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1. 00:02 I'm recording and you can All right, we're both recording. Yes. Yes, most certainly. So, Professor Sam Vagn, uh, welcome to the digital mind melt and thank you. Thank you for having me. Please call me Sam. It will make it a more more efficacious.
2. 00:20 Yes. Yes. Yes. Most certainly. Um so you you you are the author of uh malignant self-love and you went to university at the age of nine. I started my yes I was sent to university at the age of nine. Not a very good idea because I was taken taken out of my peer group but at the
3. 00:41 time there was this hysteria about um um gifted children and and so on so forth. And the belief was that gifted children should be removed from school to an academic setting because in at school they would be bored and then they would become troublemakers and it would lead
4. 01:00 to antisocial behavior. That was the idea at that time. So I and a few others we were removed at age nine and we were sent to the Technon which is Israel's foremost um poly poly techchnic university and I studied there for nine years. Quite interesting. Quite interesting.
5. 01:23 And then then you you wrote your PhD thesis on chron theory. Yes. And Right. I mean probably you were a teenager or No, I wasn't actually a teenager. I was 20. I I got my doctorate at the age of 23. I I made a break. I went to business and I did very well in business. I did
6. 01:46 so well that I became addicted to money. And so I spent something like 10 years in in the business world. And so these were 10 lost years as far as academic accomplishments, attainments go. And then I returned to academ and I completed my doctorate at 23.
7. 02:07 Oh, I see. I see. Could you please expand a bit on what what what led you to the interest in your in your business ventures and what were you kind of uh interested in in that duration of 10 years? Money, traveling, uh luxury. I I made a lot of money. I had a private jet and I
8. 02:26 was I was a kid. Wow. And so I got lured in and baited by the the luxuries and the the hedonistic lifestyle that uh that became available to me. It's very tempting. And the academic or intellectual world is as as thrilling and as adventurous as anything the
9. 02:52 external world can offer. But it is usually mired in in poverty and I mean even if you're unless you are an extremely prominent intellectual public intellectual and so on and and at the same time a good businessman who monetizes you monetize your fame and
10. 03:12 celebrity in many ways you merchandise yourself. Unless you are this type most academics that I know including absolute geniuses are are poor. They're simply poor. And I grew up in a slum and um I have
11. 03:31 disavowed poverty forever. I decided that I will never ever be poor again. It's a kind of deformation, character deformation if you wish. So I regard I regard money as um as a safe or secure base and at the same time I regard money as a sign of
12. 03:53 the universe's love for me an expression of the universe's love kind of. So in my case and in the case of many people who grew up poor, impoverished um these kind of people who were deprived of of material possessions, deprived of the certainty that comes
13. 04:11 with money, deprived of constantly living in a state of anxiety and fear, handtomouth, check to check. You know, these kind of people grow up and they develop a pathology when it comes to money. They begin to regard money not in in um materialistic terms but they begin
14. 04:31 to regard money in emotional terms. They sorry like a video game where you have to get the next reward in the next level and then just the next there is the element of competitiveness. No, I'm talking about much more something much more profound. They develop an emotional
15. 04:47 relationship with money. They have a love affair with money. They regard money as a maternal substitute, a mother. They regard money as proof of God's love for them or the universe's love for them. So they experience money the same way a child would experience
16. 05:03 his or her mother. You know, they get attached to money. They develop attachment. So it's much more profound than merely accumulating money or the competitive side or the ambitious side or the status or the luxury. These are the symptoms. The disease is much much more much deeper.
17. 05:24 The disease or the pathology is emotionalizing money, beginning to have an emotional relationship with money, the same way you would have with another human being, another person. And this is why people with a lot of money also have severe difficulties in
18. 05:42 interpersonal relationships because they are already in love. They're already in love with money. So, they can't be in love with people. You have to choose whether Your main love is money or your main love is people, other people, your intimate partner, your children. And if
19. 06:01 you love money in the emotional sense, if you're attached emotionally to money, if you are cafeffected, the the clinical term is cexis, emotional, psychic investment in money, then at that point you would find it very difficult to relate to other people in a
20. 06:20 similar way because you're already committed. you are in a committed relationship and your your your partner your intimate partner is money. You know, I I I I kind of have to kind of probe you here a little bit like um a person who as you mentioned that who came out
21. 06:39 of the slums of Israel. Isn't that the most defensive mechanism or the strategy that one must have in order to come out of it? And isn't that also kind of like human to do that to well I mean not not everyone who who grows up in Islam or in poverty not
22. 06:58 everyone actually the majority do not develop a compulsion to obtain money or they strive they work hard in order to secure basic needs and to not be intigent and yeah that that's a common behavior But when it becomes compulsive, when it excludes other emotional
23. 07:20 attachments, when it narrows and constricts your life into a single pursuit, when you experience heartbreak when you lose money and euphoria when you make money, in other words, when you have emotional reactions, then this is a sign of pathology. Simply a sign of pathology.
24. 07:39 Money of course brings a sense of safety. Money brings freedom. No one is underestimating the benefits of having money. But the people who pursue money obsessively and compulsively, they're not interested in money at all. The money is in the bank. They never see the
25. 07:58 money, never touch the money. Many of them don't even spend the money. I mean, they buy this, they buy that, but it's it's not about the money. It's about the the presence of money in their lives is a sign if you wish from the from reality or from the world or from the
26. 08:17 universe or from God. A sign that um you know they are chosen. They are loved. They are cared for. They're safe. It's it's an infantile reaction. It's the way an infant would react to the presence of his or her mother. The Protestants, the Puritans in the 17th
27. 08:41 century, the guys and girls who established the United States among others, they believed that um being successful in business, making money is a sign of God's blessing and God's grace. They said that rich people are blessed by God and poor people are shunned by
28. 09:01 God. It's a sign of God which is quite opposed to the which is quite opposed to the original view of Christianity where like the doors of God are open for the poor and u it's it's a it's a it's an inversion an inversion of the message of Jesus Christ who said
29. 09:18 that the meek the meek shall inherit the earth the earth and that it would be very difficult for a rich guy to end up in heaven. He said it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than from a rich person to to end up in heaven. So yes, it's an
30. 09:34 inversion of the original um message of of at that time it was not Christianity. It was a Jewish sect. So a message of the Jewish sect. It's an inversion. But it had to do a lot with a belief in predestination. Calvinism, the Calvinist belief in predestination. And
31. 09:55 so whatever whatever happens to you in life has been predecided by God. God is God micromanages your life. So if you make money, it means that God's hand is is involved. Somehow God is involved in this. And why would God give you money? Because he loves you. Because he's
32. 10:14 chosen you. Otherwise, why would he give you money? It's according to the Puritan thinking. There's no other way you could have you could have made money except with God's intervention. God needed to intervene for you to make money. But then this implies intentionality on the
33. 10:32 part of God. It means God wants you to make money. Why would he want you to make money? Because you are you belong to the good guys. You're you're an angel. So and all this is predestined according to Calvinism. There's not much you can do about it. It's all written in
34. 10:48 advance in the big scrolls and books of divinity. So it's the Puritan creed and
35. 10:57 Protestantism more in in general were a malignant form of Christianity because Protestantism for example introduced narcissism into religion. What Protestantism said, Lutheranism to be more precise, what Martin Luther said was that there's no need for mediation
36. 11:18 between you and God. You have a direct relationship with God. You can talk to God directly. You can pray to him directly. You can manipulate God somehow. You can, you know, you you have a you have a relationship with God the same way you have a relationship with
37. 11:33 your best friend or something. And this of course is an extremely grandio notion because it kind of equalizes you with gold in a way. You're negoti your co your collaborators. There's a collusion here. You're you're negotiating things. You're bargaining. It's it's something
38. 11:52 that is and by the way this is also the the perception of of Judaism. In Judaism, you can see many of of the Jewish patriarchs, for example, Moses, who constantly negotiate with God and argue with God and disagree with God and, you know, God changes his mind and
39. 12:10 they manipulate God and they intercede on behalf of other people with God and Abraham and Moses and all. So, Puritanism is much closer to Judaism, which would have horrified Martin Luther because Martin Luther was an anti anti-semite. He hated the Jews, you
40. 12:27 know. But Protestantism is a direct extension of of Judaism much more than Catholicism. Catholicism is paganism in effect is is kind of paganism. It it includes numerous elements of pagan Rome and to some extent ancient Greece. While you can't find a trace of this in
41. 12:47 Protestantism, it's a purified religion, so-called religion. But on the other hand, Protestantism elevated the individual. And of course, here you see the impact of the Renaissance. In the Renaissance, the individual became the main agent. The individual was
42. 13:05 empowered. And so, Protestantism borrowed this concept from the Renaissance because they were cerminous. They happened at the same time. They cross-fed intellectually. So, Protestantism is the religion of the individual. Exactly as renaissance was the
43. 13:24 philosophy of the individual. Exactly as liberal democracy is the politics of the individual. Exactly like capitalism is the the uh economic activity of the individual. The individual became the organizing principle of everything. Right? And it was a short step away from this to
44. 13:47 narcissism and malignant individualism because if you are the agent, if you're the center, if you're the most important thing, if everything revolves around you, if you know, then you know, why not feel godlike? Why not, you know, and that's how narcissism actually started.
45. 14:04 The modern version of narcissism, that's exactly how it started. a confluence of the Renaissance, capitalism and Protestantism as Weber had described in his work about the Protestant work ethic. So this is how I see the historical emergence of narcissism. Now,
46. 14:24 of course, with the with the aid of technology, narcissism is taking over and not individualism, not even the Renaissance version of individual, not even the the chosen, the god-chosen individual, but the individual as God, the individual as God, empowered totally, apotheiois,
47. 14:47 divinity. The individual is now a deity. and and narcissism is the first distributed religion. It's a religion that reflects of course the technological metaphors of the time. So the technological metaphor nowadays is the network. So narcissism is a network
48. 15:06 religion because every narcissist is simultaneously a god and a worshipper. The narcissist worships his false self. The the false self is the narcissist primitive god and the narcissist is at the same time the false self. There's a merger. The narcissist is the false self and
49. 15:33 also worships the false self. So every narcissist is a god and a church and a cult. So you have like um 8 billion narcissists, let's say. And so you have 8 billion gods. Polytheism is restored 8 billion gods and they worship themselves and they try to convert you. It's a
50. 15:54 missionary religion because they try to convert you. They want you to admire them. They want you to worship them. So a narcissist would try to convert you to become a believer. It's a new faith. And this is the religion of the future. That's a religion of the future.
51. 16:12 I think the two religions that will survive in the future would be Islam and and narcissism basically masquerading narcissism masquerading as Christianity is you know but essentially narcissism and Islam the alternative is Islam and it has its own interesting
52. 16:32 features and and so on so forth. I don't know if you want to go into it. It's up to you. You you're the boss. But maybe Sure. Sure. Maybe there I would I would love to probe you there. But like first I want to kind of uh get into some of the uh reflections on what you what you
53. 16:47 just mentioned because it was it was quite provoking on some certain grounds like um you so you were in jail once when you
54. 16:59 read about the u um the whole structure and framework of narcissism almost you mentioned it was like Hollywood movies that you smuggled books in in scale and and it was quite romantic in a certain manner. So um and you also said in one of your talks that uh if you are goal
55. 17:19 oriented this is an orientation that will guarantee failure. Uh only uh the only reason to improve yourself is yourself. Nothing external, not money, not your mates, children, not your nation but you. Right? So I guess my my question is much more rooted into the mediation
56. 17:42 aspect of things like in a constructive to form a constructive solution to this problem because I personally have went through c some of these species called narcissists like you define right and uh like at first I I totally trusted them because I was fooled honestly and I
57. 18:03 think that this is kind of like a human nature to trust also and and they were so well done. I mean the act was done perfectly that I but then the switch of the character when it came to me it was very difficult to digest at first. Right. So um are we doomed or is there
58. 18:24 like some hope there as how do you see that? Because in the business sense we we all have to team up and work together essentially to form some common goals, right? But if if if a company or a corporation is full of narcissists and uh what about a
59. 18:43 Socrates? What about a Plato in there or or maybe a Jimmyi Hendris, right? Um, like I think they're done. I mean, so I I would love your thoughts on this part a little bit. Like first of all, what uh what to you you and and me might be an evolution or a
60. 19:07 revolution. So the new generations will be the new normal. They would say nothing strange about it, nothing outstanding. Every transformation leaves leaves one generation baffled and perplexed and the other generation indifferent and insucient because
61. 19:30 uh narcissism is becoming the organizing principle of modern societies and modern cultures. Narcissism is not only an organizing principle but it is hermeneutic principle. In other words, it has explanatory power. You can use narcissism or the the concept of the
62. 19:48 percepts of pathological narcissism to make sense of your life. You you've just done this. You've exactly did this right now because you said you applied your knowledge of narcissism such as it is to your interactions with specific people. So it
63. 20:04 made sense. Narcissism made sense of your life. So Nazism has a lot of power to organize life, to structure it, to introduce order, predictability. Um, even to some extent narcissism is normative. There are norms associated with narcissism. You may
64. 20:22 disagree with them. You may find them antisocial and abrasive and so on, but there are norms. Narcissism is normative. And narcissism is has explanatory power. So someone who's born nowadays, someone who's born today would would be growing into a narcissistically infused
65. 20:45 environment. Uh the political leaders are narcissists. People in entertainment and show business are narcissist. Chief executive officers of companies are narcissist. Narcissism is a positive adaptation in the sense that the more narcissistic you are, the more you are
66. 21:00 rewarded and accomplished and so on. And so children who are born today would regard narcissism as a natural aspect of human uh interactions and a foundational cornerstone of modern postmodern society and culture. They would see nothing strange in it, nothing deviant, nothing
67. 21:23 pathological. They would maybe regard empathy as a kind of weakness the way Elon Musk suggested. They would regard um um altruism and and charity as wasteful a wasteful misallocation of resources. They may even opt for eugenics and um worse. No. In other words, what to you and me
68. 21:54 appears to be an aberration or an innovation or a transformation or a revolution or whatever to someone born today um in 20 years time would appear to be the normal thing and everything else would appear to be apparent and deviant and so on. So in
69. 22:17 psychology there we don't believe in dividing mental processes into right and wrong good or bad. I'll give you an example. I would ask you do you think depression is a bad thing? And you would answer in all probability yes depression is a bad thing.
70. 22:35 But in all probability, of course, you can if you work very hard and if you spend the next two hours thinking about it, you may come up with a single situation where depression is a good thing. But by and large, Gorso, depression is considered to be a bad
71. 22:51 thing. I know that it is considered to be a bad thing because we medicate against it. We're trying to mitigate it. So, however, that is not true. It's not a bad thing and it's not a good thing. in Awitz in a concentration camp. Yes. If you are not depressed then you're mentally
72. 23:11 ill. Depression in Aitz is a healthy response is the right response. So it depends on context. Narcissism in the world I was born into was counterproductive, destructive, dysfunctional. Narcissism in the future would be a positive thing, a positive adaptation.
73. 23:40 It would add to people's self-efficacy, maybe even bring them happiness. It all depends on the context. So the focus should not be in my view on narcissism or on narcissists, but the focus should be on our changing civilization. Everything in human nature is ultimately
74. 24:05 reactive. Everything in human biology is ultimately reactive. We are all reacting to changing environments. Narcissism is not a coincidence, an incident or an accident. It's an adaptation and the more the civilization changes, the more the adaptation becomes positive.
75. 24:28 So in a civilization which values competitiveness, ambition, worth r worth r worth r worth r worth r worth r worth r worth r worth r worth r worth ruth worthlessness, callousness, disempathy, um selfishness, malignant individualism as I call it and so on. In such a
76. 24:45 civilization, it's very um not helpful to not be a narcissist.
77. 24:54 So in 2016 in July the f the important science magazine New Scientist had a cover story and the cover story was read uh parents teach your children to be narcissist. So narcissism in the discourse outside clinical psychology, narcissism is a value
78. 25:21 judgment saying narcissism is bad, is horrible, should be eradicated, should be fought against, should be resisted. And this is not psychology. This is religion. This is morality. It's a morality play. Narcissists are all bad. So that makes us all good. It's bad
79. 25:39 versus evil. It's the oldest story in the book. But that's not how psychology regards narcissism. In every single narcissist, pathological narcissism was a positive adaptation in early childhood. It allowed the child to survive and to function and to grow
80. 26:01 up. So narcissism, pathological narism starts off as a survival strategy and a coping strategy. And then it is carry carried on into adulthood. Let me put it to you in a simpler way. Imagine that Donald Trump comes to me and I tell him don you know we are like
81. 26:26 good friends. Don listen sure go. Don't listen. I tell him, I have uh diagnosed you with narcissistic personality disorder. And that's really seriously bad news for you because narcissistic personality disorder is almost psychosis. It's really bad. It's destru
82. 26:46 self-defeating, self-destructive. It's the the it's involves fantasy, dysfunctional defenses. It destroys your interpersonal relationships. It's poison. You need help. You need treatment. Donald Trump would say, "Why do I need treatment? I've had the most beautiful
83. 27:09 women on earth. I'm a multi-billionaire. I am a a twice elected president of the United States. If you're right, and I do have narcissistic personality disorder, it's the best thing that has ever happened to me. It allowed me to accomplish everything. have I've accomplished. It
84. 27:29 made me the man that I am or the person that I am, a super hyper accomplished person. What incentive would Donald Trump have to treat his narcissism or to to abolish it? None. Nor would I offer it to him. He's happy golucky and he's super functional more than most people. M
85. 27:52 so is it that that part of the DSM that you're referring to that if one is functional then I don't have a say in it essentially like it's not only in the DSM but it's the philosophy of of um clinical psychology that if the patient satisfies or potential patient the
86. 28:08 client satisfies two conditions one is essentially egoonic egoon means you're comfortable with who you are you're happy or content with your life. You were not complaining about anything. Everything is fine. Condition number one. Condition number
87. 28:26 two that you function well, reasonably well, as could be expected in a variety of settings at the workplace, in family, church, neighbors, colleagues, friends. So if you function well and you're happy with who you are, why would we intervene? If it ain't broke, don't fix
88. 28:45 it. Why would we intervene? Even take a psychotic person. A psychotic person, someone who has psychosis, hallucinations, hears voices, sees things that are not there, totally divorced from reality, is hyperrelexive. Hyperreflexivity means he misidentifies
89. 29:05 internal objects with external objects. The internal with the external, it confuses. So this is the ultimate devastation in mental illness like psychosis, schizophrenia. That's the worst you can get. But there are cultures and societies and there are
90. 29:22 periods in history where psychotic people were considered the elite because there was a belief that they are in direct contact with God. Right. Right. Right. These are the people who established all religions. No exception. This is also prevalent in many Indian um
91. 29:42 cultures like I mean a lot of people like for instance uh Ramak Krishna Paramhansa is one of the saints where I come from in Kolkata, India and uh I I think a modern psychiatrist would call him completely insane and uh but he was way more functional than many. So um and
92. 30:02 and in many societies and cultures these people are admired they're revered. So they revered as prophets as you know and so psychosis in itself is not something you need to treat. It depends crucially on how the person is coping with the psychosis and how what about
93. 30:24 pain? Sorry, what about pain? For instance, if I may just like I mean probe into the part of depression like you mentioned like I I know that like yesterday you had a video on on BPD and you and I just want to kind of like that's why I take another illness like
94. 30:39 for instance let's say bipolar depression which is also 2% of the world like kind of have it and um the there are certain amounts of um pain associated with the patient like they have go through periods of mania where it's becoming like they're going super
95. 30:56 fast or something like that and then there is depression when they feel um they can't wake up from their bed. This pain is very real. This is a real phenomenon. Well, I've just said you need to satisfy two conditions. One is that you're happy. So, you can't have pain and be
96. 31:13 happy. Sure. First condition is to be happy. Second condition is to be functional. Both of them. You you need to have both of them. If the if the if the person is both both happy and functional, no need for treatment of any kind. But the person
97. 31:31 needs to be happy. Of course, a person who is in pain but functional needs treatment. A person who is not in pain is happy but dysfunctional needs treatment. I see. But a person who is happy and functional does not need treatment. Regardless of the diagnosis
98. 31:49 does not need treatment. These are the tests. So as as you said there is a psychotic there and he's a guru and you know he's super functional and everything. Why would we treat someone like that? There is a narcissist probably a malignant narcissist and he's
99. 32:05 the richest man in the world Elon Musk. Why would we treat him? There's another narcissist. He's president of the United States. Why would I treat him? How can I improve his life? I don't understand. He accomplished everything he ever wanted.
100. 32:16 He's happy. He thinks he's great. is in which way would I improve his life? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um may maybe we can just uh like switch a little bit of gears on the on the on the uh diagnostic side and and also regarding how the centralized medicine exactly takes in
101. 32:36 mental disorders and categorizes them and then defines criterion of diagnosis and then treatment. uh like why don't you like I mean tell us a little bit about regular depression bipolar disorder and the very fact that like I mean from what I have learned is that
102. 32:53 like there are certain kind of illnesses on which you don't have a solution you just can't manage some of this stuff so um like what are your viewpoints on the on where centralized medicine is talking about and then they keep you on the on a certain kind of medic medic medication
103. 33:10 routine for for like a maintenance medication routine and uh how how would you reflect on that? First of all, uh clinical psychology and clinical practice are mostly geared to tackle with the problems of mentally healthy people. So mentally healthy people go to
104. 33:34 therapy because they suddenly are depressed or but overall these are mentally healthy people. Mentally ill people rarely go to therapy. They most of them tend to deny their condition, reframe it somehow. And so they rarely attend therapy. And when they do attend
105. 33:57 therapy, it's in coercive settings in a mental asylum or they were sent by the court or they are in prison. You know, they or the wife is threatening to divorce them. So they go they they attend therapy or something you know. So it's coercive when it comes to mental
106. 34:16 illness. Not I wouldn't generalize. I wouldn't say that 100% of mentally ill people but sure it's pretty prevalent. The people who do go to therapy the people who do attend therapy are mentally healthy. The same way that you go to a doctor when something's wrong with you
107. 34:34 but most of the time you're okay. You don't go to a doctor. Most of the time you would go to a doctor because something has changed, something is wrong. So that's point number one. Point number two, the overwhelming vast majority of mental health mental illness or mental health
108. 34:52 conditions have no cure or solution of any kind. The best we can do is modify behaviors to some extent. We can do this in the in borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder. Even we can modify some behaviors. We can use pharmac
109. 35:16 pharmacologic agents, drugs. We can use them to control moods usually and to eliminate um the symptoms of psychosis. These are the great the two great achievements of psychopharmarmacology. mood control and um also we have certain medicines that can affect uh ADHD and
110. 35:43 similar neurobiological conditions. But when you look at the at the big picture, it's dismal and abysmal. We have no solutions, no techniques, no cures, no medications, no kind of treatment modality or talk therapy that is efficacious with almost anything.
111. 36:07 So psychotic people, they should take they should take antiscychotics for the rest of their lives and the antiscychotics essentially zombify them. They become zombies. People with bipolar disorder can medicate against the mood swings or the cycle, the mood cycling, the the
112. 36:28 mania and depression, can prevent the manic phase and ostensibly help with the depression. But it's also for life. It's also for life. all the others ADHD they can take stimulants like aderole or vitiline
113. 36:50 and that's more or less it this is why there's a huge excitement with psychedelics like ketamis to ask you about psychedelics there's a huge excitement because maybe we found maybe we found the antibiotics of the mind maybe we finally came across a class of
114. 37:07 substances that can effectively medicate against depression and anxiety and personality disorders and maybe we found finally the biochemical molecular key that we've been looking for for so long. Yes. uh we were we were uh talking about psychedelics and it's a very very very
115. 37:28 interesting topic which I really wanted to discuss with you because I have been studying a little bit about this because now it's a very very hot topic in academia and everybody's speaking about psychedelics magic mushrooms um then um so yes yes yes um what are your thoughts on
116. 37:49 psychedelics and uh like there must be some kind of fashion with which like like there was a time when we couldn't solve uh lot of problems like uh let's say typhoid right and uh other kind of physical diseases which which we had no clue about and people just had to die
117. 38:10 right like pox chickenpox uh small pox for instance polio um so what after further investigation as time passes by I Did we really hit a a a milestone here where we found something? We don't know yet, but there are philosophical problems involved um which
118. 38:33 precede the the question whether psychedelics actually work or not. And the first philosophical question is whether psychological illnesses, mental illnesses are illnesses of the body. And in this sense the mind is just um an emergent phenomenon an
119. 38:54 epiphenomenon. The mind emerges from the body. So if you treat the body indirectly you're treating the mind. In other words, this school of thought uh in psychology, the medical school u believe they believe that there is no such thing as mind that everything is is the
120. 39:17 body that we call it the mind because we have a direct experience of it. We introspect, we have consciousness and so on. But actually what we call the mind is just our internal experience of 100% bodily processes. So if these are mere body processes, then yeah, we could
121. 39:41 conceivably find medications and drugs which would eliminate eradicate mental illness because they would be able to affect the bodily processes that give rise to mental illness. And this is one approach. The other approach is a dualistic approach.
122. 40:00 And it it is an approach that says that psychological illnesses and conditions cannot be reduced to the body. They are non-reductible. They're non-reducible. While the first attitude is a reductionist attitude, the second attitude is non-reductionist. So it says
123. 40:19 that psychological processes are inherently distinct from bodily processes. Psychological processes happen in the in the body. They occur in the body. They also use the body's hardware and the body's wet wear and the body's software, but they are distinct
124. 40:37 from from them. In which way they are distinct? That's a problem that has not been solved yet. There's no answer to that. And since the car in the 16th 17th century, there's still a huge debate mind the mind body problem, you know, body still the there's still a huge
125. 40:57 debate about the the ostensible connections between body and and mind. Is there such a thing as mind and and so on so forth. And so we need to resolve this philosophical conundrum before we answer the question whether any class of medications can actually eliminate or
126. 41:16 help with mental illness. The second problem we have is a problem of correlation and causation. We know that mental illness is highly and closely correlated with processes which are neurobiological. We know that. We know that when you have borderline personality disorder, you
127. 41:36 have brain abnormalities. When you have antisocial personality disorders, when you're a psychopath, your brain is very different. We know that um in bipolar disorder, there's a biochemical cascade in the brain which we have identified fully. So we know that schizophrenia of
128. 41:55 course depression even although in depression lately there are there's a big debate whether we got it completely wrong but how how is that there's a big debate because we discovered that serotonin is uh not associated with depression as we as we used to think so
129. 42:13 all this class of serotonin uh reuptake inhibitors I mean probably is based on mis misconception completely And it's probably a placebo placebo effect. But going back to the to your question, so we know that there is a correlation between mental mental states
130. 42:32 and bodily processes, but we don't know what is the connection between them. For example, we know that the psychopath has a brain that is substantially different to the brain of a healthy person. But we don't know whether the psychopath is born with such a brain or whether the
131. 42:53 brain of the psychopath is altered or changed by the psychopathy. So we don't know if a lifelong of psychopathy maybe changes your brain dramatically because we don't test the brains of newborns. We don't test the brains of of uh toddlers and infants. We don't do that. And so we
132. 43:15 have zero information about what kind of brain the psychopath is born with. We have a lot of information about the adult brain, the the brain of the adult psychopath, but not about the brain of the child who would become a psychopath later in life. One main reason of course
133. 43:35 is we cannot predict. We cannot predict which baby will become a narcissist, which baby will become a psychopath. So there's no point in testing the total population. So it's a big mess. This problem of correlation and causation is a very serious hindrance or obstacle
134. 43:54 because if there is no causation, if the bodily processes just reflect underlying psychological processes but they don't cause them, then no drug and no medicine would have any long-term impact or healing impact or cure will never become a cure.
135. 44:15 Because if the bodily processes do not cause the mental processes then changing the bodily processes will not change the mental processes. If however whatever happens in the body causes the mental states and the mental illness then of course
136. 44:33 changing the body using medications will change the mental illness will affect it. So we need to resolve these philosophical conundrums long before we tackle the issue of whether this particular drug or that particular drug would be the magic bullet or the the
137. 44:51 panacea. More specifically to psychedelics, there are strong indications that psychedelics would be useful in depression and anxiety. There are some indications that psychedelics allow people to gain experiences which are otherwise blocked. So for example, we
138. 45:12 know that people with narcissistic personality disorder who have consumed ketamine and other psychedelics, psilocybin, we know that they have experienced empathy and probably for the first time in their lives they've experienced empathy. This is an experience that is
139. 45:30 blocked, that is not available to someone with narcissistic personality disorder. So the psychedelics allow them to experience things that they would otherwise never experience. But to generalize and say that this is a magic cure and we found the the solution to all mental
140. 45:51 illnesses, we are extremely far from that. And there are many reasons. In some countries, psychedelics are illegal, outlawed. In other countries, the problem is the protocol. We still don't know what are the optimal quantities, how long they should be
141. 46:07 taken, whether it's a lifelong thing. So you need maintenance sessions all the time whether it's a one-off whether what are the what are the mechanisms the the brain pathways and and which which neurotransmitters and neurom modulators are involved. We are at the very
142. 46:27 beginning and inception of this field and the inflated hyperbolic grandio claims made even by neuroscientists they reflect very poorly on these people. They're not serious. These people are not serious. Unfortunately in modern day science in current science
143. 46:49 contemporary people want to become famous. They want to become celebrities. even scientists. So scientists exaggerate, they lie, they falsify, they they go into hyperbole, they make unfounded claims and statements. It's a sorry site. This situation is really really bad. You have
144. 47:12 a psychologist conducting an a study of 12 people and then he comes out with bombastic statements about a mental health condition that has been studied for 150 years. 12 people study of 12 people. You have um you have a neuroscientist who studies 30 people
145. 47:32 30 and makes claims about uh the brain and the connection of the brain to this and to that and how is going to change and solve the you have u the same phenomena in in in biochemistry and the same phenomenon and today the drive to make money to become famous an instant
146. 47:53 celebrity an influencer and so on is so wrong that it has completely corrupted and contaminated science completely and you cannot trust what scientists say today. You absolutely cannot. I grew up in an environment where I trusted scientists as if they
147. 48:11 were gods. Scientists said something end of story. I believed I believed I believed the peer review. I believed all the rigorous controls. I believed the falsifi falsifiability of the theory. I knew that there were checks and balances that would prevent but today I can't
148. 48:29 trust. So when new studies come out I bother to download them to go through all the the methodology that how many people were involved in and something like 90% of the time I find trash. Indeed in psychology 80% 80% of the results of studies cannot be
149. 48:55 replicated. This is known as the replication crisis. They cannot be replicated because they were trashed to begin with. I think 85% of the uh papers from humanities were never even cited once. Uh one of the studies it's a mess. But not only humanities. No, we have a similar
150. 49:13 situation in physics. I'm a physicist. I have a PhD in physics and I developed my own theory in physics. You have a similar situation in physics where physicists come out with a with the craziest claims just to gain some exposure some to be on television to
151. 49:28 talk to the media, you know, or social media. And you have psychology is devolving, not evolving but devolving into some kind of mysticism. All kinds of theories that can never be tested, never can never be falsified. All kinds of nonsense, you know, it's
152. 49:47 flooded, physics is flooded with trash and nonsense nowadays. A few about a week ago, or was it two weeks ago, a group of scientists from Cambridge University, Cambridge University is up there, you know, one of the five best in the world. I teach in an institute
153. 50:04 affiliated, so a disclaimer, I teach in a post-graduate institute in Cambridge. So, but still a group of scientists from Cambridge University announced that they found traces of life on an exoplanet. There were there's a molecule on Earth associated on Earth only, mind
154. 50:25 you, which is a limited sample to use a British understatement. But on Earth, this molecule is associated only with life. Okay? So they claimed that they found such a molecule on another planet on an exoplanet. Immediately there was a media circus. They went on every
155. 50:44 conceivable television all over the world. They became instant celebrities, superstars until until a team from Oxford, the competing university, had a go at their raw data and found out that it was all complete nonsense. They failed. They failed to use the most
156. 51:08 basic statistical tools. For example, significance tools. They failed to use these tools. It was trash. Not science, pseudocience. Cambridge University. Who on earth can you trust anymore? You know, so all these studies with psychedelics are conducted outside
157. 51:28 academia. Most of them, not all but like 90% of these studies are conducted outside academ controls no control groups in the majority of them. They're conducted on small tiny samples which are not representative. They are self- selecting samples. Many of these people have used
158. 51:48 psychedelics before which is very bad news because the previous use of psychedelics may have changed their brains or conditioned them somehow. We have competing protocols. Some scientists say you need to give it once. Some scientists need say you need to
159. 52:03 have maintenance sessions all the time. So we can't even compare what's happening because they don't adhere to a single protocol which would allow replication and comparison. It's chaotic. It's a chaotic scene. Having said all this, clearly ketamine, other
160. 52:24 psychedelics have a beneficial effect in depression and anxiety that I think is established beyond doubt. Definitely psychedelics are more efficacious in depression than anti-depressants. That is I also think is established beyond doubt. all the
161. 52:42 other claim anxiety maybe to some extent I think also in anxiety but otherwise I think all the all the claims are inflated hyperbolic and un unsubstantiated at this stage I'm a great believer that psychedelics
162. 53:00 um can be a a change agent a transformative agent I think when a narciss if a narcissist experiences connection to another human being even once it could have a bial icial impact long-term I believe that but it's a belief and belief has no place in
163. 53:18 science it's not a scientific statement what I say what about an engineering kind of an attitude towards it like for instance like so far like on this theme that we are discussing like let's say that like there is a body aspect of it which if we probe into something and we get
164. 53:36 something out there and sometimes it works sometimes like we just understood that it's a the whole depression phenomenon with with serotonin was a placebo and then there is a mind aspect of it like there have been miracles where people have changed radically over
165. 53:52 a very short period of time just by the power of the mind right and I don't know what to tell you this is a this is a foundational debate in in psychology as a medical school or medicalization school which which um started with vund and even Freud Freud was a kind of
166. 54:13 medical guy. He he was a neurologist and so on and he believed that there is a mechanics of the mind, the physics of mind. That's why you call it psychoanalysis. So you have this essentially psychoanalysis is essentially a medical school because in psychoanalysis you
167. 54:28 have energies and the the basal concept of psychoanalysis is energy. You have psychic energy and this psychic energy is discharged and accumulated and so it's all a very physical model. It's a physical model and you have the non the nonphysical or non um medical approach
168. 54:49 which says that psychological processes are so complex that even if they are connected to bodily processes we would never or it would take a long time before we are able to reduce them to bodily processes. It's a little like genetics. In genetics, a single gene in the vast
169. 55:11 majority of cases has zero impact. But if you take an array of genes, if you take like 50,000 genes or whatever, then you get something. You get blue eyes, you get, you know, whatever. Everything you see in a human body is the outcome of of a collaboration between multiple
170. 55:28 genes. It's extremely rare for a single gene to manifest. Usually in in disease, you have single genes there. So it shows you that the normal state is a collaboration between multiple genes only when when you are diseased when you're sick it's something's wrong with one gene.
171. 55:47 So the same way you can you can view the mind. The mind is the synergetic outcome
172. 55:57 of a collaboration between dozens maybe hundreds maybe thousands of processes, molecules and pathways in the body. Are we in a are we in a condition right now? Are we in a state that we can identify all these thousands of collaborating and colluding components
173. 56:16 and ingredients? No, we are extremely far from that. For example, until very recently, we were not aware that the vast majority, the biggest quantity of serotonin is not produced in the brain, but in the intestines, the gut. Okay. Yeah. It's new. It's a new discovery.
174. 56:35 So, what do we know? We are nothing. We're ignorant. Until recently, we were not aware that spinal fluid cleanses the brain every night. We were not aware of that. There is an irrigation system, an iritary system that cleanses the brain. And when this fluid passes through the
175. 56:56 brain, you dream. That's when dreams occur. Right? We were not aware of that. We didn't know that until 10 years ago. So to say, "Wait a minute. Um, I know everything about depression. Depression is serotonine or this is dopamine or this is extremely arrogant. and
176. 57:19 counterfactual. It stands to reason that something like narcissistic personality disorder, which affects emotions and cognitions and you name it. It affects everything, behaviors, I mean, you name it, it stands to reason that narcissistic personality disorder
177. 57:35 involves everything in the body, but I mean like everything. The intestine, the gut, the the brain, the the spine, the you name it. I think thousands of processes in the body are involved in the production in the emergence of narcissistic personality disorder. It's
178. 57:52 what we call epiphenomenon. It emerges from an underlying substrate. Are we in a position to say that we can identify all these processes in the body that give rise to narcissistic personality disorder? Not even extremely remotely. Like we haven't even begun, you know.
179. 58:11 So and we have entered a territory recently recently I mean in the last 20 years but definitely in the last 5 years where we are discovering medications and we have no idea how they work. So for example SGLT SGLT is a class of med anti anti-diabetic
180. 58:31 medication we have no idea how they work. I mean we know what they do but we don't know how they do it. Similarly the famous drugs or zmpic and the drugs the the drugs for is also one of them right the weight loss drugs lithium I'm sorry lithium lithium
181. 58:51 lithium lithium is is anti-depressant uh but it's no longer used because it's toxic but um we have we have now weight loss drugs and um we know how they work
182. 59:07 but we have no idea how they do it. So now we're beginning to use drugs that are a bit like a cazasino. We know that they work, but we have no idea how they work. Consequently, we have no idea what are the side effects and what may happen in 10 years if you consume them or 20.
183. 59:25 It's extremely reckless. The whole environment is reckless and contaminated because it's driven by money, of course. And that was the main argument against the COVID vaccines. I'm a pro vaccine. I I'm a provax. Don't misunderstand. I'm completely I was completely for the
184. 59:43 COVID vaccine. But to claim that we knew everything about it, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Do we know what are the side effects? And absolutely not. We need another 20 years. Maybe then we will became extremely political after a point of time. It was political. It was
185. 60:02 also fear, terror because COVID was killing millions of people. I mean ultimately when I weighed the risks of COVID with the risks of of the vaccine I said okay I I will I will I'm pro vaccine because there was something more dangerous than the vaccine but the
186. 60:18 vaccine is dangerous of course it is it's only less dangerous than COVID that's all. So all this arrogance, there's a newfound arrogance, a hubris. In other words, narcissism, grandio narcissism in science and medicine driven by money, ambition,
187. 60:43 celebrity. It's the field is totally corrupt. Totally corrupt. And that's why people, simple people, laymen, not people like me who have doctorates and access to the knowledge, but simple people, they lost trust in science. They lost trust in authorities and
188. 61:03 institutions because they're they're not stupid. They're simple, but they're not stupid. They see the corruption. They ask themselves questions. Not all these questions are conspiracy theories, you know. So that's a long way of telling you psychedelics look promising. But do we
189. 61:23 know anything about them? Close to zero. Close to nothing. We know that they have some impact in depression and anxiety. End of story. And I'm being I'm being generous. Charitable. Even that is debatable. Right. Right. Right. Interesting.
190. 61:48 Yes, I I actually kind of also wanted to talk about uh your work in in in the chronon field theory. Um like um but maybe before going there like I just want to kind of let you finish the riff on on on um the psych the extension of psychedelics with with all these
191. 62:06 ailments that we have right now talked and the amount of pain that is already there which is which is kind of very very existential right and all of this kind of always boils down into knowledge like if we have the knowledge we will be able to solve it and every passing day
192. 62:26 we are definitely getting some more of it a little more of it but we we somehow don't have the the basic fundamentals like I I want to take one of the one of the tangents from here like if you if you consider a technology like neural link right uh how do you exactly kind of
193. 62:43 put it in your framework like for instance if I if I make a thought experiment right let's imagine that I have one wire in in in in my brain right which is uh related to my vision right and then there is another wire related to what I hear then there is another
194. 63:00 wire taste and then every single things and and it's much more more complicated and there are probably millions of these wires right what if I put one of these wires with one of your wires and connect them right and uh how how would you see would you would
195. 63:17 see 50% of the times how I see the world and I feel the world and 50% of the times how you feel the world and so would I. I doubt it very much. I think it would be possible in the in the future, not the near future, but in the future it would be possible, of course,
196. 63:34 to transfer data from your brain to my brain. I'm quite convinced this would be possible. Yeah. However, this data would be filtered through my emotional membranes, cognitive membranes, personal history, memories, and so on. So I could obtain your thoughts for
197. 63:54 example, maybe I could even obtain data about your emotions, but immediately my defenses, my autobiography, my memories, my emotions, my resistances, my my my equipment will take over. It's um not like computers where you can transfer data from one computer to the
198. 64:19 other and both of them would interpret the data identically because they are identical. They're clones. But we are not clones. We are not clones. Not even when we are born. Now we know that when we are born we are born with you know 10% of personality
199. 64:36 already quite a lot. Templates for language, templates for emotion, recognition of faces. we immediately recognize mother's face and so on. So we are born with equipment and uh we are very very dissimilar and we grow more dissimilar with time to the point that we are
200. 64:55 idiosyncratic. We are unique and so any data that will come from you would be immediately reframed, falsified, changed, transformed, rewritten, reinvented, you name it. So that I am the one who is experiencing it, not you anymore. You could in theory have two
201. 65:16 virgin brain brains. One day in in laboratories, we would be able to grow brains without anything like virgin. The equivalent of a new laptop with no operating system. And then in these brains maybe which have had no prior experience, we may create cloning or identical
202. 65:37 resonances so that these two brains will be actually identical copies of each other and will form a single um a single consciousness space or memory space or whatever. This could be I I believe we will be able to do that subject to ethical considerations and philosophical
203. 65:58 debates and so on. But technologically I believe this would be possible. But now with existing brains and existing bodies of existing people it's a hopeless task to expect me to experience anything the way you do or vice versa. A hopeless task. So Neuralink's biggest promise is as
204. 66:23 interface interface with machinery devices and so on and intervention pinpointed intervention in highly specific areas of the brain. We know that if we intervene in the brain we there are behavioral outcomes, emotional outcomes, cognitive outcomes. We know
205. 66:41 that we can change how people feel, how they think and how they behave by directly intervening in the brain. We know for example that if we cut the connection between the two hemispheres, something known as lobotomy, we know that depression disappears. Now would you like to do
206. 66:59 that? I don't think so. But it's a fact. Thank you. We know that if we administer electric shocks to the brain, electroconvulsive therapy, electric shocks to the brain, we know that it aerates major depression and suicidal ideiation. It eliminates them
207. 67:19 almost therapy is very efficient. So, does it also turn you into a zombie? Not really. That is this is media hype. Electrocombulsive therapy is well tolerated and the recovery is pretty pretty total but lobotomy is not lobotomy turns you into a zombie. Yes.
208. 67:40 And and many drugs antiscychotic drugs turn you into zombie. Absolutely. So even then if we were to gain direct access to the brain through a neural link or whatever it would raise practical questions. What price are we willing to pay in order to modify the brain, intervene in
209. 68:01 the brain, affect the brain? Are we willing to live like zombies? Are we willing to live in a matrix, for example, a delusional state? No. It would be these would be debates that would emerge. For example, if you hate reality and there's another 10 million
210. 68:17 people like you, they hate reality. They can't stand reality. They want to die. Maybe it's a good idea to give them a neural ling to give them something to interfere and to cause them to live in a fantasy in a delusion which would make them happy. There is already such an
211. 68:34 intervention. It's called religion. Essentially a delusional disorder that makes you happy, you know. Right. Right. Right. So all these questions will emerge pretty soon. I believe in 5 years to 10 years. We'll already be faced with these questions because we are entering the last
212. 68:53 frontier. The last frontier is not space. Space. We are already in space. You think there's much difference between going to the moon and going to Mars. It's only a question of time. Technology is there. We are already in space. But we are not in the brain.
213. 69:09 That's the last frontier. We are in the oceans. We are on land. We are in space. The last remaining frontier is the brain. It's a last remaining cosmic voyage. And the brain is far more complicated like dramatically exponentially more complicated than any
214. 69:28 known object in the universe. And then the universe in its totality except the brain if you take out the brain. So the brain is so hyper complex. We have spent for example something like 5,000 years trying to decode and decipher the universe. And we've done a reasonable
215. 69:50 job at this stage. We are 25% there. Another 75% to find out but 25% we're there probably. It took us 5,000 years. The brain is incomparably more complex, incomparably orders of magnitude, huge. So it took us 5,000 years with the universe. Maybe it will take us 50,000
216. 70:15 years to understand the brain fully. We have just been a scientists have just been able to map to create a map of one cubic cm of a rat's brain. The brain of a rat. One cubic cm. Tiny. Almost microscopic. Not exactly but tiny. You should see. You should see the outcome. Multiple
217. 70:44 supercomputers generating millions of pages, tens of millions of diagrams, well over 100 billion interactions a second for a total by now of 12 trillion. We are talking about one cubic cimeter of the brain of a rat. Not a human being, not even a politician. a rat.
218. 71:13 Right. Right. You understand? That's a rat. It took all our supercomputers combined to map one cubic centimeter of a rat. And here we go online and we say that we understand the brain and we have insight and we can do this and we can do that. How arrogant is this? How
219. 71:31 narcissistic is this? Yes. Yes. We don't have much time. So I I suggest to leave the cornfield theory some other time. I'd be delighted to talk to you about it. Most certainly. Most certainly. I think we covered some interesting topics here and if we are
220. 71:46 too long, no one will watch anything. I sure it was it was a great talk and I I I really appreciate this and I I would love I have many more questions actually but I know that this this is not going to be possible in one go. No. So we can discuss the chronory and generally the
221. 72:03 state of physics and similar issues on another talk. not right now in a few weeks time to avoid saturation but I'm open to talk to you again. Okay. Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you for tolerating me. And uh where are you now? You're not in Kolkata. You're in Mumbai. Yes. I I live
222. 72:23 in a small village in Germany called Ilmano. Oh, you're in Germany? I thought you were in India. Okay. No, I live in Germany. Oh, I saw your phone number. Yes. Yes. Germany. Yes. I saw your phone number. You sent me a message. I'm sorry. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I I actually
223. 72:37 did my masters in signal processing in in the technical university of film now. All right. And then I I worked for about two years and now I'm starting to form my own venture u called dial mate. So um long long long time ago when I was a kid kid yes I I did some work on u on
224. 73:00 filters on filters. Never mind. It's a old story. Okay. Hey, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Great pleasure. So, have a lovely evening then. Take care. You too. Bye-bye. Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye.