Welcome to Cloudlandia Ep131: Weathering Change and Creative Evolution
In this episode of Cloudlandia, we explore how weather predictions and media sensationalism influence public views, especially regarding storms like impending Tropical Storm Debbie. Drawing on past hurricanes and climate patterns, we examine the normalized perceptions of living with these events.
Additionally, we delve into the evolution of creativity through technology and mind-altering substances. From early stone tools to therapeutic uses of psychotropics today, innovation is traced alongside historical cultural explosions. Comparisons are drawn between eras like the 1960s and perceptions of creativity now.
These chapters emerge from a common thread of challenging assumptions, spanning climate activism, human creative drives, and digital changes.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan, mr Jackson, welcome to Cloudlandia.
Dan: And I hope you're enjoying all the extraordinary benefits of your own four seasons.
Dean: I really am. We're battening down the hatches. We're just getting ready for Tropical Storm Debbie, which is making its way through the Gulf of Mexico, beating towards the coast of Florida.
Dan: And it's so funny, yeah, yeah.
Dean: So it won't be. It's apparently it's going to be a lot of rain and wind and stuff for us. You know I'm so I'm very close to the highest point in peninsular Florida, so we're not going to get flooding, we're on high dry.
Dan: That puts you at about 60 feet above sea level. Right, you know it's so funny. It is funny I think I can see.
Dean: Let's see sea level reading. There's, yeah, the highest point in.
Florida is three feet above sea level, which is Bock Tower, which you've been to, and so, yeah, so we're sitting here ready to go. But you would never know, dan, what's coming, because right now it's still. It's slightly overcast, but it's still. Yesterday was beautiful, today slightly overcast. You'd never know what was coming if it wasn't for the big. You know buzzsaw visuals in the news right now, but seeing it marking its way and with a huge, wide swath of the path of the potential storm, you know.
Dan: When you first moved there, did it take you a while to get to normalize the fact that, yes, we get tropical storms, we get hurricanes.
Dean: Yeah, Exactly Did it take you?
Dan: two or three times before you said oh well, I guess it's just normal.
Dean: It is normal, that's exactly right, and every year you know what I would say. It's so funny that there's never a year in memory that I can remember somebody saying, or the news media saying should be a light year for hurricanes, this year Doesn't sell newspaper or drink advertising.
Dan: I remember, after Katrina, but Katrina didn't really hit it for it. It hit Louisiana.
Dean: Yeah right.
Dan: But I remember the alarmist saying well, every year it's going to get worse. Now and then there was almost a year, maybe two years, when they didn't have any hurricanes at all.
Dean: Yeah, exactly that's what's so funny, right? It's like the things like you know, and it is funny how the whole, how it all has cycles you know, because California, you know, had the. You know everybody's talking about the water levels in California. Now you just it's all reported right now that you know Lake Tahoe is at the highest maximum allowable level for Ever, ever, yes, exactly, it's at its peak, it could be poor flooding.
Yeah, exactly, it's like 15 feet off of the highest level allowed and because of all of the snow cap melting and all the stuff. But anyway, it's just so. You know, I definitely see those. It's all part of the balance for our minds, you know yeah, it was really interesting.
Dan: Did you ever read bjorn lawnberg? He's, uh, danish. He started off as a you know you know a card carrying climate. You know, I don't know what you call them. I guess they're called climate activists.
Dean: Okay, yeah.
Dan: I feel that I'm very activated by the climate, so I don't know, what the distinction is there. Are you activated by the climate? I am, you know. When the climate is this way, I'm activated this way, and when the climate's a different way, I'm activated a different way. He wrote an amazing article in the Wall Street Journal.
I think it was Wednesday and this past Wednesday, and he just points out that, first of all, the whole climate activism movement is an industry. There's a lot of jobs that are financed by the climate. It might be in the millions the number of people who make money off of doomsday predictions about the climate. So whenever a movement, someone once said everything starts off as a cause and it's just the people emotionally involved. In other words, they said we're not paying attention to this, we have to pay more attention to this. But then when government gets involved, it becomes a movement because large amounts of government money start flowing in a particular direction and then it becomes an industry.
The fourth stage is it becomes a racket. I think we're in the climate racket period right now. Yeah, but Bjorn Lomborg was going back to 20, 25 years ago when he had a revelation that the climate does change. But he says that's the nature of the climate. The very nature of the climate is that the climate changes. But he said the first, if you'll remember this, with Al Gore, this was right around when he lost.
Dean: Yeah, it was right around 2001.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, he was right after the 2000 election Right 2000 election and I suspect he needed some money. So he started the movement and he used the polar bear as an example. There was this one polar bear who was just floating on a very small ice sheet, you know.
And they said, you know the bears will be gone within 20 years because of the warming. It turns out the population in the last 20 years has doubled. The number of polar bears has doubled, even though it's gotten warmer. According to the climate racket people, it's gotten warmer, but the polar bears, you know, have been around forever. I guess they know how to adapt to changing conditions.
Dean: They were all grizzly bears.
Dan: They were all grizzly bears at one time. I don't know if you know that.
Dean: I did not. That's where they started.
Dan: Yeah.
They found the white yeah, they rebranded it as polar bears, I guess extended their territory and that was it, so they've doubled since Al Gore's warning. And then the other thing was that the let's see, there's two more. Well, I'll mention number three. Number three is that all the low islands in the Indian Ocean were going to sink below sea level. The sea level was going to flood the Maldives and some of the other things, and for the most part, all of them have expanded their landmass in the last 20 years. They've actually gotten bigger. They've increased their height above sea level by possibly six inches.
Dean: Oh man.
Dan: You'd appreciate that. Living in Florida, so it hasn't happened. The other one was the deaths from warming. Last year in the United States I don't know if it was last year or the year before, I don't know if it was last year or the year before 25 times more people died of extreme cold than died of extreme heat. So if you're a betting man, I call it the Gore factor, that if Al Gore says something, bet the other way.
Dean: Ah right.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, this is you know.
Dean: The man is impossibly rich because of his creating a movement, creating an industry, and now it's a racket. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing how invisible he is now. I mean he really is like I haven't seen or heard anything from Al Gore. I can't remember the last time.
Dan: Well, it's passive income now.
Dean: Right, just stay quiet, stay low.
Dan: Just stay quiet, just stay quiet. The dollars just keep rolling in yeah, yeah. But it's interesting. My suspicion is I've been thinking about this because I'm writing my next quarterly book. We just wrapped up Casting Not Hiring, which will come out in September this one with Jeff Madoff, this one with Jeff and it really really worked. This book really worked the Casting Not Hiring but the next one is going to be called Timeless.
Technology, and the idea here is that technology is a way of thinking. It's not so much particular technology, but it's a way, and my been that it's actually one of the crucial factors. Technological thinking is one of the crucial factors that differentiates humans from the other species, and what I mean by that it's the intentional and yet unpredictable utilizing stuff from our environment to enhance our capabilities.
Dean: And.
Dan: I did a search on perplexity what would be reckoned from perplexity doing a search of what would be sort of the 10 early breakthroughs, the technological breakthroughs, and one of them was just stones that you could throw. You could pick up a stone and throw it and it actually changed how the human body evolved. Is that the ability of using our hand and our arm and getting that tremendous arm strength that you can throw a stone and, you know, kill something. Right Kill an animal or kill it. Kill another human yeah, and everything.
Dean: I wonder even about that, the evolution of technology, like that, like thinking a rock and then realize that, hey, if I just chisel this away now I make this sharp on this end.
Dan: And now all of a sudden we got an axe, you know yeah, and then actually they think that glue was an early adaption, that you could take sticks and stones and put them together. You could glue things together and you could actually. So they looked for probably really sticky saps or something from trees you know that they would use. Then pottery, of course, and it's interesting with pottery that the very earliest samples that we have.
clearly they took clay and made it into some sort of cup or yeah, a bowl of some sort, but whenever they find it and it goes back hundreds of thousands of years they can detect alcohol. They can detect that there was alcohol, which kind of shows you how early that must have been. Consciousness transformer that's what I call alcohol. It's a consciousness transformer, would you not say?
Dean: Yeah, I mean I was listening to Joe Rogan. I had Jordan Peterson on his podcast just recently.
Dan: That's a good podcast partnership.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, and he was talking about the, you know psychotropics and the things that are. You know that psilocybin and all the all of those things, marijuana was all what was sort of responsible for the revolutionary change that happened. You know the difference from the fifties to the sixties and his thing was, you know, in the mid to late 60s. You know that's what started the whole. Every single one of those things was made schedule one, narcotic and illegal and completely controlled right, and that his thing is that we haven't seen anything revolutionary, like any kind of change happening from since then, since the 60s, into now.
Dan: Which kind of indicates that it's good enough?
Dean: Well, it's just kind of funny. You know, like that, you wonder what the you know where he was kind of going with that, but he was using as an example like the creativity in the 60s, like he talked about the difference of the car.
Even the cars and the things, the designs of things that were being made in the 60s are iconic and desirable and different than, like you compared to, you know, a camaro or the muscle car, this, the corvette, and the things in the 60s compared to like nobody wants your 19 camaro. That's not desirable at all, not in the the way that the 60s, Except maybe NASCAR.
Dan: Except NASCAR, I think Camaros have a very niche use because they're really souped up. Mark Young, his team has won. At the latest count, his team had won three races this year so far. Discount this team had won three races this year so far and he was talking about it at the podcast dinner that we had after doing the podcast, the four-person podcast.
But Camaros always play a very active role. They establish themselves as this amazing niche, you know, souped up, NASCAR type of car. But I really take what you're saying there that there's been no blockbuster new designs of cars that have really you know that you think that they'll still be around. In other words, these are real breakthrough cars. Yeah, Just going a little deeper into the Joe Rogan, Peterson, the Jordan.
Dean: Peterson conversation.
Dan: Did they go any deeper into why the creativity was then? But the creativity hasn't gone any further.
Dean: Well, I think it was Joe's sort of. You know, I'm halfway through the podcast right now, but his basic assertion was that those access to those drugs or those not I will call I use the word drugs those, those we could say technologies are new. Access to those things opened up the part of the brain that is creative linkers, like that that's really they're saying all the way back, like going, if you take it all the way back evolutionarily, that they believe, like what you just said, back in, as far back as they go, there's access. You know they're seeing alcohol in, yeah, as mind-altering things. They would revere mushrooms, mushrooms were abundant and things that were mind-altering. And you think through all of these things, even in Indian or Native lore, that the peyote and the things that were, that part of a trip out of reality is a rite of passage or a thing that activates another part of your brain. You know, makes the connections that aren't otherwise accessible.
Dan: Yeah, I'm totally, you know, I'm convinced that's probably true.
Dean: And I think that we're starting to see now that these hallucinogenic what do we call it? Not hallucinogenics, but psychotropics. What's the right word for?
Dan: it Psychotropic, I think.
Dean: Yeah, so whatever now in treatment of PTSD and addiction and all of these beneficial things that are coming as part of using it therapeutically and but because it's just now starting to become more accessible or more active, it used to be like you've always heard we you and I both know a lot of people that have gone down the Iowa or the you know version and have had, you know, all sort of mind altering experiences doing that. I've never done it, yeah.
Dan: I mean, I mean, it was very interesting. I was at Richard Rossi's Da Vinci 50. This was the last one I was I think it was february and scottsdale and two or three there. We had two or three coach clients there who were just doing a look.
See, you know if they wanted to join the previewing and they were having a conversation about psychotropic drugs and they asked me if I had experimented and I said you mean, right beyond dealing with my own brain every day? You mean I said I have to tell you I don't have time for that stuff. Just dealing with my own brain every day is sure, you know, it's a full-time job. You know, because it's switching, it's switching channels continually and it takes a full-time job. You know, because it's switching channels continually and it takes a lot of work to get it focused on something useful. Yeah, I just wonder about that because it's when one of the political parties went really strange. I noticed the Democrats, since, well, kamala seems to me to be a sympathetic candidate for the president.
Dean: Unbelievable, this is all craziness.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, but they're using the word weird to describe the Republicans.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: If there was ever a weird party. I mean, this is sheer projection, this is psychological projection. You know of weird, you know.
Dean: Yeah, but it's amazing.
Dan: That's when the Democratic Party changed, and it changed quite radically. I remember speaking about you know, psychedelics. I was in the army in Korea for two years. Us Army.
Dean: And.
Dan: I came back to the West Coast. When we flew back, we went into Seattle. I had a brother who was a professor at University of San Francisco, so I took a jump down to San Francisco before I flew back to my home in Ohio and he said I'm going to show you something really interesting. And he took me to Haight-Ashbury. This is the summer that Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, became really famous and it was the beginning of the whole hippie movement. And he walked me around and I could tell by interacting with him that he wasn't just an observer, you know that, he was actually a participant.
And he didn't do him any good, because he eventually dropped out of, you know, being a professor and became more or less a vagrant.
Dean: Tune in turn on drop out.
Dan: Yeah well, he dropped out. He dropped out and then, about I would say, 12 years later, he committed suicide. Oh, no, and yeah, I mean, he's the one real casualty in my family. But I remember him how unreal his conversations were starting to become when I talked to him about this. You know this, and he was never and he was very smart. He was very smart I mean before that he was very bright and he was sort of practical and he became a professor, a university professor.
Dean: That says something right there. Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Yeah and anyway. But that was my first awareness, that was my first introduction to it. I mean, I mean I didn't drink alcohol until I was 27 years old. I never drank until I was 27. Wow, I'll have a glass of wine, that I'll do anything, but I've never I've never actually enjoyed. I had pot a couple of times back in the early 60s, 70s and I found it disconnected me from other people. Alcohol does just the opposite. Alcohol kind of connects you. It does just the opposite. It kind of disconnects you and so it's very definitely.
it's a reality since that period of time. But the one thing I want to say is that there's a really interesting thing the Democratic Party, up until the late 60s, was the party of the working class you know, working class, blue collar workers, and they had a real disaster in 1968 because they had huge riots in Chicago.
So it's interesting In two weeks they'll be in Chicago and I think they've done one previous convention in Chicago. I think one of Obama's conventions was in Chicago. But anyway, they made a decision that they were no longer the working class and I think it was the result of all the tremendous growth of the student population as a result of the baby boomer generation. So between between, I think, 1940s, when the baby boomer generation starts to 64. Ok, and that would be 18 years there were I think it was, I don't know the exact number, but there was like 75 million babies who were born during that period and the front end of them were going to university in the 60s boomer generation. And so they saw the party start looking.
Well, these are our future voters. They're not blue collar workers, they're college students and graduates and professors, and then the entire new working cadre. They're all going to be professionals. They're going to be professionals. And they changed their entire focus in 1960. I think it was in 1969 or 70. George McGovern, who was a senator at that time, did a commission and said we're no longer the party of the working class.
And and so they're not, you know, 65 years later. And it's funny because the Republicans were always considered sort of the Pluto class, they were the class of the rich people, and now they've just shipped positions. So 60 years later, it's the billionaires and it's the college professors and media people and the bureaucratic class the government bureaucrats they're the Democrats. And the working class class the government bureaucrats they're the Democrats and the working class is the Republicans.
Dean: Yeah, the Midwestern. Yeah, that's true, yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Dan: And Trump is the working class billionaire.
Dean: Yes, that's true.
I wanted to say it is kind of I'll use the word weird. What is kind of weird about this increased use of the word weird to describe the Republicans now is that it's so widespread. It's like the it's the Democratic talking point now. Like I love the videos now that kind of expose, the, you know, the Democrat party line sort of thing, and it happens on both sides actually. But I mean this idea of that, you know, with the media, all the soundbites are, you know, planting that thought that Republicans are weird, that this is weird.
Dan: They're testing it. It's just that it's. I think it's hard for them to say it plausibly. There's no traditional values that the Democrats represent. Yeah, but it's interesting. And now I'm especially interested in your Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson podcast.
Dean: And I'm going to watch that after.
Dan: Watch that and Jordan Peterson I think I mean the two people together is a very interesting partnership for a podcast, because I think Jordan Peterson is, you know, came out of the university class. He was a professor here in Toronto and where he became. He became very famous for his book, which was basically very popular Rules for life you know, like before you leave your bedroom in the morning, make your bed and, yeah, stand up straight.
You know, stand up straight and when you visit with your, your friends and meet their parents, be the sort of person that their parents would like to have come back as a guest. Pretty basic, fundamental rules of life. But then he really became infamous, if you want to call it that here in Toronto, because he had a real objection to the whole university class saying that people could be whatever gender they wanted to be, and they could self-identify, and they were opposed to the he and her or he and she thing, and he said no, he said I'm not going to do that.
He said if it's a female, I'm going to call her she. And they said oh, this is an attack. This is an attack on equality. This is an attack on diversity. This is an attack on inclusion. So he became very famous and it actually ultimately had forced him his hand to leave the university. He was called up and they said we're going to take away your professional degree and everything like that. Right, right, okay, which you know. I think there's something weird about that.
Dean: I mean just my own opinion here, but yeah and I think Joe knows him.
Dan: I think he's had Joe's had conversations. Joe Polish has had conversations with Jordan Peele. But all his videos where he's being interviewed by people who obviously don't like him, he comes off really well. He comes off as the sort of sane, rational person in all the you know, in all his interviews. I enjoy watching him. He strikes me as being kind of on the depressed side. You know he seems not to. I think he's a psychologist. I think that by training.
And anyway, but I think it's interesting because this all started with the conversation of alcohol on the ancient pottery.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: You know our thing here, but I think that probably throughout history, generation by generation, place after place, they found substances which can alter their consciousness, and I think it's probably been with human beings forever.
Dean: Yeah, these whole. You're absolutely right, that whole yeah.
Dan: It's not as good as steak for breakfast.
Dean: No, I'll tell you what Dan.
Dan: I have Steak for breakfast. Steak for breakfast. I just started it 12 days ago and it makes a big difference.
Dean: You've started Carnivore.
Dan: Well, not Carnivore, but I just don't have Cheerios for breakfast.
Dean: Ah, right, right, Protein for breakfast. Yeah, I've been this week has been because I've been leaning more and more, as you know, working with jj on prioritizing pro no, babs was telling me about your call, abs was telling me about your call yesterday yeah and your air dryer.
Dan: Your air, my air fryer.
Dean: Yeah, and I'll tell you your air fryer and I made yesterday, yesterday for the first time, the most amazing ribeye in the air fryer. That was so juicy and delicious it was and so easy. I mean literally. I took the ribeye, I put salt and pepper and just a little bit.
Dan: Yes, came out just like so your adventures get around you. Now I know, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Dean: But I mean that's just, it's so good, who knew?
Dan: Yeah, I mean yeah, it was I texted that.
Dean: Well, we've got the whole. I'm very fortunate that you see second hand through, babs, but you know there's been a real support network, a gathering of what we're lovingly calling Team Dean on a text thread, and so I texted a picture of that last night to the group.
Dan: Let's keep Dean in the mainland for a while, right?
Dean: We don't want him drifting off into Glanlandia for eternity At least until we can get my mind melded up there somehow, right, but this week has been a breakthrough. Like this week I've been, this is the first week of full carnivore, like only meat. Oh so I started on Monday and it's been, you know, an interesting thing. But I had my highest weight loss week since we've been doing this by by this and I actually feel great. It took a couple of days to kind of get through the Van Allen belt of carbohydrate craving, you know. But now that I'm in, I'm through, I'm out of the atmosphere, I'm kind of floating that I think I can do this, you know, perpetually here for a while, and one of the reasons yeah, yeah Well.
Dan: yeah well, I mean you talk about the air fryer, but there's a direct connection between the management of fire and your air fryer.
you know, I mean hundreds of thousands of years and the human, the first humans who got a handle on fire. You know, it happened, probably accidentally, it was a lightning strike or something. But then they began to realize once we have fire, let's find a way of keeping it going. So we have access and that was a huge jump, because eating raw meat almost uses as many calories as you're getting from the meat, In other words you really have to work to digest.
Let's call it steak. You know the steak. It takes a lot of calories to digest it. You really have to work to digest it but once they added fire to the mix and you could cook the food it made it much easier to digest and you got your calories much easier, yeah, but the other thing is that it's filling it's very filling, I mean the more carnivore you are, the less you're attracted to the sugar. That's the truth, easy caps. I mean, I don't feel particularly hungry.
I had breakfast around 8 o'clock this morning Steak. I have steak and avocado. Okay, it's ribeye, but we're going to get. As a result of your yesterday information, babs is going to get an air fryer. We're going to get an air fryer, and then Stephen Poulter had even more.
Dean: I saw that. He put up a fancy thing, exotic thing you would know that Stephen tracked it down, because that's what Stephen does.
Dan: Yeah, but it's very interesting this getting enough calories to do interesting mind work. It's about if you're going to. I read a report that one of the great advantages of North America is right from the beginning. Right from when the first people came to the East Coast, they had a lot of protein right from the beginning.
There was lots of game. There was lots of fish, you know. They had a lot of game and Americans have. Except for two periods of history, during the Revolutionary War and, I think, great Depression, americans have always had as many calories as they wanted. But there's a reading that high-level mental work requires roughly, you know, in the neighborhood of above 2,000 calories a day. You have to have 2,000 calories to be doing mental work.
Dean: That's interesting.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. And North America, the US and Canada have always had enormous amount of calories, protein calories, you know. So you can do hard labor, you can do high level of mental work. Makes for an industrious, you know, makes for an industrious population.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, that's really you know. Jordan Peterson has been carnivore for five years.
Dan: He's been carnivore for five years, yeah to save his life really.
Dean: Right.
Dan: And he mentioned that.
Dean: you know he looks at when the that everything got shifted when they came out with the food pyramid in the 70s, that was not by any nutritionist but by the agriculture department to get people getting grains and breads and stuff as the foundation of a healthy lifestyle, healthy nutrition plan.
Dan: That sounds like a four-stage cause movement, industry, racket. Racket yeah, I think it's now at the racket stage yeah, you know I mean halfway when we go. We were at the cottage for the last two weeks and halfway to the cottage is tim hortons. Tim hortons, okay, and I will tell you, based on your present heading in life, dean, you've probably been to your last Tim Hortons, because there's nothing in there that's actually good for you.
Dean: Right, right, right, right. Yeah, that's true, isn't it?
Dan: I mean that's something I call it Tim Hortons, where white people go to get whiter.
Dean: Oh man, Do you go up 400 when you go to the cottage, Like do you go past? No, we go 404.
Dan: We go 404.
Dean: Okay, so you don't go by Weber's.
Dan: No, weber's is good, weber's is a high-protein, but that's what I mean. You don't pass that on your way to your cottage.
Dean: You're one freeway over on your way to york, got it, you're one. We go one freeway over right, right, right. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, that's interesting, but that you know there's a great example what a canadian institution you know tim horton's corner, really it's, uh, it's funny, yeah, but I had a thought about, you know, jordan Peterson being. You know like I think that where the revolution has really discussion of is this the best of times or the worst of times? My thought was that the battle for our minds is the thing.
Yes, you're absolutely right, but just like cancel culture, I think we're in a period where our access to more information that's not being just packaged and filtered for us.
We have access to unfilled information, and I think that you're seeing a resurgence, that we're moving towards in big swaths of categories, that the consensus, things that actually make a difference, and that we have access to more and more people who can do that, plus the diagnostic tools that we have support and show which methodologies are the most. And we're starting to see that in. You know, just like cancel culture was able to, the reason that we brought on cancel culture is that the consensus we were able to, everything was being exposed. You know that more people had a voice to say to, to the checks and balances kind of thing of being observed, and that when people find out things, you know you've got access to that. So I see things like nutrition, like it's like I'm noticing a trending, you know, more examination of christ, of Christianity as a thing that's becoming more mainstream as well, and that's just an observation of you know, seeing all these things. You know.
Dan: yeah, One of the things that's really interesting is the variety of choices that you can make that actually cancel out a whole other part of where the information or news is coming out.
You know, for example, I haven't as I mentioned, I haven't watched television at all for now more than six years, and so what ABC thinks, what CBS thinks, what NBC thinks, what NPR, public television, msnbc, cnn think about anything I'm not the target here anymore because I don't know what they're saying about anything but I found all sorts of sites on the internet that I find really interesting. Real Clear Politics is my go-to. First thing in the morning I always look at Real Clear Politics, and what they do is they just aggregate headlines for the entire spectrum. So if you want to go to all the other sites, you can go there. But what they find, you know. I find that they're making pretty widespread choices of what goes on there. In other words, if you're left wing politically, you'll find articles on RealClearPolitics. If you're right wing, you'll find real clear. But one of the things I find really interesting is when they mentioned the most popular articles for the last seven days, for the last 24 hours. They're all right wing, they're not left wing. So interesting.
Although, yeah, I've never seen a left wing article be most watched or most read during the last seven days or the last 24 hours. They're all using the definitions of what would be left-wing or right-wing in today's setting. So it means that the people who are going to RealClearPolitics are mainly right-wing and they're interested in knowing what the left is saying, wayne, and they're interested in knowing what the left is saying, but they're not really. They're not really reinforcing themselves with the articles.
I mean a and you can tell just by the nature of the headline, which where the bias is whether it's left or right and in any way. And but the interesting thing is how much I'm using perplexity now.
Dean: Me too.
Dan: Yeah, and I just got this format Tell me the 10 most important aspects of this particular topic. Five seconds later, I got the 10. And what I find is it's having an effect on my mind that there's never one reason for anything. There's always. I mean, I use 10 reasons, but if I did 20, they could probably do 20, you know but what it does? It gives you a more balanced sense of what's true, okay, but I've discovered this on myself.
I mean, if you talk to 100 people, maybe three of them are using perplexity and perplexity. You know I may. I know there's other sites but it does for me what I want it to do. It gives me a background to think about things, and is that? What you're talking about is non-controlled?
Dean: Because it's my question. Yeah, like that's what I think is that we've got access.
Dan: It's my probes my probes that are revealing the information.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: No one is packaging this for me. It's that I'm asking clarify me on this particular subject and bang you know within a matter of seconds I have clarification.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Is that what you're saying here?
Dean: and I, but I think that the onus is on us to do our own interpretation and, you know, measuring whether this fits with what we think. Whereas, you know, we were sort of when we were exposed to information like all of our whole adult lives, up until the last say, you know, 10 years has really been filtered through the lenses of the mainstream media, like I think about curators, often curators, curators.
Yeah, they were the curators. Yeah, or the guardians, local minority. You remember, I mean, even in the closest thing was I remember when City TV came out with Speaker's Corner.
Dan: You remember that they would have a little booth set up and you could go in and speak your mind.
Dean: Yeah you could go in and speak your mind and that's how you got to think, see what other people were thinking. Otherwise, you had to go to Young and Dundas and you know, on the corner there and hear everybody up on their soapbox or whatever it was. That's always been. You know, that's kind of where everybody's megaphone now is. You don't have to go out to the corner where all the people are. You can sit in your basement and you've got a megaphone to the whole world.
Dan: Yeah, you know, this probably helps explain something. I read an article Friday, I downloaded it and I read it about three or four times, and that is that none of the big corporations are making any money on AI. Right, they're investing enormously in it, but they're not making any money on it, and I think the reason is that it wasn't designed for them.
Dean: Ah right.
Dan: It was designed for individuals to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. And if anything, it works against the corporations, because if people are using AI to pursue their own interests, that means it's time and attention that they're not giving to the corporations. Yeah, yes.
Dean: And I would say there's a real panic.
Dan: I would say there's a real panic setting in, because it's when ChatGPT came out. Everybody said, oh, now this is going to enhance our ability to get our message across. Well, that's only true if people are paying attention. But what if the impact of AI is actually to take people's attention away from you?
Dean: Yeah, it is changing so much. So I mean yeah, it is changing so much, you know.
Dan: I mean. Dean if you're going carnivore, Tim Hortons' messaging isn't getting to you.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I mean All that money they're spending on Tim Hortons' advertising is wasted money on you. Wasted on me.
Dean: That's exactly it. Yeah, it's so amazing how to waste your money on Dean Jack.
Dan: How to waste your money on Dean Jack. How to waste your money on Dean Jack Uh-huh.
Dean: Man so funny. Well, yeah, I should. This would be great, though, to get a. You know, start spreading the word about the air fryer. Get an air fryer deal. I mean, the salmon and the steak are amazing.
Dan: And apparently JJ thinks pork chops are good. That's right. So you got the whole good. That's right, exactly.
Dean: So you got the whole scoop.
Dan: I love it that you've got a buffer between you and the technology. Well, she controls the checkbook, so she might as well get the information, because she controls the checks. Yes, and Babs has been my authority on eating since I've met her. I mean that's one of the great benefits of being in relation she's always been good about that. You know, my life is two parts, before Babs and after Babs.
Dean: Yeah, I know Absolutely. I'm much healthier since I've met her.
Dan: I'm much healthier since I met her. Yeah, Anyway, yeah, but it's really interesting. You know that what you're introducing here to the Cloudlandia conversation is that we now have the opportunity to be much more discerning than we were before.
Dean: Yeah, we have not only the opportunity but the responsibility, and that's what I think we wrestle with is that we can't just take all of the information and take it at face value to realize that that there's a level of building your own internal filters. Timeless Technology is that we're looking for advantage.
Dan: That's what.
I established right at the beginning is that you're looking for an advantage that, for a while, other people don't have, because that improves your status. That improves your status that you have an advantage, and it creates inequality. One of the things that people don't realize is that every time you create a new advantage, it creates inequality in your surrounding area, okay, and then other people have to respond to that, either by using your advantage, like imitating your advantage, or they canitating your advantage, or they can create their own advantage, or they can try to stop you from having your advantage, and I think that depends on your framework. So I think a lot of cancel culture is people not wanting you to have that advantage, so they won't let you talk about it, they won't let you do certain things and I think the cancel culture has probably been there right from the beginning, it just takes different forms.
She's a witch, yeah, yeah, there's a witch, yeah, yeah. Can I tell you something about? That the salem, and also the ones that happened in Europe the witch thing, was. It was moldy grain, so usually the witch seasons happen to do happen when there was a lot of rain. Okay, and the grains got moldy and my sense is they created, they created, and so that a lot of the Fermenting. Yeah, there was a fermentation, but also it drove people a little bit crazy and there's a lot of investigation now of the which periods.
Dean: Okay, salem is the most famous US.
Dan: But it didn't happen. It didn't except for Salem Massachusetts. But they had several really wet seasons where the grain got moldy and my sense is that people were getting fermented grain on a daily basis and it drove me kind of crazy, yeah that made him weird.
Dean: Weird it made him weird. I saw james carville. James carville said that the democrats should stop saying they're weird and start calling them creeps. Weird Weird is creeps as a label. They're creeps, you know yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: I think it's funny to see. I would love to hear.
Dean: I'd love to hear a podcast or a panel interview between you. Know, luntz the. I forget what his first name is Jeffrey Luntz? Is it the Republican wordsmith guy? I think it's Jeffrey.
Dan: Luntz, I don't know him oh.
Dean: Luntz yeah.
Dan: Jeffrey Luntz. He's the one who does the panel discussions, that's right.
Dean: And he gets the messaging, for he's the Republican wordsmith and James Carville is essentially that for the Democrats. I'd love to hear that.
Dan: Yeah, I think James Carville is essentially that for the Democrats. I'd love to hear that.
Dean: Yeah, I think James Carville is now. He's like the crazy ant upstairs. Yeah, I think so. Right, right, right.
Dan: Because the last couple of weeks he said you know you better get over this mania real fast that you're having with Kamala Harris and he says, because he said you have no idea what's coming back against you. It'll take the Republicans three or four weeks to figure out what the target is here, and he says you better get over this real fast. He says it's going to be incredibly hard work over the next three months to get to the election, make sure your grains are dry here, don't get that fermented grain brain.
Make sure your powder is dry too. Yeah, yeah, but it's an interesting thesis. This is where we've added a new dimension to Cloudlandia the psychotropic part of Cloudlandia yeah, I agree.
Dean: There was a.
Dan: Greek player, one of the Greek writers, playwrights. He talked about a place called Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Dean: Okay, that's funny.
Dan: Yeah, and he was talking about people who would just go off and make up new stuff and everything like that had no basis in current reality and he called it cloud cuckoo land. You know well, you know we've had a lot of that over the last 50 or 60 years yeah, I think what we're really introducing.
Dean: Dan is the intersection you know the venn diagram of the mainland cloudlandia and Danlandia or Deanlandia. That's the one that we can actually control. Is Danlandia, yeah.
Dan: Well, the big thing is, if you truly want to be a uniquely creative individual today, the resources are available for you to do it.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But you got to be really discerning about what gets allowed in across the borders into your thinking that's it exactly.
Dean: Yeah, All right Dan.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I have to jump too. One thing about it is I'm going to watch that Joe Rogan church because I think that's interesting.
Dean: I have to watch that Joe Rogan George because I think that's interesting.
Dan: I have to laugh when Joe Rogan had.
Dean: Peter Zion for a loop.
Dan: I've never seen Joe Rogan thrown so much for a loop, because Peter Zion is nothing if not confident about his point of view. I mean, he's a very confident guy about his point of view and Joe wasn't ready for it and about every you know, every 90 seconds he said holy cow, oh wow. Oh yeah.
Dean: Oh, I got to watch that one too, jesus Christ yeah.
Dan: And you can see Joe sitting there. He said yeah he said next time I have this guy on no pot for 24 hours beforehand. This is moving, this is moving. I'm too slow here. I can't keep up with this you know, Peter Zion is like a jackhammer when he starts going you know he does a whack, whack, whack. Yeah, that would be Actually Jordan Peterson and Peter Zion would be an interesting one. Two brains, yeah, yeah, for sure. Maybe Elon Musk as a third person, jordan Peterson and Peter Zion would be an interesting one.
Mm-hmm, Two brains yeah yeah for sure, Maybe Elon Musk as a third person.
Dean: Imagine a panel. Yeah, exactly, there was a great. There was a show called Dinner for Five and it was a. It was an entertainment like movie one, where they'd have different directors and actors at dinner, just a mix of people and having just recording their conversation. No real thing. Jon Favreau did that show it was really great.
Dan: No curating really. Yeah, anyway.
Dean: Okay Dan.
Dan: Very entertaining. We'll be here next week, yes, I always enjoy these.
Dean: They go so fast. Yeah, thanks a lot. Okay, thanks, dan, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.