Based Camp: Life Extension vs Experience Extension

Jun 9, 2023

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Description and transcript written by AI: In this enlightening discussion, Malcolm and Simone delve into the fascinating concepts of life extension and experience extension. They explore how the brain forms memories based on novelty and change, a phenomenon that could enable us to expand our remembered or experienced life significantly. Their conversation highlights the idea that by disrupting habitual patterns and seeking out new experiences, we can enrich our lives and potentially remember 50 to a hundred percent more of our lives than through traditional life extension strategies. Whether it's moving to a new country, starting a new job, or even taking a unique vacation, the key is to embrace change and novelty. This video is a must-watch for anyone curious about human memory, life extension, and the power of unique experiences.

Based Camp - Life Extension vs Experience Extension

Malcolm: [00:00:00] And when you are doing a, a task that you've done over and over and over again, your brain will erase that and, and begin to, so suppose on a weekend, right? If I'm always watching movies and drinking and, and doing about the same thing over a weekend, my brain compresses all those experiences together.

Malcolm: But if one weekend I do something different, like, go to a petting zoo as my kids, my brain will distinctly remember that more than if I had done, done the, the same thing I'd been doing over and over again. And through this knowledge, you could actually expand your remembered life or experienced life.

Malcolm: More than you can than through traditional life extension. So if through traditional life extension today, like being healthy in many ways and stuff like that, you're increasing your lifespan by like 25%. You can easily get your memories up 50 to a hundred percent.

Simone: Hello Malcolm.

Malcolm: Hello Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. What are we

Simone: talking about? We're gonna do a lightning round [00:01:00] on life extension versus experience extension cause it's something we talk about a lot and I figured it might be fun to chat about it. Again, I

Malcolm: really like this topic, so when people often meet us, they go, oh my gosh.

Malcolm: It's like, you guys have lived 20 lifetimes. How have you done all of this? And, and still be so young? Or, I always expect to meet someone older. And we look at all the things that we've, we've done in our life and it's like, yeah, it is true. We have done a lot more than a lot of other people, and it's because of the way we compact and manage our time, but it also means to a very meaningful extent.

Malcolm: That we have more memories. So when I look at the different chunks of my life, I remember them as chunks and they do feel like full and separate lives. Mm-hmm. So a lot of people, they might think of their time in college, for example, and it can feel like. A full and separate life, even though it's only four years.

Malcolm: I mean, if you're an adult, think about what you were doing four years ago that was like nothing [00:02:00] ago, if you're not constantly, changing where you live, changing the jobs you're in, et cetera. But in addition to that, there's also a a, a biological and measurable part of this, so let's talk about reminiscence bumps really quickly. A reminiscence bump is a tendency to remember more during your late adolescence, often when you're in college. And people have like a much clearer memory of these things. However, reminiscence bumps can be created at different times of your life when a person really changes their environment.

Malcolm: So, you also see reminiscence bumps after immigration to new countries and stuff like that. People are literally remembering more because they recently went through a re a major change. You also see this happen with memories when a person. It's experiencing something new or different they will record it more.

Malcolm: And when somebody's experiencing something they've done a hundred times, again, Rome Hypnosis, something they brought up on the podcast before road Hypnosis is a phenomenon. Where when you drive, especially cuz the route you've done a bunch of times, your brain will actually just completely erase [00:03:00] that entire thing as if you were asleep or something.

Malcolm: And when you are doing a, a task that you've done over and over and over again, your brain will erase that and, and begin to, so suppose on a weekend, right? If I'm always watching movies and drinking and, and doing about the same thing over a weekend, my brain compresses all those experiences together.

Malcolm: Yeah,

Simone: no, I mean, I, I totally agree with you. I think for older [00:04:00] adults now there's still now this really easy way to kind of. Sanity test this concept with the pandemic because all of us just recently experienced a year in which life was violently different. No matter how old or like entrenched your habits were.

Simone: Suddenly, non consensually, everyone's habits, pretty much everyone's habits were really significantly changed and it, I mean, to a certain extent, Added more life to a lot of people, ironically, because it broke their routine. And I think it's really interesting. We were just reading an article on life extension by Susie Weiss and one of the life Extensionist quoted at the beginning of the article.

Simone: She describes him as having this unhurried way that he's not like in a rush to get things done. And I see that and I'm like, yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter how many eons you live. If you're gonna be slow about things, you're gonna wait to to work on something. It doesn't matter how many years you live, you're gonna [00:05:00] have a lot less life.

Simone: I, I think there's another benefit too, to. The concept of living many different lives. And I think, the way that you maximize this is you don't necessarily have to move, you don't necessarily have to change jobs. There are many different ways that people extend lives by, for example, taking vacations to really, really different places.

Simone: So I would argue that, all of our vacations, for example, we really love going to Edinburgh, right? We got married there. Mm-hmm. I, I would say that like most of our Edinburgh vacations kind of blend together. Most of our friends visits to New York City kind of blend together cause we go a lot.

Simone: To entertain friends and stuff. The, every time we go somewhere violently new, like when we went to Morocco, when we went to Africa, when we went to South Korea together,

Malcolm: well, we just got off a cruise. That was de definitely different when we Yeah, like

Simone: with that, yeah. These, these violently different experiences, like Yeah.

Simone: I mean, so anyone can travel somewhere new. Anyone can do that, but also anyone could like, change the bedroom they sleep in, totally change their schedule, but, things like having [00:06:00] kids. I think an underrated. Benefit to these that shows up in two different areas is the ability to change your behavior and, and use these as what we would call the Privus Guide to Life Flux Periods.

Simone: So one thing that I read in this book called Inside the Nudge Unit, which was this, office within the United Kingdom government Designed to implement small policy changes that could change behavior in a significant way to low cost. They realized that, for example, In intervening with parenting methods, it really only made sense to reach out to first time mothers because they were completely changing their lives, totally changing their identities.

Simone: This is their time becoming a first time mother. They could actually really significantly change their behavior for the better by utilizing that life change. And they, they discovered that along some other lines. And then you also hear about people, for example, when they need to quit smoking or something else that they might like, go to Japan, like go somewhere else, to be in a totally different area.

Simone: And in the Pragmatist Guide [00:07:00] to Life, we talk about using these flex periods to reinvent your internal model of self, to reinvent your public identity, to, really, really retool who you are. So by living all these violently different periods, either through travel or moving, or changing careers, or changing your social network or whatever it might be, you also have the ability to genuinely change yourself, not just experience more lived experience, but fix major problems.

Malcolm: Yeah. No, I, I, I think you're right. And I think that that's a, a, a, a very astute point. It's also interesting to think about how you optimize for this, right? So we're not really vacation people, but occasionally mm-hmm. We'll do one because we're like, Well, we should, right. We we're supposed to do vacations.

Simone: Well, it's not fun. I think what we always talk about is like, I would be way, I would be happier, I would be healthier and it would be more comfortable and obviously it would cost a lot less if we were just at home doing work, doing what we love. Cuz like every day our, we don't do

Malcolm: that. Love vacations.

Malcolm: Yeah. We [00:08:00] did decide, okay, let's try a cruise, the, the, if, if the system's gonna collapse, we may as well do this sort of peak capitalism things while we can this, this dystopian wally like environment. And it was funny, when I went on the cruise ship, I, I, the first thing I was reminded of that the last time I was a cruise ship, I was in my teen years, around college or something like that.

Malcolm: And, My entire optimization function on the cruise ship was basically sleepless. People like, okay, I'm sectioning my time, I'm managing my time around meeting people who I can sleep with. And then executing on the seduction pathway and then getting that done. Cause I've got, four, five days to execute on this.

Malcolm: Right. And God cruises were great for that. You could just plaster people on a cruise when you're, when you're a young guy and, and you're really horny all the time. But then, I got there now and it was so interesting to be like, oh, I don't care about that at all anymore. I, I don't want that.

Malcolm: I don't wanna, so then what am I optimizing for? And so we went into this, this sort of moment where it's like I guess we're optimizing [00:09:00] for unique memories because those are the memories that we'll remember. So let's. Section the crew's experience into individual unique memories and capture and fully experience as many of those with each other and with our kids as possible.

Malcolm: While also taking advantage of all the stuff that can be done less expensively on a cruise ship. Because, you get all these all expense paid things on cruise ships. So it's like, okay, we have access to pools. Let's try to teach our kids to swim. Okay. We have Just going from thing to thing.

Malcolm: We cast

Simone: bunny it, as we said

Malcolm: it is, is what we called it in terms of unique memories. Just running from experience to experience. Oh, black park ca. Oh, so scary. Ah. Then to the next thing. I, I, but it wasn't, it

Simone: wasn't always fun. Like there were definitely, there were times where we, we really didn't wanna do something, but we did it anyway because we knew it would create a, a memory.

Simone: For example, there was one more ma morning where it was an ocean day on the cruise. We were going up to Canada to Nova Scotia. It was like 49 degrees outside. Oh, it was freezing. Yeah, it was really windy. However the water slides were [00:10:00] open and there were no lines. So we got in our swimsuits and screamed very loudly in pain while doing all of the water slides multiple times.

Simone: But it was, I will never forget that. And I think that I, the interesting thing is I think a lot of people. Do travel for that reason. And maybe they're even more self-aware about it now. You see all this Instagram versus reality nonsense know where people are clearly going to these locations just to get the photo right.

Simone: It's actually so they understand

Malcolm: with some sites now. I was watching a video, Windover production did when we were a lot of these out outdoor monuments are becoming overcrowded now because people are going up and just to do these Instagrams, but

Simone: continue. Well, but I think people have come to understand that this isn't about fun.

Simone: It is about getting the photo, it's, it is about getting the memory. I mean, we'd argue that like just getting kind of lame photos is not the, and, and also that would start to blend together, right? If every trip you take is about getting photos, all of your memories are gonna be about getting the right shot and taking tons of photos.

Simone: But like still, I think people are aware, and you see this also like when [00:11:00] you go on a vacation in most environments where I see. Travelers. They look hot, they look tired, they look bored. They're staring into like mid space, they have that convention.

Malcolm: Oh my God. A beach. I can't even imagine. Like I look at people on beaches, like in the sand covered in sun and, and, and clearly like drunk, being drunk and, and, and, and in the heat on a,

Simone: yeah.

Simone: Well, I mean, so I don't, I don't think people are actually having fun on these vacations either.

Malcolm: So I think you're wrong because when I was younger, I gained genuine enjoyment and happiness from exploration really when I went out and I was like, and it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that you would have this gated period of like happiness and fulfillment that could be gained from exploration.

Malcolm: But th this would turn off as you get older. Hmm. I think a lot of people in life, for many of the things that they're doing, they are doing things. That they used to gain happiness from, or that they used to gain meaning from or [00:12:00] fulfillment from, and that's no longer outputting that, or no longer outputting that at significant volumes.

Malcolm: And so they're just spamming the button, hopefully hoping to get the reward. In the same way that, I could have gone on a cruise and been like, suppose I'm wasn't married or something, and been like, okay, I'm just gonna sleep with as many people as possible because that's what made me happy when I was younger

Simone: on cruises.

Simone: No, I think there's some cruises kind of optimized around that.

Malcolm: But that's, we take out all the fun.

Simone: Oh my God. It's about the challenge for you. It's not about Yes, yes.

Malcolm: I, I didn't wanna sleep with, with, with, so you

Simone: don't wanna go on an orgy cruise. You wanna go on a, it's, it's a hard to get cruise. Yes.

Malcolm: I, okay.

Malcolm: That's the point. Anyway. So, sorry. So. Here's the worst. I could have done that and I just wouldn't have gained much happiness from it. Cause I, minute my age, they're just not gonna gain the same level of happiness as they do when they're a, a younger person sleeping around as they do when they're an older person sleeping around.

Malcolm: Yeah. But it's the same as exploration. It's the same as new experiences. It's [00:13:00] the same, I think, even with aping lifestyles that you associate with luxury. I think that when you're younger you can cosplay luxury and, and, and sitting on a beach drinking a, I don't know, whatever the fancy drinks are, and you'll get this form of happiness that your brain just doesn't release when you're older and people are trying to.

Malcolm: Get happiness from things that they, they just, they're not, their biology has moved past it. They, like, if you look at me, what do I gain genuine happiness from? Like, what am I gaining genuine happiness from on the cruises, playing with my kids. It's putting my kids in environments where they are experiencing new things and watching them, experiencing new things and learning and being excited.

Malcolm: That's what I would get, genuine happiness from on the cruise. And so I wondered, if we didn't have kids Would I still be trying to milk happiness from that old stone? The, the, those, those old things like exploration and not understand why I wasn't getting it, why, why life had just become this sort of monotonous on rail thing where I am chasing.

Malcolm: Consumerism and exploration and [00:14:00] other vapid things that no longer give me genuine meaning, or could it be that a huge portion of the population still has this exploration drive turned on and they're still getting genuine happiness from this sort of exploration thing. And they're not, it's, it's that we are the weird ones that it turned off in us, and, and now it's just completely focused around our kids.

Simone: They're trying to make the world. Don't indicate that though. Maybe everyone has like, Irritable resting faces? I don't know. I don't know. I don't understand people, but I also don't, I don't know if I experience happiness that way. People do. So I whatever.

Simone: Still, I really appreciate the experiences

Malcolm: we have to say it's an evil sociopath. Don't

Simone: sociopaths have fun. They

Malcolm: do though,

Simone: right? I honestly though, I don't know. But presumably someone can let us know in the comments. Well,

Malcolm: well, you're podcast my source of happiness. Not [00:15:00] really though. It's the kids, Simone, you created the thing that's my source of happiness. I remember before we had kids, you were afraid that I would like start loving you less and, and, and, and start to love the kids more now.

Malcolm: And now. That seems like such an insane thing to fear,

Simone: right? Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, the horror of having a spouse who doesn't love their kids more, like that would be. Kind of heartbreaking. Like one of my happiest, feelings or a, a great, I feel very satisfied when I see you loving on our kids.

Simone: And I think most parents feel that, and you probably feel something similar with me and our kids. So, Maybe.

Malcolm: Yeah, no, I You, you're a great mom. You're, I always comment on it, you're like really good at mommy. Like she is professional Tear Magazine and mom,

Simone: no one is going to believe that ever

Malcolm: people will see in, in, in inside videos and stuff like that.

Malcolm: I gotta get more videos of you doing it, but always, it's always little things anyway.

Simone: I love speaking of which, we better go pick them up. Yeah, we're gonna get in trouble with daycare and I will start pasta EST [00:16:00] tonight. So I'll get some water boiling. I love you very much. Looking forward to dinner.

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