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Episode 38: Flawless Predictions for 2022
17 Plays2 years ago
Joe and Rolf once again scry the future with bold and entirely accurate predictions about the year 2022
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Host Backgrounds
00:00:10
Speaker
All right, welcome to Cognation. I am your host, Rolf Nelson. And I'm Joe Hardy.
00:00:17
Speaker
And it's good to be back in the year 2022. I know we've taken a little bit of a break, so it's been a while since our last episode. So it is good to be back. This has been just a particularly busy time for I think both of us. The semester has been pretty rough for me, and I think hopefully we'll be back on a more regular schedule now. Yeah, it's great to be back.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yeah. Realize that we haven't really introduced ourselves, uh, to the audience for some time. We started this podcast a few years ago and I think we kind of introduced who we were back then and haven't really recently. So might be just a moment to say a little bit about who we are. You know, uh, we, Ralph and I know each other from graduate school where he studied at UC Berkeley in the same cognitive psychology program.
00:01:08
Speaker
and studying, both of us studying vision science. And so that's sort of how, how we came to know each other. And we've continued on in different paths. I ended up working in technology for the most of the past 17 or 18 years, I guess. And Rolf is as a professor and for different reasons, we've both been quite busy over the past few months. And so we haven't had a chance to record. Hopefully we can get back to it a little bit in the, in the new year.
00:01:38
Speaker
But we're super excited to get back to doing some of this stuff, talking to some interesting people. Of course, today, those interesting people just include us, since it's just going to be just us today. No special guest. Yeah, but so as Joe said, so I'm a professor at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. And I teach in the psychology department and in neuroscience. And my area is also in visual perception.
00:02:08
Speaker
Joe and I are both interested in a number of areas within academia. We like to think about philosophical issues related to neuroscience, advances in technology, all that kind of stuff. And I think we've tried to expand our show into a wider field of thinking about the human mind.
00:02:33
Speaker
We had a guest, we had Annie Murphy Paul on who talked about the extended mind and sort of this philosophical idea of thinking about the mind as existing in the world. And we've talked to a few philosophers, we've talked to some people about religion. What else have we talked about, Joe?
00:02:51
Speaker
We talked to Josh Mealy who's another friend of ours from graduate school about the work he does and assistive technology for people who are not sighted, who are blind. And that was a really great episode. That was one of the last ones we recorded.
00:03:06
Speaker
Yeah, and an update on that one too, some good news for Josh. Shortly after we recorded that episode, he received the MacArthur genius, I don't know if they still call him genius guys, but he received the MacArthur Fellowship. So he gets a
Notable Past Guests
00:03:20
Speaker
whole pile of money to spend as he sees fit, and it's a great honor too.
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Fantastic award for him and just great to see him. Um, one of the things that we haven't talked about too much in the show, we just sort of often just kind of kick off these things, but some of the people that we talked to are people we know from previous, our previous lives in graduate school in particular. So, um, Stephanie Preston was on, um, uh, you know, Josh was on Brett, Brett Stansfield, Josh Mealy. Yeah, right.
00:03:52
Speaker
So that's part of where some other people who are people who are writing books, typically that's with podcasts, how it happens. People are writing a book and their publicist reaches out. So if you're writing a book, you want to be on the show, let us know. Or just in general, you have something interesting, an intersection of technology and neuroscience you want to talk about, let us know and we'll see if we can fit you on kitchen onto the show.
Predictions for the New Year
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good little background on... Oh, yeah, I guess I should mention, Rolf mentioned that he's a professor. He was actually the... Are you still the chair of the department? Yep, I'm currently the chair of the department. Yeah, so that's causing him headaches. That's a lot of work, yeah. Making it less possible to do the podcast. And I started a company a couple of years ago, co-founded it. The company is called Anuma, and we do virtual reality
00:04:44
Speaker
at the intersection of psychedelic science and VR. So if you guys have listened to the show, you know that in the very first show I talked about how VR was not a thing. I've since changed my mind on that as witnessed by the fact that I started a company in the VR space. I'm going to talk a little bit about that today, but just thought I'd mention that.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's, that's part of one of my predictions for the new year too. So, okay.
Advancements in Telepresence Robots
00:05:13
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Well, we haven't shared our predictions. So we're going to do predictions for the new year. Uh, we haven't shared them at all. Why don't we just kick it off? That sounds like, well, do we want to have any caveats before we do this? I mean, our predictions are perfect. I mean, that's, well, as, as we went back, I haven't, I haven't tech, I haven't actually checked what our predictions are, but pretty sure I got them all right. Oh, technically, I mean, a hundred percent. I mean, I didn't have no idea what they were, but I'm sure they're absolutely perfect.
00:05:38
Speaker
Well, okay. So this seems like a tricky year for prediction. I don't know. I have absolutely no idea that was going to happen. I mean, that's my caveat. 2021 seemed like such a hazy year. I really couldn't tell what was going on during 2021. So how are you supposed to predict that and follow trends and figure out something out for 2022?
00:05:56
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, it's not possible. Yeah. And it's sort of that thing. Like, I think our, I feel like our decade predictions were probably, probably better. I mean, I guess it's, you have more, it's easier to predict farther in advance. Eventually something will happen. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's not a Bill Gates thing, right? You know, people always underestimate what they can do in 10 years and overestimate what they can do in a year. Oh yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I guess what those, what we can kind of kick it off. Do you want to go first, Ralph?
00:06:24
Speaker
Okay. Sure. Well, let's see. Okay. So we each have, I think we have about four predictions total. So we each have four predictions and these are really distilled down to the, really the best quality predictions. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is like, you should be placing bets on your stocks based on this.
00:06:42
Speaker
So my number one, well, I don't know, this is in no particular order, but one of my predictions is better telepresence robots. I feel like there should be a genuine, you know, I think all of my predictions are based on things that would have a reason to exist, like there's a human need for them. I feel like right now a good telepresence robot would be
00:07:07
Speaker
I think it'd be a great educational tool. I think because in my classes, at least last semester, there are a lot of people disappearing because of COVID or something going on. All they have to do is just stay in their room, just throw on a telepresence suit and it's like they're right there in the classroom. So you're thinking like the
GPT-3 and AI Skepticism
00:07:26
Speaker
robot is in the classroom. It's one of those deals where the robot's rolling around the classroom with a screen and a
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, well, this kind of, I mean, this kind of stems from the, I saw the state of telepresence robots now. And basically what I saw is, I forget the name of the company, but it's basically just like an iPad that you can rotate a little bit. That's it.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's, that's a little bit weak. I think, I mean, I feel like a college should have on hand a number of, I mean, you should have, you know, like a, you know, a sturdy mannequin size thing that you can throw in the classroom and it can do things like look around, maybe raise its eyebrows, uh, you know, raise its, raise its hand.
00:08:13
Speaker
Look approvingly at the at someone who speaks Yeah, something feedback some feedback because I think that you know, what's What I'm thinking is, you know, everybody did zoom meetings like all the time for a while
00:08:29
Speaker
And then it sort of switched and it was real time and there's real in person meetings and now it's. Some people want to stick with real person meeting someone people want to be never be in person. And for all these various reasons it seems like it would be really nice to have good telepresence robots that you can just hop into right.
00:08:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's good. I feel like you just get a, you get a dozen of them or so for a, for a college. And then, you know, when students are gone, they can just rent one. I thought you were, I mean, for a college, I mean, the way things are going these days, you need like 10% of your population of the college. Well, yeah, that's true. That's true. That's yeah. But I like that. I mean, I have something, I have something for that right now. I mean, it's not, it's not directly 100% there related, but I think it's a little bit related on one of my predictions.
00:09:18
Speaker
So I was talking about predicting, I was looking at AI because we always like to talk about AI because it's related to cognition just in the way, especially more recently as neural networks have become again prominent in the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning, et cetera. So it relates back to our neuroscience stuff.
00:09:42
Speaker
But I was looking around at what was going on and the one thing that stood out to me was GPT-3. GPT-3. Yeah, generative pre-trained transformer three. Do you know this one? I don't think so.
00:09:55
Speaker
Basically, so GPT-3 is essentially like the company that does it or the organization that does it is called OpenAI. It's a natural language processing tool. It's really a whole tool set, artificial intelligence-based way that language can be generated. It basically can generatively create language in
00:10:25
Speaker
Basically, you can ask it a question. It'll give you a reasonable sounding response. It's like the closest thing that you have to an off-the-shelf tool set that can beat the Turing test, if you think about it that way. So you can talk to this thing, and it sounds a bit like a person would talk. It's just trained on so much data. And then they train it on Wikipedia, for example. And it's got so many parameters, just a ridiculous number of parameters.
00:10:55
Speaker
Um, and so it's just, it's a super complex, you know, very, you know, the training of it was, it was intensive, but it's definitely the state of the art when it comes to this, you know, language, uh, AI, essentially you can think about it that way. And so what, so what's going to happen in the next year? Well, I, you know, I was, I was wondering about that and I was thinking, you know, like, I don't have like a ton of good ideas for this show, so I'm just going to ask it. And here's what it said.
00:11:23
Speaker
There is a strong chance that human-level artificial intelligence will be developed. Self-driving cars could eliminate urban traffic deaths within several years. Advanced manufacturing technologies may start to significantly improve the efficiency of resource use, as well as begin to reduce environmental impact.
00:11:42
Speaker
Rapid progress in gene editing may significantly extend healthy human lifespans by curing genetic disorders and modifying the genes that control aging.
Future of VR and Metaverse
00:11:52
Speaker
There is much potential in the fields of neuroscience and topology if they are used to their full capacity. So that was the predictions for 2020. I asked the question I specifically asked was what are five things that are likely to happen in 2022?
00:12:07
Speaker
Those are very optimistic predictions, I think. Yeah, I have some. So, I mean, first of all, let me just say, GPT-3 is like biting our style because these are, these are all like a lot of the things that we like to talk about. Yeah, right. Maybe we should invite. One of the things I thought about was, well, maybe we should just like let the fucking machine do it. Right. Because like, but then I looked at the rest of the show. Yeah. I mean, exactly. Like, you know, it's, you know,
00:12:36
Speaker
No, no, I think you're wrong. I think you're wrong. These are clearly nonsensical algorithmic predictions that have no, there's no grounding in them. We have a good connection to the real world. That's right. This thing has no idea. Right. Well, I mean, the other thing I would say, so the thing that came out of this for me was like, okay, interesting that it was able to respond with something that sounded sensible, but it didn't quite
00:13:06
Speaker
didn't quite answer the question, right? So because I was specifically asking, what are five things that are likely to happen in 2022? I mean, there is a strong chance that human level artificial intelligence will be developed. I mean, is that a this year prediction? That's not a this year prediction. First of all, what do they mean by human level intelligence, obviously? Right, exactly. I mean, this is where some analysis is helpful, right? So we can talk about the fact
00:13:34
Speaker
that depends on what you mean by intelligence. That's really what it comes down to with that one. We've talked about this on the show before. If you're talking about solving certain problems quickly, like math problems, even playing chess or solving some very algorithmic type of problem, the computers are already doing better than humans. That's in the past. In some places, it's unclear where you would want human level intelligence.
00:14:02
Speaker
Right, exactly. So you've eclipsed it in some places, and in other places, you're behind. But nothing that approaches a sort of general kind of problem-solving ability. Well, it's interesting when you say that, because I agree. I agree. So I was thinking about what would it mean to really do that in a way. And so there's the Turing test that we talked about, which basically says, is a conversation with this thing indistinguishable from a human?
00:14:32
Speaker
I think we probably are there with this GBT3 stuff, depending on the context and how many questions you get to ask and what the context of the feedback is. I think we're probably mostly there. Maybe at the level of about it, maybe a chimpanzee. It's a pretty smart chimpanzee.
00:14:57
Speaker
Well, you know, chimpanzees can learn like, you know, 150 symbols or something like that, right? Right. Right. Right. Well, this is a lot of, I mean, this is, you saw this produces paragraph in two seconds. Like, these are all like reasonable sentences, like whether the, you know, to make, it's not exactly answering the question, but it is, there are kind of like predictions and there are sentences. So, and there are things that are happening. So, I mean, it's definitely beyond like the champions, but then like, you know, to your point, like,
00:15:25
Speaker
If you're asking about like, can it solve an unstructured problem? Can it identify where the problems are and exist and then solve those unstructured? Well, obviously we're pretty far away from that. And I think that's what separates humans for the most part from other animals. But if you're asking just like IQ,
00:15:42
Speaker
You know, if you're just saying like in terms of like an IQ test, I bet that this thing could, I bet AI could, you could build an AI right now that could have almost perfect IQ at the level of IQ test. You could probably build one in the same way that you can build one to play Jeopardy, you could build one to take an IQ test. Yeah, exactly. So I think that's just important as people think about IQ and what IQ is, which is not the same thing as intelligence.
00:16:09
Speaker
It's IQ is just the results on a specific test. The other thing I thought about when I was looking at this list was self-driving cars can eliminate urban traffic deaths within several years. Advanced manufacturing technologies may start to significantly improve efficiency of resource use.
00:16:29
Speaker
a rapid progress in gene editing may significantly extend human lifespans. This is extremely techno-optimist. It concerns me that they're making an AI that's spouting techno-optimism. If we're thinking about the robot apocalypse, you can start to see how that happens. Yeah, it's all through optimistic, happy robots. Yeah, exactly.
00:16:55
Speaker
So I don't know if that actually qualifies as a prediction there, but that was what I had to start with. Well, that's definitely something to keep an eye on, I suppose. Okay. So my second one is body drones, which by body drones, I mean, like the very, you remember, gosh, what are those, all those movies where they shrink real small and they jump into someone's body.
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, like Ant-Man and the Wasp. Yeah, and Ant-Man, stuff like that. Yeah. I'm thinking that rather than seeing just all of that at once, I think you could start to see, basically, I'm thinking like laparoscopic surgery without any of the wires or anything. So you could put small drones in and be operated. I don't know how you swim around in the bloodstream or whatever.
00:17:50
Speaker
Here's one idea for clearing obstructions in the intestinal tract. I mean, you could imagine something that would be, you know, small enough that it could go all the way, it could pass all the way through your intestinal tract and maybe remove something that you didn't want there. Um, so you're saying like shrinking down to that size and then going in the body. Yeah. Like, and then having someone operating it like some, like a regular drone operator, like a big size person.
00:18:17
Speaker
No, not a, no, I'm not talking, not talking about a strength ring. We have those already, don't we?
00:18:29
Speaker
like robots that you can, you can, I'm pretty sure that I'm pretty sure that exists for the intestinal tract for sure. I'm talking about like, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm talking about, uh, ones that could be operated by someone and would be cord free. So if you wanted to, you could take a detour somewhere else, right? You could.
00:18:48
Speaker
You could hop off. If you're in the intestinal tract, you could, I don't know, hop off somewhere else. Technology starting with bigger ones and then as you get better, you can hop into smaller arteries and stuff. I could definitely see that. I could definitely see that. So that's what I got. I call them body drones and I'd like a patent on that too. Well, yeah, maybe a trademark. I think that sounds more like a trademark.
00:19:14
Speaker
But yeah, that sounds good. That sounds good. My second one was about virtual reality. As I mentioned, I had been a VR skeptic and now I'm much more... I would describe myself now as a VR enthusiast, although most of the VR out there I think is what we call shitty VR. So I think it mostly sucks. But I think...
00:19:41
Speaker
My prediction, let's get to the prediction, I guess, is the prediction is that this is the year of virtual reality, that long predicted but often delayed arrival of virtual reality as a thing. I'm going to think it's here. I think this is the year.
00:20:01
Speaker
Oh, OK. Well, maybe we can combine that with one of my predictions, which is, well, same with just the connection to Metaverse, too, which is also that there's this huge potential for it. And it's really hard to know what it would look like, right? Yeah. I mean, I guess, I think when people say Metaverse,
00:20:29
Speaker
I don't like the term that much at all because for a few reasons, I never really liked it because it sort of has this kind of What is it? What does it conjure for you?
00:20:41
Speaker
For me, it sort of conjures like the Ready Player One thing, right? Where you're sitting in your horrible trailer at the top of this huge stack and all you've got is this tether. Kind of like a matrix. Yeah, this tether to this other world because your world sucks so all you want to do is spend time in the other world. Yeah. I don't want that. That sounds bad. And I think, so I don't like it because I don't want that and I don't,
00:21:07
Speaker
And I also realized that many other people have the same connotation that I have. So I think it's also bad branding from that perspective. So I think it's like rather than try to recreate the world and do stuff, oh wow, I can make like a super realistic roller coaster or whatever. I think what's really cool about virtual reality is being able to do stuff that you can't do in real life.
00:21:30
Speaker
for whatever reason. So, you know, occupy the same space as another person, like physically overlap and, you know, um, you know, feel present with a person who's halfway around the world who you'll never be able to meet. And, you know, but you can feel like you're there and you can really in some sense be there in the same room together in this virtual space. I mean, that's the part of it that I find compelling is this idea of embodiment. So like feeling like using your body, feeling like your body is, is there,
00:22:00
Speaker
How do you see that as?
00:22:03
Speaker
What sorts of things can you see augmenting that? Because I'm thinking about that a little bit too. And I agree that's something people want. One of the things that seems like an obstruction to it is the fact that you have to wear these glasses. And just having something on your face means it's hard to have a representation of you or like an image of you in virtual reality too. It is. It is. And that's certainly like
00:22:31
Speaker
That's where right now the best stuff in VR is not trying to make you look like you. I mean, in some sense, why do you want to look like you? You can look like you in real life. And what's so important about that? What are we so attached to, egoically, that we need to...
00:22:53
Speaker
present ourselves. You're trying to connect with other people across the globe or across the world. I mean, you want to be recognized anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So some way of being recognized, yeah, having an identity. I mean, certainly voice translates nicely. I mean, yeah, there's so much done with avatars, but avatars still tend to be very shitty looking.
00:23:20
Speaker
Cartoony. Cartoony, yeah. And you're in that one so-called uncanny valley where it's not real enough to be good and to really be compelling, but it's close enough that you know that it's supposed to look like that. So yeah, I mean, I have some ideas about that. But I mean, in terms of technology-wise,
00:23:42
Speaker
One of the things that's really going to be helpful is better use of the cameras on the device so that you don't need controllers, for example. So there's hand tracking on the Oculus Quest. How's that? And other devices are developing that. You can imagine pulling in other objects from your environment using those external cameras, so-called inside-out tracking. So those cameras aren't
00:24:09
Speaker
pointed at you because they're pointed outside. So to your point, it doesn't represent you as well. Um, so if you're willing to just let go of that, then it works well. And then, you know, the, yeah, if you really feel like you need to like, you're so tied to like how you personally look, um, on, on screen, then, you know, this mixed reality, I guess is maybe an approach.
00:24:36
Speaker
So what are the, I mean, we can't have big clunky glasses forever though. They have to, they have to be more integrated or easier to use, right? Yeah. I mean, I guess, yes, no, for sure. I mean, I guess I would say there's a few things there. Like one is like easier to use is huge. Like that's, that's currently the biggest barrier to entry. Like one of the reasons why people don't like
00:25:01
Speaker
have trouble or don't get into VR. It's just because there's a number of set up steps that you need to go through. And the technology has not always been super robust. And so it's taken multiple steps of calibration, et cetera. Right now, I mean, where you are with like the Oculus Quest 2, I mean, it's pretty much off the shelf. You put it on and you start and you're starting in virtual reality, like within a few seconds.
00:25:26
Speaker
which is a massive leap forward, which is why I say that I think VR is here. It's because this experience is so compelling and you can be there in seconds. But in terms of the question is, is this something that you even should be using many hours a day? I mean, I don't think that you really should. That's my whole point about the Metaverse. I don't think you really should be using it. What I think it's really great for is
00:25:52
Speaker
you put the headset on and now you're in this space where your attention is fully engaged in the space that you're in virtually. So because like right now, like, you know, we're, I can see you on, on our video, people can hear us, but people who are listening to us are probably doing something else, which is great. Cause like, we're just talking shit, whatever. It's fine. You should be like, you know, going for a walk or whatever you're doing, you know, around the house that you're doing right now. That's perfect. That's a perfect way to listen to a podcast, but you're not giving your full attention to this. If it was something that required your full attention,
00:26:23
Speaker
It would be better if you were really fully paying attention to what was going on in the virtual space that we're co-habiting. And virtual reality kind of forces that to be the case that if we're hanging out in virtual reality, we're not- You can't multitask. We're not looking at your phone at the same time. We're not checking our phones. We're not cleaning the dishes. We're there together. And it makes a big difference.
00:26:49
Speaker
And it's actually right now, it's an affordance. You can decide whether you think it's a good or bad, but it's an affordance of the device. I mean, Apple's going to come out with their device soon. And I think if it, you know, the thing of just like, there's two things you mentioned, like one is like,
00:27:05
Speaker
you know, the fact that you can't really see the person who's speaking. And like, that's, that's true. I don't think it, I've come to the view that's not inherently, it's a difference. And that's why I think some of these technologies are complimentary, that this is not kind of like replace everything, nor do I want it to or think it should. But the other is just the thing right now, it's very heavy. I mean, that's to me is like the one thing that's like clear, it's like, it's, it's heavy and a little bit can be a little bit uncomfortable. So
00:27:34
Speaker
It's like a, it's a process. It's like a process doing it, like going into virtual reality. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that, you know, that will continue to improve. I think, you know, lighter, easier to, yeah, lighter and easier. So what kind of interactions would you imagine having on VR that would be useful? Cause I'm, I, I can't stop thinking that it's a metaverse. The whole idea is to sell more products and it's, it's meant to be like a big giant Facebook, right?
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not going to do a commercial for Anuma here, but I think that what we're trying to do is one of the things that is cool.
Innovative Health Technologies
00:28:09
Speaker
I can't even do that commercial, but you can check out our website. Yeah, so your app is about making human connections across distances. Yeah, exactly. Having meaningful, real interactions that are transformative with other human beings.
00:28:30
Speaker
and in ways that you can't do in real life just because there are things that you can do in virtual space that you can't do in real space. And also, you're just sometimes not going to always be able to get together with everybody, especially these days. But forever and always, it will be the case that there's some people that are in another part of the world that you're just unable to get to them. So for both of those reasons. I mean, I think in general, those are the kinds of things that are
00:28:58
Speaker
really cool is like being able to interact in a meaningful way versus, you know, the kind of interactions that you have on social media, which are like so well, they're anonymous, first of all, and you know, in many ways, and then they're also like, there's just like a lack of no sense of tone. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's no sense of this person's a real person. There's no sense of their their being as like,
00:29:23
Speaker
you know, something that's, that's equal to your own. Yeah. I mean, it's a real connection. Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm excited to see how all of this stuff shakes out. I don't, neither of us know. We don't know how it's going to happen or what, what it's going to look like.
NFTs and Unconventional Uses
00:29:41
Speaker
Um, but I would love to see some accelerated growth in this area and see what happens though.
00:29:46
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, I think there's also some real concerns about, you know, the stewardship of that space. Um, you know, particularly with met, meta, you know, the company, meta, we don't necessarily trust all of, um, big techs motives on all of this stuff. And we, or at all, nor should we, let's be honest. Um, yeah.
00:30:12
Speaker
So is it your turn or my turn? Can we move on to the next production? Yeah.
00:30:17
Speaker
Okay, next prediction for me is, and I don't know anything about the science of this, but I think it would be an amazing thing to have real-time COVID testing. I'm imagining just having some kind of device that can test on a continuous basis whether or not you have COVID. I'm not imagining this for everybody, but I'm imagining for research, right?
00:30:43
Speaker
because I'm really thinking about just the poor quality of data that we have sometimes and also just really the lack of testing and availability of sort of knowing where you're at right now, which I think we should know that by now in the pandemic. And I feel like big breakthroughs like this could be happening. It would be
00:31:08
Speaker
It would be amazing to see a kind of real-time testing where you just get a notification on your cell phone that you just contacted COVID. Or you could extend this to lots of other things too, sure. What would the form factor or something like that be like?
00:31:25
Speaker
Well, I guess I'm thinking like any of these kinds of things are bulky and unwieldy at first and then maybe get better. But I was thinking, you know, something that would take blood samples so it would have to be sort of plugged into you in a way. So like a Theranos type of device.
00:31:40
Speaker
Well, yeah, except one that works, right? Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. That's what I'm trying to sell. No, I'm just thinking of something. It could be unwieldy and it could be intrusive, but something for at least test subjects. You can kind of tell, you know, the moment people contract COVID and you can just get a better sense of how these things are working. Yeah. Or maybe it could be like a breathalyzer kind of thing, you know, like take, you know, you breathe into it type of deal. Yeah.
00:32:09
Speaker
analyzes that. I mean, we have these rapid tests. Well, I mean, yeah, you could just take like a rapid test every like 10 seconds all day and see when exactly it happened. Oh, you're thinking like truly continuously. I'm thinking truly continuously, like, you know, so you can, you can really monitor levels and you can get a real sense of, you know, vectors and, you know, where it got contracted. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That would be interesting. I don't think that's going to happen in 2022.
00:32:39
Speaker
Well, that's where you and I differ then my friend. That's my, okay. Good. Good. That's good to have some different cause yeah. I mean, we can't even get like the normal things that we already have to people who, yeah. So yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Fucking COVID next. Uh,
00:33:06
Speaker
Yeah. Real-time COVID testing.
Psychedelics in Mental Health Treatment
00:33:07
Speaker
That's all I got. Okay. What's your next prediction? All right. This one is NFTs, right? NFTs. We know them. We love them.
00:33:16
Speaker
No, we don't know. I was thinking like, where are some places that NFTs are like totally not needed at all, but they will probably show up. That's where they'll show up. Yeah, exactly. So I was thinking of like, you know, actually the, the DMV goes like totally blockchain and you get like NFT of your driver's license.
00:33:42
Speaker
Or even better yet, hospitals will offer for a charge, a significant fee, get your birth certificate of your child as an NFT. Oh, that's actually kind of cool. Is it? Maybe. I don't know. I have no idea really what I'm saying. I don't even really know. I was just thinking of all the weird things. What's the weirdest place you could end up
00:34:05
Speaker
but some sort of digital ownership. I mean, yeah, it's where, yeah, maybe it does actually kind of make sense, right? That maybe that's where it does make sense. It's like, cause it is truly, I think you can suggest something totally crazy on this and it'll actually sound more sensible. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Take an NFT of your poo. I don't know what, yeah. I don't know where NFTs are going. I don't know either. I mean, it's, it's, it seems to me, yeah. I'm, it's one of those things where,
00:34:36
Speaker
happy to join in on the side of the pile on of people saying, this is just ridiculous and crazy. But at the same time, I'm like, I just don't understand it well enough to know that it's completely crazy. Yeah, I hear you. I mean, I'm still that way. Well, I'm still that way with blockchain stuff.
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I get the idea of some of why it would be appealing, some of the characteristics of blockchain, just in terms of being a really solid ledger that you can't lose track of what happened when and so on and so forth and who owns what.
00:35:22
Speaker
uh, and what was agreed upon and that kind of stuff. Obviously like the way that idea, but the idea of the first implementation of it as being worth as much as it is for no particular reason. Yeah, it's hard to, yeah, it seems like it's, it's like a solution looking for a problem. That's kind of what it feels like right now.
00:35:41
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, these can be predictions themselves where the blockchain is going to actually come in where it's actually going to be useful. I don't know. I don't know either. I don't know either. I think it's going to be getting your birth certificate as an NFT that you can then sell to someone else.
00:36:01
Speaker
Well, what happens when you sell your birth certificate? Then you're selling your identity. Yeah, you're selling your identity. It could be valuable depending on who you are. It's a lot to think about. It is a lot to think about. It's a lot to think about. We'll have time to think about it in 2020 when it happens. What's your next prediction? I don't know. I think I might have gone, let me see, what else do I have?
00:36:30
Speaker
uh, no metaverse tied in with your virtual reality stuff. So that's all mine. All right. I have one more, um, which is I think that
00:36:43
Speaker
2022 is the year that, um, a psychedelic is approved by the FDA for use in mental health. I think specifically it will be MDMA will be approved for use in post-traumatic stress disorder. Uh, there's like a set of phase three trials being performed by maps. Uh, and you know, that's going to be wrapping up this year. And I think that 2022, if not 2022, then 2023,
00:37:11
Speaker
will be the year where that's approved. And, you know, we'll start to see a big shift in, uh, the treatment of mental health issues, um, with this sort of, you know, the application of psychedelics and in some, in some of those situations, it's going to cause a lot of, it's going to be revolutionary. It's also going to cause a lot of questions and, and, uh, challenges for the industry and for our whole mental health system, which is kind of,
00:37:38
Speaker
in poor straits at the moment and will require a lot of resources that I don't know that are quite being developed in the way they need to be.
Hopes for the Future
00:37:48
Speaker
But yeah, that's the prediction that that will be happening this year.
00:37:51
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think that would be an exciting thing to happen because it seems like there's a lot of promise for these kinds of things. I mean, not just MDMA, but, you know, some other pharmaceuticals that that I think Michael Pollan brought this to the fore a lot a couple of years ago and how to change your mind. But, you know, it's sort of been brewing for a while that
00:38:13
Speaker
that there could be something transformative about using these powerful drugs in extreme cases. And maybe some not even so extreme cases. I mean, I think- Maybe not even, yeah, maybe not even just extreme cases. I mean, we know that these are technologies that have been used for many, many, many years in different ways.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah, many people have gotten a lot out of them. And if they're applied in a way that's intentional and systematic, could be quite helpful to humanity. I mean, we'll see how it goes. But yeah, I guess psilocybin is probably next up on the
00:38:54
Speaker
on the roles of psychedelic drugs to be approved. And that will probably be for treatment-resistant depression. It's probably like the next place that we'll see that. So those are both coming. And then it'll be very interesting to see how that develops over time. I agree. So those are the flawless predictions for 2022. I think those
00:39:19
Speaker
Well, the future is always hazy, but luckily you have us to guide you through with some certainty. Yeah. It's good to have some certainty about what's going to happen. You just need to listen to this podcast and you're pretty much there. Once a year or two. I know. And then, you know, I mean... All right. Well, let's just hope that 2022 is better than the previous two years, which
00:39:44
Speaker
I know I would like to make the prediction that it will be, but I, I don't have enough confidence in that. But yeah, I also, the hope is for sure there. Well, we don't know. Like we don't know if this follows the same time course as the, as the great, as the influenza of, you know, 2000 or sorry, 1917, right? But, um, if it does, it was, it was about a three year cycle, right? Was it really that long? Yeah.
00:40:10
Speaker
I mean, there's a lot more people and we have vaccines and there's all kinds of other stuff going on, but it would be great to think that the end's in sight at some point. I can't imagine anything more spreadable than Omicron
00:40:29
Speaker
Right. Yeah. The real thing would be if Omicron becomes the even deadlier or something like as transmissible as even deadlier. Yeah. Oh man. Well, we can't imagine what's going to happen there. I can't. I can't. No, I have no idea. Just keep the fingers crossed on that one. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
00:40:50
Speaker
Well, everyone happy new
Call to Action for Listeners
00:40:51
Speaker
year. I know we're late. We're always a little bit late on these things. Like that's just kind of our deal. Like we have day jobs as we described at the beginning. Apologies that we're not getting these out on regular basis, but we're happy to be back. And yeah, 2022, this is going to be the year for cognition.
00:41:09
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. And tweet at us if you have ideas, thoughts, comments, questions, criticisms at nationcognationpodcast. You know, let us know what you think. And thank you. And we will hopefully be back very soon.