a sudden, they can do, you know, most of white collar jobs. And that's yeah. So time will tell. There's obviously no way to know because, obviously, if it's a breakthrough, we're not gonna see it coming.
But it all comes back to my point that we have to take the time to ask those questions of how we're gonna use it. Well, until they have AI robots actually doing plumbing work, you're always gonna need a plumber. Yeah. And honestly, that may be where we head to. I definitely see white collar jobs more at risk because it could be done through a screen, You know? Whereas anything in the physical world that requires skills, physical skills, that's gonna be much, much harder to replicate within robotics. Although they're they're, you know, they're working on it. Right? They're not gonna stop. That's the crazy part. Right? Like, even though today we laugh and, like, oh, yeah. The robots just fall down. They can't do much.
I mean, it's it's just a matter of time. But you're absolutely right. Like, I may get to the point where I'm out of a job software wise, and I go being a carpenter or something, you know, go work with my hands. But, yeah, but time will tell. Eventually, you know, I do see robotics getting to the point that blue collar work will also be replaceable. So I don't I don't think there's any major hurdle that's gonna keep any job safe that that I can think of. So we've we've kind of already talked about some of the things that people
[01:53:49] Unknown:
would be afraid of with an AI driven future. But, and a lot of those fears are justified without a doubt. But on the flip side, do you think there's anything that we could be excited about with a society that that where where work really is maybe optional, not necessarily completely abandoned?
[01:54:09] Unknown:
Yeah. Absolutely. Not, so, like, in my novel. Right? So I mentioned one of the characters. Right? She grows up in a UBI based America. But then there's the other side of the equation where there's this automationist society, and it follows, kind of what does it look like there when people are sharing those resources. And one of the biggest benefits, in my opinion, is health care. Because if we can get technology to the point that you have doctors and nurses that are, you know, robotic, and, again, it could be way off in the future, but, you know, eventually, I think we'll get there. Like, if unless we just blow ourselves up. Like, eventually, technology will get to the point that, your health care provider could be robotic, and they could diagnose things way more accurate than a human doctor can. And that's really exciting. Right? Because I I I don't know about you, but, like, I've seen a lot of issues with health care in in America.
I've kinda like, in my own family, like, I've had some issues where, kinda got screwed over, you know, by the system. Like, we pay for these insurance premiums, and then they just kick you to the curb, you know, and it's just totally it's corrupt. It's a scam, but we don't have alternatives because, like, I can't just not have insurance. And then I have some major medical, you know, I'll go bankrupt. I think that's, like, one of the biggest causes of bankruptcy in America right now is just health care, which is ridiculous. Like, there's no reason why we can't, find a way to make that reasonable, you know, for for everybody to afford. We have the technology.
We have the resources. And so I think one of the biggest benefits I see with this technology is is health care. Because when we co own these resources as I talked about, like, you can imagine a cell, like, not only do they co own the industry, but they also co own the local medical facilities. And if I get sick or, like, I need to go in for care, I don't have to think, oh, how much is this gonna cost me? It's like I'm a coowner. Like, I I can go in, get the care that I need, and the labor is paid for by the automation. That's what's so fascinating. Right? Because like any other economic system or any other social structure before, if you were going to have somebody pay for the late or, like, if you're gonna exploit the labor, you had to do that through slavery. Right? Like, because somebody has to pay the price for people to benefit from work.
Mhmm. But we're reaching this unprecedented space where now it's not a person that's doing the work to help you recover. You know? It's it's a machine. It's an intelligent machine that can, again, diagnose you, treat you, do all these things that you need. It has the resources available to give you the care that you need, everybody the care that they need. And for me, that's super exciting because I want my kids to grow up in a world where they're not afraid to have to go get, like, a check or, you know, like, go to the doctor because, you know, they're not feeling good. Or they have, like, like, issue where they gotta go to the emergency room and, like, like, how am I gonna afford this? I I kinda I look for the day that people can not have to ask that question to go get the medical care that they need because that's just it's a shame. It's a shame that we're at that point. And I do think we can make it better.
[01:57:24] Unknown:
Well, I think we're at that point now. I think there are a lot of people right now that that weigh the weigh the bet weigh the benefit of actually going to the doctor and having to deal with the insurance issues, the premiums, the payments, and so on and so forth. I mean, how many times have you been to the doctor where you've used your insurance and then a few weeks later you get a bill in the mail because your insurance only paid $50 on a bill that was $700 Yeah. You know? And now you gotta come up with this additional money to pay even though you're paying every month to get into, you know, for the insurance. Another subject I know altogether.
[01:57:58] Unknown:
Sure. Sure. I mean but, again, these are the questions we have to ask, because they're not gonna get better by themselves. Right? And I think the other thing is, like, we have to remember that we as the people, like, we in this country, we have more power than we think we do. It's just a matter of coordination. That's where it gets difficult. Right? Because we have to be able to coordinate. And I the Internet has gone a long way to lower the barrier that people like you and me, like, we're having this conversation now. Other people, they can have those conversations to figure out, like, how can we make this better? But we have to have those conversations. We have to talk about that. Because if we don't, it's not gonna get better.
There's no incentive. Capital the thing that's interesting about capitalism is it's not good or bad. It's amoral. It's a framework in which humans, decide how we're gonna share resources. Mhmm. And the biggest kind of blind spot that I see with capitalism is it only values a human life so far as that life can generate capital. Right? Like Interesting. And that's that's really what it comes down to. If you cannot generate capital in the lens of capitalism, you're worthless. But this gives a huge oversight, which has been just a huge gap within humanity for since the beginning of time, which is who bears responsibility for the individuals that cannot generate capital through no fault of their own. Right? You have children, the elderly, disabled people, in the future, people that are replaced by AI.
Mhmm. You have all these people that, like, through the lens of capitalism, if you cannot generate capital, you're deemed worthless, Which first of all is super depressing, like, if that was true, which it's not. And we all know that. But we are working under the incentives of a system that has deemed that is the measuring stick by which we determine the value of life.
[01:59:54] Unknown:
Are you familiar with the with the gentleman by the name of and I use the word gentleman in a loose context. Okay. Yuval Noah Harari?
[02:00:03] Unknown:
Yes.
[02:00:04] Unknown:
Yeah. He wrote the book Sapiens, I believe. Right? Is that Yeah. He he was in one of his books. I I actually today, I I wasn't really paying attention to it. And I just you know, you do you ever just, like, put the TV on in the background and it's just running? You're just not really watching it. It's just playing. Right. Well, I saw he was doing an interview on a podcast, and, this show that I was watching was running a clip of that, and he was talking exactly the same thing that you and I are talking about right now. Those people whose jobs are are removed and their purpose is removed because of AI.
And I wasn't exactly too thrilled with the response that he got because then he basically said that those people are no longer worth anything in society. And and of course, you know, Harari and that crowd, they're they're in they're very much interested in transhumanism. And they are very interested in depopulation. And, so so they'll look they'll look for any excuse whatsoever to to to lop off a couple of million people. There there no no qualms about that. And I don't say that flippantly either. I'm being unfortunately very serious. Right. So he was talking about the exact same thing that you and I are talking about right now. What about those people who have had AI take their jobs. Now, well, okay. So we retrain them, so then they become cashiers at like say Walmart. I think that was the example he used. But then you have AI takes that job.
Right? So you go from a skilled labor to unskilled labor to what at that point? Right. Right. You know, that's I think that's a very, very scary prospect.
[02:01:48] Unknown:
Yeah. It is. And it's a shame that the answer to so many people is, yeah, You're worthless now. Tough luck. And that is just ridiculous because the technology is there to make life better for everybody. Mhmm. And so anybody who answers that, it's it's so fascinating to me, like, human nature. Right? Like, as long as you're not the one that's being screwed over, it's like, you know, let's let's do that. Let's do that. I'm so sorry for you. But the reality is that life does have value outside of capital. Anyone says different, like, probably not gonna like hanging around you because, like, if you just see money as a means to an end, like, your life's gonna be pretty shallow because there's just so much more to this existence than, this idea that I have to be productive. I have to generate capital in order to be valuable as an individual.
And quite frankly, that is gonna get challenged, by and it's gotta be by us. It's gotta be by the people who don't own the automation. But the only way to fight against such a, like, idea is you gotta unite. Like, you have to find a way to share those resources, so that we can be self sustaining. Right? Because it one of the biggest things about, like, a cell is it's a self sustaining economic unit. They generate all the profits they need for all the members that belong to it. And then from that, like, everybody's provided for. And now your value as an individual is no longer coupled to your ability to generate income.
And I'm I'm hopeful that we could figure that out. I I don't know how widespread it would be. I don't know if, something like that would scale. I think there's a lot of challenges to it for sure, which I explore in the book. But I think it's still even if it's not automationism, right, there are alternatives. Like, capitalism, like, it started somewhere. Right? It didn't it hasn't been around forever, and it's not gonna last forever. It just can't. Especially, AI is gonna challenge everything that we've assumed about, the value of of human labor.
And so we have to find an alternative to, make that make sense or else somebody is gonna define that for us. And, that's kind of future I wanna avoid.
[02:04:12] Unknown:
Well, we we've talked about a lot of pretty heavy, heavy issues tonight, so I don't wanna end the show on a on a downer. So, who's someone that you respect right now? What are they doing that inspires you?
[02:04:24] Unknown:
Oh, man. That's a really good question. Someone that really inspires me, actually, believe it or not, is, Jordan Peterson. I've I've followed a lot. It's very device he's a divisive individual, right, depending on what side he's on. But he his work helped me a lot when I was, like, you know, years ago. Like, I picked up his book, 12 rules for life. And it is it's a great book. And it was amazing to me how just reading words off of a page could alter my mindset of what I was capable of achieving and and what's worth striving for. And, honestly, that has inspired me a lot as a writer to explore, like, you know, even though it's just words on a page, if it can inspire, like, a new generation to think differently than what we're doing learn from our mistakes and build something better, I think that's really powerful. And so, anyway, definitely somebody that's, been influenced in my life.
[02:05:23] Unknown:
Outstanding. Alright. So where can the audience go to get some more information about you, get your book, follow you around?
[02:05:29] Unknown:
Yeah. So, again, the book is called We Can Be Perfect, The Paradox of Progress. It's available for preorder now on Amazon. I actually have a sample of the first chapter. I think can I put this in the chat right here? Do all your viewers see? Yeah. Or if you wanna put it down, but if you could put in the comments after oh, I didn't see we had chats. Oh my goodness. Look at that. Yeah. I'll just put it here if anyone has access to that. Yeah. Go right ahead. That's a little link that takes you to a free sample of the first chapter. You can read it, and, find out where to preorder it through that.
And, yeah. Again, it comes out November 4, and, super excited to just see what people think about it. So Alright.
[02:06:10] Unknown:
Outstanding. Why is that up on the screen there? I don't know. But okay. I don't long as they don't see it, that's good. Okay. Alright. So, Landon, thank you again for spending the night with us. I really appreciate it. This This has been great information. And to the folks in the chat, I'm sorry I didn't get to it. I didn't realize I had the chat window closed. But, all of the information that we talked about tonight, locations, books, Amazon, we'll put all those links in the show notes. I think I have your website in the in the show notes. I don't think I have the Amazon link, so I'll make sure that gets in there. Yeah. I'll make sure you got it too. No. I have it, actually. Oh, okay. Great. It's on the it's on the PodMatch page. So Oh, perfect. So I'll just grab it. I can grab it from there. It's not not a problem at all. And, I I would really encourage you to check it out. Check out the book. It's really interesting. The the little bit of the first chapter that I looked at was fascinating.
So please check it out. This is a really important subject matter too. I mean, folks, this is this is the future and it's here now. You know, we need to pay attention to these things and ask these questions. And like Landon said, we have to keep talking about these things. It's incredibly important to do that. Landon, thank you so much for being with us tonight. Have a great night and we look forward to getting you back on again another time. Awesome. Sounds great. Thank you, Joe. It's been great. Okay. Got it. All right, folks. Let's go let's go wrap this thing up here. So, just a couple of quick announcements. Don't forget to sign up the programming announcements email list that we have going on on the website.
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[02:11:47] Unknown:
Happy
Introduction and Housekeeping
Guest Introduction: Jake Griffin
The Role of Psychology and Faith
Challenges in Pest Control and Medicine
The DSIX Framework and Coaching
Reprogramming the Mind
Identity and Purpose in Modern Society
Advice for Younger Generations
Introduction to Landon Shumlee
AI and the Future of Work
Economic Systems and Automationism
Potential Benefits of AI
Challenges and Opportunities in AI Development
Closing Thoughts and Future Prospects
