Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hi everyone, I'm Adam Browse. I'm Scott Moffin. And this is Solutions from the Multiverse, where we bring you a fresh, unheard-of solution to the world's problems every episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

That's right, and we have a new one here today with a new guest. So let me kick it to Adam. Adam, what are we doing with our solution today and who are we with?

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Yeah, we're here with Mo Hafez. Do you want to introduce yourself a little bit, Mo?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Uh hi everyone. Mo Hafez. It's a pleasure to be with you guys on this uh podcast. And uh I guess you could say I've I'm a 20-year veteran of the technology space. And uh I'm now the uh chief strategy officer of ByteWise. I also run a podcast myself called Beyond the Bite. And I love talking emerging tech, strategy. You see a whole bunch of strategy board games in the background and uh solutions. I love solutions.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Well, let's do it. So also I didn't bring I I I'm we're going outside of everybody's comfort zone. I'm not talking about we're not gonna talk about tech. This is a weird one. Okay.

The Lithium In Water Proposal

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Okay. Uh we should put lithium in the drinking water. Lithium the element lithium. Yeah, the element lithium. Okay, so lithium, I'll just explain a little more. Do you guys know about this? Do you know about lithium, Mo? Do you or Scott?

SPEAKER_01 1:23

I know what lithium I know lithium is used for for batteries, for renewable energy.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yep. I have some, yeah, some like preconceived notions of the thing, but I'm curious where you're going with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Okay, so lithium is a psychoactive chemical, and it's used as a medication for people with psychosis. Yeah. If you have psychosis, they'll give you lithium, like a pill of lithium, and you just take it, and it's safe, it's very safe, and it reduces psychosis. And it kind of if you take a lot of it, it kind of zombifies you, it kind of makes you like bl. Um, but people who have too much psychosis, it's good to kind of get them a little bit bl, you know, kind of chilled out. So lithium.

Suicide And Dementia Evidence

SPEAKER_02 2:04

But if you put if you take a small amount of lithium, it does two things. One is there's evidence that places where the groundwater just happens to have more lithium in it just by accident, like just because of like geological strata, the water is like near some lithium, and so it leaches into the water and people are drinking it. The suicide rate is significantly lower in those areas. Interesting. And there is very good science that has recently come out just in the last few years, that a small amount of lithium, again, we're still talking like a micro dose of lithium, nothing you could detect in your mood, like day to day, actually is defensive against dementia and Alzheimer's.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Incredible.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

So I guess I gotta go buy some possible stock to I know, stock up. You can have your batteries, you can have your brain health.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

What are these places where the lithium is in the water, where they've discovered this?

SPEAKER_02 3:00

So there's there's places because water tables are, you know, they're in with a bunch of minerals. So some water has more so sulfur in it, some water has more iron in it. Like in San Francisco here, we have a lot of iron. Uh, you know, some has more of one or another. Some places have higher lithium rates just because the water is near some lithium in the in the water table.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

I'm just curious because you're saying like the the suicide rates are down. I'm like, what if you discover it's like, oh, it's Tahiti and Hawaii and like all these places? I'm like, oh, wait, hold on, wait a minute. There might be some other uh factors. There might be some other factors that yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

For some reason, you know, on the beaches of Hawaii, there's such low suicide rates. People are just enjoying themselves too much. So this is the proposal. So we have fluoride in the water. Now I'm saying we should add lithium.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

What are the negative possible things for adding lithium? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

So if you have a h so lithium does have a very narrow therapeutic window when it when it's used as a mood stabilizer, and you do want to have very low amounts of it to have like a to have like you know this protective effect on the brain. So the danger would be there was be might be some danger that you have too

Risks And Public Backlash

SPEAKER_02 4:11

much of it. There's too much of it in the water. But I mean, you know, what's in the water is very closely controlled. So I think that's not actually that big of a risk.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Um now, what is public opinion gonna be about putting the theme in the water?

SPEAKER_02 4:24

That's what I that's what I think is gonna be the big push off.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

People love it when we put new things into the water.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

They love it, they love it. Yeah. It's people's favorite thing. People are already against fluoride, right? And that's just to make your teeth healthy.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

And that's and that's the people that know. You know, there's all the people that have no clue. Like, you're gonna have to convince them that this is good for them before, you know, like yeah. There's some people who don't know what H2O is in this country. So, you know what I'm saying? Like, we're gonna have to start somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

The public opinion, I think, is where the backlash is gonna come.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

They're gonna say they're turning us into zombies, trying to stabilize all of our moods, you know. Like it's like putting pro people say it's like putting Prozac in the water, because it's a mood stabilizer. It's it's actually similar to like a Prozac. It's not an SSRI, but it because it's just an element. It's just literally lithium. It's like a it's just an element on the periodic table.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

So I have another question for you, Adam. Why? I mean, this is because you know, we know lithium is used for battery. It's a it's a already a very scarce and and much needed resource to power the future, but now we're talking about putting it in the water just to help us feel better. Like is there a reason why we we really need this for the for the public?

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Well, two things. Just reducing suicidality, which would be great. Because it it they there was, for example, a meta-analysis found that in areas that had higher lithium in their drinking water, there was a fifty-eight percent lower odds of suicide mortality. So the chances of you dying of suicide went down by sixty percent in high lithium areas. So that's a lot. That's like a pretty big I don't know how many th you know thousands of people that turns into in terms of saved, prevented suicides. But, you know, that's pretty cool. And it doesn't hurt anybody to have a little bit of lithium. Like that's the one thing for sure. Like a little bit of lithium in the water doesn't you know, there are these places people are drinking lithium their whole lives. It doesn't, you know, they don't have any problems with their health, you know. And and then this additional research around dementia and Alzheimer's, also, I mean I'll pull up some of the data on that, but that also it's protective. It's for some reason it's correlated to the reduction of of dementia and Alzheimer's.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

You're thinking like we can move into a lithium as a as a supplement that's accepted, like how magnesium or zinc or something like that you would take and just be like, oh, iron. Oh, I take iron supplements, you know, I take lithium supplements, and they don't have this this association with you know psychosis medication that they currently do. Right. Is that what you're thinking?

SPEAKER_02 6:58

So you could maybe, but I mean it would be bet it would be easier as a if it doesn't hurt anybody and it has these positive effects, why not just sprinkle some lithium into the gr into the water supply? And now you just as a public health measure, you just assure everyone, independent of anything, is getting this this positive protective effect on their brain.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

It certainly might counteract some of the potential effects against society right now with all of the coming craziness with AI. We can you can call it an ounce of prevention that's worth a pound of cure.

AI Psychosis And Modern Stress

SPEAKER_02 7:33

You think people are gonna go nuts from AI. Oh, there's an interesting case. AI psychosis is gonna be so widespread that we gotta put a little lithium in the water.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Oh you know, Bill Gates just came on uh on a podcast recently and was talking about how he's flipped his whole thing about AI, and he now is like, oh, there's a lot of dangers and we gotta watch out. So it feels like maybe we need to uh we need to get the people inoculated, prepared, you know what I'm saying, for the coming AI apocalypse with a little bit of lithium.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Wait, what is AI psychological?

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Yeah, maybe Mo you can explain what AI psychosis is.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

So as people, you know, you have to project forward as people use AI more and more. There's this psychopancy bias where AI agrees with you, and so people fall into an AI psychosis where they essentially by using AI you know in their everyday lives more and more, they become convinced of their own really terrible ideas. And so it's it's already it's already beginning to become an epidemic. Uh no joke, actually. And you're hearing about it, and this is just the beginning, but you're hearing about this uh in a lot of different news cycles, you hear people that you know they're they built a relationship with a chat bot, and and then the relationship, you know, that it just changed and then one day it wasn't the same, and then they you know they have a problem with that. So AI psychosis is real. So we're already dealing with that on some level. So we might as well get some benefits, you know. This is where I'm trying to validate your play here, uh Adam.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

I think well, I mean we can we should definitely be critical of it. I mean, I just threw this out there because my my dad actually told me that because of the research about protection against dementia, since he's been about 70, he's been taking lithium, like minimum these these tiny little uh lithium supplements. And uh and uh they're like 12 bucks online. So I bought some too, and I I've been taking them too. And I haven't noticed any difference in my I don't think I've noticed any difference in my mood. Like I don't think my mood has been more or less stable. But the research is pretty good. I mean it's the or it's not great, but it's it's definitely a strong indication. So that there was a Danish study with 800,000 participants, and people who had the high level of lithium in their water were 17% less chance of getting dementia. So it's like a fifth, like a one, like a 20% reduction in chance of getting dementia.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

And there's a this is not like this is a cool this is a correlation, not causation or a causation, not correlation.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

It's a correlation. We they don't know the exact pathway. They they know that lithium is neuroactive, they know that it stabilizes mood, but they don't know why it reduces dementia. They don't know why or reduces.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

I feel like a study is warranted before you start actually introducing it into the water. There needs to be actually a lot of things. Yeah, inclusive evidence because not only cause a relationship. And does it affect specifically people like different moods, right? So if somebody is if there is an area where people are naturally down, does it help them? And then if the people are in an area, like you, you're a generally cheerful guy. So maybe it doesn't do much for you because you're already, you know, not that your baseline is at your baseline's good, you know, it might be fairly.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Well it's a mood stabilizer, not an antidepressant. So it makes like if you're like all whacked out psycho psychotic, it'll kind of calm you down. If you take a big, a big medical dose. This is not that. This is you take a like a micro like like if you're thinking like, oh, I take LSD or I microdosed LSD, this is like your microdosing, or even smaller than that. I mean, it's undetectable really in your day-to-day life, the the effect. But I guess it yeah, it just has some kind of and I think the suicidality is sort of thought of like suicide when you are when if someone becomes suicidal, that's like a kind of psychosis. Right? So if they have this sort of baseline of lithium in their blood, their psychosis is calmed. So if anyone gets sort of whacked out, psychotic, wanting to kill themselves, it sort of calms them down. So the other I should add one more thing too. The research says that violent crime goes down by a measurable amount in these areas. So you have reduction in uh depression. It says depression, suicidality, Alzheimer's mortality, and violent crime all go down. If you have interesting that would make sense, lithium in the water.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

That would make sense uh about lowering crime if it if if it you know if it's a mood stabilizer, that makes sense why that would be preventive for uh for crime. I mean, it seems like a good idea that again the question's gonna be like Scott, if somebody said, Okay, we're putting lithium in your water now and you didn't have this conversation, would you be like, hey, it sounds great. You know, pumpy full of them.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

I mean, anything where they're like we're putting something in your something now, I would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. I usually say whoa, woah, woah with those words too.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

I I usually pump the bricks.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Let's let's let's discuss what's happening in detail before we're putting X in your Y.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

I I don't really care what the Y, like what Peanut butter in your chocolate for the example.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Okay, that's that I'll go for it peanut butter in my chocolate. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's it's a little unnerving. I yeah, I was you know, and if they're like, don't worry, this is just a thing that we give to people who are dangerously psychotic, you're like, okay, that's actually more worrying. And if you're like, but we don't think it has any negative effects, yeah. Uh I'd be like, I th I would I would want to know for sure. But yeah, the stats are convincing. And if you're telling me this is like no more harmless than vitamin C and what it does is reduces it might not, it might be a little more harmful than vitamin C.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

So let's talk about some of the okay. There's a few things. So if you have large therapeutic doses of lithium, so this is where it's like the mac, you know, the dose that actually like treats psychosis, which is much higher. I don't know, ten, ten hundred times higher. I don't know how much higher, but it's much larger. You do have uh a much higher risk of kidney uh disease, and you you double your risk for hyperthyroidism. And there are not studied, but there are kind of dis sort of discussed but not fully studied dangers to potentially to pregnancy and maybe infants, we don't know. But that's at the therapeutic dose. So we don't know if you get a very low dose, if it's going to have those on a population level, is it gonna cause 0.1% more birth defects or something? We don't we don't know, or maybe it'll affect you know brains or something. Um and so yeah, definitely more study should be done before I say sprinkle this into the water supply. But the but the positives make it like seem like we should study it, we should see because that seems like it would be a way to reduce some of the ills of modern life, and it's a very uh operationally an extremely easy and cheap thing to do. I mean, lithium costs nothing, it's pennies, you know, and it's cheap. I mean it's easy, you just put it in the water. There's the water supply, you just add a bunch of lithium to it, it dissolves into the water and you're done, you know, and you just you just have to maintain it just like you maintain any other mineral in the water supply. And if it can reduce suicidality, violent crime, and dementia, all bad things go down, that's good, right? Why don't you you know so we'd have to look at the the these other these other risks, but uh I think I think these risks are over like they're just from the therapeutic dose, they're not from the uh from the minimal dose.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

As soon as whenever you mention putting anything in the water supply, I immediately go to the scene from the first Batman, the first Chris Nolan Batman movie, and I'm just like, I don't know if I if I like the idea of putting something in the municipal water supply. So I would say that's that's a joker move.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

That's strange. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Yeah, it's one of those like you know, why, you know? Uh and you could you'd probably end up getting a whole bunch of people with conspiracy theories about it, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, for sure. I think one way to practically make the solution work might be to start by actually introducing a line of water bottles, water bottle products that have lithium in them, and and you could be it could be a by a dosage of saying, like, you're supposed to have one of these a day, or something like that. And that would be kind of a step measure into then saying, hey, this is good for the general public, for the health of the public. We should really consider having this be part of the water supply. But you know, you take you kind of take a step towards that instead of just immediately. Because you're gonna you're gonna end up getting just like Scott, you know, you're gonna end up saying, Oh, I don't know how I feel about you putting anything in my water.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Uh I should say that the the therapeutic dose to the water dose proposed dose is a thousand to thirty thousand times less. So it's a thousand times less at the at the highest level, it's a thousand times less than the therapeutic dose. So we're talking like a vanishingly small dose. So if you think about it, there's if there's 365 days in the year, you would it all year you would consume only a third of a single day's dose of the three.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Could you overdose if you like chug water? I mean, if you just want to let people know. No, not never, never, never.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

You'd have water toxicity before you even got a day's dose. I mean, you'd have to drink a thousand liters of water to get even one day's dose.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

I was gonna say that's a problem. Notoriously right now, people are not hydrating well. So what if this you you run into the issue of people not drinking enough water? But if you could like nebulize it and put it in the air somehow, maybe drop it from a plane, if we could fly over and put some sort of a chemical trail. People are not chemical trail across that's a that's too long of a title, maybe over the atmosphere. The chemical trail for you know population control, some sort of mood stabilizer for right.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

A mood stabilizing population chemic chemical trail left out of planes. Yeah, no one's gonna object to that. That's not like putting something in the water supply.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

When you put it that way, I'm wondering why we haven't done it already.

Chemtrails And Rainbow Gathering Story

SPEAKER_02 17:38

I have a crazy story about chemtrails. I have a crazy story about chemtrails. So I went one time to the rainbow gathering. Have you guys ever heard of this? The rainbow gathering. So the rainbow gathering is like Burning Man, but for like ultra hippies, there and there isn't really like the art and music side of it, it's just hardcore hippies, tree huggers in the forest, just like hippieing out. Like you can just be naked anytime you want. There's like, you know, pit latrines, everyone's just pooping in the woods, and it's just like around Burning Man, basically. It's like Burning Man, but without the there are drugs, but not the drugs from Burning Man. It's more like weed and mushrooms, whereas Burning Man's more like Molly and other drugs. But there's no alcohol allowed. I think Burning Man also, there's no alcohol, isn't it? Or there's I don't think alcohol's allowed. Or is it allowed? I don't know. I've never been to Burning Man, but there's no alcohol allowed in in uh in Rainbow Gathering. Anyways, I went to it once in college because it was nearby. I was in Santa Fe and it was in Colorado. It was in Steamboat Springs, Arizona. So we drove up.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Did you go for the naked people or for the big pooping trenches?

SPEAKER_02 18:47

I went for the people trenches.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Yeah. I went there because I had a couple of real hippie dippy friends, and I was kind of a hippie, and so we were like, we should go to this hippie thing, you know? And um, anyways, I went there and it was, it was, it was a it was interesting, it was fun. I stayed in the uh Warriors of the Light camp, and every night there was like a fire, and everyone was like spinning fire, like sticks and juggling fire, and like doing all kinds of fire stuff or Warriors of the Light. It was a cool camp to be part of it. Yeah, it was fun. And there were other camps. My my friends stayed in the Love and Ovens camp where pe people who built that camp came weeks before and built ceramic out of mud, like earthen mud. They built uh ovens and they built a whole like p p pavilion where people could make bread all day long. So all day long, people were making, raising bread and making bread and putting in the oven and taking it out and then sharing because at the rainbow gathering, all the food is free and provided by the community. So you just walk around to different camps and you just you just eat whatever people give you, and you're constantly eating all this amazing food that people are making for you, which is fun. Do they still do this? Um, but anyways, yes, rainbow gathering every I think it's every year. Yeah. They they don't advertise where it is until like I think two weeks before or three weeks before. Because if they do, the the people will try to like stop them, like the governments will like try to prevent the hippies from like descending like locusts onto their national park or whatever and and uh doing this thing. So they they release it and then all the hippies like strap all their you know, you know, stuff on the ceiling of their car and drive in. Anyways, I was there and I was hanging out. Uh I found I was looking for places to sit down. There's no damn places to sit down, like no chairs in all the rainbow gathering. There's like very few chairs because it's all just like in nature. So you have to like sit on the ground. And anyways, I was not interested in sitting on the ground. I wanted to sit in a chair. So I was constantly on the lookout for chairs and benches and stuff. And I found this hanging chair that was like a netted like macrome, like hanging chair that someone had strung up from a ceiling from like a tree. And I was like, Oh my god, that was like a flashing red light on my map. Like, I gotta go back to that chair all the time. So I went back there one time and I and this woman came and there was a stream nearby, and to the stream, she put this 10-gallon bucket, like a white 10-gallon bucket in the stream, and I was like, What's in there? And she said, Oh, I charged all these crystals in the moon last night, put them in this bucket, and I'm putting them in the stream to fight the contrails. Wow. I was like, Oh yeah. Okay. Some good drugs. So nice. So the hippies would the hippies might not like it if we try to put the lithium in the in the drinking water.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

What

Lithium Supply And Tech Power

SPEAKER_00 21:38

so is it uh is it a rare element or is it not a rare element? Because I feel like lithium is the number three element, so I feel like it should be plentiful, but I don't I I hear of it like Mo was saying in the context of lithium ion batteries, where it's like a scarce resource, so I'm not sure where it lies. How do you go farm new lithium? How do you get it?

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Actually, there was a company. That I uh advised for a while ago back when in my days where I was building global networks, uh, and this company was mining lithium, and a lot of the lithium they were mining was in South America. And uh it was one of those companies that was actually, you know, uh I think they had gone public and you know, they were starting to gain valuation. And the idea was that because of the coming energy requirements and batteries and all the stuff for robotics and AI and and and servers and stuff, the idea is that this is you know, the the the outlook for this company was gonna be good because lithium is gonna be needed more and more and more. So that's as far as I know about lithium production and where it's where it is all over the globe. I know there's there's a good supply of it in South America.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

Yeah. The commercial uses like batteries, uh use so much of it that it that it it becomes a bit of a challenge, like get enough of it. But the medical uses are so little that it's it's not a it wouldn't be a big burden at all, I think, to put it in a like a water supply.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

So that's the other thing to consider too, is we're in a sp an age now where you've got a lot of these technologists, the the or rather the the big tech bros, they're saying, you know, like we need to feed AI at perhaps at the cost of humans. So do you think they're gonna be okay with us using lithium for the humans when they'd rather put them in batteries for robots?

SPEAKER_02 23:17

I think your point though is that if AI is making people kind of crazy or kind of angry, and then they're like, Well, if we put this like lithium in the water spot, people might chill out a little bit and just sort of hang out and sort of be chill, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

About the robots taking over.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

They might just go for it, you know. I think this is the I think this is what you've identified it, Mo. This is like the future. If they did this today, then immediately the conspiracy theory would be it's the tech bros putting lithium in the water to get us to like you know roll over and like be, you know, less have less of a revolutionary fervor of any kind. We accept our specified opiate of the masses.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Opiate of the masses, indeed. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, but lithium. That religion's over, right? Well, legit really, but it's still there. But you know, less so. And then uh and then now lithium can be the opiate of the masses. I think it's that would still be a conspiracy theory. That wouldn't be a correct theory, I think. I mean, I think I don't think it actually would have a mood effect that was detectable in any way.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

So they should run another set of tests, not just Denmark, but now go to South America to those lithium miners and see if they have decreased incidence of suicide versus other type of mineral miners, you know, because of the lithium in the air causing them.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

They're just happier than all the other miners. They're just like we actually love this.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

We're like these seven dwarves in the Snow White and Seven Dwarves. We just whistle, we love it whistling. Actually, they love it. Love our mining life. If this

Creativity Mania And Dystopia Fears

SPEAKER_00 24:55

worked, if if everything worked and snap your finger, boom, we can do this, and it reduces the amount of general psychosis in the general population. Do you think there might be a cost with like art or like having a kind of a blunted create the creative force of people whose sometimes it rides pretty close to that psychosis sort of over the line area? Would we lose some of our creative output, some of our potential great works of art?

SPEAKER_02 25:22

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, does art come from mania? Does does what what's great come from mania? Like Van Gogh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

If Van Gogh is a happy dude who never has any sort of turmoil, do we see a single one of his paintings, you know, now hundreds of years later?

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, there's a there's a famous quote from Plato uh in the Phaedrus where he says, In truth, we receive the greatest blessings through madness, through mania, if indeed it is given by the gods. So yeah, maybe we don't want to recruit in reduce mania. But then again, maybe modern society makes us crazier than we were before. And so we might actually just need this just to like bring things back to like a baseline that was you know, like Van Gogh's life, if you think about it, he had no tech, no, virtually no technology, right? He just like was on farms and hanging out in Paris. There were just like horses around, and like, you know, like the most the most exciting thing they'd invented was oil paints in tubes. That was like the newest invention was that you could have the oil paints like ready to go in tubes. Like, like what we have. I have oil paints because I do oil painting. This I this like putting putting oil paint in tubes like that, that's why the impressionists were able to do what they did. Without oil paints in tubes, they couldn't have gone out into plain air, into the into the nature to paint their impressionistic landscapes and nightscapes and waterscapes and stuff. And also they had new pigments. So the pigments used to be more dull because they were all earthen pigments and and expensive. The bright pigments were very expensive, like the blues were made out of lapis lazuli, which is like a precious gem. You could barely make anything blue. That's why Mary's robe and all the Christian stuff, Mary's robe is blue, because it's like this sort of, oh, we really spent a lot on the Mary's robe, because it's like a veneration of Mary. But with they had the new chemical um pigments that came out, anyways. So for them, like the most exciting thing in their whole life was like more colorful pigments. That doesn't make you crazy. In our lives, people are like scrolling TikTok, like maybe we need some lithium just to like calm shit down a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

I mean, if if Meta ends up losing their case in court, you know, social media might change and we might need something to cope. Because if social media is gone, what are we gonna do? Didn't they lose already? They they lost 16 billion.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

Didn't they say it was a 16 billion dollar settlement?

SPEAKER_01 27:55

I didn't realize the case was oh, they said that's right. I heard that they had settled. Okay, yes. So they technically won.

SPEAKER_02 28:03

Or no, here $18 billion settlement for social media.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

What is Meta paying $16 billion to?

SPEAKER_01 28:10

They got sued because their social media algorithm was harming youth, young people. And so they got sued for that. I forgot who actually sued them, but the idea is that they owe damages to these teens that became addicted to social media and had social all sorts of issues. And that was their opiate for, you know, social media was their opiate for for the worse, not for the better.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Well, how do they how do they recomp like do they give all 16 billion to just one lucky teen?

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Or how do they re- What happens is everyone goes and buys chocolate bars and some people get a golden ticket with a billion dollar case.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

And now we'll do a Hunger Games and see who wins the That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Then the phone wins the whole 16 if it's a hunger game.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

I gotta say one thing though, guys, to Scott's point, the this the I this idea of it, you know, makes your mood, it stabilizes your mood. I think it's bad for art. And it's making me think of this other film from way back, it's a dystopian film called Equilibrium, actually. It was Christian Bale. It was way back when it had very matrixy vibes, not very well-known movie. But they were all taking doses of this thing called prosia, and what it was supposed to do is get them to uh be relaxed and not have emotions, and because emotions is what causes wars and and and oh, and art was banned. Books were banned and art was banned. It's you know, straight up, you know, very dystopian future. It sounds like maybe the lithium thing is a step into that direction, Adam. I mean, you know, that you gotta be careful.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

Equilibrium, right? That's where we're headed towards great Christian Bale film where they can bend bullets, don't they bend bullets? They flick their guns and the bullets.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

Yeah, it was like an art where they basically, you know, they fire the gun as they move it, and so the the bullets have and you know they don't go in a straight line. They go things arts.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Okay. So here's here's the solution. Here when people start to dis display concerning signs that there might be psychosis on board, they are then you know brought into a room and asked to create some sort of work of art. Like i in in the mil in the moment, you know, people are watching through a double glass, they're like, make something. And if they can't make anything worthwhile, they get the lithium. But if they make something and it's pretty cool, or it seems like it has promise, they get an exemption. And they're like, Well, we think you you might you might be yeah, you might be like the next really like smart, you know, you might be like You've got to cut your ear off, though.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

You gotta do something really extreme.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

You have to prove it. But if you can't prove that you're worthy that you're talented and crazy, you get the lithium.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Like, would you get a Salvador dolly with lithium? You know, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Yeah, you certainly wouldn't get his mustache. He would go, yeah. He would he would after two or three doses, he would go, why am I spending so much time on this mustache?

SPEAKER_02 30:58

No, you'd have the mustache, but it would go pew pew like instead of like straight up like this. Or instead of straight up like this, it would go down. No, I don't think so. I don't think it would have any effect on that. I think the art would be fine, everything would be fine. Because I think it would be so subtle, I don't think people would notice. That's what I think. But we'd have to study it to see more if we were really going to do it.

Dosage Practicalities Taste And Waste

SPEAKER_00 31:23

It have a taste, Adam. You're taking this because it would it no, it doesn't would it change the taste of the water? Like that's a that's a real because sometimes water tastes weird.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

So little. It's so little. It's like a mic, it's 0.8 micrograms uh per like gallon or something. It's it's incredibly low.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Next question. Are we wasting it on because you drink like some of your water, but lithium would then be in the whole supply, so you would be flushing lithium down the toilet. You would be bathing lithium down the drain. Using lithium to cool data centers.

SPEAKER_02 31:59

Do they use drinking water for cooling? Is that the same water supply? I feel like that's separate, isn't it? Like industrial water supplies and drinking water supplies. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

This brings me back to the idea of putting it in water bottles, because then you're not wasting it. The idea is it's meant for banking. You know, to Scott's point, you want the cumulative effects. I know. You you're you're saying you want it to be because if it's in the water, everybody's drinking it all the time. They're getting their dose.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

I looked up. So Facebook has to pay $18 billion. What it is is each of it goes to 47 U.S. states in Washington, D.C. and several U.S. territories get the money to fund child safety initiatives and mental health programs. California will get 2.1 billion, New York will get 1 billion, and then Texas made a side deal to get just a billion for Texas.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

I was gonna say 47 states. That's what what are the three that are like, nah, we're good.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Texas and some others. And then also they have to make product changes. So they must have a default two-hour daily time cap across all platforms. So hard time limits for for ages 13 to 17.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Um so that means if you're that if you're if if you're of that age, once you exceed that time limit, it just service will be like, hey, sorry you've exceeded your time limit. Yeah, yeah. I'll believe it when I see it.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

That's uh that's a and then they're gonna also do nighttime access blocks. Apps will block access and notifications during late night hours, midnight to 6 a.m. School mode, silence all app notifications by default during regular school hours, and strict oversight, implement of strict age verification barriers and enhance parental control dashboards.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

This is like then in Ready Player One when they had like one day and they said that one day you can't go online. And everyone was like just like lost their minds. Now we really need the lithium.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

I I looked it up. The three states that are not involved are Texas, like you said, and also New Mexico and Florida. Those are the three.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

I kind of was gonna say Florida. I don't know why, but Florida, I don't know why New Mexico would have left out the poor state. They could have used you know a billion dollars for Florida.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Florida's a you want to start with lithium in the water, you start with Florida. That's true. That's that's your case study right there.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

We can just say gator's pea lithium. We'll just be like, it's just there. It's just there.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

You're already getting I'm totally cool with drinking gator pea. So that's that totally passes my sorry, I was worried for no reason at all. Give me that glass.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

Have you guys ever eaten gator? I have. It tastes like chicken. It tastes like chicken, yeah. It tastes like chicken. Yeah. You've had a gator on a stick. It's pretty good. Oh my god. It says that actually five billion of it of Meta's $18 billion deal is locked away from states unless TikTok and YouTube agree to the exact same terms. Huh. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Which is kind of crazy. That is cool, actually, when you think about that.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

So basically they're gonna pay $13 billion unless the states can like go and put pressure on TikTok and YouTube, like file lawsuits and be like, we're gonna do the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

These guys are doing it too.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

If you are like a teen and it's you know, what did they say, midnight or whatever they say? So instantly, and all of a sudden I'm gonna go down. You're like YouTube. Whatever. Like fine.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

I'll go to the other service provider. So yeah, yeah. Well, TikTok has a pretty trusting relationship with our government, right? They're not we haven't soured that uh in any way. So that should work out nicely.

Pilot Programs And Lithium Water Products

SPEAKER_02 35:39

I would say we should, like everything, we should study it more. Yeah. And then I think we should do pilot. We should do a pilot. So like a city could vote for it, could vote on it if they wanted to try it. Or a state could vote on we're gonna do it in these five cities if the city's councils like agree to it. And then we could see, you know. And maybe maybe go to cities or states where there's like, I don't know, some awareness of, you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

I'm still back to the idea of it's you know how we have like vitamin infused water and we have you know, water with all sorts of like, oh, this is it's got electrolytes in it and stuff like that. We I feel like it's just a uh, you know, this is a commercial opportunity in the waiting here is lithium water. Lithium water, let's do it. Yeah. Alligator pee.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

Alligator P is gonna sell through the roof in Florida. I mean, that's where it's gonna sell.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

How can you convince people of the efficacy if like one of the main things is it prevents suicide? Like, if you tell someone, oh, you've been drinking this lithium and they're like, Well, how do I know it did anything? You're like, Well, you're you're you're still alive. And like, well, if we had this conversation and I was in the non-drinking lithium group, I would presumably still be like, how do I find that difference as a consumer, I guess, without it being the have or I have not killed myself? You know, like do I notice any other benefits in the in my day-to-day, or would I notice my mood getting a few?

SPEAKER_02 37:04

I don't think you can notice it. I don't because like a thousand times less than a therapeutic dose. So I mean, I think it's it's like homeopathy. It's like, you know, it's it's just like a vanishingly small amount.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

The point is that I'm not gonna in notice it as I drink, like I'm not gonna drink a big glass of water and go, whoa, I feel the lithium. Like that's the point, is that it's it's there, but it's not doing anything.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

And it looks like it looks like I I'm seeing some more of this data as as we talk, and it says using data from 27 Texas counties from 1978 to 1987, researchers found homicide, suicide, and rape rates were significantly higher in counties with little to no lithium in their water, less than five micrograms per liter, than in counties with higher levels, meaning 123 micrograms per liter, which is like still nothing. Because a microgram is a thousandth of a milligram. So it's like this is extremely small amounts. And differences held up economics level statistics there, right? And they say differences held up even after adjusting for population density. Robbery, burglary, and theft showed weaker but also significant associations. So this could like, you know, to some measurable effect, reduce violent and even I mean, if you consider property crimes like robberies, also somewhat, you know, that's not violent, but it's you know, you pretty interesting, pretty interesting way to reduce crime. I mean, I prefer this to like you know, thousands more police on the street and flock cameras and drones, and you know, I prefer this to to all that. It's like pick your dystopia, right? So this one is one's yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

I'd rather have that than those robot dogs coming after me and stuff. Right.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

That's right. Yeah, that's right. And the surveillance, there's no surveillance because it's great. Now you're free to do whatever you want, no one no one's surveilling you, you know.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

In in a country that's like steadily reduced the amount of money or attention they put toward like mental health for the general population, you know, having something that's more of a safety net, a higher level safety net that kind of goes around that, I don't know that that's a bad idea, especially for our population where where we don't have a lot of other high-level you know like safety nets for this sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

How how these statistics and these studies are they recent? The Texas one it says 78 to 87, so that's like 30 years ago. Uh the Danish one, that's pretty recent. The Danish uh that's the dementia one is pretty recent, I think.

SPEAKER_01 39:29

Now no government has actually done this or have thought about it. It's just the studies are out, but nobody's experimented with this to the level of, you know, let's try it, basically.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

That's right. That's right. Yeah. No one's no no one said let's add this to the water.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Let's well, we're the innovative Americans are the innovators. We we gotta, you know, we are we're always first to things, so I feel like this is where this is where we step up.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

We step up and medicate the population.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Let's do this.

AI Futures And Democratic Control

SPEAKER_00 39:56

So, Mo, what is your AI interest? Like, what are you ultimately thinking? I I just want to ask, because I I worry about Terminator future with AI, with that we're always going toward that way. Adam leans more toward like utopia future. Where do you fall on the what what dangers does the future lead or not have, you know?

SPEAKER_01 40:17

Well, I you know, I think that uh you're gonna always have this. I want to say black or white thinking. You there's merits to both sides. There is merit to, yeah, you're gonna put if you're gonna put AI in autonomous weapons, the chance that this AI can over time, I don't want to say get sentient, but essentially turn against us and then potentially become something like a Terminator is absolutely possible. But the thing is, that is one, you know, scenario in a sea of other scenarios. There's also a scenario where we put AI in uh, you know, all of our you know, governmental decisions and it becomes very representative and it actually helps us have a utopian society. So the thing is you can where I stand is that it's it's probably not gonna be this or that. What's gonna end up happening is gonna be somewhere in the middle, but not necessarily in the middle. It first is gonna be somewhat terrible, and then we're gonna have to police it and say, okay, how do we make it better? And so I'm on the of the mind that we it really is not about the tech itself. The tech itself is just like fire. I say fire can burn down your house or it can cook your food. It just depends on what people do with the technology. And you know you get into you know phil philosophy and you start thinking about like power, right? The concept of power, absolute power corrupts absolutely. So if you give this AI power to a few people, they're gonna abuse it, not because they're bad people, but just because power is corruptive. Um, and so I stand with this idea of AI does need to be democratized, um, it needs to be made available to everybody, and it can't be concentrated in the hands of of a few governments or a few uh you know oligarch type companies, tech companies. Um and I think that's gonna be ultimately the determining factor in whether this tech becomes dystopian or potentially I don't want to say u utopian, but it's gonna be actually help us out and help us, you know, realize the Jetsons future, you know.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

That makes sense, yeah. I mean it it does feel like it's in the hands of a few people right now who can get well, you know, it's a ship with uh a few different steering wheels, and I'm curious what way we will end up shifting it.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

There's this great book I read a while ago called The Tower and the Square, and it was talking about how throughout history there's always been towers and squares, and towers represent where power is concentrated. So governments, now we're looking at at big companies, corporates that have you know more money than the GDPs of certain countries. And then you have squares, and the squares are essentially the the places where communities with big networks of people, and that you've always had this you know interplay between towers and squares. And so what we'd like is a balance, right? You can't have you can't have everything be a square. You do need towers, you need you need some form of way to um govern the masses and and create some kind of social order, but you also don't want to have it be oppressive. And so this is that fine line that we're towing. And, you know, the only way to do that is by getting people educated and getting people involved and getting people to to be engaged and not see AI as this awful, terrible, terrible thing, but also get them to wake up to the fact that it could be dangerous in in the hands of few people. That's that's kind of the vision here is to is to get more people to take it seriously and not just completely, you know, put their heads in the sand about it.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Like you're saying, if decent people who would use AI decently say, Oh, I would never touch AI, I'm not going to, then it becomes ultimately a self-fulfilling prophecy because the non-decent people are the only ones using it doing things with AI, and you're like, Oh, of course now.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

Sounds like Scott, that's an indictment of you. It might be. This is like I don't like AI, I don't want to do anything with AI. Well, there you go. It only takes good men to do nothing for evil to win, Scott.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

That's it. I'm gonna invent a robot called a terminicer, and it's gonna go around, it's gonna be nicer to everyone. Like it's just gonna really go over and cause some of the things that we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_02 44:16

I'm gonna make one called the lithiumator, and it's just gonna chill people out, man. We need Canadian robots. That's what we need.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

Yeah, no, actually, there's this the battle for good and evil uh extends to robots. I mean, the future also, even in cybersecurity, you're gonna have good agents and bad agents, and they're actually gonna fight each other. So you know, cybersecurity now has become a war of ages. Uh so yeah, you wanna go create more good you want to go create good robots, Scott. By all means, be my guest. Get into it and create some good robots, man. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

Maybe I'm I'm very skeptical that we should do lithium now that you guys talked about it. Because uh not because I don't think it'd be good, I actually think it would be good, but I think the public, I just feel like people aren't although wait a second, if it makes people a little less crazy, maybe there would be fewer conspiracy theories overall. Because everyone would be like, take it down a notch in terms of craziness. Maybe that's what we need a little bit is kind of just to bring the crazy down just like one notch. So there you go.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

Because sometimes it's not that the fringes are the loudest sometimes, the vocal minority. And if they are less crazy, then maybe we have more space for some rational discourse, possibly.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Yeah. Mood stuff. Now, see, and by that token, I do I do like that. I think you know, I'm not val I'm not saying the idea we should absolutely implement it, but I do see I do see merit in this, you know, counter-effect, this idea of okay, well, if we're gonna be dealing with all sorts of crazy dystopian AI stuff, then we need something to help the masses cope. But it just it I just when you do it on a large scale like that, it's gonna be hard for people to swallow that pill without thinking that it is um that there's ulterior motives. That's the problem. It's the public opinion. The battle for public opinion is everything here.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

It's not what I hear. I hear Mohaf is saying fully on board, let's let's get and uh shoot people up full of lithium as much as possible.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Yeah, yeah. I'll get behind some lithium, sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

Do we leave it there? Have we have we beat the lithium horse to death here?

SPEAKER_01 46:14

Maybe so. I gotta say, Adam, you are full of surprises. I did not expect to be having a conversation. I really had no clue what I was getting into here, but I had a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

Now you know where I what I go through. I never know.

SPEAKER_02 46:26

It's always I I I feel like you know, I go out into the media landscape. I there are there are very few places where you actually get to hear new ideas. Most places are talking about something you've already heard about, and then you've already so I I just I'm just waiting for solutions to pop off. I because our catalog is evergreen. You can go listen to the first episode, and it's just as new to you as this episode because they still haven't done uh nurse policy.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

That also indicts our world of not solving things. Yeah, we just that's the problems of the identifier story. Have they done any of our solutions yet?

SPEAKER_02 47:03

No, I don't think they've done any of them yet.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

Well, not that you're aware of. Somebody might be working. Somebody might have just registered the LLC for the lithium water company right now for all you.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Yeah, they're these guys with masks dumping big bags of lithium into the water plant up the road I just saw.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

Ski masks, right. Yeah. No, I love that. I I I I love the concept of fresh ideas that nobody's thought about. One of these might be the solution to you know the human problem. You don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It's worth exploring.

unknown 47:35

Yeah.

Wrap Up And Where To Find Mo

SPEAKER_00 47:36

Well, and thank you, Mo, for joining us for this episode and for this conversation. I really appreciate it. How can people get in contact with you if they want to get more Mo?

SPEAKER_01 47:45

Uh well, you can find me on LinkedIn, Mo Hoffiz. Uh, beyond the bite, uh my YouTube channel, you can connect with me there. Um, I've got a fresh season coming. It's uh it's been four months since my last episode. I feel like it's a confession. That's a great way to connect with me if you're uh if you guys are interested. And you know, we'll we'll probably link up the podcast somehow so we you know we can find each other.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

Yeah, let's cross podcasts. That would be amazing. That would be great. Fantastic. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Mo. Thanks, Scott. Take care, everyone. This has been another good one, Adam. Thank you. Yeah, banger. All right, bye-bye, everyone.