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Rob Reid

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166

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2021-06-21

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2021-06-21

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1

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1. “Decide how much time I've been doing this or that, but I would say it's at least four or five hours and maybe as many as ten that I spend editing. And so it's relentless for me.”

   2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Fiction for lack of a better term, where it's more about aura and ambiance and character development and experience and inner experience and inner journey and so forth. I think that group is more likely to fly by the seat of the pants. And I know people who start with a blank page and just see where it's going to go. I'm a little bit more on the plotting side. Now you asked what makes something at least in the mind of the writer as great as it can be. For me, it's an astonishingly high percentage of it is editing as opposed to the initial writing. For every hour that I spend writing new prose, you know, like new pages, new paragraphs, stuff that, you know, new bits of the book, I probably spend, I mean, I wish I kept a count. Like, I wish I had one of those pieces of software that lawyers used.”

   2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “But then when I get into the process, that outline, particularly the center of it, ultimately inevitably morphs a great deal. And I think if I were personally a rigorous outliner, I would not allow that to happen. I also would make a much more vigorous skeleton before I start. So I think people who are really in that plotting outlining mode are people who write page turners, people who write, you know, spy novels or supernatural adventures where you really want a relentless pace of events, action, plot twists, conspiracy, et cetera. And that is really the bone. That's really the skeletal structure. So I think folks who write that kind of book are really very much on the outlining side. And then I think people who write what's often referred to as literary.”

   2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Amongst novelists, again, this is an oversimplification, but there's kind of two schools of thought. Some people really like to fly by the seat of their pants, and some people really, really like to outline, to plot. So there's plotters and pancers, I guess, is one way that people look at it. And as with most things, there is a great continuum in between. And I'm somewhere on that continuum, but I lean, I guess, a little bit more toward the plotter. And so when I do start a novel, I have a pretty strong point of view about how it's going to end. And I have a very strong point of view about how it's going to begin. And I do try to make an effort of making an outline that I know I'm going to be extremely unfaithful to in the actual execution of the story, but trying to make an outline that gets us from here to there and notion of subplots and beats and rhythm and different characters and so forth.”

   2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Well, it would be very different if it's fiction versus nonfiction. And I've done both. I've written two works of two nonfiction books and two works of fiction, two works of fiction being more recent. I'm going to focus on that right now because that's more toweringly on my mind.”

   2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “A great deal of deliberate and willful exertion of a conscious mind. And so like the bees and the flowers, I think there's a great symbiosis. And they both kind of have one another. Ideas have us, but we have ideas for real.”

   2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “And ideas have us rather than us having ideas. But at the same time, let's take a catchy tune as an example of a meme. That catchy tune did originate in a human mind. Somebody had to structure that thing. And as much as I like Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk about how the universe, I'm simplifying, but kind of the ideas find their way in this beautiful TED talk. It's very lyrical. She talked about, you know, ideas and prose kind of beaming into our minds and, you know, she talked about needing to pull over to the side of the road when she got inspiration for a particular paragraph or a particular idea and a burning need to write that down. I love that. I find that beautiful as a writer, as a novelist myself. I've never had that experience. And I think that really most things that do become memes are the product of.”

   2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “And so, in the case of bees, obviously, you know, you could see the flower as being this monolithic structure physically in relation to any given bee. And it's the source of food and sustenance. So you could kind of say, well, flowers have bees. But on the other hand, flowers would obviously be doomed, they weren't being pollinated by the bees. So you could kind of say, well, you know, bees, you know, flowers are really expression of what the bees need. The truth is a symbiosis. So with memes in human minds, our brains are clearly the petri dishes in which memes are either propagated or not propagated get mutated or don't get mutated if they are the venue in which competition, selective competition plays out between different memes. So all of that is very true. And you could look at that and say, really, the human mind is a production of memes.”

   2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “I mean, I found Dawkins' interpret or his launching of the idea of. What a PS to put at the end of a long chunk of writing. It's profoundly interesting. I view the relationship, though, between human as probably an oversimplification, but maybe a little bit like the relationship between flowers and bees, right? Do flowers have bees or do bees, in a sense, have flowers? And the answer is... It is a very, very symbiotic relationship in which both have semi-independent roles that they play and both are highly dependent upon the other.”

   2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Selective pressure and everything else that's going on. But in terms of the entire ecosystem of conscious systems here on the earth driving for a level of entertainment, that is on such a much higher level that I don't know if that would necessarily follow directly from the fact that atomic units of entertainment are very, very aptly selected for. So I don't know.”

    2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “That's interesting. Yeah, we do have an incredible ability. Like, I mean, how many memes are created in a given day and the ones that go viral are almost uniformly funny, at least to somebody with a particular sense of humor. Yeah, and I had to think about that. We are definitely great at creating atomized units of funny. Like in the example that you used, there are going to be X million brains parsing and judging whether this meme is retweetable or not. And so that's sort of atomic element of funniness, of entertainingness, et cetera. We definitely have an environment that's good at selecting for that.”

    2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Interesting. Okay, that's good. So, okay, so we'll rule out me being the star of the show, which I probably could have guessed at anyway. But then even the arc of civilization. I mean, there have been a lot of really intriguing things that have happened and a lot of astounding things that have happened. But, you know, I would have some werewolves. I'd have some zombies. You know, I would have some really improbable developments like maybe Canada absorbing the United States. You know, so I don't know. I'm not sure if we're necessarily designed for maximum entertainment. But if we are, that will mean that 2020 is just a prequel for even more bizarre years ahead. So I kind of hope that we're not designed for maximum entertainment.”

    2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “The Earth Show was going to get canceled, etc. So taking all that together, and I'm obviously being a little bit playful in laying this out, what is the evidence that we have that we are in a reality that is intended to be most entertaining? Now, you could look at that reality on the level of individual lives or the whole arc of civilization, other lives, you know, levels as well, I'm sure. But just looking from my own life, I think I'd make a pretty lousy show. I spend an inordinate amount of time just looking at a computer. I don't think that's very entertaining. And there's just a completely inadequate level of shootouts and car chases in my life. I mean, I'll go weeks, even months without a single shootout or car chase.”

    2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “An observer. Then on top of that, when you think about it, you're also presupposing a producer because the act of observation is mostly fun if there are plot twists and surprises and other developments that you weren't foreseeing. I have reread my own novels and that's fun because it's something I worked hard on and I slaved over and I love. But there aren't a lot of surprises in there. So now I'm thinking we need a producer and an observer for that to be true. And on top of that, it's got to be a very competent producer because Elon said the most entertaining outcome is the most likely one. So there's lots of layers for thinking about that. And when you've got a producer who's trying to make it entertaining, it makes me think of there was a South Park episode in which Earth turned out to be a reality show. And somehow we had failed to entertain the audience as much as we used to.”

    2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “To infer what he was talking about. So that's kind of like it provokes some interesting thoughts. Like, first of all, it presupposes the existence of an observer. And it also presupposes that the observer wishes to be entertained and has some mechanism of enforcing their desire to be entertained. So there's like a lot underpinning that. And to me, that suggests particularly coming from Elan that it's a reference to simulation theory, that somebody is out there and has far greater insights and a far greater ability to, let's say, peer into a single individual life and find that entertaining and full of plot twists and surprises and either a happier tragic ending or they have an incredible meta view and they can watch the arc of civilization unfolding in a way that is entertaining and full of plot twists and surprises and a happier unhappy ending. So, okay, so we're presupposed.”

    2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Yeah, so exactly. He said from the standpoint of the observer, not the participant, I think. And so what's interesting about that, those were, I think, just a couple of freestanding tweets and delivered without a whole lot of wrapper of context. So it's left to the mind of the reader of the tweets.”

    2021-06-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #193 – Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source