Ezra Klein

Because our consciousness is...

under pressure from everyday life, capitalism, and the need to succeed financially.

We happen to have a president who intrudes on our consciousness for a lot more of the day than any of us have had experience before with previous presidents.

So I think there's some desire to get back to some more sovereignty around our consciousness.

And psychedelics are part of that too.

And there is also AI.

I say in the book, we're entering a Copernican moment, a possible redefinition of what it means to be human.

On the one hand, we have all these animals and even plants that turn out to be conscious, what we used to think was our special thing.

And on the other side,

We have these machines that are going to be smarter than we are, and some people think they'll be conscious.

But whether they can or not, we're going to think they're conscious and act on that basis, which raises all sorts of problems.

So who are we exactly if we're not the smartest, most conscious being?

And are we more like the animals who can feel and die and suffer?

Or are we more like the thinking machines who speak our language?

The posture.

The posture of screens, yeah.

One of the things I've been talking a lot about, protecting our consciousness and what a precious space of interiority we have, and it's this place of mental freedom.

But I realize for some people going there, it doesn't feel good.

That these are people who ruminate a lot,

And I'm prone to that too, to a lot of rumination, which is very circular thinking, often not productive.