(upbeat music) - Joining me right now is Valentin Randen from Muse. You've had an interesting career in neurotech. Neurotech is one of the forefront technologies in the world right now. I have mixed feelings about it. Sometimes I'm really excited about it. Sometimes I'm really scared about it. Maybe right now I'm a little more on the scared side because of everything that's been going on, but we're not going into that. (laughing) - Future optimist. - Sure. - But talk to me, first of all, what is your role and what are you doing at Muse? - Yeah, yeah, thanks. I was really excited to chat with you today. Yeah, I'm the head of product at Muse. It's been a really interesting journey so far. I do have the same as you and I hop back and fall between, oh my God, this is the best thing in the world and we can do so many great things to, oh, we're really close to a potential dystopian future where everyone can read your thoughts and no freedom, amazing. Let's keep going, yeah. So if we're going to start from this place, there's really where do we go from there? It seems like both. And I think let's maybe come into it like this. There's this duality here of the theoretical person who desires to optimize their own existence, right? The person who watches Huberman Lab, who looks at YouTube videos, what sorts of supplements should I be taking? What sort of drugs should I be taking or not taking? What's my relationship with alcohol, with exercise? There is this desire to optimize ourselves and to be the best version of ourself that clearly exists. And in many of these companies that are dealing with neurotech, they sort of market their service at these types of people. Like here's a way to further optimize your own existence through understanding your own brain. - 100%. - On the other hand, the dystopian side is if these things are forced upon you without your consent, just like the meta glasses that are harvesting every piece of data that they see, whether you're aware of that or not, this type of tech being embedded without your knowledge or consent and harvesting brain data is where it becomes very scary. So how do you see the market as it is right now? And how do you see the next couple years where clearly this could kind of go either way? - Yeah, I know that's a great question. And then we're part of the future optimist podcast. So we'll hopefully have a bit of an optimist lens on all this. - Yeah, to your point, there's really a desire to optimize performance. We're really seeing this trend that I like to talk about in terms of it's not about surviving anymore, it's about thriving. And we see that in getting applied to so many different pieces of tech, including neurotech, including other wearables. And it's all coming from really, and I think what I fully believe is a great place. It's desire to be a better person, a better human. So having a better impact on the world and all this. I really love that trend. And I see it being just exponentially growing in the last few years. And yeah, with any technology, there's a flip side. There's a potential risk, right? Like when fire first came to Earth, like there was an potential risk of what I was gonna do with this, an electricity and everything else. So it's always an interesting dialogue and conversation to have around any new net technology that's happening. Right now, I can share a bit about some of the things we're seeing at Muse that are both super exciting and also to your point. Like they can lead to maybe something else that we don't have full control over that may reduce speech or freedom in general. One of the interesting things that we have is Lee, we actually have the biggest, the largest database of brain data out there. Just because we've been around for some time, which is. I was going to get into that, that's why. Yeah, it's really interesting and exciting. So we have about a billion minutes worth of data, which is equivalent to 2,000 years of data of people's brains, right? So hundreds of thousands of people have been meditating with Muse or sleeping with Muse over the years. And it's an incredible amount of data in itself. And so why is that important or impactful? It's because especially recently with some of the newest AI techniques, when you start getting that amount of data, you can do some really interesting stuff. And so you apply new techniques like what Chaji Piti and other large language model have come up with. And you use those techniques to look at the data and come up with insights or outputs. So we actually called our techniques large brain models, kind of using the large language model in the main clater. And so with that amount of data, we are now able to see very subtle differences in patterns between people's brains, right? So you're like, you can get someone who's a little bit stressed on any given day or had one too many coffees. And you look at their data and you can compare it with the huge amount of data we have. And you can see really subtle differences that you wouldn't be able to see just comparing one person to another person. So the amount of data is really helpful to identify patterns in that way. And so we are starting to do some really interesting work where we can find biomarkers, so ways to detect any kind of disease, for example, through EEG data. So we're working with a big health system in the US where we're trying to find a biomarker for long COVID as an example. So can we put a headbed on someone's brain? And after five minutes of recording the data, can we find whether they have long COVID or not? Which is not even a clearly neurological condition, right? So it's just a regular health condition because the brain is connected to everything else. So we're starting to see ways to identify diseases and potentially like mindsets or energy levels or things like that. You can start to look at many different aspects of the brain in that way. And then if you push this a little bit further, you can really quickly go to the next level, which would be okay. If we have 100 people or 1,000 people coming into the news app and we tell them, hey, think about the words orange right now. Then we ask another 1,000 people, think about the word blue. Can we find a pattern differences? Even if it's extremely subtle in those two things? - Can you find the abstraction of the word orange and a large subset of the population? - Exactly, yeah, probably oranges, yeah. - That's crazy. - We're probably gonna get there relatively soon. We haven't necessarily invested much in that right now, but we could potentially, right? 'Cause we have this platform where we have thousands of people active every day and we actually use this program called Citizen Science where they can enroll and use their data to push the boundaries of research in the brain. And so potentially looking into thought reading or mind reading is not such a far-fetched idea at this point. It's pretty like closer than I think it was just a year or two ago, yeah. - That's incredible. And that's where it quickly gets into the scary territory. - One of the hall markers of this time in human society, I would say, 10 years ago or what the origins of Facebook, we started getting hip to the idea that data had value. That sort of started with social media and with these free platforms. But now we're transitioning into another phase of our use of data. And one of the most interesting things is like if you think about Apple's encryption with messaging or messaging platforms, there is now a fear of people harvesting all of this data that's encrypted at current levels of tech, but there's the understanding that that data could later be analyzed by quantum computers or by different mechanisms that could crack historically encrypted things. And that's why Apple's like, hey, we need this forward thinking encryption algorithm that is far beyond what we need today because at some point in the future, somebody could maybe go through, deconstruct all of the data. So we've got these giant subsets of data and now comes the phase of how do we make sense of the 2000 years of brain data and what might be in there if you did? Because it could be far more than the word orange or blue, right? It could be lots of stuff that could be revealed from that in the next few years. >> The deepest secrets of people's thoughts when they're trying to meditate and they're thinking about the next job they wanna get to that I haven't told their current company or the person they're cheating on with or things like that. So it could be mentioning that because I saw the documentary on the cheating platform. >> I don't know this one. >> Actually medicine, those documentary recently. >> Oh, okay. >> And how they got in all the data got stolen and it was this massive ha-drama, right? 'Cause whatever secrets that we're holding is quite tricky. So yeah, it's an interesting thing to contemplate. And especially when you think about the tech giants like Apple where they have the resources to really think about, okay, how can we future proof this and build the best encryption possible so that future hikers 10 years from now can't go back in time and find all those pieces of data. When you look at a different scale of company, you have to cut corners a lot more, right? It's kind of a trade-off between business success and growth and also best practices or the best impossible privacy policy and things like that. So it's always more- >> More fast and break things. >> You have, yeah, you have to navigate exactly how to navigate another way. >> With doing things the right way. >> Yeah, 100%. It's an interesting time to live in for sure. >> Yeah, well, on your personal journey, you once broke up with tech. That was something you said before. You swore that you would never work in tech again. And I think many of us have this love, hate relationship with tech and our relationship is changing with tech on a day-by-day basis. It feels like, I know mine is. On the one hand, I've been very passionate about it because it's fascinating and it's always been something that's fascinated that part of my brain since I was in middle school. The desire for something new and building an exciting future, that's all well and good. But we also know the stereotype of the tech bro and all of these other bits that are closely related to the tech industry that are maybe not so desirable. Why did you break up with tech and how did you find your way back? >> Yeah, no, this is an interesting story. So it really started with, I actually started renovating some furniture in my backyard and spending hours like folding stuff, painting stuff. And I felt this like immense joy from using my hands. >> Peace. >> And peace and I was like, wow, I've been getting into this flow state that I haven't experienced in a long time being behind a screen and looking at pixels my whole day. And I started thinking about this, okay, if an alien race comes to Earth tomorrow and they see what we do in the world, they kind of rank us in terms of the most useful, so least useful, I'll probably be towards the bottom. Like, I can't do anything with my hands. I can't build a house. You know, I'm terrible at building a bonfire. I'm just not great in general with my hands. I don't think I'm exploring being a human really to its potential. Like, I'm not really pushing the boundaries of what it means to be human. So I just had this reflection and all of a sudden everything felt quite empty around my job and just tech in general. And I felt like this constant need for growth and always growing, always constantly using more resources felt like completely at odds with this idea of like inner peace and acceptance of what is. And I was starting to be honest, a bit of a self growth journey myself and realizing what is something that feels really fundamentally at odds here and I'm not finding my grooves. You know, I looked into things. I was like, okay, can I be an arborist? Can I be a woodworker? Like complete shifts in careers. And I ended up going to what had been my passion for a long time, but I had never really allowed myself to think that it was possible, which was music, making music. So I spent a year doing... - You said with a guitar behind it. - It's a guitar. I know, I have a few more things here, exactly. But yeah, so I spent a year, I released my album. I did a few gigs and tours and things and had a lot of fun and also things, some things were missing there that I started to put my finger on. And parallel to that music journey, I really started exponentially grow on my inner growth journey. I had just come out of a nine-year-long relationship, lots of things to integrate from it. And as I started growing, I just felt so much pleasure from it. Like experimenting with different things like ice bath or like plant medicine or different aspects of life. And really explored a lot of my own consciousness and understanding reality a lot better. And I realized how cool would it be to start enabling others to go through the same. And I almost rekindled my desire to work in tech through that lens. Being like, oh, tech allows for a global impact like so quickly. How can I have the most impact with my life, helping the most amount of people and started realizing again, you know, once more in my life that, okay, tech might be the way. And I even started thinking about this idea of an app being like, okay, is there a way I even thought of the name like the way in my mind where I could almost like a Mario Bros game where at each stage of my life, can I have three options of areas that I can explore to grow as a human, to be more complete and more wholesome. So whether it is, you know, again, trying as bath or whether it is like reducing my coffee consumption or whether it is for giving my father or like things that could just help me. Something I'm never going to do, by the way. (laughs) - Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All this is a built-night on-prem experience too. But yeah, how can I grow? And I was, you know, just reflecting on this idea for this app, and I was like, okay, amazing. But one of the main issues, me being a product guy is the amount of inputs I would need to put in as a user to figure out where I am on that path. And then the continuous feedback to be like, oh, I've grown in this way or I haven't grown in that other way. Or maybe I've just progressed in general because something massive has happened in my life, loss or grief or whatever would be, would require, again, a lot of user inputs, which typically is too much friction and not great for business success or for user satisfaction. And so this is exactly when I actually found out about Muse and I was like, wow, wouldn't that be so cool that by putting a headband on, you could actually, you don't need all that input. Maybe you can measure where you're at on that scale of, you know, consciousness and growth. And then continuously track it so that you know how you're growing, what are the areas that you need to still grow in and what are the areas that you're already pretty advanced in. And so this continues almost guide companion with life where you could just, that you could rely on to help you grow. So it was kind of an interesting intersection between myself growth and then finding out about Muse and me like, wow, this is such an incredible fit in that sense. - So what it seems like is there's always a question of what is the path and what's the gateway drug as it were, whether that's a piece of tech or data. Different people might react differently to different stimuli, whether it's handing micro dose of a certain fungus to somebody or whether it's handing them a headband. The question and the aim is perhaps the same, which is to change the way that people see themselves and their relation to the world that they're in. So the question is, of course, whether tech is the best tool for that or whether a natural substance is the best tool for that or something like Walden Pond from Thoreau going out in nature by yourself completely sober in the absence of any substance and just for a month with nothing. For hundreds of years, human beings have been trying to figure out how to convey an elevated level of consciousness to other people who don't necessarily see it. Why is that such a strong desire? And why did you feel that? Why do you think that so many smart people feel this intense desire to bring others along with them on this journey versus just stay there thinking what you're thinking, doing what you're doing? - Well, I'll tell you a bit in my experience there. And I was reflecting on this a few days ago and realizing it's actually coming from quite a long time ago for me where when I was a kid, I was a bit of a geek. I loved math, I loved numbers. I quickly realized that there were really two main scales in life that we measure ourselves against. - Oh, I love this point, yeah. - Yeah, like one is age. I just grow older and I tend to respect the elders and I see an evolution of path there. And that's a number that I can identify with along with the journey of life. And the other one is money. And both are quite flawed, right? Because it's not because I get older that I'm actually more happy or more fulfilled. I might just become a grumpy old man. And it's not because I have more money that I also have, I'm a better person necessarily. I can just be rich and very unhappy and having a terrible impact around me. So I just felt like there was like a, for me, a missing piece of something I could reliably attach to to help guides my own journey, my own life. Like how do I know if this is the right decision? How do I know if I'm going in the right way? And am I feeling better? Yet maybe I'm feeling a little bit better. But does that mean it's so subjective? I don't really know how to track that day over day. And so yeah, so it was just in my sphere of awareness that there was a bit of a lack for like a metric, a thing that tells me where I'm at on my journey. And then I found out about the level of the map of consciousness that David Hawkins created in the '70s, which is essentially this map that goes from zero to a thousand. It's one number that describes levels of consciousness. So it starts at guilt, shame, anger, grief. And it evolves with the score. So we start like 20, 30, 50. Around 250, you come to neutral. That's the neutral state according to him. And then above that, they're more positive state. So you get to love, bliss, eventually, enlightenment above 700 is kind of the idea of evolution. And you stay, you know, you kind of evolve throughout life. You can oscillate a little bit around the value, but typically you don't do like massive jumps on this. There's like a big event happening in life again, like loss or even a positive realization that may just jump you somewhere else. And when I saw that I was, it felt like a revelation for me. Well, there's now a thing, a number that I feel can have so much impact to your point with tribes, you know, for thousands of years to become better humans, to strive. There's been so many religions and lineages, traditions, beliefs to try and help us grow. But never really a way to know where we stand. Where are we on that path? Am I better than yesterday? Am I better than my neighbor in that sense? Which maybe comparison has its limits in its own. But I felt like having a skill like this can now enable us to use that competitive nature of ours for goods, you know, where I can actually be, oh, I want to increase my score. And this not only makes me a better human. It, you know, has a positive impact around me. It just, like the impact is just positive all around with that skill. So it's an interesting concept. Now, how do we measure it? How do I know where I am on that scale? And there's still a number of techniques that David Hawking talks about. Some of them are just reflecting reflections from your environments and asking others and trying to get like a relative unbiased opinions about where you are with a set of different questions. This is also the technique of muscle testing, which is relatively controversial in the scientific community. But we get you that your body has the answer. And so with reliable counterparts, we can help you muscle test. You can score where you are, which is, I've done it. And I actually scored at 250, which is a writing new news. And I was like, OK, well, I have some work to do still. You got some work to do. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I like the idea. Yeah, score every now and then and see if I'm progressing or not. And then we're now coming to a place where with news-- and that's my pet project. It's not something that we're already investing in as a company right now. But the idea of, OK, we could bring in 1,000 people into the app, where we either ask them that they already have their consciousness called according to that technique, that theory. Or we provide a protocol for them to do that. And then identified, again, the patterns within that scale, within those people. And it's pretty easy for us to access 1,000 people. It's easy to access 1,000 as well. So we could start getting a lot of data and then provide for net new people a very reliable way to be like, you put the headband on, OK, you are 170, OK? You are 364. Like, you can understand where you're at, which then allows you to see what's next for me to keep growing, as opposed to doing things that I've already done, or that I'm not actually that helpful. Yeah. There are so many things that I wrote down there that I want to touch on because paradoxes are really at the core of this moment in human history. And you touched on a number of paradoxes there that I'd like to talk about. You know, when we define what is consciousness, or we define what makes consciousness better, obviously we as a species are very far from agreeing on what those metrics are. I think some people would just say more money equals better, your older things. And, you know, the biggest asshole with the most money is inherently better than the most conscientious Zen person under a tree with the enlightened a person with no money because they're, you know, well, you can't afford a Ferrari loser. So there are paradoxes between our internal awareness of our self and the society that we live in. Obviously, stoicism philosophers have been talking about this. Marcus Aurelius said something to the effect of it's possible to live a perfectly philosophical life without anybody around you being aware of that. AKA, you might not necessarily be celebrated or appreciated for living in total perfect Zen harmony achieving that thousand out of a thousand score. And I think we as humans, we talk about gamifying or competing towards Zen or measuring our progress, right? In some ways, that's the opposite of Zen, which is more about letting go of all of the balance here between our desire for personal growth and achieving Zen in a way that we can quantify with analytics and a chart that goes up. And something like a rating system like from black mirror, I don't know if you saw the episode of black mirror where every person has like an Uber rating. And you know, you are judged, I don't like this interview, so I'm giving you three stars and your rating goes down. So it's like our internal perception versus our external societal perception of our value. There are so many of those things and how do you see the gamification of Zen or higher consciousness? Do you see a paradox in that? Yeah, I think there is a paradox until there isn't in my mind. So good answer, healthy competition, right? Like I think it is definitely a thing where you can improve yourself using the inherent comparative nature that we have as human beings. Some of us have it more, some of them have had it less. I think when you think about that scale of consciousness from the year 2000, I really imagine a competitive nature to be effective in the lower ranges, all the way probably to maybe a 300 or 400. After a certain point, it probably loses the point, like who cares, if I'm better than anybody else, but then the desire to grow becomes so much stronger at that point that there's no question that I want to keep going. So competition is not needed anymore for you to keep working on that path. That's the way I see it. And I feel it in different ways. One day I'll feel super competitive, I want to compare myself to others, I want to compare myself to myself from yesterday. Other days, I'm in this peaceful chill mode, I'm just like, everything is so good, world is perfect. I'm just acceptance. And I feel almost like a bit of a higher level of consciousness. I wish I could actually measure and compare and have the data to validate it. But it almost doesn't matter so much anymore, it just feels more peaceful. And there is that human desire that when you achieve that for somebody to say, "Hey, nice job." That might never happen. Instead they might say, "Fuck off, or you're an idiot. I am the most zen and somebody says you're a loser." That's what's so fascinating about humans living as a part of a society. I think I'm riding my bike instead of driving my car, and therefore I'm helping all of us with pollution. But somebody who's driving a car in my neighborhood yells at me because they think I'm blocking traffic. So we just sometimes completely disagree about what it means to be a better human. But I think you're right that taking that first step, because again, it's like what we said earlier where it's all about what is the in-road. Is it competition to level 300, and we're just going to borrow that scale for the sake of argument? And then if something takes hold, or is it, again, finding more time and nature, can anybody truly go from A to B, or are some people A's and some people B's? Can anybody go from 100 to 1,000, or can you only go from 100 to 150? Is it genetic? What is the limitations of each individual's brain? These are questions that I'd like to know. Yeah, totally. And it's a good point, because then it's definitely, and we've seen that trend in the last few years, there is a tendency sometimes to give too much importance to data and to numbers. And I've seen a lot of people talking to me about their aura ring or their whoop wristband and be like, "Oh, but now I look at it in the morning and I saw that I had a bad sleep." So then I'm like, "Oh, shit, I had a bad sleep." And now you're going to feel bad all day, but if I hadn't, I actually felt great. And actually didn't feel like I had a bad sleep. That's from the Matrix. Yeah. It's like you really- Don't worry about the dish, so don't worry about it. Yeah, I think inside of us, there's a lot of wisdom that we, not all of us, have access to in an easy way. So clearing some of that garbage and some of this noise to try and access what's clear inside is one of my best practices I try to do every day. I mean, there's a very noble thing involved in all of this. And it's just, it's all about how you approach it, right? And human beings being barely evolved primates. Our competitiveness is always there. And one of the things that's always super funny to me, I love, I love when people break the system entirely. I love the studies of people who formed cults or communes or they went off and tried to break free from society with their own little collective somewhere and living off the farm. And I love how much a part of those experiences ego still is. Right. Like if we have a community of a zen community for only the people who really get it, then there will be some kind of competition amongst who is letting go the most. Are you really letting go, Valentin, because I have let go more than you. And I'm the leader of the let go people. I'm the one who let go the most. So therefore, I should have a Rolls Royce be better than you. So everywhere we go, we always stratify. We always rank ourselves and we always measure ourselves even when you supposedly try to get away. Yeah, I think spiritual ego is a real thing. And it's one of the biggest traps that is being talked about in this sort of consciousness expansion world where people like try all those different techniques and new meditation method or this new like physical exercise or breathing or ice bath to try and get to the next level. And then when you get to that next level, do you feel like a bit of sense of superiority? Oh, I'm. Yeah. Next. I worked hard. Exactly. I'm better than yesterday. Therefore, I'm actually better than other people, right? Like I feel a sense of superiority in that sense. And I think that kind of ties back into this map of consciousness, which to me is so helpful, because you might experience in a bit of a gross and a higher score if you were to label it with that with a number. And then from there, you know, day of next month, feel a sense of pride that might actually get you a little bit lower. And then, then you were when you just first got there. And through that, if there was again a way to assess this, including the ego that comes in, including the sense of superiority, including our competitive nature, I truly believe that past a certain point that that can disappear and truly believe that there are monks in the Himalayas who really don't care anymore about that and have probably there's some moments where ego comes back and competitive nature comes back. I don't think that apart from like purely enlightened beings who have who live a thousand years and have that level, I think it's probably a handful of and the entire world's population who actually can feel that. But on the consistent and day to day basis, I think otherwise you touch different areas and you come back into your ego at some other point, which is helpful, because especially in the world we live in, unless you live on a mountain or in a cave somewhere, you do need that ego to keep going and to make sure you don't starve. So there's usefulness to the ego now, how do we apply it well? And definitely you're raising a really great point on that. Well, it's like that old proverb, you know, God, give me the strength to accept the things I can't control and to, you know, and the wisdom to know the difference between what you can control and what you can't control. And I think with like stoic philosophy, where do you accept what reality is? First, where do you decide that you can change reality, both internally and externally? And that monk who's at the top of the hill in the Himalayas, they might be in perfect blissful Zen, but somebody had to build the road that leads to their monastery and they probably didn't do it, right? So there's always the argument to be made that you sitting there begging for food is are actually less valuable than the person who is not conscious at all, but builds roads. Yeah. And I think that's a sort of fundamental divide in our society between how much should we observe, how much should we do, what is the balance and what is the value internally and externally on somebody who spends more time observing and somebody who spends more time doing and obviously leads to this. This is really interesting. There's a great spiritual book called the Bhagavad Gita from the Hinduism tradition and they talk a lot about that where they mentioned that there's really two paths to enlightenment. One is the contemplation path, which is this monk on the mountain. And the other one is the action path, where through you actions, through the way that you put yourself out in the world, you actually grow and learn. And they actually recommend that most people should take the action path, not the contemplation path in the book, but you realize that those elements, those triggers are what we need to grow, right? Otherwise, we just stay in the same place. I do think there is a positive impact of the contemplators. It's probably hard to quantify, but I imagine that there's just their aura, their energy, like grounds a little bit, the rest of the doers and the actors, but they're probably a very small proportion of people who can actually do that successfully and who actually have even just the desire to do that. The rest of us are probably more on the doer side. And can we find a peace through, I love the analogy of the hummingbirds, stillness and motion, that can we find a peace through movement? Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right about the ratio being right. Not everybody is well suited. And Plato's Republic, he talked about the need for a philosopher king. Obviously, not everybody could be a philosopher king. Nobody's capable of that. Somebody could be, not that they've found their way into any position of power. But in theory, it would be nice, it would sound. Yeah, but I think you're right. For most people, the doing is that people have to contribute where they can and how they can and with the skills that they have internally, physically, mentally, and figure out what their role is. And some people, their role is probably to contemplate, I agree, but not everybody. And that's, again, my earlier question of whether you can go from 100 to 1,000 or whether going from 100 to 150 is a worthwhile goal to have a device in a couple of years of your time. Yeah, and it's interesting, right? I love that question because that's where also this scale can be counterproductive where I agree with you. I believe that everyone might not be able to go from 100 to 1,000. And having said that, you see people who have the most traumatic experiences, the hardest possible lives, so much loss, so much grief, so much pain, who actually go much, much further than people who have it easy in a way, who are like, they are surrounded with love and love and families and all that. So I don't think it means that everyone can do this inherently. I think we inherit a lot from our genes, from our ancestors in so many ways. But there is also like this sense of empowerment that I think everyone should have that I can grow. Regardless if it's 50 points or 1,000 points, I think the important piece is, can I take control of my life and my beingness to try and be better, regardless of the amounts? Just I just want to be better as opposed to being in the autopilot's past mode, which I still am many moments of the day. Most people still are where we're just being a victim of our environments, trying to just let the autopilot do its thing, and if we're angry and what can I do, because he cut me in traffic, and so I just must be angry, in terms of you can take control, you can be the master of your emotions, and you can really, through identifying your past patterns or just a better self-awareness in the moment, where the data can be handy, by the way, like all those wearables can help you be more self-aware, grow to that next level, and have less red road as an example. Yes, yes. And I think, obviously, human growth. I genuinely believe that human growth is one of the key parts of feeling happy or satisfied for any human. Sagnation is clearly the enemy physically, mentally, and in all other forms. I really agree. Yeah, I think relative individual growth is a very noble goal. So to get it back to the wearables, so probably many of these technologies will be amalgamated into other things, like this tech will become a part of AirPods or something else that people already use. Do you think that all of these companies, it's all going to be consolidated into other technology, or do you really think there's a future where we're going to have 10 different batteries on our body at any given time? No, yeah. I think the less friction to add yet another piece of tech, the better. And that's where even with the watches, they use an existing form factor, the watch, to try and bring more value to it. So 100%. I'm with you. I think there's going to be some consolidation, especially when we start looking at those massive amounts of data, right? So you might be able to get all the data from use and all the data from the Apple watch and find where are the correlations that we can almost start detecting brain function from the watch. So you can start seeing is there any pattern there between the rings data and the watches data, all the rings data and whatever, foot, small footwear data, other ones. So I think as we're starting to grow the amount of wearables and to grow the amount of data, we have to access different parts of the body and all knowledge about the body. We'll start to see potential correlations. There's a lot of potential privacy concerns there. I'm not sure what that's going to go. Obviously, sharing data between companies and all that is a tricky aspect, a tricky matter. But yeah, I'm with you. I imagine a world where either what I'm seeing too, there's a lot of new projects that are really interesting where it's less about wearables, but it's more about a full diagnostic tool that you do once a month, for example. So you go into a lab or a clinic enter a pod and in the pod, there's like a ton of sensors, cameras look at your face, thermal sensors, like everything, look at your HIV, they look at like your brain waves, everything else, and they give you this like cool report. And maybe there's a mix of both worlds, which I think we're actually seeing some traction there with news where you go into, for example, a longevity clinic, which are becoming more and more popular, where you do a full assessment with many different devices, a strength assessment, a blood test, all of that stuff. You do this once every three weeks. And then in between, you have your other wearables that can track some of the major data points of your body. With that, you get really a full complete picture without having to wear 100 devices at the same time. Yeah, that's a good model. And of course, there's a big difference between people who have a specific condition or disease and who need further monitoring versus the person who seeks to just enhance their life in some way. I think the last paradox, and we've gotten very philosophical, I can't help it, I'm sorry. I love it too. But at the last paradox, where if I'm an entrepreneur and I want to make money and I want to maximize myself and I want to get a big house at the top of the Hollywood Hills, that's my journey, then I want to figure out how I can work 18 hours a day without burning out or physically harming myself because that's an internal desire for wealth or status, but it quickly flips when the mandate is opposite, just like the return to work culture where you say, hey, we want people in the office. I want my employees to work 18 hours a day because I demand it of them or like you're working in a Chinese factory seven days a week, 18 hours a day, and this technology is used to make sure that we get the most value out of you as an employee that you don't take breaks and then quickly it becomes a little more disturbing. So do you see this as being something more, again, that people choose to do in the future or something that is increasingly just pushed on people? Yeah, it's such a good question. Back to our all debate around the user technology and the two sides to it. Right now we're definitely in the phase where it seems to be a personal desire a lot of people have and there's trends around it. Well, is it this T-shirts I think branded from Brian Johnson that says, just don't die. Stop dying. We're waiting to see the result of that experiment. I'm very curious. But if I live long enough. Exactly. Yeah, that's the question. Can I live longer than Brian Johnson to see you guys on it? But it's interesting and I feel like right now we're in a phase that's positive in that sense. What is it? It's a healthy trend. People are trying to optimize themselves, feel better. I think to your point, I have seen or heard of some people who are trying to optimize to make money and that's the end goal or to those successful businesses. I think most cases, though, are a step removed from this. I just either want to feel better or perform better at what I'm already doing. So athletes are really into that already. It's just the desire to do a good job and feel fulfilled from the job that I do. I think it's where we're at now. The day where your employer demands that you work 15, 18 hours a day based on your wearables data, I guess they'll depend on elections and who's running the countries and all of that. We've seen it in China with the scores, social scoring. Right? But that's the black mirror thing, right? The external internal. You aren't productive enough, according to my framework, therefore I'm going to re-educate you to be more productive, to be more useful to my society. You can find your next podcast guest based on the scores like that. That would be helpful for you. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. I want to interview a perfect thousand on the consciousness scale. That would be fun. Of course, they wouldn't be messing around with me. That's not what you want. Would you join me? Are you sure? Yes. Well, that's on brand. Yeah. So I guess to put a bow on this and just sort of wrap it up, for you personally, leaving tech, working with your hands, let's not forget those important, low tech ways of connecting with yourself and now coming back full circle. So do you feel that this exoing this has led you to a greater understanding of your own consciousness? Do you feel differently about it now than a couple years ago? Yeah, that's a great question. So I haven't been able to yet fully run that experiment of measuring consciousness the way I'm envisioning it. Having said that though, this idea, this concept feels super empowering and feels like it can really have a massive impact on the world, on myself and others. I feel like I've grown so much in the last couple of years, definitely through the manual work, definitely through taking time off of a screen for about a year. Having said that, I was producing music on a screen, still a screen there. It's a different screen. Yeah. Also like holding like instruments and things in my hands, it felt like a really necessary step and growth and now coming back into tech, I feel so much more comfortable confidence that it is the right path. Yeah. Thank you for taking the time to jump in and to go deep on some of this stuff. I'm continually fascinated by the people in the neurotech space. We often have conversations like this and everybody is very open and it's definitely comforting to me to know that you have this level of thought and intention and you want to bring that meditative aspect to your, so that gives me a level of comfort. I hope that you're always able to continue on your mission in the way that you desire and that you don't end up getting forced into one of the dystopian nightmares scenario. I hope so too. I hope so too. More data. More data. I tell it to everyone. All insurers. Everybody else. Yeah. Exactly. You must wear this headset while you drive your car. It's like a breathalyzer. But yeah, thanks, Valentin, super cool talking with you. I'm glad that we met. I wish you tons of success and keep me updated and keep us all updated as your side project progresses. I will do. Thank you so much, Ross. Had a great time chatting with you. All right. Cool. And is there any parting word or anything you'd like to ask people to do, whether it's check out your website or? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. You can definitely check out the website, choosemuse.com, C-H-O-O-S-E-M-U-S-E.com, not to mixupwithchoosemuse.com, which is not a very Canadian website, where you can buy some Canadians of moose figurines and all that. So, you both will get a deal from them. Exactly. Choosemuse.com. You can also, if you're interested, find my Spotify, Valentin, Randon on Spotify as well. And yeah, I just encourage people to keep trying to be better. Whatever stage you're at, whatever feels like an improvement in the way you feel. Try to go at it every day. The days that are hard are the days that have the most impact, when you can actually get to do that practice and maybe not watch that Netflix episode or not drink that extra. Just wine, it actually has a ton of impact when you accumulate it over time. Definitely encouraging everyone who's listening to try and have the most beautiful impact in the world. What a great end with that, the official podcast. Let's go. [Music] [MUSIC PLAYING]
