#2167 - Noland Arbaugh

Joe Rogan
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What's up, nolan? Nothing much. Can you guys hear me through this? Is this too far away? Cool.

No, it's perfect. It's perfect. It's a pleasure to meet you, man. Hey, you, too. You, too.

Noland Arbaugh
Thanks for having me. I have a feeling if there's a movie that they do in the future of how the world changed in 2024, you're gonna be in that movie. Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah, that'd be cool. Wonder if they'd get to play me.

Joe Rogan
They probably don't need people by then. They probably just do movies with AI. And probably really quickly, you could probably, like, take a really great novel like the great Gatsby, run it through an AI video creator, and it would just make you the most amazing version of the great Gatsby. Yeah, that's true. Probably.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, that'd be sick. But if we're talking about, like, historical moments in human beings and in technology, the implementation of neuralink on the first human patient. That's you. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.

Joe Rogan
No, definitely, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was. I keep thinking about it, like, you know, BCI have been around for a while, so I've. What is BCI?

Noland Arbaugh
Brain computer interface. So, like, just implants that they've done in people different ways that they've found. They've given people the ability to control electronic devices. They've been able to control computers and stuff. There are a couple things out there.

The Utahray synchron came out with something where basically, they go through the artery in the neck, and they kind of thread something up into the brain. It expands in a vein up there, in an artery up there, and then they can, like, control the brain through that. So BCI has been around for a while, a few decades, at least, I think, since, like, the nineties. So I always say that we're standing on the shoulders of giants, sort of thing. But I know neuralink just has.

It's in a league of its own, and I know that, you know, with Elon's name attached to it, it's gonna blow up way more. But I think this is the beginning. I think everyone else that, you know, comes after this, basically, is gonna be pulled up by the progress neuralink's making and the fact that they are trying to, like, open source basically all of it. I think the whole field is just going to grow exponentially at this point. Well, we can only hope so.

Joe Rogan
And that really is fascinating. And it really is fascinating how many different ways and strategies they've employed to try to connect computers to human beings and brains. So what, do you know what year the first one was that they did this? 98. Oh, wow.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I think so. I think that was the Utah ray that just was. Looks like a chip with, like, more fixed, like, threads on it. They were, I think, a lot smaller. And it just sat on the brain.

So obviously another open brain surgery and they put it in there and then it would read a section of the brain, motor cortex, I think, as well. Have you seen some of the stuff now where they're using some kind of scanning imagery where they can actually see thoughts? No, I haven't. Yeah, they're doing where they think they're going to be able to record dreams eventually. And what they're able to do now is get, like an approximation of what someone is seeing and thinking.

Whoa. Can you find that, Jamie? So we could figure out exactly what they did? Yeah, here it is. Scientists read dreams using brain scans.

Joe Rogan
This is an older one. Okay. That's crazy. I mean, I've always heard that scientists really don't know how, like, what dreams are and, like, what is going on or why we do it. I've heard plenty of people say, like, yeah, we still don't know why you even need to sleep or, like, what's going on in your dream.

Noland Arbaugh
I don't know if that's changed recently, but, like, I don't know. Dreams are an interesting thing. The whole sleep thing is interesting. Yeah. MRI scans reveal what we see in dreams.

Joe Rogan
Japanese researchers unveil dreams visuals with 60% accuracy using innovative MRI scan scans at pivotal Kyoto studies showcasing a breakthrough in sleep science. Whoa. Wow. Wild stuff. That picture just looked AI.

Noland Arbaugh
Are we dreaming in AI now? I think we're close. Yeah. I think if the simulation is real, it seems ridiculous now, less so than it seemed five years ago, but I think five years from now it'll seem likely. I think it's all interconnected in some very bizarre way.

Joe Rogan
I think we were slowly building toward that connection with all of this technology and all of these new innovations and all of a greater understanding of quantum physics and space and all these different. As they build on all this stuff, I think it's going to become more and more likely that this whole thing is somehow another real but not real at the same time. Yeah. Neither a simulation nor, like, actual reality, like a hybrid of these things. Oh, yeah.

Noland Arbaugh
That'd be crazy. That's one of the things I'm really excited about. With neuralink is how much we're going to learn just about the brain from this. Like, the amount of data that they're collecting. I mean, little things, like the fact that all the stuff with the thread pull out going on with my brain.

One of the reasons that they think it happened is because, well, I don't know. Have you heard about, like, the thread pull out and stuff? Yes. Can you explain it to me? Yeah.

Yeah. So, basically, there are 64 threads implanted in my brain with 16 electrodes on them each. And over the course of a month, we saw a lot of the threads start retracting from my brain. So the threads that the robot implanted were retracted, and so we were getting less signals from a lot of them, and they can't see that on, like, brain scans or anything. So, like, the threads are so small, you know, not even the size of a human hair, that in order to get a scan of them, you'd have to use such a big machine that it would probably just fry my brain.

So they can't just go in and look at them. So a lot of the data that we have that shows that they were moving or coming out of the brain was literally just whether or not the electrodes on the threads were sending signals anymore, if they were picking up neuron spikes. So a lot of the threads were getting pulled out, and that led to some decline performance for a while. They kind of fixed that, in a way. But some of the reason that that happened, at least, we think, is because the brain moves more than they thought it would, which is something that was so bizarre to me.

When I first heard that, I was like, you guys don't know how to. How much the brain moves like this feels like. Like that should have been something that was solved, you know, ages ago. I never even thought it moved. Yeah.

And so it pulses, like, with, with, like your brain, with your heart. I mean, so, like, as your heart pulses and stuff, your brain pulses as well, because, you know, there's blood running through it and everything, so it's just pulsing. And they thought that it moved, like pulses at about a 1 mm rate, so that's how much it'll pulse. Like move is 1. They found in my brain that it was moving 3 mm pulsing.

So that's on a scale of three x times what they had made the whole neuralink and the threads and everything for to be able to withstand. So they think that that might have had something to do with it as well. So is that a normal thing that, like, does the brain have a range? Yeah, I don't know. I think that's gonna.

We'll know more. Stiffness pulsation of the human brain detected by non invasive time. The human brain pulses every time the heart beats. Scientists have used the tiny jiggle to reveal new insights about our neurons. Neuroscientist try that name, Uly Root ishower Uly Rudeshower, PhD, thought he'd uncovered a strange new phenomenon about the human brain.

Joe Rogan
So. So it pulses every heartbeat. So if your heart beats a lot, if your heart's beating fast, if you're jacked up, does your brain pulse fast, too? Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I get, like, what happens with me is if my heart rate's higher, I'll get, like, headaches and stuff.

Noland Arbaugh
So, like, I have a lot of weird things with my, with my body, with being a quadriplegic, where, like, I can tell, like, if I have really high blood pressure, my head just gets, like, really, really, like, I get really bad headaches and stuff, but, yeah. So brain moves more than we thought it did, which blew my mind. Once we get more people in the study, then we'll really know if for some reason, my brain just moves a lot more than it should. I imagine that we'll see something around the same, and then we will be able to determine, like, a range like you're talking about. If it's, you know, a range of 1, say, 5 mm, or if it's pretty consistent around 3 mm, I'm not sure.

Joe Rogan
So what this implant allows you to do is you can interface with a computer, and you can use keyboard, you can type in URL's, you can play video games. How does it work? Yeah, so, basically. Excuse me, my implant has, like, a Bluetooth connection to the computer. And then through that, neuralink has created an app that they have uploaded to the computer.

Noland Arbaugh
And through that app, I can interface with the computer. What it does is all of the electrodes on the threads are sending neuron spikes, neuron signals, and through my. So it's all implanted in my motor cortex through my intentions. So, say, if I want to try to move my hand left, right, up, down, I can't really move it. I have, like, a little bit of movement in my hand, but I can't really move it.

But the neurons are still firing. That intention is still there. So, like, those signals are being sent. There's just a cutoff in my spinal cord. So obviously it's not getting down, but it's still going on in my brain.

And those electrodes are picking up those signals, and there's an algorithm, like machine learning going on in the background that is taking those intentions, and over time, it is learning what I'm trying to do, and that translates to cursor control. Oh, shit. Yeah. So if I want to try to move the cursor to the left, I move my hand to the left, but that's not necessarily what I would need to do. If I wanted to move the cursor to the left, I could kick my foot, or I could do any sort of, like, motor action to train it to learn.

That's what I wanted to do, to go left. So there will be, like, a visual on the screen that says, like, move your hand to the left, and then they will train that left movement to left on the cursor control. But that visual could be anything. It could be, like, do a little jig and that'll move it to the left. Like, anything that it can do.

Anything you can do. I mean, it can learn and you can map that to anything. So does this include facial movements? Does it? Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan
So you could, like, move it with your nose? Yeah, I'm pretty sure, like, we haven't tried anything like that. We haven't tried, you know, a lot of stuff. This is very, very, like, it's still very new. So there are things that we're working on what works well at this point.

Noland Arbaugh
So a lot of it is my right hand stuff. We have mapped a lot of things to individual fingers, hand movements in general, but we've done left hand stuff. We've done foot kick stuff, and it doesn't look like the signals are as good, but that also might be just due to the fact that some of the threads are pulled out. So when they fix that issue with the next people, then those things would be much, much better. And if that's the case, then you could theoretically do multiple things at once.

It's not just, you know, you map, say, my right hand to the cursor control, then you map my fingers and my other hand and my toes to, like, key control. So I could be moving the cursor and typing at the same time with my toes or something. Yeah. There's a lot, lot to explore with this. That's so interesting that it's tied to your mind, telling different parts of your body to move.

Joe Rogan
I'm very obviously very ignorant to this stuff. I thought, like, you were just using your mind and telling the cursor to go around. Yeah. So it's something that is true. So it's something that we differentiate, there are what are called attempted movements and imagined movements.

Noland Arbaugh
So at the very beginning, I did a lot of attempted movement. Attempted movement is just what it sounds like. I attempt to move my hand in a certain direction. I attempt to move my fingers, like lift your finger up, down, left, right. I attempt to do something, and then the algorithm will take that and translate it to cursor control.

But what I realized maybe a few weeks in was that I could just think, cursor, go here, and it would move that. It blew my mind when that happened for the first time. Like I said, with everything going on in my brain, all of it still works, all the signals are still there. I think something to try to move, and the signal gets sent. So when I'm attempting to move my hand and the cursor is moving and it's moving basically where I want it to, I'm like, yeah, that makes sense.

It didn't really shock me that it worked. I assumed that it would work because all the signals are still working. It's just my spinal cord that's jacked up. But when I moved it for the first time with my mind, without attempting to move at all, I was giddy the entire day. I could not believe what had just happened.

And I think we're going to find that with a lot of things right now. We are doing, like, I'm trying to map sign language, like the sign language Alphabet, in order to text, like write words and stuff. And it's pretty promising it worked. I'm sure there's a video out there of me somewhere that Neuralink has of me spelling a couple words with sign language. Wow.

Joe Rogan
So you're thinking in your mind, or you're trying to get your hands to make the signs of sign language, and then the computer interprets that as the language and types it out. Yep. And I think the same thing is going to happen where I went from attempting to move my hand to imagining just moving the cursor. I think it's going to be the same way with the texting. I haven't had this confirmed yet, but I don't see why not.

Noland Arbaugh
I think at some point the computer is going to learn, like me trying to do certain letters, if, like attempting it, at some point I'm just going to think that letter instead of actually trying to move, and it'll type it, because I think it's. I think it's both, like me learning what the computer is trying to do, the algorithm, and the algorithm learning what I'm trying to do. And so over time, it's just going to be completely thought based. I don't see why it wouldn't get there. From what I've seen just with the cursor control, it makes sense that as I'm attempting, it's learning, and then instead of even needing to attempt, it'll just understand what I want to do and it'll do it.

Joe Rogan
So you were saying that you were one of the first people to do this, and there's going to be more people in the trial, and that maybe they'll learn, like the things that are going wrong with yours. Can they do yours again? Can they redo it? Yeah, they could. It was something that, you know, when the thread retraction had happened, I was obviously pretty broken up about it.

Noland Arbaugh
I thought that. So, like, when they told me I didn't have very good control of the cursor anymore, it was really hard for me to get the cursor to go where I wanted it to go. I thought my time in the trial was coming to an end. And that's really hard. It's something, something hard to come to terms with, because they had just shown me this whole new world, like all these new capabilities that I had, and they had introduced so many things.

Like before that point, I had played video games for 10 hours without needing any sort of help, and it was hard to internalize that it could all be coming to an end. I know that it will at some point, because I'll be out of the study and I won't be able to use it anymore. My first thought was, can you guys go in and fix it? Go in, take it out, put in a new one?

Basically said, we're not at that point yet. We're going to see if we can fix it. We're going to see if we can do things on the software side to fix it, which they ended up doing. It works better than it did before now, even with, like, fewer threads. So I'm glad we didn't, because they learned a lot.

If we would have just gone in and taken it out and put in a new one, they wouldn't have learned the last, like anything that they had learned over the last three months. They could go in and do it. They're not going to. I don't think that they need to, but at some point, I know that the whole point of neuralink is to be upgradeable. So at some point, they're going to go in, hopefully, and take it out and give me a better one.

Joe Rogan
Wow. Now, what is the extent of your injury.

Noland Arbaugh
Sorry. I dislocated my c four C five in a. People keep calling it a diving accident. It wasn't really a diving accident. It was just sort of like a freak accident while I was swimming in the lake.

So I dislocated my c four C five, which they told me was good because I didn't sever my spinal cord. It was just kind of like my spinal cord bounced out of place for a split second, then hopped right back where it was supposed to be. And so I cannot move anything. I have no control or sensation below my shoulders. I got a little bit back.

Like, I can move my hand a little bit, but not enough to do anything. Like, I couldn't control a joystick or anything. So, yeah, no movement or sensation below my shoulders. Is there anything that. Have you looked into what they do with stem cells?

Yeah, yeah. So I applied for studies before neuralink, and I never got asked to be in any of them. I never even heard back from anyone, which is kind of what I assumed would happen with neuralink, honestly. But I had applied for things because I obviously don't want to be paralyzed anymore. I don't want to be a quadriplegic.

So it would be great if I could get into something and have them fix as much of me as possible. I mean, even if I had more control over my hands, the amount of things that I could do would, like, skyrocket, like, an order of magnitude better, and my life would be better, my independence would be better. Everything. Yeah, I don't. I mean, I don't think it would hurt to try and.

Joe Rogan
You familiar with a lot of these clinics, like the Cellular Performance institute in Mexico? No. They do a lot of UFC fighters. They do. Like, you can do things in other countries that you're not allowed to do in America because of, you know, regulations.

But what they're able to do down there is they're going right into discs, and they're alleviating people's disc problems, where they're actually making the discs grow larger and heal people with back injuries. And I know I've read things about spinal cord injuries and improvements, but I would love to connect you with them, and they're the experts on this. They'd be able to tell you what the state of the art in terms of the research shows that stem cells can and can't do. I don't think you could hurt. I mean, yeah, it's a healing thing, right.

If you're getting some sensation, a little bit better movement, maybe they could accelerate that. Yeah, that would be great. Um, I'll connect you with them. Cool. I don't know if I'm allowed to at this point.

Oh, really? Because I'm in the knurling study. I'm not sure that maybe you should lie. Yeah, I mean, it would be. It would be great.

But that would suck to get out of the study, too. Both things would suck. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe they would allow it.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I mean, we'll see. We'll see. I mean, it's only something that would help you heal. Yeah, yeah, I know. I just know that, like, in a lot of studies, something like that.

Joe Rogan
Right. They might not want to take on, like, the added risk, understandably. Also, it would kind of mess up their control. Exactly. Like, what happens, you juice somebody up with stem cells and does the brain pulsate more?

Does the fibers come out more? Yeah. How does it interplay with any sort of. Yeah, I get it. I get it.

Is there a hope in the future of utilizing this technology to help people regain movement? Yeah. Yeah, that's one of the plans. I don't know if you've seen anything on it. Basically, they do something similar to what the stem cell.

Noland Arbaugh
A lot of the stem cell research is. A lot of the stem cell stuff is implant stem cells above and below the level of injury, and those stem cells will migrate, basically, and create a bridge. Some of them have even talked about injecting right into the level of injury. So with the neuralink, the plan is to implant one in the brain and then implant one below the level of injury. And then the neuralinks will just talk right to each other.

All the brain signals that it's picking up in the brain, wherever it's implanted in motor cortex in this point, in this scenario, would go straight to the other one, and it would send it right through your body like it should. And are they. Do they have a plan on when to try this? They're already trying it in animals. They have one in a pig.

You can watch the video of it where basically they have an implant in the pig's brain and an implant in the pig's spinal cord, I think, in the thoracic section of the spinal cord. And they have been moving the pig's, like, legs on its own. The pig's not paralyzed or anything, but basically, they, like, tell the pig, come to this section of, you know, they, like, grid off the floor, and they put food in a section of the grid, and they're like, if you're okay with us testing on you, pig, come over here, basically. And the pig will go in there, and then they will take control of the pig's leg, and they will, like, start playing around with it, like, making the pig. Yeah.

So this right here. So all those movements right there, the pig's leg, are them. They're doing it. So. And this is just the beginning, obviously.

Joe Rogan
So this is flexor movement. It's saying. It's saying in. The pig is lifting its leg up unconsciously. It's not doing it on its own.

Noland Arbaugh
Nope. They're doing it all.

Joe Rogan
Dude, how long before they can hijack people? How long before the CIA can hack into you? That's like. I mean, that is the ultimate fear of human beings becoming cyborgs, is that we're. We're going to be subject to all the problems that our computers and our phones have with malware and spyware and.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I mean, people ask me all the time if this thing can be hacked, and short answer is yes. But at this point, at least, hacking this wouldn't really do much. You might be able to see, like, some of the brain signals, you might be able to see some of the data that neuralink's collecting, and then you might be able to control my cursor on my screen and make me look at weird stuff, but that's about it, I guess you could go in and, like, look through. Look through my, like, messages, emails, something like that. But I'd also have to be, like, connected already.

So if I'm not connected to my computer or anything, you can't get in there on your own. So it have to be a time when I am on it and you are able to hack it, and then. You'Re giving it basically a guidebook, how to ruin your life. It's gonna crank up the volume. Put gay porn on full blast.

Meatspin.com. yeah, I mean, it. It is what it is. It is what it is. Yeah, I think if it happens, it happens.

I've. It's something that they had to tell me about before I got into the study. This is possible, but I'm not worried about it. What kind of a piece of shit would they be to hack your brain? Get the fuck out of here.

Joe Rogan
Yeah, I know there's plenty of bankers out there. Go concentrate on them. I've, you know, along that line, it's something I've thought a lot about with, like, doing interviews and stuff is like, some of the people that I've done interview interviews with, I'm like, are they gonna try to attack me to get to, like, elon Musk or something? Are they gonna say things about me or, like, you know, try to do, like, a getcha on me, gotcha sort of thing? Yeah.

Noland Arbaugh
And everyone that I've talked to about that, they were just like, they would have to be the scum of the earth to try to do that to you. But we'll see. Hasn't happened yet. Maybe. Maybe someone will.

Joe Rogan
Oh, there's some scummy people out there. They'll give it a go. Yeah. Especially if they think it can go viral. Yeah.

Yeah. It's. It's become, in fashion, to criticize Elon Musk. Yeah. I've already had some people who.

Noland Arbaugh
Just, the way that they're interviewing me, it's just so. I don't know. It gives me. It gives me the heebie jeebies. Like, I can tell they're trying to get me to say things, and I'm just like, no.

Joe Rogan
So what do you think they're trying to do? Are they just trying to untack? Well, see, here's the thing about interviewing. That's kind of that a lot of people don't know. When you're used to talking to people.

Like, I talk to a lot of people. I'm used to talk to people. If I just meet them. This is me. If I was at a store buying food, this is me.

Everywhere. I can be me. But it's because I'm used to it. But a lot of people, when they sit down, they know they're gonna be on camera. They've never been on camera before, and they get very nervous.

And that's why I like to talk to people before the show. Just kind of hang out a little, get you chilled out. I'm just a person. You're just a person. We're gonna just talk.

It's gonna be easy, man. I'm your friend. We're gonna have a good time. Some people don't wanna do that. They wanna do the opposite.

So they wanna sit there with a clipboard, and they wanna, like, look at you in a condescending way, and it's, like, a little bit of a power move. And what they're trying to do is make salacious content. That's all they're trying to do. That's their job. Their job is different than a person who just wants to have a conversation and ask questions, which is my job.

Their job is to make something dramatic happen that's gonna be shared on TikTok. Yeah. You know, that's. They're barely in the news business anymore. What they're kind of in is the clip business.

Viral clip business. They're just. They're farming viral clips. So if they can say something ridiculous and maybe you'll say something back and that'll become the. Gotcha.

Oh. He claps back. Yeah, yeah. It's something like. Like, I'm not nervous talking to people.

Noland Arbaugh
I never have been. I've never had stage fright. I think people are people. I think I'm pretty good with people. I am not weird about interacting with others.

I think it's because of my mom. My mom's, like, the friendliest person in the world. So I grew up just being able to walk up to someone on the street and start a conversation if I wanted to. And so then I can obviously tell things when people are interviewing me, like what they're trying to get from me. Right.

Like, just the way that they ask questions, the tone of their voice. Yeah. Like, hey, I'm your friend. Like, open up to me. And it's like.

I know, I know. It's just not. It's not great. Well, you know, that's the business they're in, you know? Yeah.

Joe Rogan
If you work for a tire story, trying to sell tires, that's their business. You know, you need new tires. Do I really? You know, their business is talking shit and making things. You know, it's just.

It's a bad format. Most of those media interviews are bad formats because it's a very limited amount of time, and you have to have a clip that fits in between commercials. And also, they're not free. They have executives, and there's too many people that get in there, and just the person talking to you should just be talking to you, and they should have an understanding of what you do and how it happened and what this is all about. What is what this means for future people.

You know, it shouldn't be like going after Elon Musk. Everyone's so goddamn political right now. It's so weird. They're even making apolitical people political. It's just so.

To connect you to that, it's just so stupid. What you are is, like I said, I think if there's a movie about the future, one of the very first people that has used this kind of technology, and we're learning that these people are getting better at it, and they're. And now with the use of AI, I mean, who knows what's gonna be possible with you just in a few years? Yeah, it's very exciting. It is very exciting.

Noland Arbaugh
I know a lot of people are really nervous about it, and understandably so. I'm one of them. I'm nervous. Yeah, I've heard. I've heard a little bit of what you've said about it, and, like, I don't have, like, good arguments against it, not like I can come on here and be like, joe, don't worry, man.

Like, I'm. I'm here to help. Don't worry about it. I would say that's the computer in your brain talking. Let me.

Let me into your computer, your phone. I'll show you. There's no big deal. I'm your friend, Joe. No, but I get it.

At the same time, the way I look at it is, like, how much it's going to be able to help people. How much can it be able to help people like me at the beginning, at least. Like, I know a lot of this is, like, down the road stuff. Like, you know what it's going to do. Two normal people who get this, they're going to be able to be hacked or controlled or something.

But for me, I think about it, like, how many people who are paralyzed don't have to be paralyzed anymore. How many people with disabilities, als or, you know, Alzheimer's or any of these who are blind? How many people are going to be able to live their lives again? And that's my goal at the beginning. I know that I feel like people are going to look at me and say, like, I really need to be more concerned about a lot of the, like, things coming down the road.

And it's something that I'm trying to think more about because at some point, people are going to ask, and I don't have good answers for it because all I'm thinking about is, you know, like, I want to help people, and I feel like this is going to help people, and that's what I'm focused on, so. Well, I think your perspective is probably the right one because no one knows what's coming. Yeah, no one. And you can be freaked out about it like I am, but I'm sometimes freaked out about it, but other times, I'm just sort of resigned to the fact that this is just the existence that we find ourselves in. This is our timeline.

Joe Rogan
We live in a very strange timeline, and it's happening at a very, very, very rapid rate, and no one has a map of the future. It's not possible. It's just all guests. It's completely. It is like an ant trying to figure out how to operate an iPhone.

There's. It's not. We don't have it. Yeah. Whatever it is.

Whatever it's gonna be, it's gonna be. And you're not gonna stop it now. It's. We are a runaway train. Yeah.

Let's just hope we're going to a cool spot. Yeah, I know, right? I mean, you look at 100 years ago, like, there's no way they could have imagined what our world would be like now. No. So.

And I have a feeling the next five to ten years is gonna be a lot bigger than that. Yeah. I mean, exponential growth. Yeah. Well, it's just, once this stuff goes live, it's just.

It's gonna be really weird. It's going to be really weird. But along the way, we're going to solve a lot of the problems that. I mean, look, if I have. I've had three knee surgeries, two acl reconstructions.

If I lived 100 years ago, I'd be a cripple. Just how it is. My knees would be destroyed. I wouldn't be able to walk good. And now I can do anything.

That's just medical technology and understanding of the human body. Implementation of this kind of device that can allow you to move your body and can, as you were saying earlier, you can bring back eyesight. To some people, this is something that they really are hopeful for. Have they done any of that on animals yet? I'm not sure I know that what the plan is.

Noland Arbaugh
They did a talk about it a while ago on a show and tell, basically show how, like, how the neuralink works in my brain would be very, very similar. You would just take. You would, like, activate certain parts of the brain or behind the eye, the part of the brain, the part of the eye that dictate sight and stuff. You would activate certain things in order to display what's going on around the world to the back of someone's eye, to their retina, whatever it is. I don't know much about it, but they have done it.

Oh, they did it with monkeys, actually. Yeah. So there's a video of them lighting up parts of a screen, and they have, like, basically an eye tracker in the monkey. And so the monkey will look to different parts of the screen, and, like, wherever they've lit up on the brain, basically. So whatever is going, whatever implant they have in the brain, they will, like, light up somewhere on the brain, and then they'll light it up on the screen, and the monkey will look there, and then at some point, they stop lighting it up on the screen, and they're just lighting it up in the monkey's brain, and the monkey still looks there, so.

Yeah. So they know that they can do these sorts of things. Yeah, it's amazing. I know that there are other companies that have done something similar to this, too, with, like, giving people, like, helping people with their eyesight. I know one of them, like, went under, which was.

It was just a wild story, basically, about a company who had implanted things in people, and the company went under, and then the people in the study were like, well, what do we do now? And they didn't know if they were just gonna, like, continue. That's one of the things about, like, whoa, whoa. Yeah, yeah. I should mention that the blindsight implant is already working in monkeys.

Joe Rogan
Resolution will be low at first, like, early Nintendo graphics, but ultimately may exceed normal human vision. Holy shit. Also, no monkey has died or been seriously injured by a neuralink device. Look at that. March 21 by a neural link device.

Right. But they did have to kill the monkeys that they originally did studies on, right? Yeah. Do you know much about, like, studying with animals and stuff like that? Yeah, you have to kill them to find out what damage you've done.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, like, yeah, basically, all. All animals that are in studies at some point get. I think they have a really terrible term for it. I think they call them.

Call it sacrificed. So. Sacrifice, that's satanic. Yeah. It's come up with a new word, guys.

Joe Rogan
Right. I know. Right. But this day and age, there's a lot of fucking fear of not a great. It's not a great for their cause.

We could have worked on that. Yeah. Right. Put a little bit more thought into it. So, yeah, they do that.

Noland Arbaugh
They have to, like you said, learn. Right. Something from the monkeys, from the animals that they're testing on. And so some of them, they will let live longer. Some of them, they'll implant something in and then sacrifice almost immediately to see, because they have to know what it's doing short term, medium term, long term.

So basically, all animals and all animal testing get sacrificed at some point. I don't know how true that is because obviously, a lot of them, once they're done with the study that they're in, they let go live. If it wasn't too invasive, if they don't need to study any part of them, they would need to be killed for. But if you're gonna study the brain. If you're gonna study the brain.

Yeah. There's really no other way. You gotta get. So then, and then there was the whole, like, report that came out about all the terrible things that neuralink was doing to monkeys. I've talked to the people.

I got to meet them, the people who are working directly with the monkeys. Those monkeys have the best animal facility in the world. Someone, like, came in and built it. Like, basically, they're going around now that person is going around and changing how other, like, labs treat their monkeys, like, for the better. So they're going, they're, like, revolutionizing the world of, like, animal testing, basically.

So neuralink treats their animals better than anywhere else. And then the report that came out and said, like, all these terrible things that were happening with animals, it's. It's skewed because all the things that they brought up were just. It was all of the bad. Like, basically, anything bad that happens to the monkey has to be, or any of the animals has to be reported and gets reported in this, like, you know, XYZ format of this is what's going on with the monkey.

This is what happens. What we think happened. We had to kill the monkey. Yes or no. But none of the other things get reported at all.

None of the time between, like, if it's five years of the monkey's alive and one bad thing happens, then there's a report about that one bad thing happening to the monkey, and you compile all that and, like, look at all these terrible things that are going on with the monkeys, but it's just not really true. Interesting. Yeah, well, it's a tough one, because some people don't think any studies should go on with animals at all. Yeah. And so for them, everything that happens to an animal in captivity for scientific purposes is evil.

Joe Rogan
You know, I get it. I get it from their perspective. Yeah, I get it. You know, they call us speciesists because we're willing to do things to monkeys that. Yeah.

You know, aren't there, like, a lot of evil people in the world we could practice on? You know, I mean, I don't want. To give anyone any ideas. Right. It's Terr.

That's a terrible thing to say. Shouldn't do that. But an innocent monkey, it's fun. Very weird. I mean, monkeys do terrible things to.

Us, too, and they do provoked, you know, or if they live in urban neighborhoods where they rely on tourists and they steal their phones for food and attack people. Yeah, they're. They're fuckers. Yeah, they can be fuckers. But I saw.

Noland Arbaugh
I saw a story of a monkey who basically tore some kid's face off. I think he was, like, outside of the village or in his village, and the whole story was about how they were doing reconstructive surgery on the kid and, like, making him look a bit more normal again. But that's terrifying. Monkeys are unbelievably strong. There's a video of a guy sitting on the ground cross legged, and a monkey hops on his shoulder.

Joe Rogan
And then the guy's, like, thinking it's cute and smiley. And then the monkey just decides to take a massive chunk of his scalp off, just bites down on his head and just takes like, a football sized chunk of scalp off this dude's head. It's horrible. Just decided for no reason, unprovoked. Wow.

You know, monkey lives in a rough neighborhood. He had a hard life. He's not out there just, you know, picking fruit. This is it. So this dude is just sitting here with his monkey, is like sitting on his lap, and he's, like, talking to the monkey.

He's like, hello, mister monkey. Saying something bad about. Look, he doesn't seem like he's bummed out about the monkey. Now watch what the monkey does. Oh, gee.

Yo ouchi wawa. That is skull. That was brain. No, not that. I mean, that would have to be a chunk of skull, right?

But it was the skin pulled. I mean, that's gone. That's gone forever. Yikes. No, thanks.

Ouch. Yeah. Gross. But, you know, a monkey, again, probably had a hard life. Yeah, yeah.

We need his monkey life reform. I think when we're looking at these kind of scientific experiments on animals, a lot of people are going to have a problem with. But I wonder through with new technology, if that's even going to be necessary anymore, if they'll in the future, particularly with the leaps that are going to be made with AI, I wonder if they're going to be able to just be able to map out a study, understand the interactions between human beings and these devices, and be able to map out the possibilities and probabilities without having to do that. Yeah, you would think so, but who knows? Yeah, it makes sense.

Noland Arbaugh
It makes sense. I feel like at the beginning, they would probably need to do like that along with a study on a human. So they might run, say, simulations a million times on what, you know, an AI simulation on what, how this would interact with a human, but then they would have to go in and do it to see how true the simulations are. And then depending on how accurate they are, then maybe they could just go fully to that. But if it ends up being different.

Joe Rogan
Then, yeah, I have a feeling they're going to be able to replace parts with artificial parts, too. Like the eyeball itself. I was just thinking about that the other day. How complex. Look how small these little cameras are on phones.

Little tiny ass cameras. But one of these can do a hundred x zoom, you know? One of these is 200 megapixels. This little tiny thin thing. Like, what's to say that they wouldn't be able to come up with something that works way better than the human eye?

Well, you could zoom in. Yeah. Just like a phone. Just, like, zoom into something but have, like, a real optical zoom. Yeah.

Noland Arbaugh
I just hope they don't give them red retinas.

Joe Rogan
That would be creepy. Yeah, Terminator style. Yeah, I know. Yeah. It just seems like they could do better.

Yeah. It would be very weird talking to someone with two fake eyes. It'd be weird if you couldn't even tell. You probably wouldn't trust them anymore, right? Cause you kind of, like, look into someone's eyes and then you find out if they're cool.

Like, if you're just looking into these lenses, you're like, are you even in there anymore? I'm just trusting that you're still there. It's like talking to someone with sunglasses on forever, you know? You know what's going on there, man. Yeah.

Noland Arbaugh
What are you looking at? That is a weird thing that we look through the eye. You know, it's the old expression, the windows to the soul. Yeah. I mean, you can.

You can tell, right? Yeah. Looking at people, you look in their eyes, you're like. Yeah, you're a little angry, dude. Like, you got crazy eyes.

Yeah, yeah, something like that. Yeah. Like, I'm saying, maybe at some point you wouldn't even be able to tell, which is also something to think about. Like who? Like, if you wouldn't be able to tell someone had robot eyes, like, just looked like a normal person.

Joe Rogan
Right. But that's a real part of how we interact with each other. It's like facial expressions, like figuring each other out just by, like, how your eyes are looking at me. Oh, man. Well, it's not like you distrust someone because they have, like, a glass eye or something.

No, not a glass eye. Yeah, yeah. If they got, like, red lights moving around inside their head, maybe that's the only way it works. Has to make a little noise, especially. When you're alone with them here all through the night.

Noland Arbaugh
Rapid eye movement in the. Why are you sleeping? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they've worked. Wasn't there some sort of a study where they were trying to develop an artificial eye? I got a.

Joe Rogan
Whether or not this is. I'm trying to find out how real it is. I got one guy who has a 3d printed eye. 3D printed. Got a camera in it or something I'm trying to find.

And. Oh, doesn't it hook up to his tooth? I don't. That there's two things I'm seeing here. They figured out a way to allow people to see things through their teeth.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah. I don't get it. I don't get it. I'm not gonna get that one.

Yeah. There's not enough time in the world for me to figure that out for me. Thank God for smart people. I know, right? I mean, how are they getting it through the tooth?

Joe Rogan
I don't know. Both of them. The 3D printed eye. Here's the one guy, first guy, he's a director, shot himself in the eye on a yo. Guess he's got a camera in there, it says.

And he sees through the camera that I was trying to get to. Yeah, it's got a transmitter. I don't know if it's going to someone's brain, but he can see it on a. Can he? Oh, so you see it on a phone?

Yeah. That's kind of weird. Maybe that's the first step and they need to. That guy would make the weirdest pov. Porn made in, like, the nineties.

It's not new and almost. Yes. Twelve years ago. Playing that on a game Boy. Yeah.

It's not a game Boy, but it's some sort of a proprietary little electronic video player. Hmm. Yeah. Amazing times. Yeah.

So what is next in terms of, like, how long does this study that you're on? A blind woman sees with tooth in eye surgery. Doctors in Florida restore a woman's sight by implanting a tooth in her eye. That's different. No, but I think that's how they do it.

That is. That is the thing I was saying, like, through your teeth, but I mean, that is how they do it. Team of specialists, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine announced Wednesday that they are the first surgeons in the United States to restore a person's sight by using a tooth. The procedure is formally called modified osteo Odonto. Keratop.

Keratoprosthesis. Sorry. Sharon K. Thornton, 60, went blind nine years ago from a rare disorder called Stephen Johnson syndrome. The disorder left the surface of her eyes so severely scarred she was leaking.

But doctors determined that the inside of her eyes were still functional enough that she might one day see with the help of this thing. This is a patient where the surface of the eye was totally damaged. No wetness, no tears. Doctor Victor L. Perez, the ophthalmologist at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami, who operated on Thornton.

So we kind of recreate the environment of the mouth in the eye. What? I don't get that. Three phase operations started with the University of Miami dentist doctor Yo Sawatari, who removed the tooth from Thornton's mouth and prepared an implant of her own dental tissue for her most severely damaged eye. The tissue would be used to make a new cornea to replace the damaged one.

The doctors then remove a section of Thornton's cheek that would become the soft mucus tissue around her pupil. Whoa. Finally, Perez and his team implanted the modified tooth, which had a hole drilled through the center to support a prosthetic lens. We use that tooth as a platform to put the optical cylinder into the eye, explained Perez. Perez said doctors often use less risky and less invasive techniques to replace corneas.

But the damage from Thornton's Stephen Johnson syndrome ruled those out. Whoa. Using a tooth might sound strange, but it also offers an advantage. Because doctors used Thornton's own cheek and tooth tissue, she faces less risk that her immune system will attack the tooth and reject the transplant. Patients getting a cornea transplant from a deceased donor, on the other hand, face chances that their immune system will reject the new tissue.

Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. For some reason, I thought they were using that tooth to, like, I don't know, use it as a replacement for, like, her vision in some way, but it's literally just a placeholder for, like, you know, different.

Noland Arbaugh
Different things, like the tissue and different places to, like, they said, hold that lens and stuff. That makes more sense. Yeah, I thought it was that, too. I thought they were seeing through the teeth. Yeah.

Joe Rogan
Yeah. I was like, that doesn't. I don't get that. That makes more sense. Like, why can't we see through our teeth all the time?

Noland Arbaugh
Be looking at what's going on in my mouth? Right. Yeah. All this stuff is. It's just mind blowing to imagine where this is going to be in 100 years.

Joe Rogan
And with you, do you have the, like, if they start doing the range of motion studies or the being able to recreate motion or restore motion, are you going to be available for those studies, too? Can they. Can you do that, too, or are you only, like, locked into this one study? Yeah, I don't know. I imagine I'm locked into this for now, at least.

Noland Arbaugh
But at the same time, I'm not sure. I'm really not sure. You would have to do it with someone who already has the implant in their brain. So I don't know if it'll be a separate neuralink that they would need, like, a different one specifically for, like, the two implants interacting together. I don't see why that would be the case.

Just, like, the same thing with people who they're going to have to test to see if the surgery to replace a neuralink is safe. At some point, they're going to have to go through a whole thing, so they're going to have to do it on people who already have it in. So I imagine that sort of study might be something I would be involved in. If they're planning on implanting one in someone's spinal cord and then seeing how they interact and seeing if it works, I don't see why I couldn't be in that, but we'll see. It's kind of a long way off, I think.

Joe Rogan
How big is the. The neural link implant? It's about the size of a quarter. It's much. It's thicker than a quarter.

Noland Arbaugh
I don't know, maybe half an inch, like, that thick. And does it. It's on the surface? Yeah, it's implanted on my skull. So they cut out a chunk of my skull.

I think it's called the craniectomy. And then they left that chunk out and just replaced it with the neuralink. Do they take that chunk and, like, put it in the freezer so they could put it back in you? Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't think so.

I. Oh, talking about it. Yeah, talking about it afterwards. That's it? Yep.

Joe Rogan
Yo, that's. I was talking about it with my buddy afterwards, and I was like, I should have asked them for my chunk of skull. That would have been sweet. Yeah. I don't think they're allowed to give that to people.

Yeah, I think that's, like, bio waste or something like that. Bio has. I know. I should definitely should be. They give people their testicles back, so.

Right. But it has to be in, like, formaldehyde or something. Okay, so let's take your skull, put it into formaldehyde. That's fine, as long as I can have it. How many versions did they go through before they got to the one where they're willing to do it on people?

Noland Arbaugh
A lot. I saw, like, from their very first idea of neuralink through this one. I don't know. I. I don't know how exactly how many there were.

I would say at least one or two dozen different like iterations? Yeah. And then, like, the version I have is like thousands in like, the thousandth or 2000th iteration of this one. So, like, they're constantly changing stuff. So, like, even the next person that gets it, they've probably made, I don't know, a thousand more modifications to it.

Little things. Just like, if they've seen certain things in my implant, they can improve on. Obviously, they're going to change how the threads work, they're going to add more electrodes. They're going to maybe update the battery. They might update a lot of things.

They're looking at updating what signal it uses instead of Bluetooth. They're looking at different things like that. So the next one that comes in is probably going to be much different. Maybe the same design, maybe they found a better design. I don't know.

Joe Rogan
Wow. And I know in the future they've talked about putting this into people that don't have any issues medically. What are they planning on doing? Like, how are they planning on that? Do you know?

Noland Arbaugh
What do you mean? How in terms of, like, is that going to just be offered for, are you going to get, what are the long term goals? Is it to get the Internet on that? So people communicate telepathically? Is it gonna be like a slow build up to the idea that everyone is gonna want to get one of these things?

I think once it's proved so, like, this study is to prove whether or not it's safe. And if it works, basically, I think once that's proven, then they're gonna get into a lot more of what it's actually capable of. And then once it's released to the public, I think people are gonna rush to get it. Honestly, at least a group of people who have been following it at the very least, because once we know that it's safe, then that's one of the big things that people are going to like, once that's lifted, once you're like, okay, it's safe, now we can go through and start talking about being able to communicate with people and being able to, you know, possibly download information, have it be available to you using AI and stuff like that. I'm not sure if that's going to happen.

I don't see why it's not possible, at the very least. And then they, I know Neuralink's talking about opening up a clinic in Austin, basically, where you would go in and get a surgery and like, walk out. So it's not like, like my surgery was. I don't want to say not invasive, because obviously they did brain surgery, but it was. They were expecting it to be, you know, something like three to 6 hours, and my surgery took under 2 hours.

It went super, super fast. There were no complications at all. It was not like, obviously invasive in the brain, but there was no damage done, really. So. And this was the very first time.

So once they get this even better, even more tuned in, then I imagine people go into this clinic and go in and come out in a few hours with an erlink, and then they can chat with other friends online or something. Jesus. Pretty cool. It'd be pretty cool. Again, I'm not.

I'm not here to talk about, like, the ethical ramifications of that or like, how. How it's fun to think about, like, the things that might go wrong or could go wrong. And it's probably something that people much smarter than me should think about whether or not it should be done. But I think there are so many things that you could do with it. I think it's going to be done no matter what.

Joe Rogan
And if it's not done by neuralink, it's going to be done by someone in another country. It's going to be done. Technology always moves forward, it never stops over concerns of what could possibly go wrong. Hence the nuclear bomb. Yeah, it's not going to stop.

It's just not what we do. We always try to come up with greater things. And if someone does figure out a way to connect human beings to some form of wireless Internet or wireless data or some completely new thing, instead of thinking it as the Internet as we know it being these devices that go to websites, it might be a completely different invention that uses a completely different type of technology to sync all the information and all the minds in the world together. It might not be as dopey as going to a website. Like, going to a website is probably like an archaic way to do it.

Noland Arbaugh
It'll be like the cloud or the metaverse or something. You can just hop in and everyone will be there. You can go chat with whoever you want around the world, and they can. Just upgrade your operating system and make you woke. Yeah, exactly.

Right. You sign up for the wrong one, the next thing you know, you get some weight. Way crazy ideas. Yeah. Propaganda will take new leaps and bounds.

Joe Rogan
Right. But then who's running it like that? What are the. Is it one person and everybody else is a robot? Like that doesn't make any sense.

Noland Arbaugh
Know what they'll try? I'm sure someone's gonna want to run it all. Someone is gonna want to run it. Yeah, it's gonna need to be. Hopefully they, by that point, they will regulate it.

But as we've seen with, like, you know, things like AI art, even they're trying to catch up with that. It's like, oh, should we. Should we have, like, thought about this before all this was released and, like, no government will figure it out. Yeah. Good luck with that.

Joe Rogan
Right. Yeah, well, they're able to scour the Internet for every artist's work and then sort of take pieces of that and create art. And these artists are like, hey, you know that took me fucking forever to paint that. Yeah. You just stole it and did a version of it in 13 seconds.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just one problem.

Joe Rogan
Another problem is deep fakes and songs. Like. Yeah, they made a Drake song that became a hit and Drake had nothing to do with it. Yeah, it's not that. Yeah.

Not that far away from it being out of the barn where you're not gonna be able to ever stop. You're not gonna be able to. You're gonna be able to do whatever you want in terms of, like, creating videos, audios, and it'll look indistinguishable from a real video. Real audio. Yeah.

They're already gonna take this podcast and translate it into different languages without me being able to speak them. Just through AI. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think they did the same thing with the deepfake. Like, you were just saying something with, like, Trump recently where it was like, a deep fake of Trump, and after a while, he had to be like, hey, guys, that wasn't me.

Wasn't there. Was there a football player that was saying some wild shit that turned out to be fake? Or a basketball player. Yeah, that too. Did you hear about this, Jimmy?

Depends on exactly what you're talking about. But there's a bunch of fake press conferences that go, yes, that's what I'm talking about. It's like a thing someone's doing. Yeah, but apparently it was just barely wacky enough for people to go, that looks fake. You have to be very sophisticated if you saw this.

I mean, we're getting used to looking for things being fake. Whereas 20 years ago, you would say, that's real. Yeah, I see it. It's a video. It's real.

Noland Arbaugh
It's something that I was actually just talking with my buddy about the other day. I think it's going to be something similar to, you know how, like, we get emails from nigerian princes and we're like, yeah, like, grandma, don't open that. Don't send the money. It's not real. I think it's going to be something that people are able to do, like the next generations, where they look at something online and they're like, oh, yeah, that's AI.

Oh, yeah, that's fake. I think you're right. Yeah, they're just, they're going to grow up with it, so they're going to be able to figure out, maybe not this stuff looks so real that I don't know, but maybe they're gonna have to be required to do, like, watermarks or something on it every time. I don't think they're gonna be able to stop it. I think we're just gonna get into a real weird, blurry place.

Joe Rogan
I think the one thing that might help, and this sounds crazy, but I think ultimately what technology does is closes. It makes things more accessible, it gets you more information. It connects people more with translation. It's connecting people from different cultures and different countries more. I think ultimately what it's going to do is it's going to be some sort of a mind interface.

I don't think it's going to be as simple as language. I think it's going to be a next level mind interface. And if it's something through a technology akin to neuralink or maybe future versions of neuralink, I think we're going to be able to know what someone's actually thinking. I think you're not gonna be able to lie anymore, is what I'm saying. Yeah.

I don't think lying is going to be possible 100 years from now, which would be a really good thing. And if you're a person right now that lives your life without lying, you know, this. This is way better. As a person who used to lie and doesn't lie ever, now, I'll tell you right now, it's great. Yeah, I love it.

It's a good thing to not lie. And if you live your life in this manner where there cannot be deception, how much more would we get done? How much more would we understand each other in relationships? And if you're bullshitting, you'll understand that you're bullshitting, by the way another person sees your thoughts, and then you'll be forced to handle those and go, you know what? I'm trying to put this off on other people, and it's really me.

I'm the problem. You'll be able to see it. Everyone will be able to see reality instead of these sort of manufactured narratives that people have with this very selective view of memory and their thoughts of the past. My boss did me wrong. No, you were a fuck up.

You showed up late every day. They fucking hated me. No, you were super insecure and real shitty around people. It's like, you'll see. We'll be able to solve a lot of our social issues that seem insurmountable because of poor communication and a lack of honesty, a lack of real honest conversations, instead of just people trying to win arguments.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. Until people realize that, you know, maybe you don't need to lie. Exactly. Maybe you can find ways to work around having to lie with this thing.

If you can't lie anymore, if you're not allowed to. I mean, people find ways to kind of, sort of lie all the time, and then also, if you can hack it, and then you're able to lie and no one else is, and that becomes kind of an issue, too. If in some way you are able to, like, jailbreak your neuralink so you can't lie anymore, and then you're the only one lying, everyone's gonna believe you. They think that you can't lie. And then that brings up a whole new world of problems.

Joe Rogan
My eyes, you're seeing right into the. Thoughts, oh, I see. I don't think you have a chance to lie. I don't think there's any. There's not.

That doesn't exist anymore. I think. I think it goes away, and hence, leaders go away. That's gonna be a real problem. We're gonna have to have actual understanding of all the different processes that are in play, whether it's environment or resources or, you know, intercountry conflicts, whatever the fuck is going on.

We're gonna have a. We have to have a real understanding of it without politicians bullshitting us as to why we're gonna do something that won't exist anymore. That would be wild. They would be the ones that would resist it the most. They were like, wait, this dangerous mind reading technology, like a Nancy Pelosi, a press conference.

Noland Arbaugh
I mean, I just think if something like that ever came about, they would never let it happen. I don't think they have a choice because China will do it, Russia will do it, everyone will do it. Someone's going to do it. All these eggheads out there that are willing to push that, but they're not going to listen to the government. Shut the fuck up.

Joe Rogan
The government is just a bunch of people. The super nerds out there are the ones who are really in charge of this stuff, because even we're seeing this with technology and some of these hearings on AI, the people that are asking the questions don't know what the fuck is going on. You know, and I'm sure you saw that with some of the Facebook hearings and some of the other hearings, the people that are actually asking about the tech. How much time do you have to get into the understanding of this? How much time between worrying about water rights in your district and this and all these other problems that you have as a politician, how much time are you actually spending trying to figure out how social media works?

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, probably none. They just have AIDS that are giving all this stuff. That's why they have pieces of paper and they're looking down at their reading glasses now, Mister Zuckerberg, my phone doesn't go to Google. Right? Why is that?

Joe Rogan
He's like grandpas who argue on Facebook, like, they're not going to be the people that control AI, and they're not going to be the people that are going to be able to figure out how to stop mind reading technology. I think when mind reading technology comes, it's going to come so fast that it's going to be just like all these other things like the Internet. It came so fast, they couldn't control it. Because if you looked at the Internet, if you looked at what the Internet has done for like a distrust in mainstream media, distrust in politicians, exposing corruption, all the different things that we know about now that are a fact that just 20 years ago you would have thought been crazy conspiracy talk. If they knew that that was going to happen and make life so much more difficult for them, they would have regulated the Internet from the jump.

They would have stopped, stepped in, took over like China did, took over like North Korea did, and you would get their version of the Internet forever. And that's it. And there's no growth. And there's. And they'll silence dissidents.

And that's how they would have done it. If they had ever known that it was going to be what it is now. I think that's exactly what's going to happen with mind reading software and mind reading technology. I think it's going to happen. They're going to be, oh, Jesus Christ, I don't think, you know, and also, look, they're just human beings, too.

They're going to want that. If they find out there's a technology that allows you to communicate with people in a completely new way and it's much more fulfilling, and we understand each other much better, we really do realize that we are all one. Imagine we can communicate with this technology and it ends war overnight. It makes war literally impossible. You realize that these people that you're about to bomb are you?

And that we're all the same thing. One consciousness experiencing itself through different bodies and different lives and different experiences and different genes in different parts of the world, but we're all genuinely the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

Noland Arbaugh
It brings up a lot of questions, like where we would go from there, though. Like, how it's gonna change. That's when the aliens land. The aliens land. We figured out.

Joe Rogan
Ah, finally. Oh, man. Yeah, we were waiting. If that's what it takes to bring aliens down, then I'm all for it. If that's.

Noland Arbaugh
If that's what it takes to really get us to be face to face. The only thing I keep telling my buddy is like, I. I am all down for the whole, like, aliens come in, us interacting with them and everything. As long as they're not the mantids. If they're the Mantis people, I don't want anything to do with them.

I think that. No, I just don't want it. I'm with you, bro. Yeah. Fuck the mantis people.

Joe Rogan
Imagine mantises were like the size of a dog. We'd be so fucked. We'd be so fucked. One of the most gangster videos I've ever seen online is like, a gecko. And the gecko's trying to eat the mantis, and the gecko walks up to the mantis and tries to get it.

And the mantis is like, not today, bitch. I'm gonna eat you. Oh, my gosh. And the gecko's like, what is happening? You'd see it, look at its face, it's like, so confused.

And it's got its claws, these fucking, these giant things wrapped around and controlling it just starts eating its face. Yep. Mantises are like insects themselves. Like, you look really get up close to an insect, you're like, that thing is ugly. I do not like it one bit.

Noland Arbaugh
Now imagine that. And the things I've heard about the mantids is they're not the size of a dog. They're like the size of, like, multiple people. And no, thanks. Absolutely not.

Joe Rogan
The Mantis aliens, I'm not too familiar with. I've seen, like, a couple things online. How many people have seen the mantis aliens? Yeah, I know of one story where there was a hunter just walking around, and it got, like, dark over him or something, and he looked up and there was just like a ship over him. And he looked through his scope and he looked right into some, like, mantis people and.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, and I'm not okay with that. Like that. That's the one alien story I think I'll stay far away from and hope it's something else. Well, you got to think that insects have some kind of bizarre intelligence because that's if you've ever seen leaf cutter ant colonies when they pour the cement in them and you realize, like, how sophisticated they are. Like, how did you guys do this?

Joe Rogan
How do you figure this out? There's, like, they have channels where the air can pass through so they can ferment leaves. So they have, like, a fermentation factory inside their ant colony. And the colony's huge. Yeah.

It's so big. And you're like, you little tiny fuckers built a city underground right here. There's got to be some sort of intelligence. Now, if ants evolved to the point where they developed that kind of intelligence, who's to say that in a different environment, where ants have more access to food, more access to resources, and more competition, that they don't evolve to the point where that intelligence, it keeps getting scaled up and they get to, like, a human, human level intelligence from an insect or beyond. Why not?

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, they just need some psychedelics or something to really get that brain to. Grow or a neuralink. That's what I have a feeling. I have a feeling that in the future, everyone's going to be some sort of a cyborg and everyone else is going to be artificial, that there'll be complete life forms that were developed just with computers, just like computers, technology, whatever form of chips, and they'll put together things that are more intelligent than us, can communicate with us, can work with us, but that's going to be one of those things. It's not going to be one of us.

Joe Rogan
And that'll be a different life form that exists alongside with us. But I don't think there'll be very many people like me. No chip, no nothing. Just a person. Like, what is that moron doing?

You're running around with no chip? You know, I think in the future it's gonna be, everyone's gonna have something that enhances them. We already do with our phones. Yeah. You know?

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. It's going to be something, like, beyond that, where it's gonna be so compelling that everyone's gonna want to do it. So you're not gonna get it if it comes out? I'm not saying I'm not gonna get it. I might get it.

Joe Rogan
I might have. I don't wanna be alone. Yeah. I wanna be the only person who can't read minds. I probably wouldn't want to be the first adopter, you know?

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. I want to wait a little bit. Yeah. That was. That was an argument that I had with doing this, was, do I really want to be the first?

I mean, who knows what kind of problems there's going to be. But. But for a guy like you, I would say, like, they're pretty sure it works, and they were right. Yeah. You know?

Joe Rogan
And how cool was it the first day to be able to play video games? Yeah, it was awesome. It was really. What did you play? Civilization six.

Noland Arbaugh
I don't know. I don't think you've heard of it. It's a massive game. It's something I've been wanting to play for a long time. I was able to kind of, sort of play it with some different assistive technology over the last few years, but not really.

And I played it, like, all night. I didn't sleep. It was freaking awesome, man. I just love. I mean, I grew up being a gamer.

I grew up in kind of this age, so. So the last eight years, I've watched all of my friends play games that I've wanted to play. And the fact that I might be able to play some of them. Like, some of them are still too far out of reach for the neuralink at this point, but not for much longer. In the next few years, I think I'll be able to play anything.

Anyone else plays Halo. I love Halo. I'm a big halo. You're gonna be able to play that? Yeah, I hope so.

I really hope so. Yeah. So you'll be able to play shooters, like Call of Duty? Yeah, yeah. That brings up another thing.

Like, I basically have an aimbot in my head.

They'll probably have, like, different leagues for people like me, because it's just not fair. Wow. Is it that accurate? It's that accurate, and. And it's faster.

One thing that I found with the neuralink is something that kind of blew my mind, too, is that when I'm attempting to do stuff sometimes, or I'm thinking it to, like, move in a certain place, sometimes, it's so good that it's moving before I even, like, think it to move. It's almost like if you think about moving your hand, the signal is basically already being sent before you move your hand. Like your mind is saying, okay, he's about to move his hand, basically. So the signal needs to be sent all the way down and back up in order for you to move your hand. So the speed that all that happens, and it's almost a little preemptive.

I saw that with the neuralink, where it was moving the cursor before I was actually moving my hand. Wow. So with video games, stuff like that, you just need to think for it to move somewhere, and it is that accurate, and it's quicker than you can even think. There's no way it's gonna, like, no one else is gonna be able to keep up with it. That's gonna be wild for something like quake.

Joe Rogan
Like first person, like a fast first person shooter. You're running down hallways and you're just catching people and shooting them instantaneously. Elon Musk will have a field day. Wasn't he, like, one of the best quake players in the world? Was he?

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. I think he was, like, one of the top quake players in North America at one point. I don't.

Joe Rogan
I wouldn't doubt that. I know he's a gamer. I know he gets addicted to games. Yeah. Especially something that's that exciting.

That's gonna be so dope for you, man. You'll be fucking people up. Yeah, it'll be cool. I'll just enter tournaments and I won't tell them I have the neuralink. And I don't know.

Noland Arbaugh
I don't know how I would do it, I guess. Yeah. But if I'm doing it all online. Like, cool for you to play them in a tournament, like, a one on one tournament and fuck up, like, the best players in the world, wouldn't that be insane? Yeah, I bet they would play you.

Just to see for sure. For sure. Because, like, there's tactics and strategy, especially if you're, like, doing one on one deathmatch. We have to know, like, when the health is spawning and when the weapons are spawning, how to control a map. So they'll have, like, a little bit of an advantage in that.

Joe Rogan
But if you just can't miss video games. Yeah, I'm pretty good. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I like it. Now, what about VR?

Has there been any sort of interface that allows you to use, like, meta's VR or oculus? No, not yet. I don't think so. Like, a lot of what we've done is just the computer at this point. Like, they're planning on doing it into phones.

Noland Arbaugh
I did connect to a Nintendo switch at one point. I was playing Mario Kart. That's something that isn't like, too far off as well for me to just be able to do that on my own. But that's going to be every console. I don't see why VR would be any different.

I think at some point in the study, they're going to do it just to see if it works. I don't see why it wouldn't at all. The only thing that I would say is that VR actually requires physical movement. Like, there's a couple games that we have. Yeah, but if the brain is already interpreting your, like, motor cortex, the movement of your mortar cortex, then you can just think, move this, and it'll move it in VR as well.

I think it'll work. Right, but you're actually moving these handles in VR. Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah. You know, you have the handles.

Get an optimist robot and then have him. Have him hold the VR handles, and then you can control that. He's connected to you. Yeah. Whoa.

It would be the same. Yeah, bro, you're gonna be inside that thing, walking around. I'll just. I've always thought if, you know, you should give me an optimist robot, I'll have it get one of those, like, baby chest carriers or something. Just carry me around like that and.

Bro, great. You imagine walking down the street with that? That's a. You'd accidentally step on people. You ever watch Dave Chappelle's old, like, show that he did?

There was a Chappelle show, you mean? Yeah, I was on it a couple times. Sorry, I didn't. No worries. There.

There was one about the home stenographers, and it's basically like a little person that they carry around on one of those carriers on, like, their back. And it's just like a stenographer. He's typing down everything you say, and I just want something like that. Like a little optimist robot carrying me around on its back. Like a kangaroo pouch.

Yeah. Put it right in the front. So you just leave me sitting there. That's what you want, like your head on the chest, and it's just.

Joe Rogan
Yeah, yeah. What's this guy doing? Oh, there it is. And he just reads back. Oh, what you said?

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, yeah. Oh, I do, I do remember that bit. Yeah, yeah, that would like. I think the future is gonna be very interesting, and I think there's gonna be a lot of really wild discoveries that build upon other wild discoveries and stuff, like neural link. I'm sure there's competing companies that are doing something similar.

Joe Rogan
Right? Yeah, that's what I'm saying, I think that, like, I'm pretty sure some of the people who have left Neuralink have gone and either started their own little companies or have gone to other companies that are doing something similar, I think neuralinks advancements now are going to pull everyone else up. I think Neuralink will be at the lead for quite a while, but I don't see why companies that haven't been able to achieve, but Neuralink is achieving now, won't be able to do it in a year or two time. Like, especially, like I said, because Neuralink is making everything so open source, and there's people like me out there who are just talking about it like Willy Nilly, that I don't see why other companies won't, you know, find some way to catch up over time. No, for sure.

I think with them leading the way and the fact that it's been implemented and it's been successful, and the fact that they're already improving upon the software and how yours, and being able to correct issues with it, what is their timeline like in terms of next? Being able to use something that allows people to move that couldn't move, restore sight? Do they have like a timeline where they think, yeah, I don't know. I keep saying that it's all going to happen in my lifetime for sure. I keep saying that it's going to happen in the next ten years, 20 years, where quadriplegics like me, paralyzed people, won't have to be paralyzed anymore.

Noland Arbaugh
I have this vision of someone being paralyzed, going into the hospital, getting the neuralink, and walking out like a day or two later, which I think is totally possible. I think it's going to happen a lot sooner than later, especially how fast all this moving and the fact that this is like, successful now. Think it all. I don't know that it would help me per se, even though I said it's in my lifetime. Part about being paralyzed and quadriplegic is my body has just deteriorated so much that even if they did give me something to make me able to move again, my body's just so jacked up at this point that I'm not sure it would really help that much.

I could probably build it back up to a certain point, but even people who have recovered or have been part of studies where they get some movement back, their bodies just don't work the. Same because of atrophy. Because of atrophy. Like, one of my ankles is completely jacked up. It's twisted the wrong way.

I have to wear this hand brace because if I don't, my fingers are all just curled up. Basically.

Correcting some of that would take probably some extensive surgery. One of my buddies is like one of the top ortheosurgeons in the United States. So maybe I could just get him to go in and fix it all. But it would be a lot and I'm not sure it would help. And muscle atrophy.

So I don't know. But that doesn't matter to me. What matters is that people won't have to be paralyzed in the future. That's more like, that's worth more than anything. Well, that's also one of the legitimate uses for steroids.

Joe Rogan
One of the legitimate uses for steroids is the people with, like, muscle wasting disease and, yeah. People who have, like, severely atrophied and that it allows them to build up tissue better. Oh, yeah. Maybe that would help. Yeah.

Stem cells. Steroids. Gonna make you a superhuman, bro. Yeah. I mean, aren't I already one?

Kind of already one. Especially if you're playing, you quake. I can't wait to see that. That's sick. Now with the future of this stuff, it's going to eventually get to a point where it's probably, like, in the beginning it's probably going to be very difficult to acquire.

Right. Like, very expensive, but it's probably in the future going to be much more accessible. Yeah. When do they, like, if yours is, if they complete your trial, they find it satisfactory. They have, like, a way to do it.

When will the average person who is a quadriplegic be able to start being able to use some of this technology? I have no idea. I know that my study is like, the main part of the study is a year and then five years kind of extensive, like, follow up stuff in the study. So once that's done and however many people, I've seen numbers up to, like a few hundred people have it in this five year timeline. So once all that happens, and I don't know what, like, phase two is with this, I would say 20 years.

Noland Arbaugh
But that's me probably also being very optimistic. I have no idea. I don't know, like, what the FDA is gonna decide with all this. I don't know how much, how many more phases of the trial need to happen before that, I really couldn't tell you, but honestly, I think it's within my lifetime for sure. And how did they contact you?

Joe Rogan
How did you wind up getting chosen? Yeah, my buddy's probably out there having a freaking heart attack. So basically what happened was I knew nothing about neuralink. I was just lying in my bed one day, and I got a phone call from my buddy at, like, 11:00 a.m. or something, and he.

Noland Arbaugh
I answered the phone. I was like, what's up? And he was like, you know, neuralink just opened up their first inhuman trials. He's like, you should apply for this. I was like, cool, like, what is it?

So he explained it to me, gave me, like, a five minute rundown of what they're doing and stuff, and we applied over the phone. Like, I just basically, like, told him all my information. He applied for me. He spelled my name wrong on the application, which is pretty funny, because he was drunk at the time. Again, on a Wednesday, like, 11:00 a.m.

he was already wasted. Respect. Yeah. Respect to the day drinkers. Yeah, yeah.

It was. His justification for it is that he was, like, going to a wedding that weekend. He hadn't drank in a long time. She's like, I need to understand what my tolerance is. So he drank, like, a whole bottle of fireball or something like that just to see, like, how he would be.

So, yeah, we did all that. And then within, like, a day or two, they contacted me. And then I went through about a month long application process of different, like, Zoom interviews and stuff, and then finally culminating in a, like, an in person interview or in person, like, full day of testing, where they did, like, 8 hours of tests on me, like, different scans, blood tests, urine tests, things like that. And then I was just waiting. What was it like when you found out was gonna be you?

It was cool. It was cool. Get an email to get a phone call. They called me. They called me for the first, like.

So I applied, like, September, late September, September, like, 19th or something around that day. A month later, end of October, I had finished all my testing and interviews, and then I didn't find out they had chosen me until maybe the end of November, early December. And even when they said they had chosen me, they said I was going to be one of the first, like, three people that they were doing for the first part of the study. So they didn't tell me I was going to be the first. They just said, we selected you as one of the candidates, basically.

And so that was really, really cool. And then it was sort of a back and forth. Do I want to be the first? Do I want to wait till I have someone else? Because being the first, a lot more risk, obviously.

And I have the worst version of the neuralink that's ever going to be in anyone. It's only going to get better. So I was like, maybe I'll let someone else get the first, and then I get a better version in the second or third one. But ultimately being the first is cool. It's something that I just decided to do.

I was like, this. This is the best way I can help to, if anything goes wrong, I'd rather it go wrong to me than passing it up and having someone else struggle having someone else. If, like, God forbid, anyone, like, anything bad happened to someone, I would rather it happen to me, and I would rather not have passed up and watch it happen to someone else. So decided to do it. I was like, yeah, just let me know if I'm gonna be the first or not.

Obviously, I wanted to at that point. And then about a month later, they called and they were like, we're gonna do your surgery. You're gonna be the first person. I think in December, they had told me that it could be me, and they said that we might end up having you be the first, and it could happen as early as, like, mid December. And that kind of stressed me out because I was a little worried that something bad would happen and I would have ruined Christmas for my family forever.

I was like, if this is right around Christmas and something bad happens, like, Christmas is going to be ruined forever. Luckily, they waited, like, an extra month and a half, but it was cool. Like, I kept pretty level expectations through the whole thing. I didn't know what was going to come of it. I didn't know if I was going to end up doing media or anything.

It's something that I talked with my parents about. It wasn't something that I really wanted to do, per Se. I wasn't wanting to, like, get famous or anything from this. There are a couple things that I did want to do, and ultimately, that's why I decided to do media. But, yeah, it was cool.

It was all right. You have a very noble and selfless outlook. Have you always had that? No. No.

I would say being paralyzed made me just rethink a lot of things in my life, a lot of my perspective. I mean, one thing about being paralyzed is there's especially being a quadriplegic, you just have a lot of time to think. I thought through everything I've ever done, all the mistakes I ever made, why I was who I was, where I like, where I was. I realized a lot of things about myself. I realized, you know, that I wasn't the person who I thought I was.

I always built myself up a certain way. And then going back through all of my interactions with everyone, all the mistakes I made, I realized I'm painting a much prettier picture of myself in my head than who I like actually was, than a lot of the interactions I had with people. You know, actions speak louder than words, and if I was thinking I was this great person and treating people like absolute dog crap, basically, then maybe I'm not as good of a guy as I thought I was. I realized that I wasn't as good of a son as I thought I was. I wasn't as good of a boyfriend as I thought I was, and I wasn't as good of a friend.

So I found the reasons why I was doing these things, and I thought about it for probably a few years, lying in my bed, staring at walls for 810 hours a day, just thinking. And eventually, I came to this conclusion that partly through my faith, my interactions with God, partly just because I wanted to be better. I wanted to be a better person, I realized that there were things that I could do to help, and this seemed like my best chance, honestly. Wow, that's a wild thing to happen to someone, to have, like, a radical shift in perspective that's forced upon you. Yeah.

Yeah. I I heard you say I was watching. I can't remember who I was watching you interview. Maybe it was the Tucker interview. Maybe it was the Terrence Howard interview, because I just watched those once recently, and you were talking about people, like, people never having been through anything extreme happen to them, and so they're never forced to think certain ways, or they just.

I don't know. They never grow in certain ways. That's paraphrasing, but it was along those lines. And I don't know. Being a quadriplegic is.

I kind of make this joke, but it's easier than people think. I mean, I just get waited on all the time. I get to lie in bed and watch tv and read books, and people bring me food and bring me drinks, and people do everything for me. It's really not that bad. But obviously, it was really, really hard.

Like, being paralyzed, getting all of the things that I love to do most taken for me. Like, I was a really big athlete. I played, like, every sport under the sun. And then not being able to play sports anymore was one of the hardest things that I think I've ever had to go through. And there were a lot of other things.

Not having any privacy anymore, like, having to have everyone do everything for me, like go to the bathroom, having to take a shower with people having, like, my parents scrub me in the shower or having my mom, like, help me go to the bathroom. Like, it's just. It's not easy. And it's not easy being a burden to everyone around you. And people always say, like, you're not a burden.

Like, we love you and we would do anything for you. But, like, I am. I know I am. It's not something that someone's going to be able to convince me that I'm not. And I understand that they love me and they're willing to do it, but at the same time, like, obviously, there are things that if I could change, I would, and I can't.

So I just have to try my best to do as much as I can for those around me. And this is part of what I can do. I've thought for years, like, what could I possibly do to help? And this is it. I think, as much as I can.

I want to do everything with neuralink to make things better for people in the future. That's a beautiful way of engaging with this man. It really is. And I think what happened to you is tragic, but your perspective is pretty fucking cool. It really is.

Joe Rogan
Really is. It's beautiful to hear. And, I mean, I wish you all the best. I really hope that this becomes something that allows you to move again, and, I mean, and that they keep improving upon it. And thank you for risking this, and thank you for being the first guy.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, yeah, no worries. People keep saying a lot of weird things about me. Like, you know, you're like an Apollo astronaut. I don't see myself that way. I know that people keep saying, you're the first.

You're like a pioneer. I don't see myself that way at all. I just think anyone in my position would have done it. I think that. I guess it took a bit of bravery.

I don't think. I just. It. I don't see myself that way. I just think that I did it so to show people I did it because I knew that I could.

I did it because I knew that I was capable of going through it. I did, you know, became a quadriplegic, and I made it out the other side. Like, I feel. I feel good about my life. I feel like I manage that pretty well.

I'm a pretty chill guy, so I feel like I rolled with the punches pretty well. And I thought the same thing with neuralink. So, like, I never thought of myself, like, trailblazing or anything, but it's just cool to be a part of. And I'm really happy that Neuralink chose me, and I'm looking forward to having some, like, cyborg buddies in the future. It'll be cool.

Joe Rogan
Yeah. How long before you can link those things together? Yeah, I guess we'll find out when they get the next patient. Like, the next participant. Like, maybe a couple months, and we'll be chatting with each other.

Noland Arbaugh
I mean, I've been, you know, having telepathic communications with pager the monkey for a few months. No one knows about it, but we talk about that kind of stuff all the time. He's oddly obsessed with the new Planet of the Apes movie, but couldn't tell you why. What kind of joke is that, man? You can't crack jokes like that.

What? I don't know if you're telling the truth. You're talking to a monkey telepathically. No. You're joking.

Joe Rogan
Yeah. See, I can tell because you have human eyes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Noland Arbaugh
Are you sure? I think you do. Okay. Or they're really good. Yeah.

Joe Rogan
You know, if they could develop an eye just, like, artificial intelligence can make images, like, pretty fucking close. Maybe they can make an eyeball that just really does kind of, like, talk to you a little bit. Makes you think. Just know when someone's bullshitting, dude. Yeah, come on.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. There's no way I talk to major at all on a daily basis. At least now I'm thinking you do. Now I'm going the other way with it. Yeah, it's.

Joe Rogan
It's. It's exciting times. It's very interesting. Yeah. The ability that you have right now, it's limited to computer interfaces.

Right, yeah. What about other smart things? Can you interact with it? Like, could you interact with other sort of electronics? Would it have to be.

Noland Arbaugh
Not really. It's all through the computer just because in order to even interact with the computer, it has to be uploaded with that app. And so that's why, like, putting it on a phone or something, you would just upload the app onto it. Any sort of other devices, there's ways to connect to them. So, like, for me, even with the switch, it's through my computer still, but then you run, like, a cord from my computer through, like, a converter box and then into the.

Into the switch. So it's all through the computer right now. I don't think it's going to be that way forever. I think it's going to be much easier to connect to other devices in the future, especially if Neuralink takes off, like I think it will, then companies will start just uploading the software onto it, downloading the software onto it so that way you can connect to it. Like, it's gonna be one of those things where, like, it's Alexa compatible, it's Neuralink compatible.

Joe Rogan
Right, right. That makes sense. Especially if there's widespread implementation of this and it turns out to be a real thing. It might be something that someone has to have. Like, you have to have a wheelchair wrap at certain businesses.

Yeah, yeah. New Tesla phone. I'm sure he's just gonna build all of that into that. All the Optimus robots are gonna have it built in. Do you think he's gonna make a Tesla phone?

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah, he might. I think when he said that all. They might ban apple devices. Cause they're gonna use OpenAI, I was like, what is going on? I get real nervous when someone way fucking smarter than me gets nervous when he's saying that if AI.

Joe Rogan
Basically, what he's saying is, I think, to paraphrase, he's saying that Apple wasn't smart enough to create their own artificial intelligence, but they're smart enough to keep artificial intelligence from running rampant through their operating system. I don't think they are. Yeah. I don't. I don't trust it.

Noland Arbaugh
I don't trust it one bit. But it's gonna be in your head, bro. Yeah, yeah. One day, we're all gonna have to trust, you know? If I had Scarlett Johansson's voice in my head all the time, I don't think I would mind.

Joe Rogan
It'd be dreamy. It would be okay. It would be okay. She's got a dreamy voice. Well, listen, man, thank you very much for being here.

Thanks for being you, and let's do this again sometime in the future. See what, you know, what improvements and how it's going. Hey, man, absolutely. As we move this thing along, then I'm more than happy to come back. All right.

Noland Arbaugh
Yeah. Thank you very much. Oh, do you have social media or anything where people can find out what you're up to? Yeah, I have an ex, like, modded quad, I think it's called. I have, like, an Instagram and stuff, and I'm getting other stuff up and running.

I'm gonna start, like, streaming more and stuff. So it'll be. It'll be out there. You gonna stream? Yeah, yeah, I did once.

I did, like, kind of like a test dream about to do another test stream probably this week at some point, maybe the next few days. Then I'm gonna stream from, like, video games and stuff. That's great, man. I think people would love to see that and love to hear you talk about your experiences. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. It'll be cool. You've got a great perspective, man. You really do.

Joe Rogan
Thank you. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to meet you. Yeah, you too. All right.

All the best. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everybody.

#2167 - Noland Arbaugh

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Deep Dive into Neuralink

3: Ethical and Societal Implications

4: Personal Stories and Insights

Actionable Advice

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