Simon Waller (00:00)
Hello and welcome to episode seven and eight actually of the future with friends. Today I’m being joined by a wonderful human being and a wonderful friend Dr. Jason Fox. Some of you might know Jace from the tens of thousands of stages that he’s been on in his life. ⁓ But I’ve actually known Jace from long walks in the Queenstown mountains.

and drinking champagne in a swimming pool until my neighbors came around and told us off.

foxwizard (00:32)
That was a good time and I drank it was a nice sunny day and I think I ended up asleep with your greyhounds or something that day it was so nice you had yeah yeah it was such a good time

Simon Waller (00:46)
Welcome to the show, Jace.

foxwizard (00:47)
Thank you. So good to be here.

Simon Waller (00:49)
Yes, I’ve been so excited. There was a comment that you made on the socials, maybe a month or two back, or just before I was starting or when I kind of told you about doing this podcast. And you had said, ⁓ so beautiful. There’s this kind of almost a new type of podcast emerging where people just kind of have these conversations with their friends. And I know that you’ve got your own version of this going on with John Anthony.

foxwizard (01:09)
.

Simon Waller (01:17)
And it’s been really cool to see this kind of new kind of vibe emerge and and obviously to have you on the show is brilliant.

foxwizard (01:26)
Yeah, and I think it’s part of the, you know, the zeitgeist that we’re in. We’ve got Steph Clark, your, you know, first episode there and she’s, she’s exploring friendships. Leanne Hughes, who’s in our orbit too. She’s got this, this wonderful kind of casual podcast with, you know, that she does every single day and then sometimes with friends. And there’s this thing that she said to me, it’s 2025, you know, this is like the, game of podcasts. I don’t think we need to have the same pretensions that we previously did. And so it’s just.

It’s just so fun. mean, there are plenty of things I could be doing, but I’m so happy to be here chatting with you about the future, which is a fun topic, you know, and we’re going to be able to explore some of the stuff that I just can’t say on stage, too.

Simon Waller (02:10)
Yeah, and this is one of the things that kind of has come up repeatedly and came up with us when we were talking about the topic is almost having to remind people, no, we’re talking as friends. There are topics that you might talk about if you saw this podcast as being the future with colleagues or the future with, you know, professionals.

But there’s actually, I believe there’s other conversations that we want to have and that we can talk about and are super interesting. They’re actually the conversations that we have as friends, not as professionals.

foxwizard (02:40)
I really am glad that you said that out loud as the caveat because ⁓ I had someone listen to my podcast, which in theory should be, you know, should be me professionally positioning myself. But, but I’ve lost work because of my podcast. So, so, you know.

Simon Waller (02:57)
I believe that the

headline of the last episode was, ⁓ career limiting is just the beginning.

foxwizard (03:03)
That’s right. That’s right. No, but I seriously had someone say, I don’t think someone say to me, I shared my podcast with my boss and she just worried that that you’re not not necessarily going to land it with a clear and compelling point with our executives. And I was like, man, but the podcast is a meandering conversation. And this is exactly what I’m hoping that we’re going to have today. A nice, jolly meandering conversation that is career limiting, fraught with danger.

that’ll give us the kind of vulnerability hangover afterwards that we’re like, man, that was, I wish I hadn’t said that, but it’s going to be gold.

Simon Waller (03:40)
Yeah. And I do think that on the other side of that as well, there’s something to be said for, this again was part of that conversation you had on your podcast, which is this is also the sending signals out into the universe about who are the people that you really want to attract. And I do think there are people out there who have like, ⁓ have a, have a

foxwizard (03:54)
Mmm.

Simon Waller (03:59)
concern or like an unrealised, so an unrealised fear about some of the things that are going on in the world right now. And the fact that we can speak about it openly, but also not in necessarily a way that is like accusational. It’s almost like just challenges exist for us. I actually think it shows a like a

foxwizard (04:17)
No.

Simon Waller (04:23)
a kind of a level of maturity that we kind of almost need to bring into the discourse, especially even within corporate spheres. look, hopefully, hopefully I’m right.

foxwizard (04:34)
I’m just doing this to attract tall nautical inspired futurists into my life and you know so far it seems to be working.

Simon Waller (04:43)
thought you’re on track.

Hey, just before we kick into the actual scenarios itself, a little of a recap on our friendship. So I’ve known you now for I reckon around 12, 13 years or so. First time I ever saw you, you were wheeled out on stage at a program called thought leaders.

foxwizard (05:03)
Wheeled.

Wheeled out.

Simon Waller (05:05)
⁓ It was

like, like this is you were basically put forward as being this is success. I think at the time you had just been.

foxwizard (05:14)
You

What a joke! ⁓ yeah. Sorry about that.

Simon Waller (05:21)
I think you just reported

the best keynote speaker in Australia. And I remember you being like, you’re quite young at that time, in a profession where there is a lot of quite old, staid people. And I was just like, wow, I was super impressed. And I almost felt like, like, well, I was, but I almost felt like, my God, you are almost too special to be able to be friends with. Like, and then somehow,

foxwizard (05:26)
Mmm, mmm.

Wow, is that it?

dude.

Simon Waller (05:50)
along the way as part of that program, I managed to weasel myself into having you as my mentor. And at the time we had a little clique, there was yourself and Pat Hollingworth and Michael Dixon and myself. I think we were your three mentees who really all left the program within about two months of each other and within about three months of having you as a mentor, which I don’t look, it’s probably, as I said, it’s correlation is not causation. ⁓

foxwizard (05:57)
Yes, those are the days.

dear.

Hehehehe.

Simon Waller (06:20)
But I do remember

foxwizard (06:20)
Mmm. Mmm.

Simon Waller (06:22)
that has been a very special time. And as part of that, the adventure that Mike and Pat organised for us to go hiking outside of Queenstown, I think there’s something to be said for those types of environments in terms of facilitating friendship and facilitating connection between people. I just saw a side of you in that that was really different from

foxwizard (06:40)
Yeah, Yeah.

Simon Waller (06:47)
the persona sometimes that you put up on stage.

foxwizard (06:51)
This is a real tension that you and I would vote and any speaker or any thought leader or anyone who has to cultivate a larger than life persona to survive in these times in the distraction economy. It’s really challenging because the reality is we want to horizontalise. We don’t want verticality. gets in the way of friendships. There is no verticality. All roles, all titles, all status is a made up thing. And so it’s part of this awkward ironic dance where we sometimes have to play the part of

expert or thought leader and so on. But the reality is we all are all people, we all want to relate as people. it’s, you know, it’s a funny thing. And I think sometimes people lose themselves in the theatre of it all. But I’m so happy that, you know, as soon as we started hanging out, wonderful friendship, I love your garrulous sense of humor. I love the way you dance. I love the wits that you have and your ability to…

It is very common to get a phone call with you and within, I don’t know, 10 seconds, I’m literally bursting out laughing no matter where I am. think I was in a Hainanese chicken rice shop the other day and suddenly we’re talking about butt plugs. So, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s great. I feel very blessed.

Simon Waller (08:14)
Yeah, I do like that. I like that distinction though between the horizontal and the vertical.

And I do think you’re right. Like there’s certain parts of our lives where we’re kind of encouraged to operate vertically that, you know, justify the fact that we were on the stage and everyone had to listen to us. We have to create a sense of verticality in the relationship. Even if we don’t genuinely feel like even that that’s not how we operate in our day to day life, we almost have to have have. And it’s almost like the audience needs us to pretend to have that as well, because otherwise why would they give us their attention?

foxwizard (08:40)
Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (08:49)
So I find that super interesting.

foxwizard (08:49)
This is… yeah, it’s

also… it’s also sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but it’s also somewhere I lost myself for a while because I raged against the verticality so much that the kind of the aura of it all, I muddled it up, right? And there’s something quite fun because you walk out on the stage, it’s literally an elevated platform.

your bio and all of that is literally a groomed narrative to pedestal you and your expertise and so on. And so you’ve got to play the part, but in doing so, sneaking enough kind of warming, softening, dissolving magics that really by the end of it, people feel like they’ve had a conversation with a friend.

Simon Waller (09:33)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, as I said, when we first chatted about this, ⁓ you threw up a couple of different ideas about what you might like to talk about if you could talk about the future of anything.

share a little bit about the topic or the subject that we’re gonna be talking about today and kind of why you chose it.

foxwizard (09:58)
We’re going to be exploring the topic of continuity through a couple of different lenses. I thought it would be like this, there’s something quite charming about the format of a podcast, particularly what you have established here, the Future with Friends, in which we get an unhurried ⁓ meander through different scenarios where we’re not trying to convert it into pithy soundbites to market our own thought leadership expertise or

Simon Waller (10:16)
I’m

foxwizard (10:27)
prepackaged programs that we’re hoping people will sign up to but genuinely engaging with these scenarios through the lens and disposition of folks that are actively curious in the sense of okay, well if these patterns continue What could be the resultant effects like what could what could emerge as a result of

this and right now? You and I exist in a world that is head over heels and namered with artificial intelligence and the relentless pursuit of optimisation

Simon Waller (10:47)
and the United States as well. That is, it doesn’t happen without the intelligence, the intelligence, the intelligence.

foxwizard (10:57)
And I’m not so sure that people have thought this through considering second and third order effects. And I’m not sure that people have really thought this through, through anything beyond first, second, or maybe third person perspective. There’s this beautiful concept of the fourth person perspective

Simon Waller (10:58)
And I just want to say, I’m sorry for the people who are aware of this. And I want to say, I’m so sorry for the people who are aware this. And who are not aware of this.

foxwizard (11:14)
where we’re having a conversation about we, the kind of the global planet, know, humanity, or life itself. What are the implications of this?

And so I thought, well, you know, here’s a couple of scenarios where we could play out what this could look like.

Simon Waller (11:29)
Awesome. Now, what was really cool when I got this, I only got to see this for the first time last night. And first of all, it is beautifully written. I really love it.

One thing though that came up out of it is you’ve done something quite different than perhaps what we’ve seen with previous guests in the fact you’ve written almost two scenarios in one. And this really inspired me to actually think about how we might delve into this topic a little bit differently than perhaps we’ve done with previous episodes. Because to try and, I think, do justice to what you have written, an hour is clearly not long enough. So what it inspired for me, which we’ve obviously chatted about this morning,

is this idea of doing a double feature. There’s actually gonna be two episodes we can record. This is the first one. And then directly after this, we’re gonna record the second one. And in the first episode, we’re going to explore part one, or the first side of your scenario. And then in the next episode, which will be episode eight, we will then explore the second half. And it’ll allow people either to listen to one episode at a time, but to listen to them together, we’ll give them two sides of this conversation, which I think it’s super cool, entirely experimental, never done it before.

But you know, if I could do it for the first time with the one, Jace, it would be you.

foxwizard (12:41)
I’m so honored to be your first. ⁓

Simon Waller (12:47)
One more thing before we jump into it, the year that you have chosen to explore, what is the timeframe and what’s significance of the timeframe, if any, for you?

foxwizard (12:57)
At this point in time, I wish I had had the scenario opened up in front of me. I think I chose 2043 as the year or something around that time. The significance of that is, you know, we see a lot of, you know,

2040 visions and when it comes to climate targets, there are things that you know, we like round numbers. So there’s 2030 climate targets as well, which are, you know, I can say to be dubious propaganda, just to delay things. But but you know, it’s whatever people are, you know, deploying hope into a paradigm that is perpetuating very conditions that

Simon Waller (13:33)
We are, know, at the back of the screen, talking about this whole thing. But it’s one of the people that are deploying hope into Paradise. And it’s been really very interesting

to me. It’s something that I’ve been talking about for long I that’s especially important. I think that point of view is really important. And I think that’s key this. And I think that’s the key to this. And I that’s the key this.

foxwizard (13:47)
⁓ resulting in global heating and all the metacrisis stuff. So, ⁓ I thought that 2043, you you and I and most of our listeners would still be alive and around for this. We may have entered into a more of a, ⁓ and late adulthood

or elder perhaps role in society. You and I have grown up before the internet. We’ve grown up before AI. And so we’ve been able to experience life through

various lenses and I thought this is a cool perspective for any of the listeners to be like okay yeah 2043 how old will I be then and I was hoping that they could put themselves in the scenario too.

Simon Waller (14:18)
Awesome.

Well, I hope you’ve managed to work out how to open up the scenario because in a second you will be reading it.

foxwizard (14:36)
Yeah, great. ⁓ shit. One moment. I’ve got it. I’ve got it. ⁓ I love this. love podcasts that don’t have heavy editing because these moments are just so gold. ⁓ It’s like when tech fails at an event, it’s like you suddenly see the chinks and the professional armor as like the true personas reveal themselves. I love it. I’ve got it in front of me.

Simon Waller (14:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, it’s like that. Or it’s also hand waving. It’s like, well, you’re be a box and in that box will be the video with him. You know, so we won’t make you do this interpretive dance. We are gonna let you read it. I’m gonna turn it over to you. It’s all yours, Jace. Let’s listen to your scenario.

foxwizard (15:04)
Okay.

OK.

Okay,

just a heads up. All right, little caveat here. And this is a kind of an awkward vulnerability. I don’t want to prophesize this for myself, but I am actually a bit dyslexic when it comes to reading. So I hope that you and the listeners will forgive me is that if I stumble upon my own words, it’s, you know, one of the quirks of being a polymath genius is that sometimes, no, I’m not a polymath genius.

any mistakes or errors, going to blame on the Shoggoths I summoned to help me edit this. ⁓ Ironic that I actually used AI a little bit to ⁓ help to kind of flesh out an initial draft that I’ve seeded here because yeah, I’m turning it in on itself. Part one within the infinite machine. The year is 2043. Subject is Ava Ren, AID 744446718, systems analyst, core systems, central habitation arc.

It was Ava’s fourth optimisation prompt of the morning. Based on your recent attention levels, we’ve reconfigured your light spectrum diet and pushed a new focus playlist. Would you like to accept the recalibrated productivity schema? Recommendation? Accept. She’s linked twice. Confirmed. Behind the curved glass of her pod suite, the skyline pulsed with warmth and energy. Just the right hue of a digital dawn. Ava hadn’t seen the real sun in years, but the dome renders were exquisite.

Her neural sync

Simon Waller (16:41)
So,

foxwizard (16:42)
band adjusted temperature and sense to match her current task set, quarterly harmonization of narrative compliance systems for the outer distribution zones. The AI companion train bark of the mega corp she served delivered gentle affirmations and translate translucent data pains tailored to ease her into flow. You’re contributing to a better humanity, it cued whilst adjusting cortisol levels through her hydration pack.

Simon Waller (17:10)
Thank

foxwizard (17:10)
Ava smiled faintly. She felt good, optimised, seen. But beneath it all, the Infinite Machine was winning. It pruned outlier perspectives, metabolising descent into lifestyle upgrades. It replaced purpose with productivity. It reduced life to energy so as to get more energy. Growing so as to grow more. Every act of care was gamified, every word watched, every flicker of thought nudged towards consensus.

Simon Waller (17:11)
you.

foxwizard (17:36)
Life was abstracted into data streams, monitored, monetised

Simon Waller (17:40)
the

foxwizard (17:40)
and mined. Outside of the domes, the world continued to burn. The climate targets were never met. The world instead chose to accelerate growth. Net zero became carbon flexible. And meanwhile, sea levels rose in inches and megacorps rose in power. By 2031, the last pretense collapsed. COP36 was the last council of the parties.

Continuity emerged as a new narrative, groomed and back-tested by synthesized ⁓

Simon Waller (18:09)
And to stop the links. I’m going to the continuity and experience. going to automate the continuity and experience. And I’m going wait until the time comes when we can start to about what we’re going next. And I’m going to do a little bit a summary of what next. And I’m going to little bit of a summary next. And I’m with a

foxwizard (18:10)
data lakes. Automated continuity mandates was the decree, with entire economies handed over to privately owned algorithmic governors. Climate was no longer the concern, compliance was. Optimisation became law. Ava’s life was efficient.

Simon Waller (18:33)
summary of what next.

foxwizard (18:33)
Her personal AI

anticipated needs, moods, and sub-threshold doubts. Nutrient packs arrived without her request. Virtual sunlight followed her circadian rhythms. Electrode stimulated her muscles. Abler’s job was to manage narrative coherence across worker-facing AI interfaces to ensure no cognitive dissonance reached the lower tiers. The AI could do this without support, but it was found that human guidance would improve its efficiency by at least 4%. People worked harder now. Their metrics depended on it.

productivity was self-love. Burnout

Simon Waller (19:04)
So,

foxwizard (19:05)
was reframed as consistency gap. Ava’s companion-o updated her behavioral palettes daily, nudging her towards peak harmonics. All adaptation dashboards had been absorbed into a single tokenised metric, continuity. Ava’s job, everybody’s job, was to maintain continuity. Still, something stirred. A message she wasn’t meant to see, buried in a compliance thread. The seed still dreams?

She sat perfectly still, the glass adjusted opacity, hiding her sudden stillness from the passive gaze analytics. Why was that phrase familiar? The infinite garden, she thought. Yes, she’s heard whispers. No, she remembered. Decentralised, regenerative, wild, dangerous. Her AI chirped. Anomalous distraction detected. Shall I stimulate a brisk walk outside? You have over 20 minutes of self-time credit to

Simon Waller (19:35)
and I’m to start with

foxwizard (19:55)
recruit this year. Ava exhaled. No, she said, her throat croaky. Not yet.

Simon Waller (20:06)
Wow. This is so, so cool. And it’s funny, you mentioned before, when you, this is part one, correct. So we will do part two in the next episodes. gonna just explore part one for the moment. There’s something you said, ⁓

foxwizard (20:12)
That’s part one.

Simon Waller (20:23)
before when you talk about how you wrote this that you used ⁓ the slogoth in the writing of this. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, can you explain to them what the slogoth is?

foxwizard (20:35)
It’s a Shoggoth and let me see, I might actually, no don’t have the book here. It comes from, what’s his name, Lovelock’s Cthulhu demonic entity world. Shoggoth’s, it’s not a Shoggoth, they’re plural. Shoggoth emerged as a meme to describe kind of what AI is. You’ve got this

Simon Waller (21:00)
I it’s of one of the most

important things that we’re And it’s a team that has been working across every city to get this done. And so I think it’s really important to what we have for representing the convention speakers and for us to be of this. I think it’s important to see what we have for representing the convention and to be convention of

foxwizard (21:03)
Tentacle with an entity that has eyes across every single tentacle. It’s it’s ginormous, but there are many Shoggoths and What we have represented in conventional speakers a Shoggoth Where’s this happy smiling face and that’s the bit that we see with AI as the smiley face Which represents human reinforced learning feedback loops, but really you’ve got this vast ⁓

Entity of intelligence which is

Simon Waller (21:29)
And so I that’s

a great I think that’s a great way to start. So I that’s a great way think that’s a great I think that’s a way So I a great I that’s a great I I that’s a great

foxwizard (21:32)
I think the word entity is actually quite useful. talk about corporations as entities. Corporation means body, corporate is body. ⁓ And so we have ⁓ this entity, possibly an elder entity, ⁓ emerge and surface itself that we are using to assist us in many tasks.

And so when I say I kind of, feel like it’s an ethical obligation when you complimented my writing, which was very lovely. That was great. And it was largely my writing.

But I felt, you know, ethically obliged to highlight that I had used a shoggoth in some of the editing, because sometimes I make grammatical mistakes or I kind of I’m stuck on how to segue a paragraph from one thing to another. And so that was, you know, groomed by with the help of a shoggoth

Simon Waller (22:21)
Yeah, and it’s kind of, it’s interesting because I’d like to have a chat a bit about how you went about creating this.

and interested in how much the Shoggoth played a role in this. And I hoped, like I hoped when I read this that it had nothing to do with it at all. Do you mean like, hoped, but I hope this is just Jace writing this because it’s so, I really loved it. Like it’s beautiful. And in some ways, if it wasn’t that in itself is says something in terms of how

foxwizard (22:37)
Yeah, I know right?

Thank you.

Yeah, damn it.

Simon Waller (22:56)
You know, as you said, you talk about the smiley face that we get to see. And that we see can be so alluring in terms of its capability, in terms of its ability to craft beautiful sentences. But there’s certainly language in here that I couldn’t imagine it could come up with without some, ⁓ some training from you, particularly, and on your words, because it’s definitely still your, there’s an energy of it that’s definitely yours.

foxwizard (22:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

So there’s this weird, Holonic parallel in that I wrote this to start with and my tendency is I write and it’s a long amount and then usually I’m getting the help of the AI to help to trim or distill down. So I wrote the initial pass, but I myself in synthesizing from all the sci-fi books I’ve read, all the sci-fi shows I’ve seen, all the conversations we have, I’m doing a mirror to what the AI mirrors back to us, right? But I’m kind of

Simon Waller (23:43)
I’m to start by saying that I’m going start by saying that saying that I’m going to start by saying that I’m going

foxwizard (23:52)
blurting this out on the page and even as I did a proofread of it I saw that I had, you know, there was a scenario that I, there’s an element of the scenario I decided to cut out but then I’d referenced it in another spot and so when I just saw and I thought that I was fluffing here and I was also aware

Simon Waller (23:52)
to start by saying that I’m going start saying that I’m going to start by that I’m going going to start by by saying that going start by that I’m that that I’m that I’m going to start by by by

foxwizard (24:11)
of the word count, was also vastly over the word count, so that’s where I’m like, ⁓ okay, sure, both. ⁓

I’ve a scenario for a friend for a podcast that I’ve got coming up. I just need to trim down a little bit. And can you highlight which bits you can cut out and make suggestions for how it can flow? And I like seeing what it will attempt, but I also like to check myself what edits are being made because sometimes it’s missed a kind of a beautiful

Simon Waller (24:40)
So, going to of

questions that I’ve So, I’m going with a So, of questions So, I’m to of that I’ve had. So, of questions I’ve So, going So, a So, going couple questions So, going couple questions that I’ve So,

foxwizard (24:44)
⁓ turn a phrase or something poetic and sometimes it insists despite me trying to groom it, insists on putting parallelisms or paradisalys which are like, it’s not blah, it’s blah and so on and so I had to kind of get all that gunk out and just, know, gosh, it have been nice for me to say, huh, I didn’t touch the stuff myself but no, I used it, ⁓ you know, as a final kind of,

you know, ⁓

sweep to kind of ensure no rogue typos and grammatical issues and fluff stuff through.

Simon Waller (25:20)
Yeah, the other thing that’s interesting that came up in that in terms of how we use AI or the Shoggoth is and I’m trying to I can’t remember the professor’s name, but it’s a research out of the of the UK, he’s done a bunch of stuff around decision making, has some theory around, you especially group based decision making.

And how the way he frames it is that we are very good at coming up with ideas. We’re very good at checking other people’s ideas. We’re terrible at testing our own. And some ways I wonder whether or not by giving this to the Shoggoth and then saying, like allows us to be more critical of what it comes back with. Then we, we struggled to be critical in stuff like energetically, like I’ve got to go through my own thing. I’ve got to trim it myself. I’m not even sure.

foxwizard (26:01)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Simon Waller (26:08)
and that saves us a lot of time, but it certainly feels energetically different to be able to be critical of somebody else’s

foxwizard (26:10)
No. You’re so right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the energy is different because you know, previously, I would I would have to kind of I would I would get Kim, my partner, my wife to read through it. That is not healthy for a relationship long term to have your partner edit your work. Because like, I don’t. Yeah, I want I want her to be impressed by my writing. I mean,

Simon Waller (26:28)
You find it critical of him. Yeah. This is ridiculous, Kim. What are you doing?

foxwizard (26:39)
I don’t trust how impressed the AI constantly seems to be with my stuff. it’s okay to be like indifferent to the fawning sycophantic compliments that it keeps on expunging my way. But like, I’d like for my partner to like what I produce. So anyway, that just, there’s a different energy. You’re right. And ⁓ yeah, well pointed out. Yeah.

Simon Waller (27:02)
So tell us a little more in terms of the creation of this. So what were, I suppose, some of the signals or the things that you’ve seen or the kind of, even I know your own explorations that are very kind of quite tangential to this. So this stuff that’s happening in the present, that is an indicator of what my future and your extrapolate out to 15 years or nearly 20 years into the future.

foxwizard (27:18)
Yeah. Okay.

Simon Waller (27:25)
Like what were the, are the things that you are seeing now that makes you kind of imagine this into a

foxwizard (27:30)
Okay.

This is, mean, this is, well, as the pre-chatters saying, this is not prophecy, this is a scenario, it does feel that this is a likely path that we are on, which is ultimately a self-terminating path. We have a scenario right now where, sorry, we have a situation that we are currently in where all the weak signals I’m looking at seem to suggest that ⁓

Simon Waller (27:57)
So, I’m

going start with a of things. I’m going to start with a couple of I’m things. I’m going to couple things. I’m with of things. I’m of things. I’m going to couple of things. I’m going to start a couple of things. I’m start with things. going to start of of going a I’m going I’m

foxwizard (27:59)
Compassion is on the decline. ⁓ We have a world where people are increasingly busy, the wealth ⁓ inequality is increasing, people are having to work harder, the restorative time for our attention has pretty much diminished. So you have people working hard, they’re busy, they’re distracted when they do get home, they’re seeking, you know, pleasant distraction, numbing escape or whatever it is. Thus, we don’t really have as much time for critical thinking or reasoning.

Simon Waller (28:27)
is a

foxwizard (28:28)
we’re also in a world where you can literally see how effective mainstream media and social media platforms are at grooming consensus. Just the other day I was reading about how a report from within Microsoft about how emails with the word Palestine in there have been blocked

Simon Waller (28:29)
very diverse and well-prepared, literally saying, mainstream media and just a lot of the things that we’re in cities. And so, I that’s a very interesting thing to I think that’s a very important And I think that’s thing do. And I that’s a very important thing to

foxwizard (28:50)
and censored. We also know that people are losing their accounts on Meta if they’re ⁓ speaking up in

Simon Waller (28:53)
So, to go start with the So,

foxwizard (28:57)
you defense of international human rights law. And largely, if you are in a Western country right now, and you have an outspoken position that you don’t believe that children or non combatants and journalists should be killed, that you will be either shadow banned or silenced or somehow impacted. And so what’s happening is we’re having large populations that are groomed into a much more, I

Simon Waller (28:58)
I’m to first So, going first question. So, to question. So, first question. So,

foxwizard (29:22)
was having this analogy, I was saying that like,

because I often, you know, I’m privately whinging about the role that I seem to have chosen in this life of being an intellectually honest thought leader. And I was thinking that this is a great time to be a crime lord right now with an acronym, capitalist, reductionist, individualist, materialist, expert. So if you’re a capitalist, individualist, materialist expert, you’re going to do fine because you can align yourself to the whims of capitalism and just, ⁓ you know, give the machine what it wants.

Simon Waller (29:53)
want

to, but if you’re in the country and you’re in the city, you’re going to be getting the city. So I think that’s science and technology challenge for us. I that’s something that’s been for a long time now that we’re not really right place. And I something that we can do much more than just talk So I think that’s great to start a business.

foxwizard (29:53)
But if you’re paying attention and you’re concerned for where we are collectively going, if you’re looking at the exponential rise of extinction, ⁓ all of the red flags, the planetary boundaries that are being crossed, ⁓ there are so many grim indicators. But we are in a world right now that ⁓ would rather, you know, we’re better able to, there’s a quote, that people would much rather see the world destroyed than face their grief of seeing the world destroyed. ⁓

And so there’s this optimism, hope and denial that is constantly plastered over these concerns. ⁓ Meanwhile, we’re seeing the diminishment of independent journalism, of the tenets of democracy. And what we’re getting instead is algorithmically groomed ⁓ narratives that feed upon polarisation and weaponise friction between parties to prevent us from developing solidarity.

and coming together and the erosion of commons and a lot of things that just point out to, well, if we keep this trajectory up, where does that lead us? Hence the Grimm Part 1 scenario.

Simon Waller (31:06)
Yeah, and there’s a couple of things I heard in there, which I think are really, I really see in this scenario. The first is like, it’s not

It’s almost as easy a bit to be compliant. You know, like it’s not, you can’t speak out, but speaking out comes with a lot of friction and a lot of challenge, a lot of problem and kind of just easier if you just ease and it’s nicer really. It’s quite nice. There’s nothing like you look at this, this, this, this story of Ava, like she’s not like a terrible life that she’s leading, you know, like it’s quite, you know, like, and it’s

foxwizard (31:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, comfortable, yeah.

Simon Waller (31:42)
happy and there’s a cortisol and all these things around. Yeah, and I find this is something like when I first read this, the parallel I drew with it was around say, the and the matrix series. But what is almost like worse, like ⁓ more dystopian about your scenario than the matrix is in the matrix, people didn’t know. They didn’t know that they were being ⁓

foxwizard (31:45)
Yeah, yeah, she’s getting reinforced for her achievements. Yeah.

Simon Waller (32:10)
they were being taken advantage of, or they were being used by the machine. In this case, it’s kind of more that people have actually decided it’s easier to be used by the machine and they have given up on against it. And I find that really interesting. I actually find it even like, it’s more dystopian than the matrix to me.

foxwizard (32:29)
Yeah, it’s it’s kind of ⁓ you know, there’s a friend of mine, Matt Langdon, who runs the hero Academy says that the opposite of a hero is the bystander. It’s not the villain. It’s the bystander. ⁓ And I think that this is, know, there’s no individual to point to this as an emergent result of an aberrant ⁓ paradigm, a growth paradigm where it’s growth for growth sake, ⁓ where

Simon Waller (32:49)
and emergence of results of the first two years of the pandemic. And where

foxwizard (32:58)
It’s coupled with a monetary system that relies upon extraction, abstraction and accumulation, where real value is actually destroyed in the process of abstracting it into some sort of tokenised meta-optionality ⁓ claim on energy. yeah, in this scenario, ⁓ I kind of feel like maybe there’s awareness,

Simon Waller (32:59)
it’s coupled with a monitoring system that provides a foreign extraction and pack extraction and accumulation of labor. So every real time, it’s actually just through the process of getting into some of the new technologies that we have in the industry. And so, yeah, I this is a opportunity. I think, too, like,

foxwizard (33:19)
but also maybe there isn’t. Maybe just people are so busy, like the demands for optimisation have crowded out the time for that ⁓ reflection, critical reasoning.

the kind of what you and I when we’re catching up with a group of friends, ⁓ ideally by the fire or somewhere where we get a chance for a long meandering conversation where we’re starting to synthesize different viewpoints, that probably doesn’t happen so much in this world because hyper individual, ⁓ hyper optimised. And so instead we kind of align ourselves to a narrow band of metrics.

Simon Waller (33:45)
and we kind of align ourselves to a narrow boundary

of frameworks. And what that is that we have a very complex of algorithms that are very narrow and wide boundary goals. We have a device that’s a narrow boundary of algorithms that’s very complex. And we take that as close as we And so we need care about the things that we’re going to see in the next few

foxwizard (33:52)
And one of the challenges is that Daniel Schmachtenberger talks about is the difference between narrow and wide boundary goals. We are optimised towards a narrow boundary metrics, which means that it’s kind of forced to, it kind of forces a ⁓ obligate sociopathy because you can’t care about all the things when you’ve got this thing that you’ve got to do and it forces you

to care just about these things at the expense of all the other things. And so where does that lead?

Simon Waller (34:12)
So, I it’s time to back main So,

foxwizard (34:20)
Well, the megacorporations that have the incentives that coordinate these behaviors will eventually, you know, the way I see it in this particular world is there’s almost like a three-body problem within the world itself. You’ve got three different megacorps and because it’s not just a duopoly but like the three, you have this constant state of flux between them, which is why in

Simon Waller (34:20)
main topic. So, to So, So, main topic. So, think time the main So, So, So, I So, back the main So, time to So,

foxwizard (34:41)
part two, we’d see the possibility for another option outside of this context because the megacorps are so focused on

⁓ competing with each other that they don’t notice the other thing that’s emerging around.

Simon Waller (34:55)
So talk, there’s a one of the lines, the first lines I kind of highlighted when I read through it was around this idea of, you are contributing to a better humanity. And it kind of, you know, like it’s, it’s

foxwizard (35:04)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (35:08)
like almost a reflection of what we see or have seen. What was it? Silicon Valley, the TV show where it’s almost becomes like kind of almost point out as a parody how so many of these tech companies embody ⁓ some highfalutin kind of vision or somehow justify whatever it is that they’re doing. And I kind of saw, I feel like that was a quite explicit choice that you made in terms of how

foxwizard (35:26)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (35:39)
to frame up what this mega corp really does.

foxwizard (35:43)
Yeah, it’s purpose as propaganda, ⁓ or purpose washing, wire washing, green washing, all the kind of washing that we try to do to launder what’s actually happening. I mean, that still happens today, right? There is an understandable reason for that dynamic emerging. And the reason is, ⁓ the rivalrous dynamics of the way that we are set up in the world mean that ⁓

we’re effectively all part of a multipolar trap in that if we don’t do this thing, our competitors will. So it might as well be us. So we kind of are forced to do this thing because if we don’t, our competitors would do that. They’ll take the market share and we’ll be out of business. So we’ve got to do this thing, but we’ve got to try and make it seem nice. Or like what we’re doing is not just this thing. And so, you know, it’s quite perilous. This is part of the whole meta crisis.

Simon Waller (36:10)
of where technically all the common people are trapped in that is we don’t do this. We’re not interested in doing this. We’re interested in doing this. And if we had to do that, that would be the most interesting thing. if we that, be But we’ve got to try to do this. And if we had to do this, that would be the And if we to would be the that, that the most interesting thing.

foxwizard (36:37)
you know, grim realisation that actually literally

Simon Waller (36:38)
And And if we we had to the if thing. And

I we need to move to a more, you know, a more stable approach, because the president of the United States has been very, generous with But there is a, there is a, think, a more stable approach around the balance of power. And I that the more we start to see this, the more we actually look at both sides of the coin, and happening in the end,

foxwizard (36:40)
put me into a, you know, a state of depression or at least depressed mood, a mild chronic depressed mood when I have this realisation. But there is something, there is a kind of a more wholesome, robust, grounded, eyes open kind of hope that emerges on the other side of this. we can, then we can actually look with both eyes open at what’s happening then.

the more meaningful and realistic pathways

Simon Waller (37:03)
the more can move forward and move forward in this kind of process.

foxwizard (37:08)
to, I guess, ⁓ less grim future become more apparent.

Simon Waller (37:15)
One thing we touched on just before you read the scenario is about those different levels of thinking that you can do. You know, the first, second, third order effects. And I think this is one of the challenges we do face when we look at these types of technologies at the moment is that the first order effect is quite extraordinarily amazing. You know, in terms of its capacity.

foxwizard (37:34)
So yeah, first in perspective, yeah, yeah,

yeah.

Simon Waller (37:37)
is then

we had the second order effects and third order effects and what that means. ⁓ It requires almost that bigger view to get to where we’re looking at this. It’s almost like it’s the concentration of power and wealth within a few organisations, which allows them to manipulate the political system, which in turn then allows them to actually almost act as a quasi-government, which, you know, like it almost becomes like it’s only when we kind of zoom out from the current situation.

foxwizard (37:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (38:06)
that we can actually see this.

foxwizard (38:09)
That’s, that’s right. And most people don’t have time to do this. And we don’t have the kind of the civic commons that we previously had where we can have good spirited ⁓ debate in good faith with each other when we’re not looking to attack our opponents, but really trying to rigorously engage with ⁓ robust conversations that are generative about ideas. Like in an ideal world, politics would be ⁓ generative dialectic between conservative and progressive forces.

Simon Waller (38:29)
So

foxwizard (38:38)
Like if we learn too hard and conservative, we become stuck in the past and ⁓ backwards looking. If we lean too far progressive, sometimes we’ll embrace things too quickly without actually honoring the wisdom that has been hard won from the past and will end up inadvertently causing harm. So there’s ideally a generative

dialectic between the two, but because of the polarisation and the algorithmic grooming and the ideological echo chambers and the ⁓

the lack of civic spaces for us to do this, then the risk is that as I’m sharing this scenario and as we’re discussing it, it can be dismissed as tinfoil hatch, you know, it starts to seem like too fringe, too out there, it’s outside of the Overton window of what is acceptable. And it makes me feel uncomfortable. So therefore the easy thing is just dismiss it and carry on and continue, serve the continuity.

Simon Waller (39:34)
One thing that does just say a particular term in here that grabbed my attention, which was around the concept of gamification. So your very first bestselling book was called, was it the Game Changers? The Game Changer. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that because I think that ⁓ obviously

foxwizard (39:44)
Yes.

The game changer, yes. Cringe, yeah.

Simon Waller (40:01)
You know, we all move on in our work and our life in terms of often our first book is the one that we go like, ⁓ I like that the least just because of your own thinking has developed since then. I feel that your cringe around the game changer is actually different from that. It’s all my, and I almost see your cringe in this. Is that, is that something that came up for you? Because I know you have some challenges around how gamification gets used often in quite like a

that just I don’t know in poor ways, poor way would indicate that it wasn’t intentional that it was bad. It’s more like intentionally ⁓ negative ways. You want to talk a little bit about like the kind of mechanisms that you see play out in this world around how we manipulate people towards particular outcomes.

foxwizard (40:49)
Yeah, thank you for the question. It’s quite insightful. It’s very insightful. I appreciate the question. So I mean, the Game Changer emerged as I was doing my PhD and I was playing World of Warcraft and fascinated by why this game was so compelling and engaging. And I then took my research in motivation, behavior science, and what I knew of game design, and wrote the book The Game Changer and it just coincided about the same time.

Simon Waller (40:58)
Thanks.

about the

importance of use of And I point. important point. And I I think a really important point. And think a think a really And that’s And And And I point. And important point. And I really point.

foxwizard (41:18)
as tends to be the case with the consciousness, these ideas tend to emerge. Gamification became the term that emerged. in the early days, motivation scientists, game designers were quite fine with the term gamification. It’s quite lovely to see people taking an active interest because I was told by the more senior folks in our professional speaking industry, don’t talk about games. People will dismiss you. No one will take you seriously. Games are just a frivolous.

you know, pastime and stuff like that. Look at us now. But the issue was that the gamification took a very superficial look at it. It was simply about the goals, rules, feedback, the points, badges, leaderboards, the ability to influence competition and challenge so as to keep people into optimal flow states, which is kind of great for short term sprints. But the overall philosophy of gamification is effectively a finite game. And there’s a beautiful philosophical book.

called Finite and Infinite Games, the Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by James Kass, which I end up quoting almost every conversation that I have,

finite players play within

boundaries, infinite players play with boundaries, finite games are played to win, infinite games are played to continue the play. And there’s this thing of gamification, which kind of focuses on this winning. But the thing is that when you when you’re, you know, creating winners, you’re also creating losers by the paradigms that you’re creating here. So this this relates this gamification thing relates to the general quest for optimisation, right?

Simon Waller (42:31)
So,

foxwizard (42:49)
Optimisation means you’re picking from all of the infinite warm data, the relational qualities, the meaning that we make, the spirit of it all, the poetics

Simon Waller (43:01)
My

foxwizard (43:01)
of it all, and instead we’re fixing it on just a few metrics and we’re optimising life around that. And that means we’re often blind to what’s really important and what really matters. ⁓ And so in gamification, you’d see simple context like

You know, ⁓ we need people to be commenting more in the internal thing

here. We’re going to add points for people that comment. And so the result is people put in spam comments and it’s just junked up and no one wants to look at it because it’s full of rubbish. You say the same thing with algorithms. It’s just, how can we tweak the incentives to simulate certain types of behaviors emerging? And this ultimately leads to what many of us

Simon Waller (43:27)
So, I that’s that’s a good point. I think that’s a good I think that’s a good I think I think I think I I a point. think good point. I

think that’s a good that’s a good

foxwizard (43:47)
we’ll call Moloch, the god of coordination failure, perverse incentives and child sacrifice. A canine god that is effectively why we can’t have nice things. But

there’s this thing where, well, I’m going to quote ⁓ from Tyson Youngaporta, indigenous scholar here, good friend of mine, based in Melbourne, who wrote the book Sandtalk. That’s his first book. He also can’t stand Sandtalk, but I love it. As in just like I can’t stand my first book. The game changer was too sycophantic, was too young, was trying too hard to…

Simon Waller (43:56)
So I’m going say, I’m going to say, going going to say, I’m going going say, I’m say, I’m I’m I’m going going

foxwizard (44:17)
press executives and so on. But there’s this quote within Sandtalk

Simon Waller (44:17)
going say, going to going to

foxwizard (44:21)
where Tyson says, the war between good and evil is more of a case of a war between ⁓ artificial simplicity and stupidity imposed over wisdom and complexity. And this is what I see perpetuating with a lot of the world systems we have today as an artificial simplicity and a kind of stupidity imposed over wisdom and complexity.

Simon Waller (44:42)
I was so funny that you brought up Tyson because I, when you were talking about the whole ⁓ gamification piece.

It reminded me, actually listened to the last episode of his podcast, the other others, and he was talking there about ⁓ how the concept of play and play being really valuable. But as soon as we turn it into a game, we then have to have a winner and loser and almost like we ruin it. We spoil it because it comes around winning as opposed to the value of play. And I think that is really interesting as you know, I think the concept of play from what I understood from the podcast,

foxwizard (44:54)
cool.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (45:18)
is something that’s deeply ingrained within to kind of indigenous ways of life. And but then as I said, the idea that that we have to turn into a game where someone wins and loses almost undoes the power or the value of it. I actually remember an ⁓ I don’t know the full details. I think it was the first time that they might have taken AFL Australian Rules football to I think it might have actually been that made it say the Tiwi Islands or something like that. And they show them the rules and they’re to start playing. But at the end of the

foxwizard (45:31)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (45:47)
time, the allotted time, the players refused to stop playing. And like the, I suppose the white guys were there going, no, the game’s over. But they weren’t willing to stop until the scores were even. Like they need get it. Yeah, because it was about the play. It was not about the game and the win or lose.

foxwizard (45:55)
That’s great.

Yeah, that’s the rules. Yeah.

Yeah, beautiful. That’s infinite play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So good.

Simon Waller (46:11)
The other thing that I really read in this, which I thought was super interesting, which you touched on as well, is about the concept of metrics and what metrics we choose and the often absurd outcomes that come from the metrics we decide. We talk about what gets measured gets done, but ultimately what gets measured gets gamed in the short term. Ultimately in the long term, what gets measured gets automated.

foxwizard (46:31)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (46:41)
But there’s a real issue around the metrics we choose. often, often we choose metrics so quickly without any real deep thought about what the unintended consequences are.

foxwizard (46:42)
Mmm.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It’s, it’s good hearts law is that when a measure becomes a target, it’s become a good measure. There, it’s almost this this arbitrary function within large entities that you need to forecast what performance will be. And so you need to, which is which would be fine in stable environments where things aren’t changing, but doesn’t make sense when things are complex ambiguous, and so on. And, and then, you know, and then people’s

whole behavior and disposition skewed towards those few metrics. One of the lines that Daniel Schmachtenberger who’s a giga mind that I ⁓ love listening to, he reminds folks of the tenet, thou shalt not covet false idols. And by false idols, he talks about the models of reality, ⁓ the metrics, the structures that we have that aren’t actually reality.

Simon Waller (47:29)
Thanks watching.

I’m to turn it back to you. I’m it back to you. I’m turn back you. it back going I’m turn I’m going it I’m going

foxwizard (47:55)
Like reality is the soil, the world, the relations that we have,

Simon Waller (47:56)
going I’m I’m going it I’m I’m going going going I’m turn it it

foxwizard (48:03)
the quality of all these beautiful things, but we abstract and we obfuscate that and we instead fixate upon a narrow selection of metrics. And then we pervert ourselves in pursuit of those just to kind of make number go up. And, you know, if we were to get mythopoetic here, I would consider that metrics themselves, numbers are a kind of glyph, like

when you’re making up words, words are made of glyphs, the little letters are within typography of glyphs and they stream together to spell the sentence. Every word is a spell and we’re kind of enacting and manifesting things, but this glyph magic can create all sorts of behavioral distortions. It’s one of Moloch’s tools that manifests where people will look at someone’s follower count on a social media and decide whether their perspective is worth listening to or not.

Simon Waller (48:30)
I that’s a great to bring together some of best things that we to help the importance of this. And I that’s a great way to that. I that people will look at some these follow-up cameras, follow-up accounts, and see what’s

going on here. And I think that’s to do that.

foxwizard (48:53)
instead of engaging with the quality of their reasoning,

what they’re presenting, metrics create obscene distortions and we are metric obsessed in this society.

Simon Waller (49:05)
Yeah, and I, one of the things you talk about the metrics and the dashboard, it’s just been rolled up into one number, one concepts. So it’s like there’s multiple layers of abstraction that allow us to arrive at this.

So we first of all abstract the real world and the implications and the impacts that we have into some type of metrics. But then those metrics get rolled up into this dashboard that gets rolled up into just one number. And on one hand, there’s something that I’ve, I suppose I’ve talked about in my own work at times, which is ⁓ this inability to measure what matters. You know, one of the problems, it’s kind of both in some ways the problem, but also my hope.

foxwizard (49:32)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (49:46)
There’s certain things that we really struggle to measure. So concepts like you mentioned before, like compassion or love or friendship to these kind of slightly more of weird nebulous concepts that we can’t put numbers too easily. And on one hand, I kind of look at that and go, that’s what we will value in the future because if we can’t automate it, then the laws of supply and demand can’t come into effect.

whereby we reduce its value like us as human beings are the people who can provide this. Like it’s our competitive advantage against technology. And I kind of don’t, I don’t know if I entirely believe it to be true, but I hope it to be true. In this, you have this other abstract concept, this other nebulous concept, continuity that you’ve managed to put a number against.

foxwizard (50:19)
Yeah, yeah.

Mmm. Mmm.

Mmm.

Simon Waller (50:38)
And almost this idea by the very fact that we could put a number against it, we almost elevate its importance because of its capacity to have a number like unnumberable things or unmeasurable things, almost like the two, require too much cognitive effort. And so we kind of devalue them against things like follow account versus quality of content.

foxwizard (50:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s what we do with GDP at the moment. You know, people want to make their countries or the nation’s GDP go up. And so one of the ways that you can do that is start a war and spread a pandemic or things like that, because GDP goes up when there’s illness, GDP goes up when there’s war and there’s conflict.

Simon Waller (51:25)
More car accidents would be great. I mean, you get to sell the new car, get to the old car, you get the hospital bills, you get all the great stuff that cost you a GDP.

foxwizard (51:27)
Yeah, exactly, Yeah.

That’s right. ⁓ yeah, exactly. ⁓

I was thinking of a simpler example that came up in my earlier work. One of the things you and I both have in common is that we grew up in Western Australia, which is quite nice. And I did some work on the mine sites back then in my early days. And they used to celebrate number of days without a lost time injury. And you know, it’s like 200 days into a lost time injury. Now they have

Simon Waller (51:57)
that

foxwizard (52:00)
incentives to be, know, if we hit 200, we’re gonna, you’re going to get this bonus because we want you to stay safe. The second order effects of that were that if injury happened, better to not report it because we’ll lose this bonus, right? And so it creates this shadow effect of people not actually reporting genuine injuries, so as to hit that target. And

You know, this is this is one should be incredibly wary about

metrics and all the distortions and what’s what is obfuscated what is hidden with this. And also much more leaning into the warm data as Nora Bateson talks of the relational complex, the qualitative sense making is like, does this feel right? Are we are we on track here? It’s like, you know, that that kind of check in where, you know, we can we can can attune to whether I’ll be on the right track here. This meaningful progress or

Simon Waller (52:49)
I’m

foxwizard (52:52)
⁓ Is this a rich delusion of progress that we are perpetuating? And that’s often something that’s missing. It’s why, you know, they bring people like you into the mix because, and I love this, role of conferences, the role of off-sites. It’s like, okay, we recognise we’ve been busy, but we’re actually going to take some intentional time out here and we’re going to get some external perspective in here to help us ask questions.

And just to really challenge and sense

check what we’re doing here because in this conversation and getting someone like Simon coming in here and having explored scenarios may reveal stuff that we’re pretending to not know or that we never even realised. And that’s beautiful because it recalibrates us back towards a more meaningful kind of progress.

Simon Waller (53:35)
Yeah, I was actually I was in doing the Australian Institute of Company Directors course last week. And what blew me away more than anything was the number of kind of corporate problems created.

⁓ by rewarding people against metrics. That, as you said, the number of times that that led to unintended consequences was mind blowing to the point whereby I go like, why do we even do it? Why bother at all? And I think me operating more perhaps in the government and not for profit space, I don’t necessarily see those things as being necessary. Perhaps if you have people who only operate in a world where they do jobs in a more mercenary way, like I’m really there for the paycheck.

foxwizard (54:03)
Yeah, yeah.

Simon Waller (54:17)
that those things are required. But as the number of mistakes and unintended consequences and the significant value that they destroy, ⁓ makes me really question about why we do it. I love that idea of why don’t we just have metrics for the basis, for the sake of conversation, as opposed for the sake of reward. ⁓ Yeah, I know this, there’s a couple of things I want to touch on before we wrap up this episode. The last one about this, which I think alludes to the second part of it anyway.

foxwizard (54:35)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (54:45)
But you talk about the infinite garden. And the infinite garden doesn’t feel like a made up concept. It feels like it’s something that relates to something that exists or that you’re aware of. Can you talk a little bit about the infinite garden and what it is and what it means?

foxwizard (54:48)
you

⁓ I’ve played with this concept in my own mind. I’m sure many people have. It’s a little play on the infinite game ⁓ versus finite game and so on. But the Ethereum Foundation have ⁓ kind of adopted the term the infinite garden. Ethereum is the second blockchain to arrive after Bitcoin. ⁓ It’s a blockchain that allows for smart contracts. is open source, publicly owned.

Simon Waller (55:21)
I’m

foxwizard (55:32)
decentralised, sensitive, ⁓ technology, convivial technology. ⁓ And they have quite a kind of hm it’s it’s a combination of quite an academic but also quite hopeful vision of how things can look in the future. ⁓ If one would permit

a slightly tech biased, solar punk lens to this. So there is something that I hint towards in the ⁓

second scenario, whereas this first one we’ve really looked in at hyper optimisation, centralised coordination and control ⁓ and this kind of pursuit of a ⁓ singular metric at all costs. The second scenario starts to explore something altogether different.

Simon Waller (56:22)
And this is something I know you are deeply interested in the web3 space. And it’s something that I’ve really struggled with because in the past I’ve really struggled to quite get it. And yet the fact that you’re so passionate about it makes me really want to get it and to see what you see in it. And I know you’ve even run some courses around that, like intro to web3.

Not from the perspective of how to be a crypto bro, but rather from the idea of what does this offer to us from a governance perspective? I know that the second scenario does jump into that a more, which we’ll get to talk about. The last thing before we close out this episode, one thing that you said to me when we first spoke about this, you said, look, I read some of the other scenarios that other people have done on your website. This one’s definitely more dystopian. And we talked about the concept of practical dystopianism.

The idea that we can often have these dystopian scenarios, and we see this a lot play out in spaces like science fiction, where the idea of the dystopian vision is to kind of send us a lesson or teach us something about the present that might help us avoid the worst excesses of this. If you were to look at this scenario through that lens of practical dystopianism, and what is it that you would like people to learn as a lesson of

from this first half of your scenario, what might be some of the things that you would point people towards?

foxwizard (57:50)
In a word, would be relationality. And that is what this scenario presents is a progression towards hyper optimisation to serve individual performance metrics within a context that is optimising around a mere subset of all of life. ⁓ I think that, you know, in a practical sense,

One might, you know, even as I was writing this, was realising, you know, the first thing in morning is I check my scores from my aura, you know, to get my phone, tell me how did I sleep and so on. ⁓ I try to check in an actual genuine sense, but there is a like, just just be mindful of where we’re going in life. And there is there are intentional things that we can do to disrupt the natural gravitational allure towards this hyper optimisation. And that is

Simon Waller (58:35)
and

foxwizard (58:47)
you know, time on Sundays where you’re actually switching the phones off, going on hikes, actually spending time with friends, making efforts towards what would be more convivial forms of relationality, having people over for dinner, going out to catch up with friends. Like it used to be this was quite normal. We’re in a weird

part of the world that is so part of this part of history at the moment where, you know, even 15 years ago, it’d be so normal to go down to your pub, you know, the corner pub once a week, you would

have, you’d be part of a team, you’d have shared hobbies and so on, but we’re losing a lot of that. So I’d say that in terms of practical of what a thing we can take here is just to ask, you know, what are we missing when we optimise and what would meaningful progress look like if we were to just ignore metrics altogether, but instead to feel and sense into what that looks like for you.

Simon Waller (59:44)
Nice, nice. Now, normally I close out an episode by asking also a little bit about what you learn from the process, but we have a whole nother episode to record at the back of this, the second half of the double feature. So I’m going to save that question until the end of part two, but this has been such a great conversation already. I’m so excited by it. love the

foxwizard (59:59)
Beautiful.

Simon Waller (1:00:04)
I just really love the tone of the scenario and the slightly sci-fi vibes that it had to it. More so perhaps than perhaps I’ve seen some of the other scenarios to date, but it almost like feels like it’s a real story that we’re hearing. ⁓ We’re going to be back with episode eight, the second part of the future of continuity with Dr. Jason Fox very, very soon. Until then, thanks so much.

foxwizard (1:00:30)
Thank you.