Whether or Not to Have Kids, Transformative Experiences, and More — L.A. Paul

Tim Ferriss interviews philosopher L.A. Paul about her concept of transformative experience: choices like becoming a parent that change who you are so fundamentally you can't rationally evaluate them beforehand. Paul recounts her unconventional path into philosophy, from failing to progress in early philosophy classes and a chemistry-lab crisis to a chance airport pickup of philosopher Quentin Smith and a pay-by-mail correspondence apprenticeship with established philosophers. She unpacks her vampire thought experiment to illustrate why testimony from those who've crossed the threshold doesn't help you decide, and how this 'violation of act-state independence' breaks standard rational-choice models. The conversation ranges across accessible entry points to philosophy (Ted Chiang, Borges, time-travel films), psychedelics and altered states, and Paul's own anticipation of cognitive decline as a transformative experience to be met with Buddhist-style detachment.

• Paul argues philosophy's role is not just teaching how to think but uncovering the most fundamental truths about human beings and the nature of the world.
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• Paul introduces her signature vampire thought experiment: Dracula offers a one-time, irreversible chance to become a vampire, used to illustrate transformative experience.
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• The key insight: friends who became vampires say it's wonderful but that you 'can't possibly understand' it as a human, so their testimony can't guide your choice.
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• Transformative experiences mean you choose for a future self whose preferences may be radically different from your current self, by definition.
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• Paul names the technical core: transformative choices violate 'act-state independence,' a foundational axiom of rational choice theory, so standard expected-value models break down.
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• Paul's 'unpopular solution': reframe the decision as 'which life do I want to find out about?' rather than trying to compute its value.
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• Paul reveals her own most-feared coming transformative experience is cognitive decline (Alzheimer's/dementia) and death, which she's grappling with via Buddhist detachment.
  01:32:33
• Paul agrees psychedelics produce a transformative, 'ontological shock' that reveals how much the brain constructs our perceived reality.
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• Quentin Smith advised Paul to read widely and pay philosophers a 'modest sum' to correspond with her about her work.
  00:16:50
• Paul offered each of three philosophers a $250 personal check to reply to her letters and comment on her paper; she mailed at least 20 typewritten pages every two weeks for months.
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• Of the three philosophers she offered checks to, only one actually cashed it.
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• Quentin Smith told Paul, after picking him up from the airport, to read Heidegger's 'Being and Time' to start studying philosophy.
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• Paul went to Princeton for her PhD and was a teaching assistant for Gideon Rosen, the same professor whose class Tim Ferriss remembers from Princeton 25+ years later.
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• Paul jokingly considered hanging a shingle in her funky Brooklyn neighborhood offering paid sessions on transformative experiences and big life choices.
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• Paul abandoned chemistry after a 'gravimetric analysis' lab where brushing the side of a clay pot with finger oil destroyed an entire semester's work.
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• Paul says the film Arrival (95%+ on Rotten Tomatoes) is based on Ted Chiang's short story.
  01:04:06
• Paul recommends the 35-minute French film 'La Jetee,' noting 12 Monkeys essentially retold the same story.
  01:07:14
• Paul's PhD supervisor was David Lewis at Princeton, who developed the primary 'rule book' (semantics) for understanding counterfactuals.
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