Robert Epstein: Psychologist and researcher, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, who has spent 12+ years studying Google's influence on elections and human behavior.
What this episode covers
Robert Epstein returns to detail his research showing how Google and other tech companies use ephemeral content (search results, suggestions, answer boxes, YouTube recommendations) to manipulate voters and children at massive scale. He describes building a nationwide monitoring system that has preserved over 99 million ephemeral experiences and produces court-admissible data on tech bias in elections. He recounts personal hardship: his wife's suspicious death, threats, and an attack on his servers. The conversation then pivots to Epstein's neural transduction theory, a speculative idea that the brain is a transducer connecting humans to another domain or universe, possibly mediated by DMT, and a long debate with Rogan over whether memory actually exists in the brain.
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Proton Mail
Proton
“all of these alternative websites that are trying to protect people's privacy so we use proton mail for example we use signal for texting”— guest
Signal
Signal Foundation
“so we use proton mail for example we use signal for texting uh they've all run into problems”— guest
The Selfish Ledger
“one of the leaks from the company 8-minute video called The Selfish Ledger talks about the ability of the company to re-engineer humanity”— guest
Her
Spike Jonze
“at the end of the movie Her spoiler the AI voiced by Scarlett Johansson uh just decides to disappear she decides humanity is too slow”— guest
2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick
“just like in the movie 2001 right we got elevated there were these black monoliths that appeared and people went up to them”— guest
The Boondocks
Aaron McGruder
“this is Boondocks which is a television show an animated television show yeah so this is recommended to children because it is animated”— guest
Big reveals from this episode
- In controlled experiments, manipulating search suggestions can shift undecided voters from a 50-50 split to a 90-10 split with no one aware they were manipulated.
- Monitoring data shows Google sends conservatively biased content about Elizabeth Warren to all groups because she publicly called for breaking up Google.
- Epstein says his system is now collecting content from AI for active threat assessment, to spot AI threats to humanity before they manifest.
- Epstein calculates Google could have shifted 2.6 to 10.4 million votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016, and at least 6 million to Biden in 2020.
- A few months ago an unusual sophisticated attack overloaded Epstein's cloud servers, shutting his system down and cutting access to data for nearly two weeks.
- Epstein's most radical claim: there is no memory stored in the brain at all; the brain is a transducer, not a storage device.
- Epstein argues that even knowing facts like the first president is not stored anywhere in his brain.
- Epstein proposes declaring Google's search index a public Commons, the way governments did with water and electricity, to break its monopoly.
Worth remembering
- Epstein claims Android phones keep transmitting and collecting data even when powered off, because batteries were soldered in.
- As of recording, the system had preserved more than 99.3 million ephemeral experiences across Google, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.
- Research on AnswerBotEffect.com shows a biased answer from an assistant like Alexa can shift an undecided person's opinion 40% or more after one interaction.
- The number one variable for platform profitability is 'watch time'; gruesome quick clips create attention peaks that drive addiction.
- Epstein says Ray Kurzweil and his wife abruptly stopped all communication with him after Kurzweil joined Google.
- Epstein argues human bodies are encased in transducers head to toe (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin) that convert signals between mediums.
- Epstein challenged scientists at the Max Planck Institute to explain how the brain works without a computer metaphor, and none could.
- Early ayahuasca researchers wanted to name harmine 'telepathine' because of group telepathic experiences, but the name was already taken.
- Epstein cites a Google tech team member crediting the team with two of the four points by which Obama won re-election.
- Epstein notes Google was the 21st search engine, not the first, and argues there has been no search innovation in 20 years.