“Be a crazy dreamer and a hard-nosed empiricist at the same time.”
In short: Dr Ben Goertzel is an AI researcher and entrepreneur working in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. In this short Success Secrets clip from his London Real interview with Brian Rose, he answers three questions: what he would tell his 20-year-old self, how psychedelics and meditation shaped his thinking, and what he would say to a young person heading towards the singularity.
Goertzel jokes that he would tell his younger self to invent blockchain, or to run deep neural networks on GPUs decades before anyone realised how much faster they would be. He is more serious about the habits behind his work: a lifelong interest in meditation, early experiments with psychedelics, and a father who taught him to dig up the data before forming an opinion.
The clip is short but dense, and it is useful for anyone curious about how an AI builder thinks about learning, inner work and the future of technology.
Key takeaways
- Blockchain and GPUs would have changed the timeline. Goertzel says that handing his younger self the idea of blockchain, or the insight that neural networks run far faster on GPUs, would have brought both technologies forward by years.
- Psychedelics widened his view of the mind. He began at around 15 and says they left him much less of a hardcore materialist and gave him a different perspective on how the mind builds a reality.
- Meditation was already part of his life. As a child he read his mother’s books on Chinese culture and Buddhism and meditated often, which made him doubt that everyday reality is the whole story.
- Inner insight feeds AI design. He says nitty-gritty computer science and maths do much of the work, but high-level inspiration for architecting AI systems often comes from watching how his own mind works.
- Grounding helps in volatile markets. Meditation, psychedelics and time in nature help him cope with the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur in the crypto and AI worlds.
- Check the data first. His father, a sociology professor, taught him to set presuppositions aside and study the evidence, which balances Goertzel’s side as a self-described crazy dreamer.
- Learn widely, then your role becomes clear. His advice to a 20-year-old is to absorb science, maths, technology and social science, and to meditate; the right way to contribute to the singularity will follow.
What would Ben Goertzel tell his 20-year-old self?
Asked what advice he would give a younger Ben Goertzel over the phone, he admits the question is subtle: changing his past could undo his first marriage, and with it his three children. As a thought experiment he offers two pieces of technical knowledge instead.
One is the blockchain idea, which he calls a very simple technical concept that would have been easy to communicate. The other is that multi-layer perceptrons, the early name for deep neural networks, would solve problems such as face recognition once they ran on GPUs. In his words, it is “low bandwidth, high impact” information.
Psychedelics, meditation and the mind
Goertzel says psychedelics taught him a great deal about how the mind works and gave him a different perspective on life, the universe and everything. He started at about 15 and tried a range of substances while at Simon’s Rock College in western Massachusetts.
He adds that meditation and Buddhist reading came first, and that psychedelics “drove the point home” that human understanding covers only a small part of reality. That perspective, he says, feeds into how he thinks about the architecture of AI systems and helps him stay grounded in the fast-moving tech and crypto world.
The best advice he received
The best advice came from his father, a sociology professor, whose first reaction to any question is to dig up the data and look at it. Goertzel says that mentality taught him to set his feelings and inspirations aside and study the evidence.
He credits the pairing of a dreamer’s imagination with an empiricist’s discipline for helping him across many fields.
Advice for a young person facing the singularity
Goertzel says there is no single path, and that good personal advice would require knowing the person. His general guidance is to educate yourself at every level, from science and mathematics to advanced technology and social science, and to keep ingesting information.
Alongside that, he suggests meditation and, used appropriately, psychedelics for deeper inner understanding. After a few years of doing both, he says, the right way to contribute to the singularity should become clear.
Who is Dr Ben Goertzel?
Dr Ben Goertzel is an AI researcher and entrepreneur who works in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. He studied at Simon’s Rock College, part of Bard College in western Massachusetts, and is a long-time meditator who describes himself as part dreamer and part empiricist. He appears here in a short clip from his full London Real interview with Brian Rose.
Frequently asked questions
He joked that he would tell himself to invent blockchain, and that deep neural networks would solve problems like face recognition if they were run on GPUs.
He says they taught him how the mind works, made him less of a hardcore materialist and gave him high-level inspiration for architecting AI systems.
His father, a sociology professor, taught him to set presuppositions aside and dig up the data, which balances his side as a crazy dreamer.
Learn as much as possible about science, maths, technology and society, and meditate. The right way to contribute to the singularity will become clear.
