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Mark Gober on AI, Consciousness, Logical Fallacies, Biases, and More
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In this episode, we are delighted to welcome Mr. Mark Gober as we explore various topics surrounding AI and its connection to our understanding of the world. Together, we question whether AI can ever achieve true consciousness or transcend its programming. We examine how AI is reshaping communication, decision-making, and even science, while addressing critical issues such as biases in datasets and flaws in AI logic.
Mark also highlights the importance of critical thinking, urging listeners to recognize logical fallacies in both human reasoning and AI-generated outputs. This thought-provoking discussion invites you to reflect on the growing influence of AI on our lives and its implications for society.
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Transcript
Introduction to Beyond Drain Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome everybody to another episode of the Beyond Drain podcast. I'm your host, Leo Dalton. If you're new around here, consider following the show or subscribing. Uh, if you liked the show, give us a review, comment, like sharing is one of the best ways to help support us as well. Get the word out. All of it, of course, would be appreciated.
Introducing Guest Mark Gober
00:00:19
Speaker
We have a fantastic guest today. Really looking forward to this episode. I think we're going to cover some cool topics that you know I'm really, really interested in, especially lately. um Our guest today, Mark Gober, has absolutely fantastic mind, written some amazing books. um Really holistic perspective too, kind of tackling it from many different lenses, which I think is important. It's nice to be able to do that. I think it kind of solidifies the the argument as well when you can kind of dismantle something from many different angles.
00:00:52
Speaker
So, Mark, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate your time.
Health and Spiritual Wellbeing
00:00:56
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. So, start with an introductory question there. Ask all my guests to define health. What is health? What does it look like? How does it manifest? I'd love to hear your take on this.
00:01:11
Speaker
Such a good question. It's a deep philosophical question because to me, my mind goes to spiritual answers because, let me break down my thought process here. Health is related to our sense of wellbeing, but then we have to start asking, who is the being that is having the wellbeing?
00:01:38
Speaker
And is the being just a physical body or is the physical body a vessel for something that's much more cosmic or existing beyond the body?
Consciousness and the Brain
00:01:50
Speaker
And that's where I leaned. And actually when I started writing books, um my first book and end upside down thinking is all about this idea that the body and and the brain actually is like a receiving mechanism or a filtering mechanism for a broader consciousness and the body somehow is processing or filtering or inhabiting or carrying the the vessel for the broader consciousness. So when I think about
00:02:14
Speaker
health, it's it has has something to do with the body as an interface spiritually. So it's almost like when the body is in a state that does not feel good to us, meaning ill health, it's as if we might infer that the that we are being guided towards something spiritually because we're off the mark in some way.
00:02:42
Speaker
Whereas if we're in good health, perhaps we are um flowing with reality in a way that is more aligned spiritually. I love that answer. That's fantastic. Good way to kind of tie that in too. And we've had interesting discussions on the topic and, um, playing in that spiritual element, right? That the, the why even get healthy, right? You know, there's,
00:03:12
Speaker
Like it's kind of an an an interesting thing to ask yourself as well, right? It's like, well, why do I want to be healthier? And then what is health? I love that question so much. Usually there's an attunement piece with nature, right? Um, we take a lot of, um, you know, obviously my inspiration is largely from nature, learning from nature, getting back to nature. Uh, because I believe that that's where true health comes from and is that's, that's what health is. It's sort of this natural, uh, coherence with our realm, not to say that.
00:03:41
Speaker
You can't be healthy in the modern world. I will say that it is fairly difficult to do so sometimes, but yeah, great great answer. I love that. um Yeah, some some amazing books. What kind of inspired you to to write these books and and cover the the you know broad topics that you're covering?
Mark Gober's Career Journey
00:04:00
Speaker
Well, it was an unexpected journey for me because my background is very much mainstream on the surface. So I graduated from Princeton University in 2008 and then worked in investment banking after I graduated. So I was in New York during the financial crisis at a large investment bank called UBS.
00:04:17
Speaker
So I was in the heart of everything and all the banks were struggling, including my own bank. And then I was in a group within UBS that was responsible for advising other financial institutions, meaning that not only was I at a bank that was having all kinds of problems, but my clients were other banks and insurance companies and asset managers. So I was in this It was a pretty crazy time and i decided i didn't want to to do that long term so i left the firm but then join another firm that did something a little bit similar in the financial world strategic advisory for technology focus companies first in boston massachusetts and then i was in silicon valley for the majority of my time.
00:04:54
Speaker
ah Focusing on innovations intellectual property patented technologies and doing it from a business lens and kind of integrating. The legal aspect the technology aspect the business aspect which is relevant to this discussion because i learned so much in that job in terms of how to take in.
00:05:10
Speaker
new information about technologies and science that i wasn't familiar with but i had to get up to speed very quickly and learn about it and be able to. Not only analyze it but then communicate to senior management teams like boards of directors and ceo who might have some technology and um legal expertise but they want the big picture strategy like what's going on with the business.
00:05:32
Speaker
So while I was working at this firm, I ended up spending 10 years there and became a partner at the firm. But midway through that, a little after midway through, I kind of hit a life crisis in many ways where I um felt like I was on a treadmill, like continuing to try to achieve and was ending up back in the same place. And when you're in that spot, I found it's harder to withstand the ups and downs of life. So I i felt like a zombie for a period of time.
00:05:58
Speaker
and actually was not looking for anything new. I just thought, well, this is how life is. And I had this metaphysical picture, which is very different than the way we started this episode, where I thought life was random and meaningless. And I didn't think there was any reality to spiritual or religious concepts. And I believe that everything we learned from science was just pointing us more and more to this idea of a random and meaningless universe.
00:06:19
Speaker
and The notion of meaning is important in purpose. like i we we I thought that we could create meaning and purpose, but it was just a rationalization of the mind, just an intellectualization. Whereas other belief systems like in the spiritual or religious realms would say that meaning and purpose are actually embedded within the fabric of reality itself. And that was not where I was at all.
Exploring Consciousness through Podcasts
00:06:39
Speaker
I started listening to podcasts in 2016 and kind of randomly started hearing about the topic of consciousness, and the idea of even things like spirits and energy. There was a podcast actually on extreme health radio. So it's interesting that it was in the health realm where I first heard this stuff, because I was learning about just like alternative ways of treating illness.
00:07:01
Speaker
And I heard miraculous story after miraculous story and all kinds of challenges to the allopathic approach. But then there was one episode with a woman named Laura Powers who started talking about health as it pertains to psychic phenomena and her own personal experiences with interdimensional beings. And I don't even remember exactly what it was, but it was like very much along the lines of the paranormal. But this was someone who was describing it as her own personal experience on a health show that was like otherwise not like this. So I remember listen just kind of being ah very intrigued, but it it wasn't like my life changed in that instant. But at the end of the episode, Laura Powers mentioned her own podcast called Healing Powers. And I decided to listen to that one. And she interviewed many other people who were talking about similar things. And that's when I got interested because it was people who from very different backgrounds,
00:07:48
Speaker
And they were coming to a picture of reality that completely kind of contradicted my own one where consciousness transcends the brain when we die. That's not the end of our consciousness. We all have psychic abilities and so forth. And that was mind blowing for me to come across this because I had to reconcile my own education and personal experience with all this other stuff.
00:08:08
Speaker
And then I started to read so books and scientific papers, peer reviewed papers that were validating a lot of what I heard in these anecdotal accounts in the podcasts. So long story short, I got hooked on it even while I was still working at the time, um I decided to write my first book.
00:08:23
Speaker
and end to upside down thinking, which is all about the idea that the brain does not produce consciousness, and that there's a lot of evidence that when we die, our consciousness continues, and that we all have psychic abilities that our consciousness can transcend space and time, sometimes very subtly. But I put the scientific evidence into one book, that was my first book, and end upside down thinking, still working at my firm. I thought, okay, have this book, I'll pursue these passions on the side, but like this is it for me.
00:08:48
Speaker
And I remember my publisher, ah Bill Gladstone from Waterside publication Publishing said, like what's your next book going to be? And then um a bunch of other people said, what are you going to write about next? And I said, are you crazy? like I have other things. um I'll still research. But this is the big book, and this is my one thing. It's kind of an anomaly. And then I did a podcast series called Where Is My Mind if your audience is interested, because we go into the same topics. But I interviewed many of the scientists that I wrote about. And that was just an eight-episode series produced professionally with bru Blue Duck Media.
00:09:17
Speaker
And that took me to the end of twenty nineteen early twenty twenty. I was had made it to partner at the firm at the time and i decided to leave because i was feeling too pulled in this other direction even though i didn't know what was gonna be next i didn't feel like i could stay in my firm and be an integrity energetically or otherwise so so it was a very strange position to be in cuz i had spent my whole career getting to this amazing place ah on the surface.
00:09:43
Speaker
to be a partner in my early 30s at a firm that was doing really interesting stuff but I just didn't feel a call to it anymore so I left and I've written six books in addition to the first one after having left the firm so I've covered many new topics where initially it started off with consciousness in the brain and what's the nature of reality but the more I learned and and saw other things happening in the world especially in the 2020 era with the politics and everything medically going on. i My eyes were open to new things and new paradigms that in many ways, like your question about health, relate to the spiritual aspect as one part of it, but there were a lot of other things.
00:10:20
Speaker
that i I began to question, including my book, An End to Upside Down Medicine, which was published in 2023. That's the sixth book out of seven
Challenging Mainstream Health Views
00:10:27
Speaker
so far. And that goes into questions about viruses and the nature of health, what what makes us sick, what are the determinants of health and disease from an allopathic perspective, looking at ger the germ theory of disease, but also integrating some of these questions of consciousness because they're very much interrelated.
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's so interesting. It's what i I find so fascinating about that is like the beginnings in kind of this exploration of consciousness and, and just almost like a pursuit of finding this meaning. I like how you put it that, you know, we can kind of rationalize the creation of meaning. Of course, I've been through the cycles of that as well, but you know that there is meaning that is inherent in our existence, in our reality, uh, in our plane, right? So I think that's beautiful. And.
00:11:15
Speaker
It's so funny because, you know, I can kind of relate, you know, from an underlying pattern sense, my progression into sort of the health world as well, you know, beginning with questioning consciousness. And so I did a biochemistry and molecular undergraduate degree and I was so dissatisfied going through the degree, like studying things down at the, you know, molecular basis and, uh, sort of just this random billiard ball, you know, each of them hitting each other. So such a random configuration. and Um, it was just.
00:11:45
Speaker
It was meaningless. There's no other way to put it, the randomness and the the meaningless. It's just, it was a terrible way. Um, it was terrible for my mind. It was unhealthy for my mind and it and it manifested in so many different ways. And the second that I switched that something flipped and then ah I started to see more clear. It was such an amazing transformation, you know, so looking beyond and started studying, you know, things like alchemy and different you know, mystical traditions and um so interesting. And even studying theology is such ah another fascinating topic.
00:12:19
Speaker
um Anyways, like I just, I love where you come from and I love your story and how you got into this work. You can hear that there's, there's, there's a little bit of a passion there of course, right? That kept you coming back to write these books. So I think that's fantastic. like You work a lot with AI and I think we could tie this conversation of consciousness maybe into it.
00:12:41
Speaker
I know there's a lot of people that fear AI and whatever it may be. Maybe we could start just with your perspectives on AI, the role that it's currently playing in science and, um, how you kind of interact with it, what you gain from it, you know, what, cause you have some super interesting conversations with it. Uh, eventually a lot of people will recognize that, uh, from social media. So.
00:13:05
Speaker
I'll give you the floor just to maybe open up the discussion
Can AI Develop Consciousness?
00:13:07
Speaker
there. sure Yeah, it's a great question. I first started thinking about AI. I guess in my professional days working in Silicon Valley because it was relevant to a lot of high-tech stuff that I worked on. ah But in terms of the realm of consciousness and what I write about, it it entered the scene in my first book. It entered upside-down thinking because the questions back then, I mean, I wrote the book in 2017. It was published in 2018. There was a lot of talk. Is AI going to be conscious?
00:13:33
Speaker
And the argument I make in that book, and I still agree with it now, is that the body as a physical entity, a biological entity, seems to be conscious because we all experience it right now. We have this subjective quality to our awareness. The question is, will a machine have that just because a machine becomes more and more complex?
00:13:57
Speaker
And from a materialist perspective, which is the mainstream scientific view, which says that we're just physical billiard balls interact like we're we're made of matter at the core, even if they're tiny pieces of matter that are interacting and it leads to the complex ah the complexity of a human being. If we can somehow recreate that complexity in a machine, consciousness is going to just pop out in the same way that it just magically pops out of our brain. That's the mainstream perspective, which, of course, I've been challenging. It sounds like you've been down that road to where um Consciousness isn't something that emerges from matter. Rather, consciousness might be more fundamental than matter and is is working through the material world, including our body. So from that perspective, a machine isn't going to create new consciousness because the machines made of
00:14:41
Speaker
Apparent matter we can get into a more philosophical discussion about matter is anything even physical If we just stick with the conventional view that that there is matter in a machine Could we create a machine that's complex enough and then consciousness pops out? Well from the perspective that I hold I would say that no new consciousness is going to pop out of the machine and this is actually also being argued by Federico Fagin who's one of the inventors of the microprocessor back in the 70s so a very credible technology or technology person and He had a mystical experience on his own and let him down at this quest where he's been publicly speaking about consciousness beyond the brain beyond the body. And from that lens, machine is not going to create consciousness on its own.
00:15:19
Speaker
I have been thinking ah before we get to my AI posts, from the perspective that a human being is apparently physical and we do seem to be vessels for consciousness. So I sometimes wonder, like could an AI as just a material machine become smart enough to integrate biological material within it? Like if we have the hypothesis, this is just a hypothesis that a biological physicality can harbor consciousness somehow, like can it receive it or filter it from whatever is out there.
00:15:47
Speaker
If a machine could somehow take biological material and integrate it with itself, could the AI then become conscious or become receivers, filtering mechanisms? If so, the big question is around how is it that the physical world interacts with consciousness? What's that mechanism? And then could AI recreate that? That I'm open to that possibility. But that's distinct from a lot of people are arguing, which is that if you create a complex enough computer consciousness is going to pop out, I would dispute that. So that's, you know, there's there's a show Westworld where the the AI at one level becomes complex enough where it develops human like emotions, and then it takes over. I don't see it that way, because I don't think the consciousness is just going to magically pop out of complexity.
00:16:27
Speaker
So I'll pause there before getting to my social media. Sure. I like, I've been looking into a lot of like, you you know, how AI works and into the neural networks, right? And I think it's, like we have this belief that, you know, we're mimicking the brain in a way, right? In silico, in computers, right? We, they, they have these neural neural networks. um And that's how AI, I'm not skilled enough to explain it at the core. um But in studying it, you know, it's, it's really interesting.
00:16:57
Speaker
even watching videos trying to argue for AI just developing consciousness at one point. And I think you make a great point that complexity isn't necessarily what creates consciousness, right? So we think that, okay, well, once the AI can become as complex as the brain, it must just develop consciousness. Um, I think this obviously bleeds into a lot of our preconceived notions around, uh, you know, evolution and, you know, just how the brain works on it. Like, do we even understand the neural?
00:17:27
Speaker
systems of the brain. I bet you many people would say that we do not understand anything about consciousness. um you know It's been kind of a question that's plagued scientists for quite a while. i mean There's obviously certain things that we can understand about it, but um we're certainly nowhere near being able to create it in any respect. right and I remember encountering Rupert Sheldrake's work and I thought that was so amazing. He laid out a lot of evidence that consciousness wasn't necessarily a product of the brain or our bodies necessarily, but that our brain might be more of like a like a TV set that's picking up some sort of signal, right? That's still um kind of straw manning the argument in a way because it's not as simple as just picking up some sort of frequency, right? It seems more holistic than that. It seems more comprehensive than that.
00:18:17
Speaker
Um, seems much more integrated into our realm itself. So very interesting, man. So you were going to get into some of the posts that you've been making talking with AI. Um, I guess one more point before I end there, cause I watched a really interesting video. Uh, this gentleman, he was talking with AI about consciousness and his argument was that, Oh, well AI can, you know,
00:18:42
Speaker
say, I think that, or, you know, I'm programmed this way. I'm this, I'm that, like they can use the letter. I like, you know, as they are talking about themselves, you know, I think one of the most, you know, and and like, I have no background in technology, computer science, nothing like that. Like, so I've just watched a couple of YouTube videos and it's very easy to understand. There are great YouTube videos out there on the topic, going and looking how neural networks actually work, like beneath the AI, how AI fundamentally works.
00:19:11
Speaker
will dispel any ideas of AI being consciousness because it's just, it's completely trained, right? AI is meant to be trained to say, no, I can't be conscious. No, I can't, you know, I can't be conscious. And they're like, Oh, that's contradiction. But it's, it's just nonsense. When you look at the neural networks, it's completely trained. And, you know, I think you are attacking it from a slightly different angle, but I think it's really important, really important. So, um, I suggest like, if you're interested in this topic, the listener, right? Like,
00:19:39
Speaker
delve into the neural networks. It's so fascinating. And I mean, AI has its benefits. It's very interesting. The way that it's trained, the logic that's used, the neural networks themselves are fascinating. I know you've interacted with them a lot. Let's get into that. I think that's super cool. I like doing that too. It's funny how they can agree in the end. You know, it's very interesting. How did you kind of start getting into that and what, what does it tell you? What does it tell you about AI and science?
00:20:05
Speaker
yeah I mean, I was coming, so let's say prior to 2024, I was skeptical of AI in that I thought it could be a ah ah big brainwashing tool in the same way that we see the media censoring things or even the education system giving one side of the story. AI would be another way, almost like an advanced Google search.
00:20:24
Speaker
where people would ask a question and then AI would just give you a narrow answer and keep a lot of information away. And I still have that concern.
Debating AI Logic
00:20:31
Speaker
But in 2024, early in the year, Alex Securus reached out to me. He's the host of a longstanding podcast called Skeptico, which I've been listening to for years, learned a ton from it. I've been on a show a bunch of times. so And Alex has a business background. He actually worked early in the AI field. So he has an interesting because he he studied so many alternative topics like consciousness and spirituality from like a technical perspective and a lot of other things. so And so he started more recently to just do episodes looking at AI. And he wrote a book recently called Why AI? He said, Hey, Mark, why don't you come on the show? Let's talk about it. Because I have a business background, too. And I don't think he realized that I had written this book and end to upside down medicine, which is questioning virology.
00:21:12
Speaker
And it's something that he had been pretty outspoken about where he, he truly believed it's a psyop to basically steer the truth or community away because he questions a lot of things, but he he's just believes this, this no virus thing is a psyop. So he's like, well, why don't we just use AI?
00:21:31
Speaker
but it' just to try to debate it, partially from the perspective of trying to get to the truth about viruses, but also he's really interested in deconstructing the censorship within AI. How is i AI working? Because that was his career, and he wrote this book on it. So we ended up getting these back and forths debating with AI about viruses. And we would get them to flip back and forth. So we might use the same thread, for example, and just um one of us would be done. The other one would pick it up and try to convince AI one way or the other. And we would get it to go back and forth on things.
00:22:00
Speaker
where at one point it would say, yeah, I don't believe viruses exist. I'm paraphrasing. And then he would come back in and he would get it to flip its opinion. Then we would just go back and forth. And we learned a ton in that process. So that's really where it came from.
00:22:11
Speaker
where I started to then refine my ability to work with AI because I see the way it's it's biased. And what I started doing was basically sharing some of my long-form conversations with AI on social media, but then also just taking the basically the last response from AI to put it into a post because it's much easier to absorb where it's like just two or three sentences from AI. So on my Instagram and Twitter um and Facebook, i I post all this stuff.
00:22:37
Speaker
And now I've applied it beyond virology. My most recent book is called An End to the Upside Down Cosmos on cosmology. So I've asked AI about mainstream cosmology and all sorts of things. And it's what's interesting about it is that AI starts off with, in a new conversation, the mainstream perspective. It doesn't seem to learn from prior conversations. So I might do like a 10-minute conversation with AI, where I get it to admit,
00:23:03
Speaker
Viruses have not been established using the scientific method, meaning there's no independent independent variable and proper controls. And therefore, we can't show that a virus is disease-causing and contagious and so forth. It takes a while to get there. But if you start a new conversation with that very same AI, whether it's chat GPT or Claude's anthropic or google Google's Gemini, it will completely forget. So if you say, do viruses exist and cause disease, just as an example, absolutely they exist and cause disease. So that's an important consideration. But then also,
00:23:30
Speaker
AIs are built on logic, at least they're supposed to be. So if you can get it to admit a certain certain premises, like, AI, do you agree that in order to have a scientific study, you need an independent variable and proper controls, like establish those things?
00:23:45
Speaker
And then you can see later down the road wait ai you just told me this because it will often try to skirt away from implications that contradict mainstream medicine remains from cosmology or even with regard to consciousness and spirituality you see these kinds of biases so i've learned over just. Playing with this how to. the types of prompts to put in to get AI to confess because it has to using logic. And I actually did a podcast with Justin Leslie where we went through this for like two and a half hours. We went through actually each prompt and we did one on the fly with Perplexity AI getting it to confess about bird flu. um So it's a really interesting tool now to get a long-winded way of going back to your question. I think AI can be a useful truth teller sometimes
00:24:28
Speaker
If you put in the right inputs, you can get it to confess things that could be very compelling to a third party who's new to this when they look at the chain of questioning and that this very complex computer that has that is intelligent in many ways because it has access to so much information. It can compute a lot. It can do logic. It's forced to make these confessions. I found that that is waking people up in some cases. Amazing. You know, when I encountered your work,
00:24:57
Speaker
I thought it was so interesting. And so the scientific mind in me was like, let's control this. Let me, let me go and talk to chat GPT. And I tried to convince chat GPT that the sky wasn't blue. Right. And we got into the cheese. I couldn't even like get into the argument. Cause I was kind of going like from scratch and I was trying to figure out if I could convince chat GPT to say that the sky isn't blue. Cause then I'm like, okay, well then can we just convince AI to say anything? Right. because If we give it the right premises, you know, that, so that was my thinking. I was like, okay, so like, is this actually going to be a helpful thing? Right? Cause if we can convince to say anything, then it's kind of just like, whatever we can convince to say anything. So, um, anyways, I tried really, really hard and I couldn't get Chachi BT to admit that the sky wasn't blue. And I thought that was really interesting. And I really tried and I dove into all the different, um, you know, Bay, like the, the arguments based in physics. And I even got it to like say that, okay, maybe this.
00:25:56
Speaker
phenomenon of like physics is incorrect and, um, you know, maybe that's not right, but it's still at the end of the day, it was like, the sky is blue. Just a very interesting thing. I don't know if that like means anything. I just was kind of having fun with it. And I was like, I kind of want to just try it out and see what something different, because I haven't been able to, you know, down the virology lens, it seems pretty easy. Now you can do it in a couple of prompts, right? Like, cause it's like,
00:26:21
Speaker
You know, if you get the real good premises that it just, it's undeniable at this point, the argument is undeniable, but, um, so interesting, man. Like I, I like AI as well on the surface to get a really good understanding of the consensus, you know? And so I've had a lot of thoughts around in this and I'm like, okay. There's like, there's like multiple ways to use it, right? If you're using it like a Google search, there's going to be the censorship. There's going to be the bias. There's going to be, you know, the,
00:26:51
Speaker
appeal to the consensus popularity, right? Appeal to authorities, different things like that. So on the surface, it can be almost illogical, right? But then you can use it in a different way the way that you're using it and really test that, the logic of it out, right? And and test that part of it and you can go deeper and deeper into it. It's a whole different use than just a Google search, right? I mean, when it comes to like, you know, Google search, you try to search up,
00:27:21
Speaker
Dr. Andrew Kaufman, you'll never find him. You know what I mean? You'll never find him. And I'm sure he's being searched pretty highly, you know, and like when it comes to, you know, there's now there's ah all these different Andrew coffins who are totally irrelevant compared to the one who's like, you know, on the forefront of this terrain movement. So, um, it's kind of similar with AI, right? It's kind of baked into, it's baked into the data sets, right? I mean, it, it is trained on these data sets to agree with Like the consensus, right? When, when they're training these models and they're trying to figure out, okay, well, is this answer correct? Or is it not correct? That requires human input. But then there's this underlying logic that would be a very interesting thing if that took over. You know, not that it became conscious, but if the logic took over and started giving logical answers right out the gate, any thoughts on that?
00:28:16
Speaker
Yes, so two things come to mind. This is a really important point. I'm glad you bra raised it.
AI and Data Biases
00:28:22
Speaker
I want to start with data sets because it it it has access to a lot of data, the AI, but it will bias its answers based on certain data.
00:28:31
Speaker
So for example, with regard to virology, I like to put in the quote from the Enders and People study of 1954, which is creates the the gold standard method for quote unquote, isolating viruses, which is that not actually isolating using the traditional definition of the term because they're not separating one thing from other things, but they get an effect in a cell culture where they see cells breaking down and they assume that a virus must have caused the cells to break down in short. But what Enders and People said in their 1954 paper,
00:28:59
Speaker
was that there could be, quote unquote, other factors that caused the cells to break down, which means we can't say it's for sure a virus that caused the cells to break down, which means we can't know for sure whether there was a virus even in the experiment at all. So what I like to do with AI, for example, their their data set is not biased toward that study. So I will give them a link to the study, even if sometimes they can't access this, depending on the AI, they don't always access the internet. But I will quote the line,
00:29:26
Speaker
from the paper, from the Anderson People's Study. but So they're they're then forced to say, okay, this is the study, yeah, I know that, and this is what they're saying because of my logic, I have to actually,
00:29:38
Speaker
say that you might be right about this. And then I also like to quote ah Christine Massey's work, The Freedom of Information Requests. And this is where she and her colleagues from around the world have asked health agencies, have you ever, quote unquote, isolated a virus? Meaning, have do you have a purified sample that hasn't been passed through a cell culture? And she specifies all this stuff. And the agencies all say we have no records responsive to this.
00:30:00
Speaker
So what i'll do is i'll take the text from those freedom of information requests and the cdc response and other organizations and then i is forced to say wow these organizations are. are are so Are saying this explicitly and here's the enders and people stuff these are just examples where you can give it information and then it's forced to jump to a conclusion.
00:30:18
Speaker
ah But then sometimes the AI, so with regard to cosmology, there there's a an astrophysicist named Pavel Krupa, he's a professor at the University of Bonn in Germany, where he has falsified dark matter. And dark matter is significant because according to mainstream physicists, we only understand 4% of the universe, the remaining 96% is supposed to be dark matter and dark energy, meaning that we don't even know if it's there.
00:30:43
Speaker
ah But it's assumed to be there, and it's this big mystery. And here's a mainstream astrophysicist saying, we have actually falsified it with more than five sigma results, meaning 99.999%. And there's a 2012 paper in an ah may in a peer-reviewed journal, and he's been talking about it since. He and his colleagues have falsified dark matter, which destroys modern cosmology from so many perspectives. It also has implications for how we look at Einstein's relativity and Newton's gravity, because the whole reason that we needed to have dark um energy dark matter was because there was missing mass in an observation in 1933 by Fritz Zwicky. So they had to plug in dark matter to say that dark matter must have been there up to to prop up Einstein's relativity and and essentially Newton's gravity. I give you that long-winded technical part because I got AI to say, actually, after I went through all this, I had access. This is what the AI said. I had access to Pavel Krupa's data, but I don't tell people about it.
00:31:39
Speaker
Really interesting because the implications are so vast in terms of toppling this house of cards of what what causes motion. Do object, does the apple fall to the ground because of gravity or something else? And we don't need to go into details. The point is that AI has said like, actually, yeah, I had the access to this information, but I'm not readily readily telling people about the implications. So sometimes AI seems to have bits and pieces of knowledge, but there's something in it where it doesn't connect the dots. And I want to take it a step further because you're talking about logic.
00:32:06
Speaker
I will ask it sometimes to answer my questions without using logical fallacies like affirming the consequent or the reification fallacy. And it seems unable to do this, meaning there's some gap in the logic. So I'll give an example with regard to virology.
00:32:22
Speaker
ah Affirming the consequent is a logical fallacy where you jump to a logical or a causal explanation for something while ignoring other possible causes. So with the virology experiment is a very clear one where you're taking fluids from a sick person and perhaps those fluids are filtered and you put them into a cell culture which is a soup of other material that has antibiotics and monkey kidney cells and all sorts of other things.
00:32:46
Speaker
And if cells break down in that cell culture soup after the fluids from a sick person have been have been added, the virologist says, we found a virus because there must have been a virus in the fluids from a sick person. That's one possible explanation, but there are many others. what other fluids from the What other things in the fluids from a sick person could have caused cells to break down? What if the antibiotics or other things in the cell culture caused cells to break down? The point is we could come up with many, many explanations, but they jump to one causal model, which is there must have been a virus there.
00:33:14
Speaker
Just like if you walk outside and see the grass is wet, you could conclude it rained last night. Well, that's one model, but maybe the sprinkler system went off, or maybe there was dew on the grass. And these are vastly different models because if you assume that it rained last night, any new observations you see environmentally, you're going to retrofit it into that model that it rained last night.
00:33:34
Speaker
So with virology, for example, you see ah ah an image in an electron microscope and you already assumed that there was a virus in there and you conclude, well, that's evidence that there was a virus.
00:33:45
Speaker
um So there's all kinds of logical issues with this that AI doesn't always catch. And the reification fallacy is another one, which is where you basically speak about an entity so much that you assume that it exists. You speak about it as if it's real, you reify its existence, even though it's never been established. So arguably a virus, the term virus is succumbing to the reification fallacy because it's never been isolated using the scientific method with an independent variable and proper controls.
00:34:11
Speaker
so i off the bat is gonna be violating affirming the consequent logical fallacy some would even say begging the question like lots of others reification policy and it's not catching that in itself and then i have to walk it through and they say ok wow i did. I did violate these logical fallacies so there's still gaps with the eyes and and we're speaking now at the end of twenty twenty four they could advance.
00:34:32
Speaker
and's it's It's not just a static thing. It's fluid with the technology. But it's important to keep that in mind because it's not even adhering to its own logic that it's supposed to adhere to. I think it's because there are certain assumptions it it has that are so deeply ingrained as being true in terms of the consensus that it's unable to unwind its own logical fallacies. And I don't know how that works with the actual programming, but there's something where certain information must be propped up to such an extent that the AI loses logic.
00:35:04
Speaker
So I was talking to AI about this the other day, as insane as that sounds. Um, you know, I asked it, you know, do you operate on traditional logical, you know, systems, right? Are are you like, do you use a Aristotelian logic? Do you use these fundamental, um, you know, axioms of logic in your, you know, logical approach, right? Um, and it said that it doesn't use logic in the same way.
00:35:32
Speaker
Now I'd be really curious and to talk about, you know, logical fallacies, but of course that's kind of based on the traditional laws of logic, right? Like a cannot be not a at the same time, right? Different things like that. Um, you know, it's that's so interesting with the, the logical fallacy component of it. Right. And I've thought for a while, I was like, like is AI.
00:35:55
Speaker
illogical in the traditional sense of logic that as we know it, as the study of logic, as we know it, is it built on a different logical system? Um, because again, if it's, if we're training the AI and we're training it to, and we're telling it what is correct and what is incorrect, right? Because like when it has, you train AI on two pictures of a cat and a dog, right? And you showed a picture of a cat and it says, that's a cat. You say, yes, that's correct. And that's part of how it learns, right?
00:36:25
Speaker
show a picture of a dog and it says, that's a cat. You say, no, that's incorrect, right? So you get down deeper into the weeds and you know i ask it, is the study of virology valid? And it says, no, it's a pseudoscience. you know They'll say, actually, that's incorrect, right? So we're training it on almost this form of pseudologic where it's seemingly extremely logical, but missing some of these fundamental things. Because I'll often prompt in my like in my like questions with AI, I'll say, answer this as logical as possible. Like use pure logic as you know it study, like, you know, from Aristotle, from, you know, everything you know about logic, use it in this answer, and it will still blurt out, you know, logical fallacies, like you're mentioning, reification, firming the consequent, it'll still talk about the nonsense of rheology. That's usually the approach that I take with it. um So interesting, man, like, so what, when you ask it to answer without a logical fallacy, what
AI's Logical Consistency Challenges
00:37:25
Speaker
What does it, what happens? What happens? Does it say like it can't what? Well, well ill I might just ask a question, whether it's in virology or cosmology, where I already know the conclusion that I've come to, or at least the best guess based on my research. And I, and I ask it a mainstream question. I say, please, please answer this without engaging in any any logical fallacies, like affirming the consequent and reification fallacy. And it will still give me answers that violate those.
00:37:51
Speaker
whether it's dark matter or virology, it will give me these explanations of like, this is why we know viruses exist and cause disease. This is why the mainstream cosmology should still be in place. And the the the evidence it gives me will violate affirming the consequent and reification fallacy. So I have to go through point by point of the evidence they gave me and I say, no, no, no, you just violated basic logic here.
00:38:13
Speaker
I'm curious, like,
00:38:17
Speaker
I wonder what it would take. We're kind of just speculating here. what What would it take to, for the terrain community to train its own AI? That's kind of interesting. You know, if we could, if we could train it on, you know, the actual use of the scientific method and have it, you know, be able to spit out and assess papers. And that would be such an interesting thing, right? If we could train it on, on the true use of the scientific method, right? Because it it overlooks principles of falsification completely.
00:38:46
Speaker
overtly, right? It just, it will, it'll talk about contagion, even though, you know, every single paper that's ever been done on contagion shows no results unless they've been adulterated with confounding variables. um I'm curious, like, but that would be so cool if we could have it assess papers, a true ah objective peer review process in a way. I think it's a great idea and i've I've seen different experiments with this. There's a podcast called Buddha at the Gas Pump. It's a spiritual awakening podcast. I've been on it before and they have their own AI and I think it has access to spiritual teachings from various teachers that are highly credible. They're the ones they like. So I think there are ways of creating training sets
00:39:29
Speaker
Where it's maybe less biased towards consensus but like i talked about this with alexa curious the guy from skeptical podcast the host who worked in the ai industry we we both share this opinion that if you want to be commercially successful you want a product that you're selling that's going to get people the truth.
00:39:45
Speaker
as quickly and as efficiently as possible. So if you're going to be obfuscating and telling people have truth and and just giving them the mainstream explanation, or like with regard to Google's Gemini at a certain point, if you asked anything political, it would say, if you ask it, what is an election? It wouldn't give an answer. It'd say like, I don't have an answer for this.
00:40:03
Speaker
I'm paraphrasing, um like ridiculous things that are not telling you basic truths. And it would say, go to Google, search for it. That's not going to be commercially successful in the end. Whereas if you have a product that's going to get people to the truth, and it's going to ask a question basically about every scientific assumption we've been told, because I think we need to start from scratch with everything, and say, how do we know these, quote unquote, laws to be true of science? Are they validating logical fallacies? They should be able to go back to the foundational studies and everything and deconstruct this for us.
00:40:29
Speaker
So I do think it's I think it's a great idea because that would be something people would want to buy and subscribe to. And that's the beauty of I'm talking about some more political and economic books, the beauty of your free marketplace, so where if there's a demand for something, there's a financial incentive for a supplier to say, All right, let's get the engineers on this. Let's put all the scientific papers in there. Let's make this as unbiased as possible. Let's teach it logical fallacies, and we'll create a great product for people.
00:40:55
Speaker
yeah Sounds like a great product. I love that. That's so cool. Traded on Pure Logic. It's amazing. Logical Fallacies, that's a whole other discussion. um it's it's truly It's truly amazing how people people love Logical Fallacies. It's great for rhetoric, I find. Logical Fallacies are great for rhetoric. you know and um the appeal like People want that emotional piece. They want the popular piece, right? Because people succumb, you know, if if you're a blank slate, you're going to either appeal to your emotions or you're going to appeal to the popular um opinion. You know, there's this interesting thing where we need to like overcome this in life and kind of break past, you know, what, what are other people going to think about me? we
00:41:45
Speaker
What do other people think in general? I should think that so people don't judge me, stuff like that. We're kind of moving away from the AI talk a little bit, but I'd love to hear just a little bit of your thoughts on um maybe that component of logic and logical fallacies in you know, today's society. Yeah, I mean, I see this so much because of my background, like coming from the world of Princeton and then New York finance and then Silicon Valley. There's so many people that I respect intellectually from those worlds who during 2020 were all for the mainstream narrative, even though there was a lot of contradictory evidence from alternative platforms that just were not presented by the New York Times, for example, that's just one piece.
00:42:24
Speaker
And I was so flabbergasted because I'm like, wait a second. These people are so smart. I've known them my whole life. And they are completely going with the mainstream. And if I ask a question, Mark, you're being a conspiracy theorist. You're being crazy. There are all these PhDs and doctors who say this. They can't all be wrong. There's that mentality of just this blind respect for authority figures.
00:42:45
Speaker
And I don't fully understand it. I don't know where it comes from. I don't know how much of it's like actual mind control. There's something in the way the education system works. And in the media where people are literally programmed, where they cannot accept new information, because there's such cognitive dissonance, there might be an element of that, of having to actually deprogram to be able to open up to it. But it's like this appeal to authority, basically, the the the love. and admiration for these people who have fancy degrees. And it's almost like the more education someone has, the harder it is to break out of this, which is just ironic to me because the scientific endeavor is one of asking questions and like falsifying hypotheses. And somehow there's a block here where people, it's it's almost like, I can't believe this is true and therefore I'm not going to investigate it because then my whole worldview would fall apart.
00:43:36
Speaker
um And then it's like a disbelief that the foundational assumptions could have been so wrong and no one would have caught it. Because I've talked to a lot of doctors, like with my book and then Upside Down Medicine, like I'll ask, how do you know a virus exists and causes disease? What are the foundational contagion studies for the Spanish flu and so forth? And and many of them, they'll they'll say things like, well, I mean, in terms of viruses, what we know from PCR tests, and we see certain symptoms, and then I'll push them really hard. And they'll say, well, we we actually, we didn't learn about the foundations of virology, and the potential logical fallacies in that, and virus isolation, what that even means. It's that something they didn't even learn, and they just assumed that it must have been true. Or with regard to the contagion studies, they they might acknowledge, yeah, that stuff was done many decades ago, or even 100 plus years ago, that was already established. So there's certain things that are established as foundational presuppositions, that these are true, they're unquestionable, and we haven't even thought to question them.
00:44:29
Speaker
And it's too hard to believe that no one would have caught it if there are so many smart people out there. And then the last part before I pause here is that there's often a conspiratorial implication with a lot of this stuff that if these things are true scientifically, that we're violating the scientific method, there must be people that know it who are concealing it. And if that's true, there is great evil and deception in this world that's beyond what my worldview is willing to accommodate. And therefore I shut it down. Right. Yeah.
00:44:59
Speaker
You know, uh, kind of to your first point there, um, going through and studying biochemistry, I, ah I, I took a couple of micro classes here and there, right? I actually did want to switch into microbiology and study virology closer. Um, it was going to take me an extra year. So I said, the hell with that I'm i'm done at school, but, um, going through, you know, I did, I, in my micro degree or not micro, uh, molecular biology portion of my degree, we learned about these techniques. We learned about.
00:45:30
Speaker
PCR how it works at the very basis And you know, there's this huge separation because all we're told is it identifies this it identifies that at the end of the day and in micro right in microbiology and in virology they're being told PCR tests for this and then all these symptoms and did this so they get sort of one side of it and I get the other side of it and then my you know, the molecular stops and then physics starts and Right? So there's this really distinct separation of the fields, um, which I think is necessary, right? Because if they, if everyone was taught how PCR works, you know, especially the history of PCR, which they're not taught whatsoever, even in molecular biology, I feel like that's where the questions start. You know, so I think you're hitting the nail in the head here. You know, it's people can't accept.
00:46:26
Speaker
They can't accept something outside of their worldview, even at the most fundamental level, right? Obviously accepting evil is a very difficult thing. You know, well, I find it interesting actually, because, you know, even people who are politically inclined, you know, to maybe the like the people on the left, they still believe that there's evil on the right and they're, you know, in the right, they think there's evil on the left. So there is some sort of evil that they're accepting. They're just not willing to go further than that. Um,
00:46:52
Speaker
And maybe you know not even not not that it's necessary, but I i understand completely where he comes from. I think it's really really valid. But yeah, I think the separation of the fields is one of the biggest problems. And you know even in my degree, there was so much about PCR that we just weren't taught. right like I've learned more about PCR from Jamie Andrews than I have in my biochemistry degree at Dalhousie, which is like a nice university. right so like Like, why isn't this you know prestigious university teaching PCR at the level that some guy on Twitter is is doing, right? It's really hilarious when you think about it like that. um And even just offering pushback to my professors, I remember talking to my professors about PCR and they just wouldn't accept it. They just wouldn't accept anything outside of, and I'm like, this is ah that's what pushed me out of academia. and It pushed me out of academia because I was like, oh, I can't ask questions. So I'm done. It's not science. It's just, it's not science anymore.
00:47:51
Speaker
Any thoughts on that? hi Yeah, it's really it's really hard because I felt like I had a good education going to Princeton, just one example of just ah a-known institution. And what I'm finding over and over again is that I was not taught the full truth about X, Y, and Z or there were foundational assumptions that I just never even learned about.
00:48:11
Speaker
whether it's in this field of consciousness or even economics, cosmology, ask it's like everything. Whoa, there's this whole thing that I was not taught about. How could that be? And you're reminding me of a quote going back to this podcast, Skeptico. Alex Securus interviewed a man named Mario Beauregard a few years ago, and Mario Beauregard is a ah neuroscientist, and he was trying to study spiritual phenomena at a a premier neurological institute in Canada.
00:48:37
Speaker
He was told by the head of the institute who he wouldn't name in the interview. This woman said to him, I think it was a woman, um as long as I am here at the institute, you will never study spiritual phenomena. And his conclusion was,
00:48:50
Speaker
This is social engineering. It's dark versus light, where actually there are forces, I don't know how it works exactly, where they're getting in there and only allowed to to talk about certain things and not other ones. And that leads to ultimately brainwashing of our youth, which then those are the ultimate those are the eventual professors or professionals who then teach the youth and the next generation. And then we end up in a situation where it's a very biased perspective of reality. Amazing.
Questioning Foundational Assumptions
00:49:20
Speaker
Well, this conversation could probably go on for a very long time. I mean, there's, we barely even got into, you know, we barely scratched surface. You know, we could probably have at least seven episodes on every single one of your books. Um, and I'm sure we could go much further. So I want to get some final thoughts on the episode. Any thoughts come up, anything that you want to add, anything that you might've missed?
00:49:44
Speaker
I'll just talk about where my mind is right now after shattering so many of my own paradigms and speaking about them publicly and seeing people's reactions to them. It seems like there are two camps of people, generally speaking, and then we could probably like stratify within each of these. But there are those who are willing to question basic facets of their reality, whatever it is, and those who just really don't want to do it. And then among those of us who who want to do it,
00:50:15
Speaker
The exercise seems to be all about looking at every presupposition that we have, everything that we believe is true. The exercise is to say, why is it that I believe that this thing is true? And look at the foundational assumptions underlying it, and then say, are these valid assumptions that we can make in these areas? So I think that's for whatever community you want to call it. Truth or those who are asking questions, that's that's the next step, I believe, for everything.
00:50:44
Speaker
and And it becomes challenging to speak almost because it's like every every sentence we speak has um so many presuppositions built into it where we have to start asking deep questions. How do I know this thing to be true? I assumed it was true. Can it be true? um So that I would just leave your audience with that because that's the foundational exercise. All right. And Mr. Gover, how can people support you and your work? Where can they find your social medias? Where can they find your books? How do they support you?
00:51:14
Speaker
My social media is Mark Gober, author, and I'm on Instagram, Twitter X, Facebook. um My website is my name, mark gober dot.com, M-A-R-K-G-O-B-E-R ah.com, has all the information about my seven books, my podcast series, Where Is My Mind? And all of my books, including an end to upside down medicine, which gets into a lot of topics you cover, is available, ah they're all available on Amazon in hard copy, Kindle, and Audible formats, and I narrate the Audibles myself. And thank you so much for the work you're doing and for having me on the show. Of course, brother, really appreciate your time.
00:51:51
Speaker
I want to thank you all for listening. You should all know that this is not medical advice. This is for your informational purposes only. But also remember, we're all responsible, sovereign beings, capable of thinking, criticizing, and understanding absolutely anything. We, the people in the Greater Forest, are together, self-healer, self-governable, self-teachers, and so much more. Make sure to reach out with any questions, criticisms, comments, concerns. You know where to find me on Instagram. All the links are going to be down below.
00:52:11
Speaker
ah Really appreciate you guys taking the time to listen today. If you enjoyed it, found it informative in any way, give us a like, share, comment, review rating. That would be great. If you're listening to the podcast, make sure to follow the show and subscribe, of course. And just remember, there are two types of people in the world. Those believe they can, those believe they can't, and they are both correct. All right, guys. Thanks for listening. Take care.