A Therapist for People Who Think the World Might End: An Interview with Daystar Eld (Damon Sasi)

I sat down with therapist and writer Damon Sasi, better known online as Daystar Eld, for one of the conversations I’ve found myself referencing most often since recording it. We talk about what’s bullshit and what isn’t in therapy, therapy for rationalists, and how to stay psychologically healthy when you genuinely believe the end of the world may be coming. We also cover executive function, whether therapists are sometimes substitutes for friendships, and what actually helps people change. We talk about rationality and effective altruism, dating, and the modern dating crisis. We spend a lot of time on AI companions, AI girlfriends and boyfriends, wireheading, chatbot psychosis, and what happens when artificial partners can be tailored to us more perfectly than another human being ever could. And of course we discuss rationalist fiction, Pokémon, the influence of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and his magnum opus: Pokémon: The Origin of Species! Please enjoy the interview! (Timestamps and transcript below.) Timestamps 0:00 – Highlights 0:25 – Intro 1:04 – Damon Sasi (Daystar Eld) 2:21 – Executive function, motivation, and accomplishment 4:31 – HPMOR and the rationalist community 6:53 – What is rationalist fiction? 10:03 – Pokémon and The Origin of Species 15:55 – AI existential risk and why we’re unprepared 20:12 – How to live with AI doom 21:08 – Heroic responsibility 21:48 – Burnout: responsibility without power 25:40 – What’s wrong with therapy? 31:41 – Do men need therapy? 34:32 – Incels, dating, and the epistemology of romance 36:05 – How many times has he been in love? 44:12 – AI companions and LLM psychosis 49:27 – Wireheading 50:03 – Video games, fiction, and agency 53:55 – Favorite movie 55:02 – Smartest person 56:46 – Religion and becoming an atheist 59:02 – Can you become less neurotic? 61:30 – Alexander Technique 64:05 – Personality tests and Aella’s Glosso 66:08 – Jordan Peterson 68:38 – What Damon is most proud of 70:45 – Speaker for the Dead and Andrew Wiggin 73:02 – Outro Transcript (Note: This is transcribed with AI and some parts are corrected by hand but I haven't gone through the entire transcript so there are most certainly errors!) John: Okay, could you say your name, your background and what you're currently working on? Damon: Sure. My name is Damon Pourtahmaseb-Sasi. I usually just go by Damon Sasi. I also am known as Daystar Eld online, my website and my handle on most websites is Daystar Eld. I'm a therapist by default, I've been doing a lot of fiction writing for over 25 years. I've written novels, I've written nonfiction articles on psych research and just various different blogging topics about like psychology and mental health and social stuff. I teach at various camps and workshops around the world. I've led a few of them myself. I run WARP, the Wandering Applied Rationality Program, for 2023, 2024, and 2025. These days I'm mostly just doing some therapy, doing some writing and working on the next ideas for workshops that I want to have. John: You're one of these people we have to hate that's so accomplished and has so many things going on that it's like, how do you have the time and energy? Damon: That's the trick. You don't. You procrastinate sometimes and you let things fall through the cracks and like you end up doing only like half the things you really want to do. And then, yeah. John: So do you think it's that the things that you actually want to do will just sort of rise to the surface? Damon: Yeah. I, so obviously I've written a lot about Procedural Executive Function, which is my name a way to understand it. So I've written a lot about Procedural Executive Function, which is my name a way to understand executive function in a way that helps people isolate, like what's actually works for them and what isn't and like where they're stuck when they're stuck doing any particular thing they want to do. One of the major things I try to highlight is that your experience of motivation is always going to be driven by what you really want to do or you really need to do. And the need thing is kind of wonky in the modern Western world because we did not evolve for most of the shit we are that tell us we need to do things that our limbic system has not evolved to understand as an individual. Like a need which is a lot of what I think a lot of executive dysfunction comes down to, because this function comes down to but the one thing is pretty important. There are some people who get lucky in some ways. And one of the ways they get lucky is like the thing they really are driven to do happens to be a thing that they are good at and people will reward them for. And I am lucky in some senses. And one of the ways that I'm lucky is that like, I got really into psychology and therapy. I seem to be pretty good at it. It's a job that people seem willing to and happy to pay me for. I am really into writing. I seem to be good. It's something that people are willing to pay me fo