He would neither go towards the feeding

grounds at the edge of the ice nor

return to the colony.

Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading

straight towards the mountains some 70

km away.

But why? All righty, chat. Today we're

going to talk about the nihilistic

penguin. So, this is a case of a penguin

that instead of staying safe with like

all of the other nesting penguins or

traveling to the ocean where it will

presumably get food, it looks towards

the mountains and takes off. And there's

something like incredibly noble about

this, right? So, people watch this and

they're sort of like, wow, this is like

the triumph of the human spirit. I think

a great example of epic meaning being

epic failure is Into the Wild. So, this

is a story of someone who went into the

wilderness and then basically starved to

death. He started to eat something, I

think, called potato berries, which are

he was so hungry that he found these

things that looked like potatoes, but

are actually toxic when ingested in

large quantities. And then he ends up

sort of dying alone, poisoning himself.

And this is what we turn into movies.

And if we want to understand why people

are so into this, we got to understand

the basic problem that human beings face

in today's world. We no longer have the

capacity for self-determination. So the

world on a macroscopic level, there's

inflation, there's war, there's the

existential threat of AI. I recently

talked to a buddy of mine who's uh in a

PhD or teaches in a PhD program and she

was telling me how hard it is for like

new PhD graduates to find entry-level

jobs because they're all being taken by

AI. So we're like fundamentally like

losing control. And it's not just the

macroscopic forces. This is also a

situation where I've worked with so many

people who can't even control

themselves. Their day-to-day experience

of life is there are so many things that

I know would be good for me that have a

high probability of success. If I just

did this, everything would be great.

Simplest example of this is emailing my

professor just to let them know, hey, I

won't be able to turn in my paper on

time. Can I have an extension? It's like

30 seconds of work. And yet, even though

there's so much stuff that we could do

that would be good for us, we cannot

bring ourselves to do it. Q dopamine

addiction, social media addiction, video

game addiction, porn porn addiction,

take your pick. And so what we see with

this nihilistic penguin is exactly what

we wish we could do. The penguin is

faced with a situation where there is no

chance of success, no chance of

survival, and yet it is able to muster

up the energy to give everything that

it's got for some impossible task. And

this is the basic thing that I see in

the majority of people today is like

they just can't give life their effort,

right? This idea of like give me liberty

or give me death. Going allin, giving

everything you've got. this thing that

we love as human beings, this this thing

that we respect as human beings, like

the ultimate respect that we give human

beings are people who give it their all.

And I can't even give it 25%. And when

people watch this video, like the

comments are like, "This penguin may not

survive, but he'll certainly live." Ah,

what nobility. And then here's what's

really scary about this is like when we

look at this penguin, a lot of people

will say like, "There's no purpose.

There's no triumph of the human spirit

or the penguin spirit. This is just like

a biological error. Like there's nothing

going on here. That like the brain is

malfunctioning. The penguin is running

towards the mountains. It'll certainly

die there. There's like no chance of

survival. It's not accomplished

anything. Like this triumph of the

penguin spirit is just a bug. And

there's actually good like scientific

evidence to support this. Not just in

penguins, but in humans as well. And

then we get to this really scary thought

because here we are as human beings

striving for meaning and striving for

purpose. But there's a lot of biological

evidence that this crap doesn't exist.

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right for you. A really good example of

this is more from the the field of

psychology, but in something called

terror management theory. So, here's

basically what terror management theory

says. So as living organisms we have one

goal which is survival. There's also one

thing that is guaranteed when an

organism becomes born in the world which

is that it is going to die. So

everything in our wiring is wired to

survive. Death is inevitable. Now this

is not a problem for most organisms. If

I'm a bacteria I have no sense of my

mortality. If I'm a frog, if I'm a deer,

if I'm a lion, we have really no

evidence that primates or lions or any

kinds of organisms are aware that they

will die one day except for humans

because we as humans are different. We

know that we're going to die, right? We

have we've reached this cognitive

plateau which creates a problem because

here we are wired to survive, but we

have the knowledge of certain death. So,

how does an organism fix this

fundamentally irreconcilable thing? And

that's where terror management theory

comes in. What terror management theory

says is that we're human beings. We all

are afraid of death. So organisms are

wired for survival and all organisms

die. So this is not a problem if you're

like an amoeba. It's not a problem if

you're a frog because frogs don't have a

clear sense of their mortality. The

problem is when you achieve a certain

cognitive layer, a cognitive capability,

you're wired for survival and you know

you're going to die. So, how does our

biology

reconcile that we're wired to survive

and we're definitely going to die? So,

the main goal, the main game we are

trying to win, we will definitely lose.

And that's where terror management

theory basically says that the way that

our we reconcile this fear of death is

by like inventing

some sense of like immortality. The

sense of meaning and purpose and

self-esteem and all of these like good

things in life. All of these triumphs of

the human spirit are basically

biological copium to reconcile against

this idea of death. We've evolved the

delusion of purpose to keep the terror

of our certain death, which is like runs

contrary to our basic instincts of

survival at bay. And this is what I

think is so scary about the nihilistic

penguin is like all of us are sort of

sitting in this situation where we wish

we could be doing more. We want to live

life more. We want to find purpose. We

want to find meaning. But then on the

flip side, there is so much evidence.

There's no proof of life after death.

There's no proof of the existence of

God. Maybe there is. You can leave a

comment if you want. Right? We don't

know if we're all like all we have proof

of is that we're like sacks of meat with

electrical activity in this particular

skull that gives us a sense of purpose

and meaning. And then we're kind of

stuck because it's like do I live life?

Do I look for meaning? Do I look for

purpose? Or is it all a scam? And this

is what's so scary is that the thing

that we strive for could be a biological

delusion. So how do we resolve this?

What many people will say is like, oh,

like life is a journey and you have to

like figure out for yourself, which is

like sort of a great answer, but

honestly, it's a really crappy answer.

It's it's sort of like a non-answer.

There is no answer. You have to figure

it out for yourself. Like, you know,

reminds me of the the hand clapping meme

when someone is drowning where it's

like, okay, you have to figure it out

yourself, but how do you figure it out?

And this is where I don't have any

profound guidance. I'm not like

enlightened or divine or anything like

that. The best that I can give you is

sort of my take on this. So my parents,

you know, raised me in a religious kind

of household, kind of culturally

religious. I would go to temple and

things like that, but I didn't really

like believe this stuff. I remember

going to a summer camp when I was like

14 years old that my mom really wanted

me to go to for this religious

organization. I would people would say

these things about God and you know this

is what you should do and reincarnation

and I was like where's your proof, bro?

I started asking questions and I didn't

get any sufficient answers and I was

like okay like these people don't know

what they're talking about. I was

basically an atheist and then I went to

India and I started studying meditation

and originally the reason I studied

meditation was not about spirituality.

It was like okay I'm going to focus on

the neuroscience. I'm going to focus on

improving my physiology, gaining

willpower. I wanted observable benefits

in the real world through meditation. So

that's why I moved away from Reiki and

started to move towards other kinds of

meditation which are scientifically

valid because I didn't believe any of

this crap. And then as I started to

meditate, I started to have these weird

spiritual experiences. And I'll just

share one with you that I don't know if

I've talked about before, but the first

time I got an interview for medical

school and I went home and I meditated

and then I prayed, which is not

something that I do usually. So I prayed

and I was like, "Please, universe, God,

whatever, whatever the [ __ ] is out

there. Please let me get accepted to

medical school. I've been trying really

hard. I don't know if it's going to work

or not. My GPA sucks. Please, please,

please, please, please let me get

accepted to medical school." And then I

had something called a knowing. So this

is something that I I don't talk about

publicly, but I talk about with my

patients sometimes, which is like

sometimes when you meditate, you know

things. So it's not a belief. It's not

an understanding. It's not even an aha

moment. The best word I can use to

describe it is a knowing. Maybe you've

experienced it and you kind of know what

I'm talking about. If you haven't, it

sounds like kooky, right? So I just knew

like it's not like a voice like I didn't

hear something. I knew that I would not

get accepted that year and I knew that

it would take me two more years. And it

was like I knew that I had to go through

this and that it was like the price that

I had to pay, but it was also kind of

reassuring because it was like I knew

that things were going to work out in

the end, but there would be a lot of

pain that was necessary to get me to

where I want to go. And I was sitting

there meditating and I had this profound

experience of knowing I started crying

and I felt both loved and I felt a lot

of pity towards myself. Since that

moment, I've really appreciated this

part in the Bible in the Garden of

Gethsemane where Jesus says, "Please

Lord, let this cup pass from me to like

somebody else. Like, I don't want to do

do this. If there's any way that you can

give me a pass, please let me know." And

that's something that really resonates

with me to this day. So, when you

meditate and you do this kind of stuff,

like weird stuff happens. And then I was

in a then I had a problem because I was

like, "What the hell is that?" Right? Is

this a delusion? Is this some kind of

psychological copium? what's going on

here? And this explains like why I read

all of this stuff, right? So, I have

this paper on terror management theory.

I read a bunch of other papers about the

nature of nihilism and human meaning and

human existence and psychology and

neuroscience and all this kind of crap

because I'm looking for answers. So,

I've read probably about 3,000

peer-reviewed publications since I

started Healthy Gamer looking for

answers. And so through a series of 20

years of meditative experiences and

getting married and having kids, I kind

of found purpose, believed in dharma,

believed in karma, karma and all this

stuff. And I was like, great, I figured

it out. Now here's the really scary

thing. I'm sliding back towards atheism

and I got dragged into not theism, but

the idea that there is more in this

world than is materially v visible. So I

had enough experiences and they kept

happening once every like 2 or 3 years

or so. That was really profound. And

when this happens to you for 20 years

and you get like hit with these things,

like you you get dragged into believing

there is more. The really scary thing is

over the last year or two, I'm being

dragged in the opposite direction. As I

learn more about biology, as I learn

more about neuroscience, as I learn more

about psychology, about things like

adaptive misbelief, I'm starting to

really wonder whether all of the stuff

that I learned is just delusions in my

brain that I've been evolved. The

biology of my system is designed to give

me copium, is designed to give me

something called adaptive misbelief,

which are things that are not true but

are adaptive for for the organism. So,

is all of this stuff that I experienced

real or is it just the highest level of

copium?

I don't know. At the end of the day,

it's incredibly fascinating. But I don't

know. And I think this is where y'all

have to tell us, right? So, do you think

this is something noble? Do you think

that there's some kind of atma or soul

that is inhabited the penguin? That the

penguin is exploring the frontiers of

its environment just like human beings

did when they were like thousands of

years ago. Or is it all just a

biological malfunction?