Aliens, Ai, and Human Potential: A Different Kind of Conversation

Could the search for aliens actually tell us more about ourselves than life beyond Earth?

In this episode of Capability Amplifier, Dan Sullivan and Mike Koenigs take on one of their most unusual conversations yet.

Starting with a simple question - Do aliens exist? - the discussion quickly expands into science, human intelligence, Ai, consciousness, space exploration, and the remarkable abilities already found throughout nature.

Drawing on NASA's Webb Telescope, SpaceX, psychology, philosophy, and emerging Ai research, Dan and Mike explore why humans are fascinated by extraterrestrial life and what that curiosity reveals about our own potential.

Whether you're interested in entrepreneurship, technology, science, or simply enjoy exploring big ideas, this conversation offers a thoughtful perspective on one of humanity's oldest questions.

In this episode, Dan and I break down:

• Why Dan remains skeptical about extraterrestrial visitors
• What NASA and the Webb Space Telescope have - and haven't - discovered
• Why people naturally search for something greater than themselves
• The surprising intelligence found in animals and nature
• How Ai is helping us better understand human thinking
• Consciousness, psychedelics, and the limits of current science
• Why curiosity may be humanity's greatest competitive advantage
• The future of robotics and space exploration
  
  

Dan and I may not have solved the mystery of extraterrestrial life, but the conversation raises a bigger question:
How much intelligence already surrounds us that we have not learned to recognize?

TIME STAMPS

[00:00:00] The Capability Amplifier Alien Edition

[00:02:09] Dan’s answer on extraterrestrial life

[00:03:31] What the Webb Telescope has revealed

[00:05:16] Why people want advanced beings to exist

[00:09:02] Mike’s childhood fascination with aliens

[00:14:06] A SpaceX perspective on the evidence

[00:17:08] Imagination, belief, and the afterlife

[00:19:26] Psychedelics and expanded consciousness

[00:22:22] Intelligence in animals and nature

[00:34:09] Ai and the expansion of human intelligence

[00:40:36] Beliefs Dan has abandoned

[00:47:43] Robots, space exploration, and future alien

PS – When you’re ready, here’s how I can help: 

1. Want to find the hidden revenue in your business? Grab a Cup of Coffee with me: AiAccelerator.com/1k
2. Ready to reinvent yourself, your business, and your brand, and create “Your Next Act”? Watch this.
   
   

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Creators and Guests

Host

Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach

Dan Sullivan is founder and president of The Strategic Coach Inc. A visionary, an innovator, and a gifted conceptual thinker, Dan has over 40 years’ experience as a highly regarded speaker, consultant, strategic planner, and coach to entrepreneurial individuals and groups.

Host

Mike Koenigs

Mike Koenigs helps business owners and entrepreneurs get paid for BEING, instead of DOING by becoming Transformational Business Influencers, authorities and thought-leaders to create impact, income and a great lifestyle.

What is Capability Amplifier?

Join the eternally curious, interested, and interesting hosts, Mike Koenigs of the SuperPower Accelerator and Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach®, to amplify your capabilities, value, status, and authority on the Capability Amplifier podcast. Ever episode focuses on a new mindset, shortcut or deep thinking exercise that will improve your performance and lifespan. Learn more at: https://www.CapabilityAmplifier.com

Dan Sullivan [00:00:00]:
Hi everybody, it's Dan Sullivan here, and this is the Capability Amplifier with Mike Koenigs. We're going to explore the whole subject of aliens. Right now we're in alien season on the planet right now, and it's interesting to examine what part of it— do they have proof that there's aliens, or they wish there was proof that there was aliens?

Mike Koenigs [00:00:26]:
What you're going to love about this episode is, first of all, Dan and I definitely say whether or not we believe in them, and we're going to slice it into bits. We're also going to talk a little bit about history. We're going to talk about science precedent. We're going to tie in a little bit of AI because there's some interesting things going on with artificial consciousness right now, and also where the tie-in is with space exploration, where this country is heading, and how we're expanding our consciousness capabilities as well. So this is probably one of the weirder episodes we've done, and it all came down to we were sitting at, uh, dinner and I looked at Dan and I said, would you ever do an alien episode? He goes, let's do it. So this is your Capability Amplifier Alien Edition. Enjoy. You're not going to Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:01:31]:
Before we leave this episode, Dan and I are going to talk about aliens. And it might not be what you think it is, but it's everything you think it is. We're going to talk about whether or not Dan believes aliens exist. I'll share my point of view and why we think that way. But also, Dan and I have actually had quite a few conversations about aliens over the past few years, and it's always an interesting conversation. And when we're in having dinner groups, It's really fascinating to see what other people think too. So, Dan, let's just dive in. And aliens, yes or no?

Dan Sullivan [00:02:09]:
Yeah, well, we've got enough human variety on the planet that we can find examples of aliens in our species.

Mike Koenigs [00:02:19]:
Who are the 2 who are most likely to be aliens if you had to pick 2 of them out? The highly visible ones. Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:02:25]:
Elon is on the, you know, Elon is sort of on the edge.

Mike Koenigs [00:02:31]:
Yep.

Dan Sullivan [00:02:32]:
Elon Musk. And, but Peter Diamandis at one of his Abundance 360, it was 2 years ago, I think it was 2 years ago, he had the mission commander from NASA who was responsible for finally getting the new Webb Telescope out into space. And the impact on astronomy and everything else has just been enormous. It shows you what one piece of technology moved far enough off the planet can start to reveal. And they had a Q&A, bit of a Q&A session with this woman. She was from Arkansas and she had— She retained her Arkansas dialect. And it was such a great— she just gave such a great presentation. And this is a mission that really started about 25 years ago.

Dan Sullivan [00:03:31]:
So I think she's number 4 or 5 in the lineup of mission commanders. So the question immediately came up, have you found any sign of intelligent life off the planet? And she says, no, no. She said, you know, she says, we have a checklist. We've been thinking about this for 50 years. And what it is, is actually, she didn't say this, but I looked it up. There's a thing called the Dyson, Freeman Dyson, very famous physicist.

Mike Koenigs [00:04:05]:
Yep.

Dan Sullivan [00:04:06]:
And he said, you can tell there's energy indicators that in someplace in space, and they can see galaxy after galaxy, they can see millions of stars. We have no indication of an energy change Anywhere that the Webb Telescope can pick up that indicates that there would be a species that would have enough energy to actually escape from their solar system to get to us. And so Peter, in his inimitable way, said, how many of you believe there's intelligent life in another species in the universe? And everybody's hands went up. You were sitting right next to me, so I didn't— we were at the same table, and I don't know what you did, but I didn't put my hand— I didn't put my hand up. And he says, is there anyone who doesn't believe it? And my hand went right up. And, uh, and, uh, Peter talked to me afterwards. He said, were you pulling my chain there?

Mike Koenigs [00:05:15]:
Hmm.

Dan Sullivan [00:05:16]:
being contrarian in the audience. I said, no, I said, I think it's a desire to be saved. I think it's a childhood desire that there's a more advanced intelligent species that will come and it'll solve all our problems and make everything harmonious and beautiful on the planet. And I said, because the scariest thought is not, is there intelligent life elsewhere on the planet. What if we're the only intelligent species in the— I said, that's a scary thought. We're alone. We're alone. And that means we have to own all of our own problems.

Dan Sullivan [00:05:59]:
You know, in the book that Peter just came out with, We Are as Gods—

Mike Koenigs [00:06:06]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:06:06]:
We gave it out. Yeah, Stephen Cutler, we gave Cutler We gave the book out to all the Free Zone people yesterday. And at the end of the book, he's got charts that just shows the incredible improvement that the human race has made.

Mike Koenigs [00:06:25]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:06:27]:
And still making. He had 50 charts, everything, poverty down, starvation down, everything. And I said, we've never been better than we are right now. But it's not perfect. And I think what people want is perfection, you know, that there's a way in the future that we're going to be perfect. And I said, no, we're always going to be problems, challenges, and we have to get smarter to solve everything. So that's my attitude.

Mike Koenigs [00:06:59]:
Interesting.

Dan Sullivan [00:06:59]:
And so, you know, I don't— you know, I just don't buy into the need to have some outside intelligence come and solve our problems.

Mike Koenigs [00:07:11]:
Uh-huh. So at the end of the day, you feel that this is basically a mythology, a concoction?

Dan Sullivan [00:07:20]:
Yeah, it's religious. It's religious, yeah. You know, and the great religions all have some aspect of this. And I think religion is a built-in instinct in the human brain by this time. We've been around for There's a scientist who I follow named Joe Henrich, and he said, you know, what happened was at a certain point, a mammal— he buys into that we, you know, we come from— at one point we were indistinguishable from apes or gorillas or whatever mammal you want to have there. And that We learned how to jump our brain into the brain of another person and we can create collaboration. And we're a lot better at it today than we were 100 years ago. And we're infinitely better at collaboration now than we were 1,000 years ago.

Dan Sullivan [00:08:25]:
So I said, you know, we're on the trip. This is a trip. But it really scares people that we would be the only intelligent species. Based on, you know, what we understand as human intelligence. And I think it's, it's a desire that mommy's— mommy or daddy— there's a bigger mama, mommy or daddy somewhere that's going to come and make everything right for us. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The other thing I know is if aliens did, did visit, we'd know about it right away.

Mike Koenigs [00:09:02]:
Well, that's the—

Dan Sullivan [00:09:02]:
Remember Men in Black? Men in Black?

Mike Koenigs [00:09:04]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:09:05]:
Yeah. You know, they look normal, but at a certain point, they say, sugar! I need some more sugar!

Mike Koenigs [00:09:11]:
That's right. You know, there's a great series on— I can't remember if it's Amazon Prime or which one of the networks or channels, and it's called Sugar. And it is a film noir detective. And it isn't until the end of the first season— of course, sorry to everyone who's gonna see this now— but you find out he's an alien. And it is a really good alien story. So I'm gonna weigh in my version here because I grew up, and when I was younger, I was very young. Project Blue Book was very popular amongst preteen boys. And I had that book and I pored through it and I got books on Mars and I studied astronomy.

Mike Koenigs [00:10:11]:
I was so interested in it. So the notion of aliens was just fun. And then Close Encounters came out and I was—

Dan Sullivan [00:10:20]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:10:21]:
teenager. I was part of the— I was 10 years old when Star Wars came out. That, of course, just really pushed my generation. Then I think the early Star Trek was late '60s, early '70s, which, of course, again, shaped the mindset of my generation. It really was embedded this notion of alien characters. And I think when media helped support that and it felt real—

Dan Sullivan [00:11:00]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Koenigs [00:11:00]:
And I can remember when I was young as well, The Day the Earth Stood Still, when that movie— I saw it, again, probably preteen, and I just loved it. It really was a great story and fantastically well done, at least from my recollection. I haven't seen it in many years now. So I was raised around this, and my friends and I would go outside. And, you know, growing up in the cornfields of Minnesota, we didn't have light pollution. And of course, we didn't know what a quasar was, but we were staring at quasars not knowing what they were and thinking they were aliens. And of course, we'd be talking to each other as boys and having this conversation about aliens. And, you know, we're embedded in this whole thing.

Mike Koenigs [00:11:48]:
So I think there's this cultural programming that took place.

Dan Sullivan [00:11:53]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:11:53]:
And if you, um, uh, if you fast forward a little bit later, I became good friends with some documentary filmmakers who started doing shows on UFOs, and I got to meet a guy named Stanton Friedman who—

Dan Sullivan [00:12:12]:
I know the name.

Mike Koenigs [00:12:13]:
Yeah. So his whole claim to fame was he had figured out how to decipher all sorts of languages and had, you know, found embedded alien stuff. At least that was the general belief. And, you know, he He was a master of hope. And, um, uh, you know, one thing about him— this is something I remember, it may not be accurate— but he carried a little bit of rabbi energy with him. And part of that is always asking questions. And he was a great storyteller, so he just knew how to weave all these stories. And then on top of it, the same producer and a very good friend of mine started producing Bigfoot documentaries.

Mike Koenigs [00:13:00]:
And they did chases all over the country where they'd go to where there was a sighting. And of course, they were carrying around, um, you know, it was reality TV. So it was this very investigative thing, and they're out. And I can remember talking to my buddy who produced a lot of them and, and was involved. I'm like, okay, dude, Bigfoot or no Bigfoot? Just like this, this episode opening up. And he's like, Man, I have heard and seen some crazy stuff. I'm like, Bigfoot or no Bigfoot? And he's like, I don't know, man. I just don't know.

Mike Koenigs [00:13:36]:
I'm like, ah! And it's the same thing. I cornered Stanton and I'm like, okay, if your life depended on it, your family's life depended on it, you know, I always ask a question like that. You got to have some high stakes. And he'd still squirrel out of it.

Dan Sullivan [00:13:52]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:13:52]:
So those are my— that's my upbringing. I have one more, uh, thing to add to this, which is, um, I know someone who works for SpaceX.

Dan Sullivan [00:14:05]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Koenigs [00:14:06]:
And just for the sake of this, I won't say who, just in case. But I cornered him one day over a few cocktails. And of course, one of the things about SpaceX is they've got lots and lots of eyes on this on the stars in space.

Dan Sullivan [00:14:21]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Koenigs [00:14:22]:
They gather a lot of data and they are up in space, right? So they're on the edges of our atmosphere, at least get to look out outside. And they've collected so much data. And I did the same thing. I pinned them down and, you know, I asked them the 2 things, which is, what do you know for sure? What do you believe? And what do you believe Elon believes? Okay, so, um, and the, uh, you know, what do you know is he says we've seen absolutely no concrete evidence whatsoever. It's just there's nothing.

Dan Sullivan [00:15:03]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Koenigs [00:15:04]:
And then his whole deal is basically, I'm, you know, I'm a scientist. Um, I will add one other, one other thing to the, to that, that one. And then finally, about the Elon thing, he says, well, he's been pretty public, you know. He says if, if there really were any aliens, they're pretty quiet and we should know about it, but we just, you know.

Dan Sullivan [00:15:25]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Koenigs [00:15:26]:
And, uh, I think, you know, most people fall in the I want to believe, I'd like to see one, but doggone it, where the hell are they? Especially after now all the disclosures and the fact that Spielberg came out with a with the movie Disclosure. Um, well-timed with government releases that are going on right now. But, um, uh, and they did a— it wasn't a great movie, but it did have some interesting footage mixed up. And, um, did you end up going to see it?

Dan Sullivan [00:15:57]:
No, I haven't seen it yet.

Mike Koenigs [00:15:58]:
Okay.

Dan Sullivan [00:15:59]:
Yeah, I haven't seen it.

Mike Koenigs [00:16:00]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:16:02]:
I don't find his movies— he's dropped off. His movies haven't been as great.

Mike Koenigs [00:16:08]:
Recently.

Dan Sullivan [00:16:08]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:16:09]:
This one's— I walked out and I'm like, yeah, it's a good 7. Yeah. I mean, I'm not mad I went. And some of the ideas behind it were really good. And some of it was just like, ugh, so cliché. But, you know, in the grand scheme of things—

Dan Sullivan [00:16:32]:
I actually liked the Hail Mary project. I thought the Hail Mary project did a good job.

Mike Koenigs [00:16:37]:
Great movie. I like the fact that it wasn't, uh, a humanoid robot made out of something completely different.

Dan Sullivan [00:16:44]:
It was a Jenga stack. Rocky was a Jenga stack, you know. Yeah, plus he, he couldn't operate in our atmosphere, you know. They, they had to create a halfway house between his, his ship and, um, And Ryan Gosling's ship.

Mike Koenigs [00:17:06]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it did.

Dan Sullivan [00:17:08]:
But I thought it was a well-told story. It was a well-told— yeah. And yeah, yeah. So here's, here's the thing, you know, we have phenomenally expandable imaginations as, you know, as humans. We can, we can imagine all sorts of things. that has a real emotional impact to it. And we think the emotions we have represent reality, but it's just telling you how your nervous system works.

Mike Koenigs [00:17:43]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:17:47]:
But on the other hand, I believe there's an afterlife, and a lot of people don't. I believe that there's I got to believe that there's a human dimension higher than the one that we're experiencing.

Mike Koenigs [00:18:01]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:18:01]:
And people say, you believe that? And I said, yeah. I said, we believe in a lot of things and we do it for our own purposes to make ourselves feel better or to scare ourselves. We imagine making up shit to scare yourself. I think there's a lot of that that goes on right now.

Mike Koenigs [00:18:23]:
Yeah, I think, um, there's, um, my tie-in to that is, um, and you and I have talked about this a little bit, I've experienced, um, uh, psychedelics and hallucinogens, and there are, um, several several that you cannot walk away and believe there is no, uh, afterlife, God, or some intelligence greater than.

Dan Sullivan [00:19:02]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:19:02]:
And I think that's really, um, if, if, if, if I had to lay down like, what do I really believe? Here's what I do believe to be true after experiencing these things. is, um, and I think there's a distinction between psychedelics, hallucinogens, and UFOs. And here's where they all tie together.

Dan Sullivan [00:19:25]:
Interesting.

Mike Koenigs [00:19:26]:
So hallucinations are when you're seeing something that isn't there. Psychedelics are a gateway and a bridge to multiple dimensions that may operate outside of our normal spirit or physicality realms. and outside and causes our brains to make connections that are perfectly normal and natural, but non— not our normal conscious state.

Dan Sullivan [00:19:52]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Koenigs [00:19:53]:
And, um, with, uh, I had the experience of 5-MeO-DMT, which that they call the grandfather or the god molecule, and that was 20 minutes straight to my brain believed it witnessed the creation of the universe, and you cannot walk away and go, yep, there's no such thing as God. And then the second one was ayahuasca, which I did just a few months ago in the jungle of Ecuador. And that one really felt like a blending, a merging of symbology and—

Dan Sullivan [00:20:32]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Koenigs [00:20:33]:
spirit and heart. And, and, uh, you know, you genuinely feel like you're having a conversation with the beyond.

Dan Sullivan [00:20:42]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Koenigs [00:20:42]:
And I, I witnessed and saw, like, looking at, you know, I got sent back in time sitting on my grandfather's lap, and I could see the pores in his skin. I had a very distinct conversation with my my, my dad. Not in a weird way. It was like I just had this presence feeling.

Dan Sullivan [00:21:03]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:21:03]:
So my explanation for UFOs is simply that, um, on a physical plane, as we know this reality, doesn't appear to be anything there. I'd love to see it, and I'll be the first one in line, but I've given up on the stringing along business that we've experienced over the past few years because there's been all these disclosure guys, and it's like, ah, they all— it all, all ends with nothing. Um, but I, I do believe in, in many dimensions, and there seems to be many, many layers of human consciousness.

Dan Sullivan [00:21:40]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:21:40]:
That enter into the spiritual realm, and I think it's easy to get confused between the two. So if aliens are there, they're not in the— our dimensional realm, and that's the, uh, that's the best truth I can, uh, lean into right now.

Dan Sullivan [00:21:55]:
Yeah, I buy into it. I mean, first of all, we have intelligence all around us that's not human intelligence. You know, I mean, you know, there's animals that have 100 times the ability to smell than humans do. You know, I mean, we're actually fairly limited creatures. We're not particularly fast. We can't fly. We can't swim in the way that some creatures can swim.

Mike Koenigs [00:22:20]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:22:22]:
And there's intelligence there. So, I'm a great believer that we're going to find out a lot more about plants. We're going to find out a lot more about animals as we go along. And they have abilities that we can't imagine on the sensory level. And we're discovering this, that—

Mike Koenigs [00:22:47]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:22:48]:
And probably it's really interesting. I saw that little film, a lot of people, YouTube video about octopi, octopus.

Mike Koenigs [00:23:00]:
That's such a good one. Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:23:02]:
And that was so great. And I haven't eaten octopus since. I said, I don't eat anything I can be friends with. There's restaurants in Toronto and more in the French part of Canada, you know, they eat horse. I said, I can't eat a horse. You can be friends with a horse. I can't.

Mike Koenigs [00:23:30]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:23:31]:
Yeah. And I'm kind of waffling on cows. I've never, I've never, never had the same experience, but, you know, with, with them. But, you know, it's very interesting. We were talking about this. with the new book that we're writing called Yesterday Creates Tomorrow. And we were talking about positive feedback, you know, and there was this professor, he was a retired professor, University of South Carolina, and after he was retired from active He created a project of how many words he could teach to a Border Collie. He got a Border Collie.

Mike Koenigs [00:24:20]:
Very smart.

Dan Sullivan [00:24:21]:
Of all the various dog breeds in that, you know, one Border Collie can handle 300 sheep and get them doing anything that he wants to do. But he got this, he got it. He bought it when he was about a year— the dog was about a year old. And he taught him 1,000 words. He taught the dog 1,000 words. He'd say a word and the dog would pick up an object. You know, he would say, give me the sphere. And the dog, give me the blue sphere.

Dan Sullivan [00:24:58]:
And he'd give him the blue sphere.

Mike Koenigs [00:25:00]:
Wow.

Dan Sullivan [00:25:00]:
And then he named all the dogs in the neighborhood, gave And he'd say, Max, and the dog would go, grrr. And he'd say, Peppy, and he said, Peppy, everything. That the dog had a complete attitude towards all the other dogs in the neighborhood. And unfortunately, the professor died when he, you know, when the dog was about 6 or 7 years old. But the dog wanted to learn a new word. But he says the secret is no negative feedback. Zero negative feedback. You only give the dog reward.

Dan Sullivan [00:25:37]:
And I said, you know, that works for humans too. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, coach is very much positive feedback if you think about all the coach tools and everything else. And yeah, you can put points on the board, but you can't take points off the board.

Mike Koenigs [00:25:57]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:25:58]:
But my sense is that Humans have always believed in this. Humans have always had a sense that there's something else besides the dimension that we're currently providing. And we vary enormously in what we're picking up. Human abilities just always stagger me. Larry Bird, the basketball player, couldn't jump, white guy, couldn't jump, wasn't particularly fast, but he would just control a game when he got on the court. You know, Magic Johnson said, we hate— we hated, you know, the Lakers hated playing the Celtics because Bird had mind control over how the game was going. And a reporter from the Boston Globe took 40 pictures of Larry Bird as he was going through an entire game, and he date-stamped them. They would be stamped to the second or the minute when it was, you know, when he shot.

Dan Sullivan [00:27:03]:
And he showed Larry Bird the pictures, the 40, and he says, oh yeah, that was the second quarter, that was about the 3-minute mark. He says, oh yeah, I remember that. And he knew where, when the photos had been shot. So what kind of intelligence has that? That's unbelievable.

Mike Koenigs [00:27:21]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:27:22]:
London taxicab drivers, I always, when I go to London, I always get, because they have to know 1,000 street names They have to know 500 streets. They have to know 1,000 landmarks. And I've never been in a black cab in London where I said, oh, I'm going to such and such. And he would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, oh, I got to tell you something. He says, you can choose the long way, which is faster, or you can choose the short way, which is going to be longer because there's construction on this street.

Mike Koenigs [00:27:54]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:27:54]:
You know, and I said, how do you know that? How do you know that? You know, I was talking to Mark Young yesterday. He was in the workshop with you yesterday, and he is in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest rookie. He's in the—

Mike Koenigs [00:28:17]:
Race driver, right?

Dan Sullivan [00:28:18]:
Race driver. Racing driver. And he said, the first thing I do when I get to a new track is memorize the entire curves. They're about 2.5 miles, 3 miles. And he says, I know where all the— I can visualize all the curves and I'm always prepared for the next curve and everything else. And he said— I said, how do you do that? And he said, well, it's obvious. You have to know the curves. Of course.

Mike Koenigs [00:28:46]:
Yeah. So what do you, what do you think then?

Dan Sullivan [00:28:49]:
Um, I mean, Elon is in another realm intelligence-wise. I mean, you just know automatically that, um, he's not seeing the world that the, the way that you're seeing the world.

Mike Koenigs [00:29:01]:
Yeah, well, that's really where I was going next, is, um, the notion of us, you know, so let's just Say for the sake of where we are right now that this whole alien thing, not as far as we can tell. And then, but when you were just talking about these different types of intelligence and the idea that somehow we're tapping in the human body, let's pretend we've got some kind of an ability to—

Dan Sullivan [00:29:38]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:29:41]:
It's like when you meet someone who's just undeniably wise beyond their years and seem to be accessing information or knowledge that isn't necessarily learned or tapping into something. That definitely happens when you're in a psychedelic realm where it's sort of like, boom, you've got access to a whole bunch of information.

Dan Sullivan [00:30:02]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:30:04]:
The tie-in with, let's say, mycelium and, you know, what's— which are mushrooms. And there's this whole idea that you've basically got the internet of the planet is a fungus.

Dan Sullivan [00:30:20]:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Koenigs [00:30:20]:
And there have been documentaries done where when a certain type of food shows up, you know, this mycelium connects all the trees together. It's like this whole fabric underneath the forest floor. And there's a belief that there is an intelligence there. And I was reading something recently that, I think it was in Japan, they followed— somehow came up with a methodology of following mycelium to determine where they were going to lay down subway tracks. And I'll fact-check that and see if what I am about to say is true.

Dan Sullivan [00:30:59]:
Okay.

Mike Koenigs [00:31:00]:
But, um, what do you think about, um, otherworldly intelligence or accessing that? What explanation do you have for this strange ability that some humans have, like an Elon who's clearly like, what the hell? And, uh, by the way, um, oh, it was slime mold is the one in, uh, Tokyo. They, uh, I'll give you the brief explanation while you formulate your thought. An amoeba-like, single-celled organism, people conflate because the two form branching networks. They put oat flakes on a map representing Tokyo and surrounding cities. They put the slime mold at Tokyo. The slime mold grew toward the food while naturally optimizing for shortest paths, redundancy, resilience if a connection failed, and low construction cost. So they said the resulting network looked remarkably similar. So, eh, this is bullcrap.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:00]:
So sorry I went off on a tangent. That was a— somehow I, I heard a story, it sounded real, and I'm glad I fact-checked it.

Dan Sullivan [00:32:10]:
Yeah, well, you know, like aspen, aspen trees. You see 1,000 aspen trees, it's one tree with 1,000 with 1,000 trunks, you know, like that. It's one connected organism. But, you know, we're discovering all sorts of weird things about it. And nature's been around for a while, you know, it's had a chance to experiment. And, you know, yeah, yeah. My favorite animal on the planet right now is honey badgers. You know that?

Mike Koenigs [00:32:42]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:32:43]:
I mean, I've been watching honey— He took on a python, he ate the python. He's just hungry. He's just voraciously— he goes after elephants and the elephants don't want anything. It's about a 10-pound animal and it's taking down an elephant. It's taking down lions. It's taking down everything. It is the most outrageously aggressive animal on the planet.

Mike Koenigs [00:33:13]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:33:14]:
And yeah, but I think the neat thing about it is the number of scientists is expanding exponentially over time, and they're all doubling down on something, and they go deep and they really find out and they discover new things. And we get the benefit, I mean, as we go along, that networks of humans are being educated on things that were mysterious or weren't noticed before. So my sense is that human intelligence is expanding, you know, and I think we're much more peaceful than we've ever been. And, you know, I think we're finding new ways of collaborating, and that's the drive towards technology, you know, how much data can be processed right now. Well, that's a form of intelligence.

Mike Koenigs [00:34:07]:
You know? Mm-hmm.

Dan Sullivan [00:34:09]:
And I'm very, you know, I have this relationship. I started off with Perplexity as my AI, but it gave me dropdowns and Perplexity could take me to ChatGPT, could take me to Gemini. But I like Claude 4.6. I'm doing all my writing with, and it has a feel about it and it's almost reading my mind what I'm after. And so it'll come back and say, I could do this, or I could do this for you. Do you want it more dramatic? Do you want it more— would you like a little bit more cel in it or anything? And, but it's our own intelligence coming back at us. I think it's like the first person who had a good mirror, I bet, spent hours watching himself in the mirror, you know.

Mike Koenigs [00:35:00]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:35:02]:
Most people didn't know what they looked like up until, you know, some point in the future when mirrors got really good. I bet people just spent a lot of time watching, looking at themselves.

Mike Koenigs [00:35:14]:
Yeah. Well, there's— while you were talking about that, something popped up because you kind of went down a few tangents about— yeah. But there's something really interesting that just happened in the last week. So if you're watching or listening to this, Anthropic just developed a technique. They call it JLens. It's based on something called Jacobian analysis, and I'm going to read a little bit to you. And they call— so it's— that lets them inspect and manipulate an internal workspace inside Claude. They call that workspace JSpace.

Mike Koenigs [00:35:53]:
So it appears to function like an internal shared internal scratchpad. And ultimately what this is leading to is this notion of is AI conscious? Because something weird happened. So the JSpace where Claude can hold an idea before saying it, route one representation into several different tasks, recognize it's being tested.

Dan Sullivan [00:36:18]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:36:19]:
and carry concepts across different parts of a reasoning process. And it resembles global workspace theory. It's a major scientific theory proposing that consciousness involves selected information being broadcast across many specialized brain systems. So basically there was this moment that some AIs started appearing and behaving a lot more consciously, and they weren't sure why it was behaving the way it was. Anyway, since then, there's been enough arguments that no, but they just think that they can observe workspaces, thinking spaces, and it's behaving like—

Dan Sullivan [00:37:12]:
Consciousness.

Mike Koenigs [00:37:12]:
consciousness does. So, um, I think it kind of comes back to my theory of all things, which is the universe has a funny way of reinventing itself all the time and creating God in its own image and kind of recycling that behavior.

Dan Sullivan [00:37:30]:
Yeah, I believe, I believe that, you know. I believe, yeah. I mean, we have some big systems. The air control system is an amazing system. I mean, we go 10 years without any kind of crash or collision with airspace. They keep refining what it's picking up on and everything like that. So yeah, but that's a human invention. I think this is all human invention.

Dan Sullivan [00:37:59]:
The big problem is that we believe in a lot of things outside of ourselves because we don't actually even experience ourselves in any way. You know, people say, well, how could you write that? How could it just write itself almost? And I said, well, you know, you don't have a good handle on how you think at all. Most people don't have a really good handle on how that they're thinking, but— I dropped the line. line yesterday in the workshop. I said, you know, whenever I get a thought, I say, is this thought doing any good for me? You know?

Mike Koenigs [00:38:41]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:38:42]:
And I don't like thoughts living rent-free in my brain. They gotta go to work. But I'm much more conscious now than I was 10 years ago. I'm noticing, I'm just noticing a lot of things every day that 10 years ago, I never noticed this stuff. I'm just picking up on really interesting things. My brain's in really good shape. I mean, at 82, I think my brain is better than it was when I was 62. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:39:12]:
But it's, you know, I just think it's an inexhaustible discovery process. Yes.

Mike Koenigs [00:39:21]:
Well, let me ask you—

Dan Sullivan [00:39:23]:
You know, the thing about Einstein, do you know Einstein Wrote 4 papers when he was 26 years old. I think it was over a 4-month period, and he changed all of physics. He changed all of physics in a 4-month period when he was 26 years old. You know, 4 papers just changed everybody's ideas. Great thing about Einstein that makes him a true scientist, he said, if I'm wrong, We will have sensing, we will have telescopes, or we will have sensing that if I'm right, it'll perform this way. We can't do it now, we can't measure it. But if I'm wrong, it'll do something different. And it's every 10 or 20 years people say, you know, and Einstein would say, you know, I was wrong on this, I was wrong on this.

Dan Sullivan [00:40:18]:
He was a true scientist. Because he would set up the conditions that don't exist yet. We can't observe the conditions yet of whether I'm right or wrong about this. He said, you know, I'm guessing that this is how it works, but don't know yet because we can't really prove it.

Mike Koenigs [00:40:34]:
Wow.

Dan Sullivan [00:40:36]:
That's a real honest human brain. Yeah, yeah, that's Al Gore, not so much.

Mike Koenigs [00:40:45]:
Yeah. That's, uh, well, that, that's, that's actually how I wanted to ask the final question of this episode is, um, I want to know if you look backward in time about a belief that you've completely abandoned. So it could be something you're absolutely certain about Um, I don't know, 20 years ago that you now believe is wrong, or it's a belief that you've just walked away with. Um, what pops into your head?

Dan Sullivan [00:41:26]:
That the Browns would win the Super Bowl.

Mike Koenigs [00:41:33]:
I ain't gonna let you get away with it that quick, that easy. No, because now I have a follow-up. So I got a penalty kick. It's not a penalty, but it's an add-on to that. Anything show up for you?

Dan Sullivan [00:41:58]:
Yeah, I think it's more recent. I think it's a result of 50 years of coaching experience. that you can see someone else's unique ability, and if you tell them about it, they'll see it. And they won't necessarily see it. You know, like, I think I have a really, really good sense when I meet someone, and if I talk to them, and it's sort of an energetic thing, I can tell kind of where— what really energizes them. And I could say, you know, you should spend your time doing this because you have a lot of energy, but they've got too much— too many other things, too many attitudes, too many mindsets that you could lay it out for them, you could show them exactly how it works, and it doesn't work. I think that, you know, and the other thing is you can know everything about somebody's ability, but you don't know if they have any ambition, and you don't know if they have any character. I don't think character and ambition can really be tested in a predictive sort of way that you can say that.

Dan Sullivan [00:43:10]:
I know lots of really smart people who will never actually actualize their smartness. And I had a much bigger belief that if you could get people just to see the evidence of their ability, that they would immediately buy into it. And I no longer believe that.

Mike Koenigs [00:43:29]:
Wow. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask a different question than I was about to ask, but, um, it's somewhat selfish, but it's tied to that. So you and I met because you saw me speak and we had an interaction, and then now we've known each other, you know, better share of— it's going on, I think, 18 years at this point. Um, so what did you believe my unique ability was the first time you saw me, and what do you believe it is now? Has it changed? That's why I want to kind of test this idea.

Dan Sullivan [00:44:09]:
Yeah, you know, um, well, much more in recent years than back when I— back when I first met you. No, I think I had it. I mean, I met you the first time, I think it was at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Florida.

Mike Koenigs [00:44:31]:
At an Eben Pagan event.

Dan Sullivan [00:44:33]:
Yeah, we were next to the pool and we were talking. But I knew you had incredible curiosity, that you were just an extraordinary— and I'm really attracted to that because it means that you're in a constantly learning process. And the whole thing that I'd say is there's something you can stick with forever. So I remember when we did a couple of the podcasts and I got you to describe first technological level, second tech, they were all related to marketing. First of all, it was a passionate marketing skill. But the big thing is, like, I'm really simple. I mean, I got onto coaching in 1974, and it's all been about coaching. So I just have a, you know, in a certain sense, I haven't changed at all in 50 years because I'm fascinated with how talent organizes itself so that it does them a lot of good.

Mike Koenigs [00:45:44]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:45:44]:
Yeah. And I think the big thing— but I think AI has been your test. I think that— I think you're much more settled now that AI exists than any time previously to this. I think AI is really your world. I think you really, really love it. But the only question, do you have something that can really develop And you don't have to put a lot of work into it, but it just keeps accumulating. So that's my job as a coach, just to point out things.

Mike Koenigs [00:46:17]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:46:18]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:46:19]:
No, that's good. Well, I'm not going to ask the other question I had then, except it was going to be, if you're going to pick the next belief you're probably going to abandon, what would that be?

Dan Sullivan [00:46:45]:
Yeah, I think it has something to do with outer space, that the United States isn't going to try to create the United Nations in outer space.

Mike Koenigs [00:47:01]:
Yeah.

Dan Sullivan [00:47:01]:
space. In other words, the US created the— I don't know, a lot of people don't know that, but the United States created the United Nations. They created the International Monetary Fund. They created all these big international organizations basically to put the world back together after the Second World War. And then there's always one big enemy that the US has. And my sense is that we're getting near to the end of the cycle where the US has a challenge, has a challenger. And I think when they go into outer space, it's not going to be the United Nations anymore. Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:47:43]:
Very interesting. Yeah, I think that's a great, great way to, to top this episode off. So this is how we solve the question about aliens and whether or not they exist or not. I think we, uh, both unanimously agree Not as far as we can tell.

Dan Sullivan [00:47:59]:
No proof.

Mike Koenigs [00:48:00]:
But there's definitely something alien-esque going on that we can't explain, and the hole seems to get deeper and more complex the more science evolves and develops and the more we know about ourselves. And that is going to just create more, more opportunities, more fascinating problems to solve. And, uh, and now it looks like as we expand into the universe from here, um, our outer world and our inner world is going to just keep on getting bigger and better. How's that for topping it off?

Dan Sullivan [00:48:36]:
Yeah, I think that— I think that's true. And, uh, you know, we— there's always this temptation, you know, we've kind of gone as far as we're going to go. And I don't think that— I don't think there's any end To how we want to go. However, I do believe that at a certain point, the human body becomes the restriction. So I think there's going to be a lot of space exploration, but I don't think it's going to be human bodies doing the exploration. And I think NASA is very good at this because all the things that NASA has done over the last 40 or 50 years is robotic. And we're going to have smarter and smarter robots Yep, those are the aliens. Those are the aliens, yeah, and they're going to get more humanoid as they go along.

Dan Sullivan [00:49:27]:
You know why? Because we want that. I mean, somebody wants it, not everybody wants it, but I think there's going to be a humanoid robot that, you know, but outer space— Peter Diamandis always asks me about that and he says, Ever want to go into outer space? And I said, a lot of gravity out there? He says, no. I said, a lot of oxygen out there? He says, no. Nah. I said, 2 daily requirements, oxygen and gravity. But I'm not going to be here, you know this.

Mike Koenigs [00:50:02]:
Yeah. Well, the last intriguing button I'll push is, okay, with what you just said right now, the most logical explanation Is, um, there could very well be aliens and they're tiny, they're invisible, and they don't leave energy traces. And, uh, they may be in fact unconscious, or I mean, uh, non-living remote-controlled doodads, because that's where most, uh, uh, conversations like this end up going to that I've had.

Dan Sullivan [00:50:37]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:50:38]:
with people is, um, you know, the most likely the aliens gave up on— and maybe it was Elon who said this, or I heard it somewhere else, um, but I definitely didn't make it up— that aliens would get really bored really fast with trying to get outside and deal with all the stuff. So they'd be pursuing virtual worlds, um, and simulations, basically video games.

Dan Sullivan [00:51:03]:
Yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:51:03]:
And, um, that, that made a lot more— that made a certain amount of sense. But either way, looks like we're not going to solve this for anyone but us in this episode. And hopefully, uh, if you're watching, listening, leave a comment with what your opinion is and, uh, share this crazy-ass episode with someone you know.

Dan Sullivan [00:51:23]:
Yeah, yeah. But if we're proven wrong, everybody will know, you know. I mean, I mean, the day an alien is actually realized, guess what? Everybody will know it right away, and they'll normalize the— they'll normalize the experience as fast as— humans are great at normalizing things. So yeah.

Mike Koenigs [00:51:44]:
It's a good— it's a good reason to see Disclosure Day, because, uh, that's a big part of the story, and I ain't giving anything away. All right, well, this is Capability Amplified. Hope you had a great time and got very entertained. Thank you.