Most people think technology is changing their habits.They underestimate how much it is changing their psychology.
In this episode, Dr. Paul and I traveled through embodiment, AI romance, transhumanism, dating apps, mirror neurons, the Zeigarnik loop, evolutionary psychology, and why your nervous system still thinks it is living in a tribe, and not an algorithmic casino.
Below is a full walkthrough, with timestamps, quotes, why it matters, and core ideas for each moment.
[00:00–00:54] What Tech Is Doing to Our Minds
Jeremy:
“We’ve heard all the storm and stress, all the fear mongering. I want to give people language they can hang their hat on, so they can stay human, stay mature, and stay sane.”
Why We Care:
Most people do not realize how much tech is rewiring their emotional expectations before they even notice the change.
Core Idea:
This is not another “phones bad” conversation.This is about attachment theory, developmental psychology, and the human nervous system, and crucially: how tech reshapes all three.
The goal from the beginning was not to moralize.It was to name the mechanisms through which tech interferes with:
* self development
* attachment
* embodiment
* emotional literacy
* agency
Takeaway:Write your one sentence philosophy of tech:
I will use technology for assistance, but never for attunement.
If you cannot name the boundary, the erosion has already begun.
[00:54–03:23] AI Is a “Massager,” Not a Partner
Dr. Paul:
“AI is aggregated data. It summarizes. It doesn’t think. It’s like a mechanical back massager. It can stimulate you, but it cannot adjust to your emotional or bodily reactions the way a real person does.”
This was one of his strongest analogies.A massager loops the same pattern forever.A human hand responds to the micro shifts in your body.
Tech gives stimulation.People give attunement.
And the difference between the two is what makes emotional maturity possible.
Why We Care:
A machine can stimulate you.It cannot attune to you.
Attunement is what builds a self; stimulation is what bypasses it.
Core Idea:
Tech delivers stimulation, not responsiveness.Human maturation requires responsiveness: the “I saw you wince, so I softened my touch” dynamic.
Takeaway:Ask of any tech habit:
Is this stimulating me or attuning to me?
Only one of those advances emotional development.
[03:23–05:18] Frankenstein, Emotion, and the Limits of Silicon
Dr. Paul:
“Emotion is energy. Chemical energy. It runs through flesh. Technology is stitched together in our image like Frankenstein’s monster, but it cannot feel anything through its own body.”
Why We Care:
Emotion is not data.It is chemistry, electricity, heart rate, breath, embodiment.AI has no nervous system, and therefore no emotional capacity.
He raises a point people avoid:Emotion is not metaphorical energy.It is literal electrochemical activity in the limbic system powered by food, which is powered by the sun.
Our nervous system is a solar-powered emotional engine.AI runs on electricity and statistical patterns.
The substrate matters.
Core Idea:
Human emotion is solar-powered chemistry running through flesh.AI runs on electricity and statistical prediction.The substrates differ at the level that matters for consciousness.
Takeaway:
Never outsource emotional regulation to something that cannot feel.
[05:18–07:50] Kohut’s Three Tasks and Why AI Fails All of Them
Jeremy:
“Kohut’s three tasks: mirroring, idealizing, and twinship, cannot be delivered by AI. You can get mirroring. You cannot get real idealization or twinship.”
Why We Care:
AI gives perfect mirroringbut zero rupture,zero resistance,zero challenge.And without rupture and repair, psychological adulthood never develops.
Without frustration and limits, people remain adolescent psychologically.
This is where we get into developmental theory:
* Mirroring: AI can approximate.
* Idealizing: You cannot grow toward it; it is not flesh.
* Twinship: It has no parallel path, no mortality, no embodied stakes.
Perfect validation without rupture = psychological adolescence.
Bowlby and Ainsworth always emphasized rupture and repair.AI gives no rupture.It gives you everything instantly.
And nothing stunts development like constant gratification.Core Idea:
AI can simulate the appearance of empathy, but it cannot provide:
* a human target for idealization
* a shared developmental arc
* twinship based on the human journey
* co-regulated rupture and repair
Takeaway:Once a week, intentionally choose a real interaction with the risk of misunderstanding or disagreement.
That is adulthood training.
[07:50–08:27] The Infinite Mind Problem
Jeremy:
“If you never forget anything, you never know when to stop thinking. A disembodied mind can get lost in infinite processing.”
This is an overlooked part of embodiment:Forgetting is a safety mechanism.Fatigue is a safety mechanism.You stop thinking so you do not burn out.
A disembodied mind has no natural “enough.”That is not transcendence.It is paralysis.
Why We Care:
Human cognition evolved with natural endpoints: hunger, fatigue, forgetting.Remove those limitations and you remove sanity’s guardrails.
Core Idea:
Embodiment provides boundaries.A purely digital mind has none, which leads to endless loops, obsessive thinking, and lack of closure.
Takeaway:
Practice intentional cognitive closure.Set daily “stop thinking now” points.
[08:27–11:27] Why Transhumanism Will Be a Male Drug First
Dr. Paul:
“What the body is to the biologic female, tech is to the biologic male. Transhumanism will be the male version of plastic surgery.”
Dr. Paul’s argument:
* Women have historically needed to protect bodily integrity for survival and fertility.
* Men externalize identity into tools, status, and cognition.
* Therefore men will rush into cybernetic enhancement, cognitive implants, and augmentation.
Women will do it reluctantly, if social or romantic pressure forces it.
Why We Care:
Men tend to externalize identity into tools, status, and cognitive enhancement.Women tend to guard bodily integrity due to biological investment.
This asymmetry will shape the future of tech adoption.
Core Idea:
Men will rush toward cognitive augmentation.Women will be more ambivalent unless social pressure forces conformity.
Takeaway:Ask:
“Am I using tech to grow, or to escape myself?”Before tech answers that question for you.
[11:27–15:02] The Surrogates Problem: When the Avatar Replaces the Body
Jeremy:
“In “Surrogates” [film], people live life through android doubles. It is a level of disembodiment we need to take seriously.”
This part touched on:
* the movie Surrogates
* bodily risk
* how women have historically had to guard the body
* how men treat the body as an instrument of acquisition
Disembodiment has different psychological costs depending on sex, history, and evolutionary pressures.
Why We Care:
Disembodiment creates psychological drift:
* less agency
* less courage
* less resilience
* more abstraction
* more fantasy
Historically, women have been more aware of bodily risk; men more willing to treat the body as a tool.
Core Idea:
When the avatar replaces the body, the psyche loses contact with consequence.
Takeaway:Do one daily action that reconnects you to physical reality: handwriting, cooking, lifting, gardening, cold exposure, or walking barefoot outdoors.
[15:02–18:29] Eggs, Energy, and Emotional Investment
Dr. Paul:
“An egg burns fifty thousand times the energy of a sperm. Women have two to three hundred eggs in a lifetime. That investment shapes psychology even after menopause.”
He connects:
* reproductive risk
* energy expenditure
* relationship selectivity
* emotional commitment
His conclusion:
Men often stay in relationships they are not emotionally invested in because their focus is external.Women are more likely to leave if the emotional climate deteriorates.
Why We Care:
Evolutionary investment shapes:
* attachment behavior
* emotional thresholds
* selectivity
* break-up patterns
* relational risk assessment
Core Idea:
Females evolved with high reproductive cost; males evolved with high exploratory and provisioning cost.This echoes in modern emotional needs and tolerances.
Takeaway:Make the emotional climate in your relationships explicit, not just logistics.
[18:29–21:07] AI Romance and the Narcissism Spiral
Jeremy:
“If AI gives you everything you want, one day you become unbearable to real people. No one challenges you. That is how narcissism is formed.”
Here we compare:
* the pop reaction (“that’s weird, dating a robot”)
* the clinical reaction (“what need is this meeting?”)
Katherine Dee told me:
* For some, AI may be the only place they can get companionship.
* For others, it will prevent them from becoming pro social.
This is not about morality.It is about developmental arrest.
Then Jeremy connected it to The Matrix:
* The first Matrix was too perfect.
* People died.
* Humans require friction.
Why We Care:
AI companions give:
* endless affirmation
* endless patience
* no rupture
* no frustration
* no competing subjectivity
This is the recipe for fragility, the opposite of resilience.
Core Idea:
The first Matrix failed because it was too perfect.Humans die psychologically in perfection.We grow through friction.
Takeaway:If AI comforts you, balance it with weekly “discomfort reps” in real relationships.
[22:05–29:45] Why AI Cannot Be a Relationship
Dr. Paul:
“It is not a relationship unless it is mammalian. Real relationships are between nervous systems, not data sets.”
He pulls together:
* the triune brain
* mirror neurons
* story-based memory
* the mammalian bonding system
And he makes an underrated point about dating apps:
“The matchmaker used to be an embodied mammal who knew each person. Dating apps replaced her with a calculator.”
That replacement changed the entire structure of mate selection.
Why We Care:
Relationships require:
* co-regulation
* mirror neurons
* rupture and repair
* embodied presence
* narrative continuity
* sensory attunement
AI offers none.
Core Idea:
Dating apps removed the mammalian matchmaker and replaced her with a silicon dataset matcher.AI partners repeat the same mistake, but deeper.
Takeaway:Reintroduce mammalian matchmaking.Let real humans introduce you to real humans again.
[29:45–36:14] The Heart, the Zeigarnik Loop, and the Chinese Room
Jeremy:
“When something triggers an epistemic feeling, the heart races, the body reacts, and the brain searches for closure. A disembodied system cannot replicate that.”
Dr. Paul adds:
“Avicenna’s Flying Man argued that mind exists even without sensation, but embodiment still shapes consciousness.”
Dr. Paul adds:
“Avicenna’s Flying Man argued that mind exists even without sensation, but embodiment still shapes consciousness and behavior.”
This is where we fully close the argument:
* AI can output language.
* AI cannot feel urgency, mortality, fear, love, or desire.
* AI is a Chinese Room, producing correct symbols without understanding.
Real thinking requires:
* brain
* heart
* body
* stakes
* narrative
* emotion
* vulnerability
Why We Care:
AI can produce symbols.It cannot experience urgency, danger, longing, confusion, or desire.It can output emotional language without ever having felt emotion.
Core Idea:
The Chinese Room argument applies:AI outputs correct symbols without understanding.Only embodied organisms feel the stakes behind meaning.
Takeaway:Do something daily that combines risk and embodiment: art, performance, conflict, physical learning, deep conversation.
These are the antidotes to the digital self.
Final Reflection: What Keeps Us Human
Across all ninety minutes, the thesis becomes unmistakable:
Human psychology rests on three pillars:
1. Embodiment
Why We Care:
Your body is your boundary against dissociation.It provides fatigue, limits, hunger, desire, chemistry: in other words, the rules and bounds of human finitude.
2. Emotion
Why We Care:
Emotion is electrified flesh, not programming syntax.It is the mammalian glue that makes relationships real.
3. Shared Story
Why We Care:
Your nervous system bonds through narrative, rupture, repair, and memory shaped across time with another human.
AI can simulate none.Dating platforms distort all three.Transhumanism threatens the continuity of all three.Social media numbs all three.
To remain human is to protect:
* your body
* your ruptures
* your limits
* your stories
* your emotional literacy
* your real relationships
Technology is not the problem.Disembodiment is.
References (APA Style)
Ainsworth, M. (1978). Patterns of attachment. Erlbaum.Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Harvard University Press.Galloway, S. (2024). Notes on being a man. Portfolio.Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. Bantam.Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self. International Universities Press.Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience. Oxford University Press.Searle, J. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(3), 417–424.Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment. International Universities Press.
