Bridging Worlds: Technology's Impact on Society with Physicist-Turned-Entrepreneur Aqeel Akber | #8 - The Strange Attractor

Episode Transcript
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Samuel Wines (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Strange Attractor, an
experimental podcast from Colabs, a transdisciplinary innovation
hub and biotechnologyco-working lab based in
Melbourne, Australia.
I'm your co-host, sam Wines,and alongside my co-founder,
andrew Gray, we'll delve deepinto the intersection of biology
, technology and society throughthe lens of complexity and

(00:22):
systems thinking.
Join us on a journey ofdiscovery as we explore how
transdisciplinary innovation,informed by life's regenerative
patterns and processes, couldhelp us catalyze the transition
towards a thriving future forpeople and the planet.
Hello and welcome to anotherepisode of the Strange Attractor

(00:45):
.
So this was a really impromptupodcast actually, so there was
no preparation or anything thatwent into it, so I apologise if
it seems a little bit less cool,calm and collected.
It was just a really funconversation that I got into
with someone, but that someonebeing Aqeel Akber from Canberra.

(01:06):
So I met them at Burning Seedit would have been five years
ago and in that time, we've bothbeen on our own journeys and
they set up a successfulstart-up, exited and are now
looking to explore interestingother possibilities, which, in
their words, would be to createas much confusion as possible as

(01:29):
a means of bringing us allcloser together, which I think
is kind of beautiful.
So, yeah, I hope you enjoy thisimpromptu episode of The
Strange Attractor with AqeelAkber.
Awesome.
Well, this is a surprise.
I wasn't expecting us to end upin front of microphones.

(01:50):
We were just coming back fromhaving a coffee and this
conversation is really good.
And you were saying you'd neverrecorded a podcast before.
No, no, no.
Ah Well, just hearing you tellthat story about how you, I

(02:10):
guess I don't want to ruin thestory but here, because
obviously we're going to leaninto this but it was just so
fascinating because so much ofthe points that you said and
that you'd made resonated quitea lot with the story and the
journey that Andrew and myselfhave had.
And it's been five years sincewe met at Burning Seed, of all
places, and it sounds like somuch has changed since then.

(02:34):
But then I kind of love howmuch is still the same but it's
the same.
But after the change, likethere are things that we've both
co-learned at the same time indifferent areas and you're like,
oh, that interrelates.

Aqeel Akber (02:50):
What is the word like emergent, evolution or
convergent.

It was emergent evolution, right Divergent, and
then now, convergent, it makessense that it's the same things.

that resonates with you.
It's about trying to do goodwith technology.
Like you're a biologist, I'm ascientist, a physicist, and we
have this entrepreneurial spirit.
What can we do?
And just trying to go for it.
And it's the same path.

Yeah, actually that was something that I really
found quite beautiful that yousaid before just about, I guess,
your vision statement for whatyou do in life and also what you
did with your first business.

Making the ethical decision the economic one, like
we can't really fight out rightnow that economics and
capitalism is where it's at.
So what can we do within it?
And I actually don't really seehaving just had my shares
brought back in my exit reallythinking about what capitalism
is.
In many ways I was much moreidealistic when I was young.

(03:50):
It's at least allowed me to beable to kind of move up in a
socioeconomic class with myparents from poverty, and so
it's got some benefits there.
But no matter what, we'realways going to be exporting our
poverty down.
But it's also democratized,this idea of now people can
become an aristocrat in a way.

(04:10):
So it's an odd thing that Ibelieve that invention and
science is the only thing thatallows us to really get that
real arbitrage of being able tomake something that can make the
ethical decision the economicone, because that's where it's
like.
Now there's something new thatcan change.

So, on that note, could you give everyone a bit of
a backstory about who you are,how you've got to, where you got
to and obviously even beforethat?
So you were trying to finishoff your PhD in quantum physics,
nuclear physics, so that's thetear up, right, if we're looking

(04:55):
at a scale perspective,everything is quantum.

I guess I like to study the nucleus.
I thought it was veryinteresting.
It was the first time when Idid my nuclear physics course
and undergrad that they had aslide up and the color of the
nucleons actually mattered.
And I'm like I like colors.
That's cool.

So surely there was like what is it that pulled
you into the nucleus?

I guess.
Okay, so a part of it could bemy dad.
I can't discount that he isalso a nuclear physicist
environmental nuclear physicistbut I actually studied IT
straight out of high school andthen I found that really boring.
I fell asleep during theinformation systems lecture.
I was just describing a tableand I just went into physics

(05:46):
because it was sufficiently hard.
That's actually kind of thething.
What brought me to nuclearphysics sufficiently hard.
I think there's something indoing the hard thing.
There's always going to besomething interesting there.
But dropped my PhD to found formfive years ago, which is in AI,
consulting at the time, movingnow into ideas of robotics as

(06:10):
well and data science, justbeing able to apply the same
sort of problem-solving skillsand thinking.
You know how I got to where Iwas and where I am.
I guess my name is Akil Akbar,my pronouns are they and them
Should mention that.
When I said all my stuff followyour excitement, and that's all
I kind of did.
I didn't expect to go on thispath and I just kept doing that.

(06:33):
It made sense to move intousing AI and also I really
believe in applied science a lotmore.
Like gosh.
I remember when I joined my PhD, when saying I'm a nuclear
physicist basically became apickup line.
It was just like it's not right, it's not why you're here.

(06:54):
I didn't think anyone goes intoscience for that, and academia
was quite, and is still a bit,quite, toxic with gender issues,
as well as just beingoverworked and what's expected.
So I wanted to make a betterplace for that, or great people,
to do great things with them,and yeah, that was it.

(07:16):
It's a journey.

Nice.
So you were saying a lot of thework that you were doing was,
obviously it was curiosity ledthat led you to these places.
But then, once you're in thatcontext, it was almost challenge
led innovation.
Right, you were saying that ina way, you guys, for fun, we
started doing hackathons untilyou realized that you could also

(07:38):
get paid to do hackathons forthe government.

Absolutely.
It was hilarious, soprocrastinating from our PhDs,
doing hackathons, having a lotof fun with it.
Then people wanted to pay usmoney or hire us and we just
thought maybe we should start acompany that might be something
here, because we really believedin trying to really be more
impactful than we believed othercompanies that would hire us

(08:03):
could be, and we also believedin making a good space.
Thorn is still around.
I'll talk about in the pasttense because I'm no longer like
a shareholder there.
That's really the idea.

And with Thorn.
So you're a consulting groupthat looked at, because this is
the thing right, you're alltrained physicists or maybe not
anymore, but the originalco-founding crew were all
physicists, and so there must besomething with that way of
looking at the world whichprovided you with a benefit when

(08:43):
bringing that to problemsolving, I assume.

Yeah, xkcdcom forward slash 797.
I have memorized this URLbecause it is the easiest way to
describe to people.
It's essentially a comic thatshows a physicist that came up
to somebody else who's got someother problem in another field
and it's like can't you justsolve this with simple model

(09:07):
that I just came up with andthen add these additional
variables that I just thought ofthen, and it's easy, right?
Why does your field have ajournal anyway?
That sort of arrogance, in away, is it, gets you the good
enough to be able to make abetter decision, because there's
low lying fruit in the factthat people don't do anything at

(09:27):
all.
So if you can provide somethingsimpler, a simple solution, then
show that it's easy.
They're just amazed.
So I think, though, as aphysicist for me particularly
I'm an experimental physicist, Iguess the way that my dad
taught me to play like I thinkeducation is such an important

(09:49):
thing.
I'm a researcher at heart and Ialways will be, and you see the
world differently as aphysicist.
You definitely see the worlddifferently.
It's so beautiful, likeeverything is made up of these
nucleons.
It's amazing, and I love that.
It's something that you canapply, that thinking and thought

(10:10):
to things as high and asabstract as business.
That's, I think, really the key, if I can do it with nucleons
which are femtometer scale andhave ideas in my head and paint
a picture in my head.
I did a collaboration with astreet artist once to paint what
was in the nucleus and myresearch.
that was fun.
If I can do that, I canunderstand the confluence of

(10:34):
things that come together inlarger systems, in organizations
and for doing business itself.
So I think that's the way of it.

Yeah, Like that resonates with me as someone
who's, I guess you could saylike self-taught in complexity,
science and systems theory, isthat you realize that there is a
pattern that connects all theway through from the microscale
to the mesoscale to themacroscale and there are certain

(11:06):
things that we'll repeat atmultiple different scales and as
you tend to go up that stackyou have emergence of things
that's a newer, novel, thatmight not have appeared at the
stack below.
But fundamentally there arethese processes and patterns and
principles which you can seethat relate to the whole and the
parts, and once you can beginto see that, it allows you, kind

(11:30):
of like you know, once you playall this, like the scales on a
piano or on a guitar and you cansuddenly now play any song that
you hear, it's like once youcan see those, all those
different scales of how you canmake sense of the world, you can
start to play more freely withthat.
So when you enter into a problemspace, you can be like, oh,

(11:51):
this could go like this and thiscould be here, and suddenly you
can bring this wider boundaryperspective outside of a single,
I guess, domain or discipline.
So, even though you're sayinglike, I hear you saying
physicist, I hear you sayingtransdisciplinary thinker, or,
you know, intersectionalinnovation, like all of these
other words that could be kindof used that to me speak more

(12:13):
true to, I guess, what I imagineyou would be doing.
But I'm curious to know ifthat's sort of something that
lands or resonates with you.

Absolutely, and I love that you use the word play,
because I am a strong believerthat when I am hiring staff, I
try to see whether they can play.
And whenever I'm actuallymeeting people, I see whether
they can play with whatever itis in their field and their
domain expertise, because then Iknow that they have mastered it
.
So if you master it pretty muchanything to the point of play,

(12:43):
then you're comfortable withunderstanding that even the.
Thing that you studied so far,that might be so rigid and so
niche is malleable and you cando it yourself and it's kind of
like.
You know you're mentioning themodels and how kind of like can
like the scales right and thenyou can play.
You know, I'm also a believerin like.
No model might be fully true.
There may be a pattern.

(13:03):
It might not be real like it's,but it's good enough, it's
working.

That's not the territory, sort of thing.

So you can play with your understanding and
perception of how it connectstogether as well.
So, in form, we just believe tomake a space for people to be
able to think like that andinterdisciplinary, like applied
sort of technologies as well aspeople, is very much key to what
we do, like I, one of my majorprojects that I worked on was

(13:31):
developing Whale Pod, which is asystem to automatically detect
whales at sea using AI.
I should say I'm not trained inAI formally or computing
formally, it's just it's theskill you can pick up, and I
built a system that I had tobuild my own camera system
because nothing could actuallydetect a whale at the range and

(13:54):
speed that we needed.
I used my physics knowledgethere.
I built a prototyping of all ofthat.
So I used my tinkeringknowledge and all that sort of
stuff as well in engineering.
It was actually reallyfascinating.
The nobody built and solved thisproblem because there was one
key point where they justcouldn't fit a lens onto a

(14:16):
camera.
They said that they're notcompatible and it spent two
weeks being like why can't Ijust put it on?
Why can't I just do it?

Surely there's an adapter or something.

Well, they just told me it's not compatible and
I'm like why it doesn't makesense.
You can use a lens on anysensor.
Like for me as a physicistdoing the arrogance thing.
It's like I just drew raydiagrams bending them to a
sensor.
I'm like it has to work.
It doesn't matter 3D.

print me one right now.
Just make it happen.

So it turned out.
It actually was just that youcouldn't fit it physically and
because there was very muchyou're buying from, because we
built WhalePod with commercialoff-the-shelf parts, which I
think is quite useful in thiseconomy, then the engineers and
people selling it to you theyjust are reading what's in the
book.
They only know their domain,which engineering is great for

(15:10):
reproducibility and process, butthey didn't know that you can
actually just fit it somewhereelse and it will just work.
They don't know the physics ofit.
So that was fun.
I just like dropping severalthousands, tens of thousands of
dollars on my hunch that youknow what.
I think it's going to work andit then actually working.

(15:31):
But it also required someputting this lens very expensive
lens in a lathe and thenshaving off half a mil or
something like that.
And lucky at the researchcalled physics, we have some
incredible, incredible sort oftechnicians there that worry
what to do that.

Yeah, I can't believe you just literally lay.
So you just pretty muchsandpapered, like in.
This is obviously a terribledescriptor of it.
I'm straw money.
You literally sandpapered thelens to make it fit.
You're like, no, it'll fit, youjust change the shape and get
it in there it was just thethreading.

The threading it just hit the camera housing
before being able to fit it in.
Otherwise, like it's just, Idrew and I was not like backing
myself up.
I guess I was backing myself up.
I eventually backed myself upbut I made sure I didn't.
I drew my ray diagrams.
I'm like it has to work.
It's just simple, it's justphysics, they're just photons.
It just has to work.
There's nothing else here and Ijust kept thinking about it.

(16:31):
What other things could be likehere, what other second order
effects and stuff like that?
Because second order effectsalways matter.

And then thought of her for that matter as well.

So I left.

I made sure that I wasn't just jumping in on
impulse, but that wasn't justgetting random notifications I
think by this time into doingthis podcast that I'd know to
put do not disturb on.
But sometimes I just get waytoo excited to jump into a
conversation.

You know the funny thing, I guess going to
interdisciplinary effects aswell.
I think that that's somethingas in business you have to be,
and when I was making whale pod,it's awesome.
I actually know a ridiculousamount of things about whale
migrations around Australia.
Now, it's an odd thing.
I never thought I would.
And it was wonderful, waking upevery day just being like save

(17:21):
the whale, save the world, Savethe whale, save the world.
Just great.
And having so much of that inmy life.
I didn't expect to be a whalescientist, and so I speak to so
many whale scientists.

I'm sure there's plenty of people who'd be so
envious of that position.
I know my partner, emmy.
She is an absolute whale fan.
She absolutely loves whales,and knowing that she could
potentially find your device totrack where the whales are, just
so that she could see them,would make her so happy.
But yeah, I mean, whales arefascinating and you say, save
the whale, save the world.

(17:52):
But I know you're probablysaying that as a bit of like a
it's a good catchphrase.
But it's actually like when youlook at the biological pump
that whales do with, likecirculating nutrients through, I
guess, the habitable zone ofthe I don't know what that top
layer is called of the oceananymore I forgot pretty much
where the light can penetratethrough.

(18:13):
It's pretty much where theyhang out.
They're actually like essentialfor helping move carbon through
that system.
So yeah, you're not too far offwhen you say that.

I remember reading that paper.

Oh, do you know what the title of the?

paper was, I don't remember, but I think it was
published in nature even, andit's about how the whales, when
they die, they actually bury thecarbon and stuff like that.
The whale scientists that Ispoke to during that time were a
bit skeptical of that idea, Iguess.
Yeah, it's always hard, youknow, I think in science we are

(18:49):
so desperate to be like.
This is the answer.
Or maybe I think in Westernscience particularly and we're
not comfortable with acceptingthat.
It's heuristic in some wayinstead of saying smoking on,
this is always the solution,it's part of the puzzle.
Like, if you think about it,yes, there are a lot of carbon
and they're dropping down to thebottom of the ocean.
It's very incarbon and you know, if you think about the fact

(19:12):
that ecosystems survive andanything that it sounds like a
healthy ecosystem.
So plus is the bar test, thepub test, in a way, for me.
So about how much it couldcapture and drop it down.
I am not sure.
The reason why I actuallylooked into this so much is
because I wanted to see whetherI could use that as a point for

(19:35):
pushing commercialization of howmuch carbon we're actually
saving Like carbon credit,actually getting measurements
and stuff like this.
So much, like you know, I guess, quantifiable measurement
that's needed, I guess, to pushthings economically.

But, as you said, like with that I mean
qualitatively it's just nice tohave them around, like it's like
don't get me wrong.
Like it's great, likequantitative is essential and
fundamental, but like even justthinking about what you're
saying then and then baking inlike Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle and all these otherthings there was, like you're
never going to fully knowsomething, 110% as a fact, and

(20:11):
like if you want to track aparticle's spin, you can't tell
its location, and it's like thatsame pattern kind of plays out
even just with measuring datawith other things.
It's like you could there'sinfinite amount of data you can
take from something, but it'sfiguring out.
What are the main like three orfour variables that will give

(20:31):
you like 95% accuracy in 97% ofthe situations, knowing it's not
perfect, and then how can weuse that?
to be able to create enough of amap of the territory to make
sense with it and that's likemodeling generally when I won.

And I think a thing that you learn a lot from
physics, especially as anexperimental physicist, is you
choose a model, but you knowwhere it's good to and you know
where it's not good to, and Ithink a lot of people they don't
know they're modeling wellenough.
Maybe they don't know theirunknown unknowns which I don't

(21:07):
really like that term.
It's quite possible to knowyour unknowns and know where
it's gonna end, and I guess thiskind of tells me.
I guess a bit of the kind ofscientists that I am as well I
remember going through myundergrad and thinking about
going through my time of myreligion and thinking about
creation and things like thatare very so many scientists and

(21:28):
physicists, I guess, especiallyyoung men.
They're just militantlyatheists, they're just militant
about everything.

I can relate to that, as when you're like 17, 18
, you're like this is the way,science is the way I've never
been that way.

I've never been that way.
For me, it's just like,actually, and I think it's my
dad teaching me in science beinga scientist is a humble servant
of society, and it's just likeyou have your mind open a bit.
So I just thought about the factokay, why are people fighting
over this whole thing?
It's kind of silly.
Then I thought okay, if I couldbuild a time machine to go back

(22:04):
before time existed and seethis creation point?
That's the only way you canknow with certainty.
Otherwise people are gonna keeparguing.
But that, fundamentally, is aparadox that cannot be solved,
because if you build somethingwithin this universe and try to
go outside of it, it won't existSimply.
And that's sort of what I meanby being able to understand

(22:26):
where something breaks or ends,but still being able to use the
idea.
And that's what I mean by thewhale paper Even though you
might not be fully complete, youcan still use the idea.
That's so critical, I think,for us moving forward, and it'll
be really interesting the daythat we accept machines can make

(22:46):
mistakes and machines actuallydon't give you the answer
exactly.

Well, isn't that?
Pretty much all AI models are100% wrong all the time, but
they're 95% accurate.
Oh gosh, they're alwaysslightly, because you have
mentioned that you're doing AIconsulting, but that's not far
off the truth, right?

When you say wrong, what do you mean?
Hmm.

Let's say they might give you a result based
off the data set that they'repulling from, but not all the
data in that set is what wemight call accurate.
Yeah, and then that will causeit to hallucinate, or maybe the
way in which you've framed aquestion or the context window
that you provided it.
Yeah.
All of these things, all thedata you've trained on yourself,

(23:38):
or if it's like there's so manydifferent things that can shape
how it will provide information.
Yeah.

I guess I can talk about machine learning a bit.
So yeah, you know, whenever Isay AI, I really mean machine
learning.
I don't think we're anywherenear artificial intelligence,
like nowhere near it, or yeah,nowhere near it.
I was thinking about thisactually today when I went for
my morning walk.
In machine learning there is, orjust any sort of modeling,

(24:08):
classification, regression, andthen there's these new models of
generative sort of AI really,really cool stuff.
Classification and regression.
Classification is like you seeclusters within data.
That's a supervised learningthing.
You statistically fit a modelto that to be able to give you a
prediction Regression.

(24:30):
You then put a decisionthreshold in that to say, now,
this is the line it could be.
You can then use that to makesome sort of conclusions.
That again is something thatyou kind of bacon yourself with
your data and what you'relabeling Generative sort of
things.
These are really interesting.

(24:51):
It blows my mind that it's onlybeen what six, seven years with
machine learning gettingaccessible, deep learning
getting accessible or actuallypossible With I think it was the
creation of the NVIDIA 1080 Tiwas powerful enough and cheap
enough, and then a few yearsafter that we got generative

(25:15):
adversarial networks.
That's the deep fakes.
You go tothispersantosonexistcom, that
thing.
That blows my mind that thatwas such a short period of time
ago Crazy.
But that's when you're justtraining something against
something that can classify verywell.
That's how they'd make GANs.

(25:35):
You had one that could be likethis is a face.
I am classifying a face.
This is a human.
This is a human.
And you get one that startswith pure random noise and then
you're slowly tweaking it to beable to do gradient descent,
trying to fit your model, to beable to make something that just
spits out and that will trickthe thing that's really good at
seeing a face.

(25:55):
And then if we think abouttransformers or I guess GPT or
any sort of generative model,they're just predicting the next
word.

They're word optimization.
That's what Ben and Justin sayall the time is like it's
literally just.
All it's doing is finding thenext word that makes the most
sense in the context of theprevious other words.

Yeah.

Based on your input.
That's right.

And it's purely statistical.
I guess the clear thing that Iwant to make here is that all of
these things are juststatistical models.
They're just algorithms, that'sall they are.
It's just like any other modeland I guess that we've used.
If you will fit a straight lineto data, that's the same sort
of deal.
I you know tongue in cheek.

(26:43):
Think of it as you havepolynomial fitting with a
billion variables.
Yes.
Then you can describe any sortof functional act is the idea,
and that's deep learning and AI,but it's still just fitting our
model and it has its flaws.
Particularly, I believe deeplearning explicitly can only

(27:06):
interpolate.
It can't really extrapolate.
That's, I think, a very keything to remember, well, and
that's.
These are the sorts of thingswhere it's like, if you actually
know your model, then you atleast you can use them in a way,
that is, with eyes open, andthat's something that I was very
passionate and we very muchpassionate about our form.
That's a scientist within us.
You don't do things blindly.

(27:27):
That's so important.
I think we're talking earlierabout how the things that you
know could save us are also thethings that can kill us,
absolutely yeah.
And that is a key thing.
Like, if you think about it,they can only interpolate and
not extrapolate.
Don't use these as oracles.
Don't use it to be able to tryto understand things that are
outside of its scope, or, if youdo, be wary.

Just acknowledge those, as you were saying before
.
Acknowledge where theboundaries are.
You can still play with them,they're not fixed but just being
aware of these things, havingthe self awareness and then also
the systemic awareness to knowwhere this model might not map
onto the territory anymore andwhen you might need to use
another heuristic or where youmight need to create something
totally new, because actuallythis intersection hasn't been

(28:10):
explored thoroughly enough.
Exactly, I love the fact thatyou're an experimental physicist
working in applied technologyand innovation.
Something about that, almostoxymoron, makes me really happy
and I'd love to know what yourtake on that is why?
Because a lot of the time younormally hear it's like

(28:32):
someone's either X or they're Yright and you're sort of sitting
in this super position whereyou're like actually there's a
lot of really useful stuff fromhere that I can take over and
apply in the real world.

Experimental physics and experimental nuclear
physics.
I'm a big.
I love precision andmeasurement.
I think whenever we have a newmeasurement of things, we
actually discover a whole heapof new things, which makes new
technology.
That, I think, is just so key.
You uncover a thing anddiscover something, and then you
can make cool things.
I believe in the cycle ofengineering science altogether.

(29:07):
There's this triangle for datascience.
I've forgotten who mentioned itdata, information, knowledge,
wisdom.
There's this triangle andthat's kind of like your
understanding.
You start with just raw noiseand data and then you have
information, turn them intoknowledge, wisdom.
The way that I interpret this.

Sounds very Bateson-esque.
You know Gregory Bateson.
I feel like he'd say somethinglike that.

I have no idea.
See, I guess I kind of justgrab what kind of works with me
and I just keep running with it.
I'm not so big on names, maybethat's why I've never done a
podcast.
I'm just continuously usingwhat I can where I think it was
useful, which is totally fine byme.
So the data part the way that Iinterpret this my
interpretation of all this data.

(29:52):
For me, raw noise, rawmeasurements, unintelligible
noise measurements, informationYou've now put it into a format
that you can start to use.
Knowledge means that now it'sin a language that a human can
understand.
Wisdom is insights and wisdomto be able to do that.
If I think about from ascientist perspective,

(30:12):
experimental, physicistperspective, you are applying
your knowledge to be able to getideas from your information,
your measurement, and then thewisdom is the thought of how to
explain that in mathematics it'sactually connecting the theory,
so that kind of completes thatloop, I believe.

(30:33):
For me personally, it'ssomething.
I personally believe thatthere's another thing on top of
that which is vision, and that,I think, is something where
you're transcending wisdomaltogether and really just kind
of dreaming of it up.
We don't have enough peoplethat are brave enough to do that
or to say that I think that's acultural thing at the moment.

(30:56):
And if we then think aboutanother thing that I thought
about, that kind of sitshorizontally to this thing Once
you have knowledge, you canstart being productive, so you
can produce things, which isvery cool, and I think of these,
like okay, I can now haveknowledge, I can make these
little blocks.
And then I think of, okay, whenI get that wisdom, then I can

(31:21):
start to create things.
I can start putting theseblocks on top of each other,
making buildings, and only whenyou're standing on top of all
those buildings can you get thatoverlooking view of the city,
and that's when you get vision.
And I think the next thing, ifI think about the horizontal,
that's invention, and that's,though, to be able to invent a

(31:42):
new thing or measure a new thing, or you start to see something
again.
It's that's the discovery part,I guess, of science, where
you're doing blue sky sort ofthings or invention sort of
things in any way, but the ideais there's just one thing you
eventually need to close theloop and go back up again and
you have to produce the thingand apply it.
That's so close relationship ofscience and engineering and

(32:04):
even just like deep sciencestuff in your technicians in
your lab and everything likeit's.
It's all just.
At the end of the day, it hasto exist so you observe nature
to be able to actually dosomething with it.
I saw there was a documentaryabout AI or something like that,
and there was a scientist.
Scientist that mentionedsomething very cool, which was

(32:29):
if you think about humans, weare our technology.
Absolutely, we're wearingclothes.
Couldn't agree more with this.

Yeah, I am.
There's something.
And another thing on top ofthat.
I feel like you really enjoythis.
I'll try and find a way toweave it in.
But yeah, the tech, thetechnology we create, it's like
ontological design.
We create technology and thetechnology we make then shapes
our patterns of behavior andthinking.
So the tools we make shape us,which then it's recursive,

(32:59):
because then next iteration ofthings we create are based on
the things that we just had.
So you also end up in lock,evolutionary lockstep, with your
technology, which is it'sfascinating to think about that.
But you know we can obviouslyalways change it.
But once you bake thattechnology into the
infrastructure layer, thefeedback loops for change away

(33:19):
longer, and then, as soon as itgets embedded in culture and
worldview, good luck.
Like you know that that can takea long time unless you can have
something, except prime examplebeing economics worked really
well for a while, you know, andthen that just became like the
be able to end all, and thenwe're like hang on, no, infinite
growth on a finite planetdoesn't work.
But you know, science was onlytrendy oh, it's still still

(33:44):
obviously trendy now, but youknow it was the real voice of
reason, let's say, up untilsocial physics appeared, which
is what they originally calledeconomics, before switching it
to economics, because they'relike hey, everyone loves physics
, let's just take that title andrun with it to make this shit
sound legit, even though itisn't.
But yeah, look.
So it worked really well for ashort amount of time, but it's

(34:05):
just not really viable in itscurrent form anymore.
You know, the maps no longermap onto the territory and we
need some people to stand up and, and you know, processing all
the data, the information andthe knowledge and the wisdom,
looking up with the vision andbe like I know that there is,
there is a better future.
That's not just possible butpreferable, that we can, that we

(34:27):
can manifest, you know, butit's it's gonna like, from my
perspective, it's going to takemultiple ways of knowing the
science and the engineering.
All these things are valid, butwe also, you know, we need,
like, intuition.
Like and I feel like you look atEinstein, you look at Tesla all
of these scientific greats werevery intuitive, you know, a lot
of the time they'd be playingan instrument and something

(34:47):
would come to them, or thatthey'd be thinking about
something in the bathtub andlike perceiving, like I know
Einstein would say, like hewould stand in the arrow of time
and then off to the side andthen look at it from different
angles and then that was how hewould come up with his ideas
through him, like thinking, butembodying himself in the vision,

(35:08):
to be able to perceive howthese things might happen in a
way which you can only makehappen in your mind, because you
could never perceive thatthought experiment in reality.
And I find that stuff for me isso fascinating and beautiful
because that speaks to, I guess,the artistic and the and that
side of thinking which a lot ofthe time, as scientists you're,

(35:32):
I guess, either trained topretend it, you know you don't
think like that, like it's avery left brain, reductionist,
mechanistic, linear thinking,except for maybe those in the,
in the physics field, where youactually see things as systems.
But yeah, I feel like that tome is something that I find
super fascinating and obviouslybeautiful, but I think that also

(35:53):
ties into, like your latestventure and project that you're
currently looking at exploring.

Yeah, I guess I'm a bit unsabotical.
I know what I need to do.
I want to get back intobusiness.
I believe that the thing thatkind of got me with the one that
got me to where I am, I thinkit's funny I say I've never had
a real job in my life.
I really haven't, somehowneither really somehow, yeah, I

(36:23):
got into starting my own company, having all these stuff, and I
just know my next steps is tokind of focus on this idea of
I'm applying this process andmindset in every way I think
possible and I really want to beable to create human-centric
experiences, and I genuinelydon't know much more than that
yet.
Everything you mentioned thereI love, and I had to write notes

(36:46):
on what I wanted to say.
It was so good.

Please.
Well, I'd love to hear whatthese notes are.
Oh my goodness.

Well, it's just things that came up that I
wanted to mention, because it'syou mentioned intuition, right,
like to me, I think we all havedifferent languages in our minds
, maybe in a way, Differentforms of mental ease, so to
speak.
For me.
I think of that as justintuition, as vision in a way,
maybe it's the if you're not avisual thing or I don't know,

(37:15):
vision is vision Like it's kindof arbitrary?
You're dreaming of somethingand I think that's the thing
that came up.
The second point here is thatthese are like mantras.
I have so many mantras in mylife and I just pick them up and
I keep them.
That's the reason why I knowthat triangle is data,
information, knowledge, wisdom,because I added vision on top of
that.
Now that's a mantra.
We are the music makers, we arethe dreamers of dreams.

(37:36):
I wonder who.
There's a poet who wrote that.

Sounds like Rilke or something like that.

He's doing a lot of things.

Is it actually?
I have no idea, no no no.

It shouldn't be hard to find.
It was in Willy Wonka and Ilove it.
He's just like we are the musicmakers, we are the dreamers of
dreams.

It wasn't.
Actually I can't.
I'm trying to figure out, seeif I can find this real time,
but I'm just taking away fromthe actual conversation, so I'm
going to stop.

I think I guess, as a non-binary person as well
bravery encourage is somethingthat's so important and I think
we need to have that same sortof intellectual bravery and just
kind of go for it.
There's so much of from whatI'm experiencing, that people
are just looking for permissionto do something and to actually

(38:31):
go out there and try it.
It's the same with coming upwith that new idea, like a
radical idea that Einstein had.
It's wild, but just to kind ofthink of it from a different
perspective, to actually stopand have a look and think how,
about time to be able to do thatand ask a question, I guess,
yeah, that's the new idea.
Philosophy, dsq, studio, dot,star, question mark, studio

(38:55):
that's what it's going to be.
Something's going to happen.
Watch the space.
The other thing that came upfor me when you were mentioning
these things about economics.
Another mantra I picked up wasgosh.
When I started my PhD, I wasreally into Twitter and How's
that going for you?
No, I quit Twitter as soon asTrump got elected.

(39:15):
It was just too much and therewas hashtag my one science tweet
.
There was an evolutionarybiologist that mentioned
something that I love it isevolution is amoral, culture
serves the genome and forhumanity to survive we must
transcend and that middle part,culture serves the genome.

(39:36):
I use that all the time.
I really believe in that and Ilike this perspective of
thinking of things.
You know, the world isprogressing forward and it's
progressing forward amorally inhow it does.
It just continues.
Time marches on right.
Culture serves the genome Inculture.
That's, I guess, how you canhave self-selecting sort of

(39:57):
environments that all of asudden they end up with, or men,
or something like that right.
It serves within it and it willcontinue to get stronger within
it.
And that it keeps creatingreinforcing feedback loops that
maintain that sort ofhomeostatic thing and if that's
not the genuine state of theworld outside of that context,
and then, for humanity tosurvive, we must transcend and I

(40:20):
really love this part, becausethat's being brave enough to
step out, I guess, of theBeatredeition way and apply
ourselves as amazing humanbeings.
Look at what we've done.
It's wild.

It's pretty gnarly .
I have this thought multipletimes a week.
It's wild.

Yeah, the fact like going back to.

We made rock's talk, the fact that we can even
do this like we're talking onmicrophones.

It's crazy.
And to think that humans areour technology, we are nature.
Therefore, technology is naturein a way.

Yes, this is even actually quite a lot of
indigenous thinkers share thissentiment, which I know can be.
It sort of feels like a weirdpill to swallow as well, but
technically this is all natural.
Even the unnatural things thatwe have done.
It's all a part of the processof nature and this is just our

(41:18):
version of like a beaver's dam,but instead it's like with
satellites navigating Earth.

Yeah, so the crap that we get to, I guess, as
humans, now, I guess forwhatever beings we are and
evolutionary beings, is thatculture serves the genome, if we
get stuck in that middle partand we forget our human spirit
that brought us here, the factthat we're music makers and
dreamers of dreams.

And that we're also not just Because I love
that.
You've said human a lot and Iam going to politely dance with
this.

Yes.

And I would say it's also acknowledging
ourselves within our ecologicalcontext.
That I think is fundamental.
So it's like, yes, we needhuman-centered approach, but
that doesn't mean that we're notalso centering the biosphere as
a whole or the ecologicalsystems within which we are a

(42:08):
part of and depend upon, for theLike.
They are the foundation of ourentire being and what allows us
to even have all of thismarvellous and magnificent piece
of technology and tools andthings.
It's like it's built off thisfoundation of life, creating
conditions conducive to life,which we've shared and had a
chat about before.

Yeah, there's also another, I guess, formative
thing that happened got me intopoetry first of all was this
slam poet Oatski, which talksabout leopard, geckos and the
horseshoe crab or something likethat, and he mentions like we
need to expand the idea of whatwe are to animals, to more

(42:50):
things.
We are part of this ecosystem,we are nature technology,
everything, we're all connectedin that way, if we are now stuck
in this loop where we've hitthis super organism state where
we can control our sort ofgenome, now normal evolution is
kind of a bit different.

(43:11):
It's no longer Darwinianevolution.
Then we get stuck in thesecycles almost like an addiction,
in a way, where you're justwithin your one thing, and
Weisam Baum, which was thefather of AI, more or less one
of them made.
He's the person that actuallymade the first chatbot, eliza.

Oh my gosh.
I actually think I rememberthis from like the early 2000s.

Oh, this was like I don't know, it was like 50s.

No, there was a chatbot back then.
Oh, absolutely.

And you know when he made it, he was in the
department of Stanford.
I believe computer science andsociology were combined together
.
This was so new.
I guess he wrote a book ComputerPower and Human Reason, and
Weisam Baum became somewhatanti-AI towards the end, and
this book was also edited byTramski as well.

(44:04):
It was wonderful.
He mentions the fact that hegot terrified when he made Eliza
, which then you put in a simplescript and then it kind of acts
in a way, and the simple scriptthey made was called Doctor,
which acted like a psychoanalyst.
That simply reflects back whatyou say to it.
That was the most basic andsimple natural language
processing.

(44:24):
And then he saw his assistant.
At the time they startedconversing with this very basic
chatbot so much that they hidthe screen when he came out and
he got terrified how quickly weattached to something that was
just a simple information loop,and he goes in this book as well

(44:48):
.
The reason why I bought thebook first of all was this
chapter called Something of theCompulsive Programmer, and this
is where he talks about theprogrammer that is just sitting
there with the compiler on thecomputer just typing away,
hacking away, and this gets sointo it and that coding thing
and they get that error and theyjust keep going and they're

(45:09):
doing it and doing it, and doingit and doing it, and then
that's actually.
You're in a small, closedecosystem.
It's like your echo chamber ina way.
You're never actually bringingin anything new.
That's like cultures of thegenome that's still staying in
your Petri dish.
You really need to be able tocome out of that and transcend

(45:31):
that to kind of really bring innew knowledge.
How is this important for AI?
We think about generative AIright now, and if we're going to
start making more and morecontent that is made by it and
then train stuff of that contentagain.
We're not really bringinganything new in there.
We're not really doing ourhuman thing.

We need to be pattern breaking to then get
back into pattern making outsideof the, I guess, yeah,
otherwise it's completely stuckand just self referencing and
self feeding back and what itamplifies might not be the best
thing for humanity at large.
I mean, just look at like somany and this is another

(46:15):
fascinating thing is like we'reso good at doing all the like
the minute reductionist thingsright, and that's got us to
where we've got to now witheverything.
But where we failcatastrophically almost, is
collective coordination.
And I feel like what could bebeautiful about AI is if it is
in service to life, helpinghumanity get over.

(46:37):
Because obviously you know, yeah, we're real good up to like the
Dunbar number level of people150, we're good at organizing,
but as soon as you're gettinginto like nation states and
everything else, it's like getsa little bit confusing.
You kind of don't know everyoneand you can have room for bad
actors to just like absolutelyexploit perverse incentives in a
social system.
But I feel like there could besomething here with AI that

(46:58):
allows us to have almost likethe town hall conversation again
where everyone can contribute,and that we can have this
collective wisdom emerge that isin service of the whole like I
think about this so much.
But then I also acknowledgethat you know there's still
people who will happily likethrow litter on the ground or do

(47:20):
things that I might findquestionable, and I was like
maybe the collectiveintelligence might not shine
through.
I don't know, but I think partof me is just very romantic
about this whole concept of thatsurely we have everything we
need if we all came together, orhad a had a, had a tool or a
tech that could allow forcoherence at scale.

Yeah, gpt-4 is amazing at translation and Urdu
is the language of Pakistan.
So in Pakistani descent, bornin Darwin, it's almost a dying
language now because of theWestern influence and culture
and education.
Unfortunately there has beendestroyed.

(48:00):
So it's now captured very, verywell in GPT.
You can use GPT to make Urdu.
That is probably better than,unfortunately, what the average
Urdu speaker in Pakistan wouldbe able to create and the
literacy there.
So it is able to capture thatstuff Right.
It's like it's a snapshot ofthen and you're able to query it

(48:21):
.
And the way you're thinkingabout GPT, this is a good
insight.
It is all AI, all machinelearning is a compression
algorithm.
You are trying to.
It gives it information andyou're trying to represent it in
the smallest, most compressedway possible and then you need
to decompress it when you run itat inference and then you have

(48:44):
an output.
It's a lossy compressionalgorithm so it is going to be
not the perfect reconstruction.
So you can then think of GPT asa compressed database of all of
the information that thendecompresses in a way, and the
way that it compresses theinformation is that it tries to

(49:05):
be able to understand ourlanguage, the semantics, the
pragmatics of Urdu or grammar,and decompresses it in a way
that kind of makes sense.
So it does have a lot of whatlooks like reasoning capability
for us.
It is useful for us.
It's not I can't say it'sintelligent, because it doesn't
do what we do as humans, whichis we try to explain things.

(49:28):
It's a statistical model thatgives you the most likely thing.
It won't know that the ISOstandard book is better than
something else.
Yeah, you're training it.

Absolutely.

Whereas we think of that and this comes through,
like if we think about the whalething or the paradoxes or
everything else, or where youstart to think that even like
with economics, you know that weshould really think about it.
Never take anything with gospeland just be like okay, it works
, but it's also kind of broken.
We can do that and that'ssomething.

If we forget that, that's the problem of being in
the culture serves the genomeExactly and that's kind of where
we're stuck Now.

We just need to expand who we are Like.
We need to expand we are partof nature and the ecosystem of
it.
We have to act in a way that isdifferent.

I love that you use that word expand.
And I think we need to becausefundamentally, when I look at
this problem and a lot of mythinking is influenced by
Fritschof Kapra, who is asystems theorist, but he was
trained as a high energyparticle physicist, so again
it's these physicists popping upeverywhere telling us about
biology and sociology andecology but I have so much time

(50:40):
for it.
But he frames it in a verysimilar way and I think, ah yeah
, it's just fascinating seeingI'm just catching all these
things in my mind and I'm tryingto figure out what's the next
best place to bounce around to.

But See, I guess that's kind of saying that we as
an intelligence aren'tstatistical models, because we
don't know what the next bestthing is.
We think about it, what weactually want to be insightful,
very different from GPT.

Yeah, it's, I don't know.
I feel like there's so muchthat we can do.
If we realize that, as you saidbefore, if we realize the
inherent boundaries of thisthing, it's fabulous at getting
things done or helping you getstarted with things, whether or
not it can actually help youradically reshape and retool

(51:34):
democracy, who knows?
I remember my train of thought.
I can loop back to this.
Sorry, I'm a very non-linearthinker, which makes it horrible
sometimes for conversations,but long-form podcast that works
, because you can come back 15minutes later and be like that's
what it was.
His primary way of thinking is,he says fundamentally, where we

(51:55):
are right now is it's like withthe poly crisis or the meta
crisis that we're currentlyfacing, all these multiple
interconnected problemsmanifesting across social and
ecological sort of areas.
All of these are Actually, ifyou look at the generator
function of it, I love thatgenerator function Very physics.

(52:16):
If you look at the generatorfunction of it, it's our
perception, or what he wouldcall our crisis of perception.
So seeing the world as separate, fragmented, self-other, all of
this sort of way of perceivingreality that's actually no
longer fit for purpose, nolonger actually makes sense in a
globally interconnected world,and that what we need to be

(52:36):
fundamentally doing is radicallyreimagining our theories of
value.
So, rather than just monetaryvalue as being the primary thing
that we optimize, we maximizefor rather than optimizing for
the system as a whole andacknowledging there's inherent
value to spirituality, to justleaving nature the way it might

(52:56):
be, to like.
There's things like social value.
There's, I think, eight formsof value.
That's really, from Roland andthe Lendular, I think, really
interesting framework to look at.
But the value is something thatwe need to radically reimagine.
And also just how we look atthe world and acknowledging that
this Looking at things isolatedis fantastic, but still being

(53:20):
able to then put that back intothe context of the whole.
And I do worry that so much ofour thinking is getting more and
more and more narrow.
With all the tools andtechnology like TikTok and
Instagram and tweets, how do youput embed context into 120
characters?
You know what I mean.
Like all of these things thatwe've created have stopped our

(53:42):
capacity to think bigger andthink long term and be able to
stand on the top of thatbuilding and use that vision,
and I am worried about that andhow we can try and bring people
back into dialogue andconversation and deep thought,
and I'd be super curious to knowif you have any practices that

(54:03):
you do or anything to help you,I guess, ground yourself in that
visionary state, mm poetry.

You know how do you get something in 120 characters
?
Poetry.
Mm.
Like I only started writing thewhispers that I had in my head
when I was 30.
I just never felt like it was athing that I could do be
creative.
I wasn't allowed to, and I wasjust like you know what's good.

Scientists are creative.
It's an undervalued creativeclass.

It was very much.
I think it was reallyuniversity.
Going to university here I wasreally I could really see the
westernization of science versuswhat I was taught science from
my dad, I guess, and if I thinkabout the Arab golden age of
science, religion, art andscience or all the same thing,
it's just a way of us explainingwhat we're seeing, perception,
that idea.

(54:55):
You take into account as muchas possible that we are biasing
that result.
We have to know that and Ithink you can.
That's how I keep myselfgrounded, at least with it all.

When.

I observe something , or if I try to fix a technical
problem or something broken inthe computer or machine or I
come up with anything else.
It's funny, I tell my technicalstuff.
I just did an empathy and Iknew what it's doing.
I just, yeah, I just try tounderstand the system by putting
myself there and reallyunderstanding it.
This idea of otherness, so mypersonal mission in life is

(55:34):
actually great.
I actually came up with thisshortly after we met.
Really yeah.
Oh, and it is something that Iused as like this is what I'm
going.
I really believe this like asort of mission.
It is to decrease othernesswhile simultaneously increasing
individual safety.
That's what I, personally.

(55:55):
I wake up it's actually on myalarm clock, that's what it says
, so I see it every morning onmy phone.
If I try to do both of thosethings simultaneously, the
dialectical pressure I hope ishopefully just going to actually
bring us to a place ofunderstanding each other better.
Because to decrease otherness isyou can do it the null solution

(56:19):
.
If you do it by itself, you makeeveryone the same, make
everything the same, and toincrease individual safety is
just you make everyoneindividual.
So I think of Westernrationalism and positivism and
individualism coming from thebeautiful ontology of English
being such a wonderful languageand being able to very, very

(56:40):
precisely describe things.
It's very nice that ability forit, but it kind of shows us how
we think and it doesn't allowthat expansiveness of well, it
can allow that expansiveness ofexpanding who and knowing who we
are, but the easy solution isto just maybe just say, oh, it's

(57:01):
this thing, go into one bucketand oh, it's this thing, and not
thinking that it might be somepressure in between that really
lets you know what's going on,and pull those two triggers.
And how is this all related?
I guess you need to have thismindset.

(57:23):
I find I need to have thismindset for me to be able to be
a good researcher and scientistas well as a business person and
a good human being, or Gil?

I think you can't.
Yeah, all of them interrelate.
It's like if you're a good,yeah, there are patterns and
processes that you need to be agood individual and a good
business person and a goodscientist, and I think they're
just patterns of being which arepreferable in any state.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Oh gosh, I was so sleepy onceand I was like talking to one of
my friends with voice notes andI said something really smart.
I don't remember what.
It was Sleepy, yet profound.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's more like I givemyself permission to be profound
.
That's really what it comesdown to.
And it was like I think it was,like ego is the biggest drain on

(58:12):
intelligence.
I genuinely believe that, likeego If you are a person that has
some sort of ego, maybe in aworkplace or something I think
it was in that context, orsomebody in a workplace and they
I guess we're egotistical withtheir idea.
And this happens in science,all the time my model is this
100%.

(58:33):
That's the biggest drain onintelligence.

I could not agree more, because it's essentially
closing off the potential to bewrong to begin with, but also
closing off the potential ofother perspectives, and I think
that the moment anyone does that, whether it's in their personal
life or business or in science,you're closing yourself off to
the potential opportunities orabundance that might be in the

(58:58):
place where you least want to goand look, which is usually the
place you need to go to to beable to find those things.
So, no, I can.
I can resonate with that being.

So another matter of mine with diversity comes
strength.
I use that in line with theculture serves the genome, and
it's a biological thing to guessas well.

Absolutely.
Well, it's one of thefundamental tenants of, I guess,
like regenerative thinking, Iguess you could say, or even
just ecosystems as a whole,right, so the biodiversity of an
ecosystem, that builds a senseof resilience.
So with diversity breedsresilience is like a catchphrase

(59:38):
, I think Jeanine Benius.
She sort of says from biomimicry, but it is exactly that.
And when you have an abundanceof organisms that overlap and
there's actually, you know,because, like in human systems,
we don't want there to be anywaste, you know we have to be as
efficient as possible.
So we don't want overlap ormultiple different things doing
the same process.
But in biology and in naturethat's great, Because if you

(01:00:02):
have redundancy, say, somethingcomes along and wipes out one
organism, you've got threeothers doing the same sort of
thing you then don't have afoundational break in the, let's
say, like the, the trophiccascade or something else that's
happening in that ecosystem.
Then you don't have ecosystemcollapse.
Whereas if you're removing allof this diversity, which we're
doing in spades at the moment,which is horrifying, I think

(01:00:24):
honestly, I think biodiversityloss is more of a problem than
climate change.
We just don't acknowledge it ortalk about it.
But yeah, so biodiversitybreeding, resilience.
I totally agree with thatstatement.
It's one of the foundationalsort of pillars or diversity
breeding.
Resilience is one of thefoundational pillars, I guess,
of how we approach everythingthat we do here and why we're

(01:00:45):
always trying to encourage andbring in multiple people from
multiple worldviews, multipleperspectives, why we call it
transdisciplinary innovationrather than like deep tech,
biotech or what have you,because as soon as you put a
boundary around that, it canmake other people feel like, oh,
I can't, that's not me, I can't, I can't come there, Whereas if
you call it something liketransdisciplinary, they're a bit

(01:01:06):
confused, Like what the hell?
What does that?
Even I don't even know whatthat means, Right, but then that
also means someone can lean inand go okay, well, you know, if
they know they're Latin, they'relike okay, cool, I get, I get
that Right.
But if they don't, they're likewhat do you mean by that?
You know, and then you'requestioning and curious and
you're probing and yeah, I thinkthat is foundational and I feel

(01:01:28):
like that even might align alittle bit with what you say
like part of your mission inlife.
Another mission in life is howdo we make people as confused as
possible?

Aqeel Akber (01:01:37):
Yeah, maximize confusion, yeah.
Like it's a useful way for me todecrease otherness while
simultaneously increasingindividual safety by maximizing
their confusion and making themfeel safe, because I guess, if I
can be dressed up in a dresswith my makeup and then wear
executive presence and know allthis sort of stuff, it maximizes

(01:02:01):
confusion but then alsoprovides I use my mind and my
words to be able to and empathyto be able to provide that
safety and security, becauseusually our response to
something other unfortunatelypeople can be violent towards it
.
I believe we should always becurious that's maybe just me,

(01:02:22):
who I am, but we can also justbe like oh my God, it's
something different, it isshocking.

Samuel Wines (01:02:26):
And I think that honestly I know that you want to
go, I really want to hear wherethis goes, but I do feel like
that that is a.
It's a.
It's a fragmentary, momentarything baked into our minds from
when we were more tribal, oflike, okay, is this friend or
foe, is this other or part ofthe tribe?
And you can actually learn toacknowledge that.

(01:02:47):
But it can just dissipatereally quickly and you can build
new neural pathways where it'slike like other and lean into it
out of curiosity rather thanlike other is bad straight away.
And I feel like I'm lucky that Igrew up with quite a, I guess,
a diverse upbringing andbackground.
And you know my uncle was, myuncles were obviously gay.

(01:03:10):
So I mean I grew up knowingthat things could not be always
like it's not bound by thisnuclear sort of family approach,
like my mum was the mainbringer of the masculine energy
and like our household as well.
So I knew that genderstereotypes weren't necessarily
a thing and I think even thosetwo prompts were enough for me

(01:03:31):
to realise that the world has abeautiful abundance of different
ways in which people canmanifest and that that was
actually like the mostinteresting places a lot of the
time is is is in the margins, inthe space between the places
where things fall between thecracks, because they don't.
They don't fit the standardnarrative, they can't be box

(01:03:52):
ticked.
And and I guess that's why howthis place even emerged is
because we're trying to fill thespace between to support those
who might not fit the standardnarrative, because that's where
we feel like a lot of theexciting stuff is the
interlapping over over, like theoverlapping ecosystem is like
an ecotone, is where you get themost diversity of life and it's

(01:04:13):
like we think, with innovation,the overlapping of multiple
disciplines and ways of lookingat the world will naturally be
where the most innovation cankind of begin to emerge.

Absolutely, and you can just gain benefits from
another discipline so quickly,like another discipline probably
has solved the problem in adifferent way.
And actually you know this isgoing to that, bringing together
things with AI, sort of dealcommon sort of knowledge base.
It's like a universaltranslator in a way.

It's going to be wild for that sort of stuff.
Yeah, suddenly, now Englishdoesn't have to be the dominant
language, which I think will bereally fascinating for diversity
of thought.

With Computer vision.
There is in the Google Pixelphones the early ones they had
this idea of super resolution.
You know, actually, something Ilearned recently we've always
been doing zoom enhanced, likebasically with phones and color
cameras, because the Bayerfilter actually reduces the
resolution by a factor of four.
And then we combine it togetherand we just zoom enhance it to

(01:05:18):
the full resolution.
Super resolutions are reallyinteresting field.
It's very interesting.
They, with the pixels, they usea technique that is used in
astrophysics quite often to beable to sharpen images and get
super resolution.
They just have different names.
Yeah, but just have differentnames, that and that is

(01:05:38):
foundational.
That's like.
You know, that's the ontologyright?
Yes, that's the otherness Iguess of it.
That's the, that's the thingwhere, like, I want to try
bridge that as much as possible,bridge that otherness, like
that's the idea, I guess, thevision of my new company.
I guess, in many ways, which iswhy I got the studio part at the
end of it, to kind of have thetechie thing at the front and

(01:05:59):
have this artsy thing at the endof it where it can kind of
combine there.
That's if you I try to be asFirst and as many topics as
possible so that I can speakpeople's languages and that's
how you can kind of give them abit more trust and comfort.

I again another point that I can really resonate
with, which it's fascinatinghow many overlapping,
interrelated, I guess, thoughtpatterns that we have, but from
very disparate and differentbackgrounds and ways of
approaching this context.
And like a metaphor I use a lotto explain when this sort of
stuff happens, this confluenceor this convergence it's like we

(01:06:36):
are both different rivers thatare tributaries to the same
river system.
You know, and we've had our ownjourney through the landscape,
but inevitably we join up as wecome out towards the ocean and
it feels like so much of yourand I love this because, like,
I'm pretty generic, like whitedude, with all of the privilege

(01:06:59):
that comes with that, as well aspretty privilege, which is
another thing that doesn't gettalked about a lot.
You know that's great andthat's informed who I am as a
being, but that is what I amright.
But then hearing your story andyour background and knowing the
differences, but then seeinghow the mind has arrived at

(01:07:20):
similar sort of patterns that Ifeel are fundamental, which is I
just anytime I see that I findthat so fascinating and exciting
because it feels more real whenthere's that intersubjective,
like intersubjectively we'vekind of validating a perspective
and like triangulating onsomething that feels real around

(01:07:40):
a basin of attraction.
We're like, yeah, this ispulling me in.

And I'm going to be really brave here, really brave
here, and make a statement andcall on this.
I personally, I think that,like, love is the protocol of
human connection.
And if you look at allphilosophy, poets and stuff for
a long time, what are they allconcluding?
And the things that matter isconnection and love.
At the end of the day, that'skind of what it all kind of goes

(01:08:06):
down to Like.
I feel my mission is todecrease otherness and increase
individual safety, but mypurpose as a life form, as a
human being, is to love.
That is it.
And if we both as like humanlife forms and what are we here
for as biological things, togrow or something like that
we're much more complicated thana bacterium.

(01:08:27):
We're not just like eating andgrowing.
We have this complex thoughtprocess that involves other
people.
It involves knowing thingsaround us and connecting with
them.
Like love is a protocol ofhuman connection.
Anything that is connecting mewith something else is a loving
act.
That's the way I think of it.
What if that's just our purposeand that's why we kind of are

(01:08:51):
going from the same place and dothe same place?

I love that there's a couple of us here in
the space who we've fallingaround like a.
It's a, a wide boundary of whatis it I'm trying to think of.
I completely screwed up thewords, but essentially it's that
exact same sentiment aroundlike a circumference of care, a

(01:09:16):
really wide circumference ofcare, and that it's like being
in service to life Because youlove it.
Because here's the thing, right, like people can hear the stats
you know 95 of all ocean kelpforests in Australia are gone.
Or you know there's eightfootball fields of Forests
cleared in Queensland everycouple of seconds.

(01:09:37):
Like you hear all these thingsbut Do you feel them?
Yeah, you know, and I thinkthat we're not.
There's another good quote here,I'm sure somewhere that you
would.
You would know this.
I definitely.
I can't remember a word forword, but like the premise is
kind of like we're not going tochange or we're not going to do
things unless we feel the thingand that and that feeling and

(01:09:58):
that empathy, like you weresaying before, and that
connectedness, that is what willthen give us the impulse to
change and do things.
That might not serve us as anindividual in the short term,
but serve us as an individualand a collective in the long
term.
So I do feel like there issomething really powerful about
the, the love and the empathyand the connection to others

(01:10:21):
that, as you sort of said aswell, with self-reflective
consciousness, that's somethingthat is just turned up to the
nth degree with with, like you,social animals, like primates
and.
I would.
I would also say other animalsas well.
I think that love is probablysomething that goes way down the
stack in terms of, like complexliving organisms.
Um, but yeah, it is fascinating, it's.

I like to say crying is a sign of strength hmm
, because, um, we've kept itevolutionarily First of all, so
we can always use that argument.
But it's odd saying I likesaying that because it makes us
we can't see as far.
I don't know.
It gets stuffed so we can'tsmell as well.
You know, like in many, manyways where like physically

(01:11:06):
weaker, but it is showing thatTo other people and signaling to
other people that, hey, I'mfeeling something.
Before we had language.
Mm-hmm before we had language,there was that intuition.
So we're very intuitive andlike, if we let ourselves
understand that intuition a bitmore, we could probably do a bit
better.
And that's kind of what I'mreally hoping for to get us out

(01:11:27):
of this little rut that we got.
I think that, um, social mediaIs more damaging Than the
nuclear bomb.

Mm-hmm, I don't disagree, as someone who built a
living off it Prior to doingall of this.
I yes, it's a.
It's a strange, strange placeto be it's done.

So much harm and now we have people stuck in this
information loop getting theinformation from it and creating
information on it.
No input, it really lacks.
Everything seems to lackquality now.

Ah but there are still beautiful elements to it.
The thing is is like if onlythere was just a way and my
friend I can instantly hear mymate in the background here
saying starter reports he'screated this thing where you
could, um, essentially Validatedata sources and everything and
you can put it on a blockchainand an immutable ledger and you
could be able to track theprovenance of who said what and
how and bake it all in with anai so that everything everywhere

(01:12:22):
could be tracked and you'd seeperverse incentives or like, and
I think that would be a reallyvaluable tool.
Like, but I, but I do think thatsocial media it can be
inherently good as well, like,but it's just that so much crap
out there.
Yeah, it could be a beautifultool like.
I follow quite a lot of peoplewho do amazing things and it's
very inspiring.

But again, echo chamber and it's only a thin
slither, yeah, of the rest of itso I feel that people I had
hope in social media beforecobit lockdown.
Like I had hope, I'm going touse this to be able to like Use
the advertising algorithm forgood.
No, I thought that's reallykeen on doing.

(01:13:04):
I thought we could genuinely dosomething but, then the amount
of garbage that just startedgoing on there and it's just
like gone, gone, gone.
Advertising is just emptinessand my hope my hope is is that
in the same way that we cry?
And that's an intuition thingwithin us.
My hope is that we will connectto things with more quality if

(01:13:27):
we are exposed to it.
That's my hope.
I don't know because, like,otherwise, education is gone.
Like because we Don't.
It's so people don't believethat the world can be malleable.
They're not moving away fromthe.
The computers are screened somuch they're getting everything
from one place.
I'm really concerned about that, uh, so yeah.

No, I I really resonate with that, with that
sentiment.
I I do feel like because it issad, right, because the early
ages of the internet kind ofpromised this decentralized
networks, you know sort of thingwhich is self governed and self
regulated.
I know we've got to get you outof here very shortly, so we'll
wrap up very soon, but it is.
Yeah, it is one of those thingsI feel like we could have.

(01:14:08):
We could have done so well.
And then you know, again,perverse incentives come in and
then it's baked in where, like,eyes on site is what keeps us
there.
So then it's a race at thebottom of the brainstem.
You're limbically hijackedpeople and get them like either
excited or enraged, and thenthat makes them more likely to
click on something or buysomething or watch something,

(01:14:28):
and you can see how all of thesereally simple AI algorithms
Really simple, just like keepeyeballs on on on the screen,
right, and you could do that andthen be like, oh well, I'm not
a bad person because it's just asimple thing, but looking at
the consequences of it, it'slike well, should someone accept
responsibility for an algorithmif they're the ones deploying

(01:14:50):
it?
and it's then creating thesecollective coordination failures
, or destabilizing democracy aswe know it like.

Yeah, I like to say often is that Everyone just
needs to chill, like everyone,every, all of us need to just
chill, and I felt that BeforeCOVID as well, there was very
much the manic memes of AI memes, and I rode that ride to be
able to get the company off theground.
People are crazy about it, butI was just like this is clearly

(01:15:21):
people aren't chill, like if youknow deeper within it, you're
like you know how you can thenuse it.
I think you know even, like ifwe're in our workflow, if we're
trying to work so fast and hardand we burn out.
Then we have to stop again.
We always kind of go at thisaverage velocity.
So if we all kind of justrealize that our average
velocity with humanity isactually kind of slow and
actually maybe that gives us thetime to be able to think a bit

(01:15:42):
more, we need it.

That's how that's our superpower is.
Do you have any protocols forslow Me?
Yeah, what are your personalprotocols to make space?

I, I believe in like working to only 50 percent.
I use the other 50 percent tobe able to manage myself, I
guess, almost constantly.
Wow, I, that's.
I use 50 percent of my mentalcapacity.
I wouldn't give more than thatto any external thing.
I will use that, that's mything, that I can kind of use
for everything else, to becreative, to be able to do my

(01:16:13):
personal things or flex it outelsewhere.
It's necessary, I believe, tolet that tick in and maintain
the brain.

Yeah, I know I.
I really resonate with that,because that also then allows
you to have more powerfulinsights and to contribute more
productively In that 50 percentwindow, rather than trying to
work 200 percent in 100 percentwindow and then doing it really
badly.
You're sort of saying I'm goingto show up and when I do it's
going to be qualitatively Timethat I spend on this, because

(01:16:46):
I've had the space to just beyeah, to ponder.
I know that rick rubin doessomething like that.
It spends like an hour or twohours a day just like Sitting
yeah that's every morning.

I like to have about at least two hours of me
time when I wake up.
Where?
I just do whatever I want.
Just usually I'm just quiet, Ijust kind of move my body
however I want.
I'm not really exercising orsomething.
That's very much a meeting,yeah, and spending a lot of time
just looking at clouds.
I love that.
I.
I think I don't know how peoplelive without it.

(01:17:20):
Honestly, I don't know I canrelate to that.

I'm a big part of the the cloud appreciation
society.

My inner voice is really interesting.
I I think I'm a great person tohave a conversation with, so I
just have conversations withmyself.
It's great.

Did you know that?
Um, we pass up time differentlywhen we look at clouds versus
something like a computer screenin front of us.
That really said, perceptuallywe pass time in larger chunks
when we look at clouds whichprobably also helps with diffuse
mode thinking and everythinglike that because there's
there's more time, like you know.
Say, if it's like a one, two,three, four, there's more time

(01:17:59):
within that, whereas if you'rehere on the computer and doing
minute tasks, it's like one andtwo and three, which I just find
fascinating because I feel likeI can stare at clouds and it'll
be like an hour and a half andthen like what, what just
happened?
Where'd the time go?

I can do the same on a computer screen as well,
like just reading and readingand reading and doing
information.
I think that comes also to likethe compulsive program of thing
.
You just kind of get into it,get into again to it, but you
have to make sure that you slowdown.
Hmm, take that time.
Good design is, I believe, inquality.
That's really it, and I thinkquality just takes time.

Oh, I love that.
And, speaking of time, I knowthat you have to leave soon, so
do we want to wrap it here?
Is there anything else you'dlike to share?

I just follow your excitement.

I love that.
Yeah, follow your excitement,and If people wanted to keep up
to date with what you're doing,where might they be able to find
you?

LinkedIn oh.

Yeah, so I know.

I know, I know, go rid of all my social media and
everything.
I guess Going into thecorporate space and that's what
a ways.
But I think now Going solo, Ithink I'm gonna actually be a
bit more brave there as well.
I want to be a bit more bravebecause I think that the world
is totally ready for this.

I agree I think.

I think 2024 is going to be a fascinating year,
like climate change is going toget really real and people are
not Going to be able to ignoreit, I feel like a lot of
patriarchal things will getreally pushed when, now that
women are really getting intoprofessional positions, which is
awesome.
So there's going to be extremelash back to that, but also that
you're going to be there, sosomething awesome is going to

(01:19:34):
happen there, and and just theemptiness of information right
now, I think will be caught.
I think all of this is just soripe and ready right now, which
is part of the reason why I kindof wanted to Move away from
thumb and actually kind of havemyself time to be able to do
something a bit riskier.

I, I love that and I look forward to watching this
Adventure.
Technically would be, whatyou're called a venture is a
risky business.
Oh yeah, look thing right.

So my business, whatever, I'm just doing things
that are to exist in this world.
Right, like, yeah, we're just.
I'm just a life form.
I'm a squishy piece of meatwith electricity running through
it.
That's just, that's all we are.
Right.

Mm-hmm, and also good at poetry.

Yeah, it's important.

Yeah, I'll take that out as a quote Anyway, I um
, I could obviously keep here,keep you here chatting for
forever, but I better let you goand Thanks so much for joining
us and I look forward to thenext conversation, whether it's
on a podcast or just in person,because it's um, it's very
beautiful every time we catch upand have a chat.

So thank you so much.
Beauty is very important.
Yes, I agree.

All right, see you later.
Thank you for taking the timeto listen to this conversation.
We hope you found itfascinating, insightful and
lightning, or interesting, orall or none of the above.
We have a collection ofconversations coming up still to
round out the end of season onewith a few more of our members,

(01:21:01):
and then we'll be deep divinginto biomaterials, um for like
food, fiber and fuels, and we'llbe exploring that for all of
season two.
So if that's something thatinterests you or there's anyone
in the biomaterials space,either in Australia or abroad,
that you would like us to have achat with, let us know and yeah

(01:21:23):
, we'll see if we can make ithappen.
Thanks again for tuning intoanother episode of the Strange
Attractor.

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Bridging Worlds: Technology's Impact on Society with Physicist-Turned-Entrepreneur Aqeel Akber | #8

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Bridging Worlds: Technology's Impact on Society with Physicist-Turned-Entrepreneur Aqeel Akber | #8