PodClips Logo
PodClips Logo
Twitter Spaces
Naval Ravikant —Let us not talk falsely now. (Twitter Space, March 15th 2022)
Naval Ravikant —Let us not talk falsely now. (Twitter Space, March 15th 2022)

Naval Ravikant —Let us not talk falsely now. (Twitter Space, March 15th 2022)

Twitter SpacesGo to Podcast Page

Naval Ravikant, Brett Hall
·
47 Clips
·
Mar 15, 2022
Listen to Clips & Top Moments
Episode Summary
Episode Transcript
0:00
Great, welcome everyone. The format here is pretty simple. I'm just going to bring people up, you get to ask a question and then I'm going to bounce you back to the audience and then I'll discuss that question. Unfortunately, I found that other formats just don't work as well and I reserve the right not to answer your question, but feel free to answer ask any question. I think specific questions are better ones that are practical and concrete rather than sort of these wide-ranging philosophical.
0:31
I think, philosophy. Philosophy is better experience in the particular than in the general or the abstract because then they can have a real impact on our lives. And I'm just here to have fun. Just like all the rest of you and learn something. And I'm probably going to make mistakes and much of what I say is going to be wrong. So please interpret gently don't take out of context. Resist, the urge to tweet things that are sensationalist, another context and these days, one of the ways I survived on Twitter's by blocking
1:00
Frequently with extreme prejudice. So keep that in mind. One of the reasons. I'm doing a Twitter space instead of just tweeting as much is because Twitter as usual continues, to be very combative. People like to misinterpret things, take things out of context and just strawman everything, red and steel magnate. So one of the advantages of a format like this is that we can be, we can I can provide more context, so enough for the disclaimers. I'm going to mute.
1:30
Mike? What? I go through the requesters profiles and yes your profiles do matter and I'm going to figure out who I'm bringing up here. Start with
2:03
hey Joseph.
2:06
Hi Neville, how do you think about how open source will
2:11
transform web to to web three startups companies? It's good question. As I promised even though, I know you and respect you, but we'll be back to the audience, just to kind of stay within the format's again, one, second on that.
2:29
So, the question was about open source.
2:33
Oops, I think I may have bouncing from the space altogether. Apologies Joseph. I didn't mean to do that. That was a little too harsh. Hopefully he'll come back and shoot. If he doesn't I will send him an apology later.
2:48
Huh?
2:50
I try to see if there's a way to remove some of the speaker without bouncing them from the space. Hopefully, I've been bouncing from the space. Anyway, if I did bouncing for the space I owe me an apology anyway, so open source. The coral, web three is open source. The core of crypto is open source, if you have a crypto application or web three application and it's not open source. And is it really even open source? In fact, I think it was Chris Dixon who said that web 3 is the business model for open source, and it's amazing to me. How many people is
3:20
Actually, you know, beat up opens beat up web three without realizing that. This is the heir to the open source movement. That's found a business model. And how many of the original OSS folks consider crypto a scam when maybe maybe the answer to many of their dreams. So open source to me is fundamental. It's a building block of web 3 and I think that's as simply as I can put it, you couldn't have web 3 without open source, of course, you can have open source without web three, but I would argue that web 3 allows.
3:50
As you to take your open source, application actually, instantiate and run it in distributed format and get paid for it and let it in, let the users own their data. That's sort of my definition of web 30. The code is open. The data is owned by the users, and and the network is owned by the contributors. So that's probably the three big differences between web three and web to for anyone who's looking for a slightly more. Precise definition than just taking web and, and incrementing the number behind it by 1.
4:20
All right. Move onto we got a lot of questions here. So I'm just going to start. Maybe I'll crank through people a little bit faster.
4:33
Sian. I hope that's right. I notice you're connecting. Hopefully, you don't have issues.
4:45
Plan, you're on the air.
4:47
Hi, Nova. Thanks for taking me in. So I have a pretty simple
4:51
question is with wet three. Since we are on the topic
4:56
with web three. What do you think? Like, just like AI + ml kind of found their way into the whole ecosystem. How can web three be more mainstream so that there's no kind of question about it later that whether it's actually legit or not. I just want to get this.
5:15
Action. Now to move from the students perspective, if you can answer it. Thank you.
5:21
I'm sorry. I don't quite fully understand. The question that you're asking. Can you you mind rephrasing it a slightly different way?
5:30
He left.
5:33
I think it was something about how can you get web three out there? Like, AI, am L. Look, these things are going to be adopted on their own schedule. Web 3 is going to build lots of hopefully. Useful apps that you couldn't have, otherwise webp doesn't have to appeal to everyone. It's trying to appeal mainly to the applications that would otherwise be D platform door benefit from decentralization or creating a Frontier where no such Frontier currently exists. So you can kind of have Innovation. There's no Ironclad law of software that
6:02
All new software movements have to appeal, to all people. In fact, you could argue that open source didn't actually transform large chunks of software, and most users never directly interacted with, or use open source for quite a long time. But yet, it still had a huge effect on the data center in the background in debugging and building the underpinnings of much of what we see on the web. So, I don't think there's any Ironclad law that web 3 has to go mainstream the same way. Like I don't think Bitcoin has to go like super mainstream to be valuable.
6:32
If it just becomes a reserve asset like gold, how many people actually hold gold as a reserve asset? Not a lot, but it doesn't take a lot for people to park their wealth in something like that and use it as a reserve asset for it to be valuable. So the same way I'm not convinced went through. This really has to go mainstream anytime soon for it to be incredibly valued. If you just have a lot of very smart people, tinkering on the edge building apps, accepting web currency, web three currencies and kind of innovating in that whole field and
7:02
In D5 and if T is or anything of that sort. It doesn't have to be mainstream. It can still be incredibly valuable because you're dealing with money and memes it can spread virally and it can build and hold and capture value. Very, very fast. People have made huge Fortunes in crypto without it having even got gone mainstream yet. And I think that Trend can continue for quite a while and no they're not bullshit fortunes. If you're if you're that's your automatic response, then you haven't studied enough.
7:52
Hey Ryan, you're on the air. Hey, I am you tweeted something? If I could just reread it and then maybe get your take on it. You said the reality is life is a single-player game. You're born alone. You're going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You're gone in three generations, and nobody cares before you showed up. Nobody cared. It's all single player. I mean, I think about this quite a bit myself. I spend quite a bit of time alone and
8:22
Sometimes it has me thinking like what's the point? So I was just kind of wanted your your take on that. Thanks.
8:30
That's good question.
8:35
Great - you're removing the as a speaker without Ruby. Ejecting him this time. Okay. So life is a single player game. Obviously. It's not 100% to true life. Is also a multiplayer game, but I think it's more interesting to consider it as a single player game because that's not a thought that gets brought up. As often Society always trains us for society's ends in society is a multi-user organism. So, it will train us for the multi-user game. So only the individual can themselves stumble upon the single player game and that frame of mind.
9:04
And see where it takes them. So why is this an interesting friend of mine? Well, firstly, there's a lot of truth to it. So much of the world so much of it is your is your interpretation of the world. So much of mindset is your mindset to a tree or a rock or a house, or even another person reality is very different to an object reality is neutral to another subject. Reality is subjective from their point of view. So they're so a lot of this is kind of up to you how you want to interpret it. Another Point here, is that
9:34
That it's really the only moment that really exists is now, even tomorrow, or yesterday are just thoughts in the current moment. So nothing exists outside of right now, you're necessarily going to be around for any appreciable period of time. Everything you do will be forgotten like everything in the past has been forgot. It's not to say it's meaningless, but it's more to say that you create your own. Meaning you interpret your own meaning, you are the meaning of your own life and that gives a freedom. Now you can, you're free to interpret this.
10:04
You want inside every person is either a budding, God or a budding demon or an angel or a saint, it's entirely up to you how you choose interpreted. I just recommend that you interpret it in a way that is as close to reality as possible because then you're likely to make less mistakes. And if you have the choice, if you must choose an interpreter positively because just better to live a positive experience and negative 1, you know people who commit suicide for example, you know, God bless them, but they kind of left the game too early. They were going to leave the game.
10:34
Anyway, everybody leaves the game eventually so you may as well, just stick it around. See what it has planned for you. Why do anything? What is this a is this a problem? It is the problem with. There's a lack of meaning. No, it's a form of Freedom if there was a meaning to life, then we would all be stuck trying to figure out that meaning and the moment that the person a person found that meeting and shared with everybody else. Then we would all be enslaved to that particular meaning. So I think it's liberating with there's no meaning to life. You can create your own meaning and certain me.
11:04
Is that you create or interpret are far more pleasant than others. Some of them can lead. You directly to a life of contemplative Bliss. Some of them can lead, you straight to creativity. Some of them can lead you to helping other people. I would argue that the meanings that are sort of the best to create and work on are the ones that self-actualize you against your natural talents. The thing that you enjoy doing the puts you in flow that has some worthwhile benefit either to yourself or to society and doesn't cause extreme negative repercussions for you in this life.
11:34
And just be aware that a lot of the things that look like they're good for, you are actually just good for you in the short term and they do cause negative repercussions so long term, so, to me, the part of the secret of living, a good and happy life is just understand the long-term consequences of your actions. And so if you create a meaning that is a sort of set of meetings that long term will lead you to compound interest in good relationships, and in creating wealth, for yourself, and not having a very busy mind and just being able to go through life, sort of
12:04
Happy from moment to moment, that's going to be a better life that you've created for yourself. But yeah, if you want to create a harsher and darker or shorter life for yourself, your feel, you should feel free to make that choice. I just don't think it's a very wise choice, the single player game frame. Also kind of robs you of this idea of Outside Agency. It takes away, this idea that you are a victim that things happen to you that you don't have agency in your life. I think the belief that
12:34
You know, people fall into where their victims. Yeah, there are. There are real victims in real circumstances, but they're far rarer than Twitter. Would have you believe on Twitter? There's many, many budding victims who are raising their hand crying for victimhood. And well, all you're doing is you're robbing yourself of your agency. You're robbing yourself of your ability to make a difference in your own life. So even if you have been a real victim, let's just go, go ahead and accommodate that for a moment. I would say it's still a better frame to basically say no life is a finger single player game. I choose.
13:04
Rise out of that. I choose to interpret that and long term. When you look back on your life and moments, you can be proudest of is when you Rose past circumstances, that were difficult, when you roast past your suffering, and then, you'll accomplish something. That's that's where character is built. That's where resumes are made. That's where people have their proudest moments. So if you had no adversity, it would be a really boring game. Imagine a game of, I don't know. Mario Brothers. Where there was no jumping and no prizes and nothing to do with no monsters. It would be incredibly dull and Incredibly boring.
13:35
Also a game that went on forever, would get really dull. So I would say play the game. It's your game. You get to design the board, you decide to challenge. You get to send the victory condition. And that's a lot of the creativity. One of my other related tweets is no, the only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life and this one, triggered a lot of people, which I love, I love the tweets. That I struggle. A lot of people, but they're undeniably true, which is intelligence, is like this abstract.
14:04
Except that we talked about, but the real measure is, did you get what you wanted a life? And there's a to there's a two parts in there. It's not just one part. One part, of course is where you able to hack reality, to get what you wanted. But the more important part is where you smart enough to figure out what to want in the first place. And that means there are many booby prize has that simply aren't worth having. And then there are others that are out of your reach. It's ludicrous for me to desire wings or even to travel into a rocket, not into outer space because it's either low Roi.
14:34
I effort or it's unachievable for me. So what I want to do is to figure out what it is, that is worth wanting, and remember, not wanting something is as good as having it. So if you cannot warn in the first place, that's even better. But the test of intelligence here is getting what you want in life, but also knowing what to want. So, when life is a single player game, you get the crafted, it's a blank canvas. It's not a negative thing. It's a positive thing. It gives you a level of Freedom. You would not have multiplayer games are inherently less free single player.
15:04
Teams are more free. I encourage the single player frame simply because Society will not encourage it. You won't encounter it outside of the individual and also because it gives you back your agency and it has the benefit of being largely true.
15:42
Gabriella. Welcome.
15:45
Thank you. It's fascinating listening to you. I've actually just ventured into the space and and I'm coming from a place where when I say, I just ventured into this space. I'm part of a founding team of our social impact platform called, Save A Love Save 0, which means selfless, service and love, which means love. And, and I wanted to ask you,
16:12
Because I'm really in the,
16:14
I would say the the collective, if that
16:17
if we bring Consciousness and had that intention to bring it into this new space. I really feel that we can ultimately tip. The scales of where I would say in real person. This this world is right now for good. So I'm maybe I'm innocent. Maybe I'm naive, but I really believe that web.
16:41
That possibility of generating critical mass for good. So whether we're using it through and FTS, whether using it for social impact investment, or whatever that is or actually, even having these conversations on Twitter space. I was wondering, you know, what do you see the future as in this space up? Because I'm very enthusiastic buy it. I'm very hopeful. I actually think that if we didn't have with pre I'll be pretty depressed in terms of where
17:11
We going as Humanity.
17:18
All right. Thank you for that. So one thing I would be careful about is mixing. What is true with what you want to be true? And I see this happening in business, a lot where a new business Trend comes up. People are excited about it because they want to make money. But then they also start projecting all the other fantasies onto it. And I'd be very, very careful about that. So what I mean by that is we have three I think is really what decentralization? It's about Freedom. It's about Innovation it, I'm not sure it's
17:48
About Consciousness or self-awareness? I think that's orthogonal. I do think it's better. If people are more conscious. I think it's better if they have more agency. I think it's better if they're more self-aware and certainly you can use your time and resources try and connect the two. But I do not know if web three automatically leads to a race Consciousness level. Now, that's a fuzzy term Consciousness. It's hard to Define. So let me just go back to something slightly more concrete, which is self-awareness, which is just how much attention do you pay to your own thoughts? Your own?
18:18
Mannerisms. Your own being, how much do you critically question? Who you are, or do you just blindly accept that everything your mind says to you is true and just the way things are. So generally I find the people who are more self-aware are more interesting to be around. They're less of a pain. They're born control their emotions and I find it to be probably the most attractive trait that said, it doesn't necessarily follow from web three, perhaps. There's some orthogonal press is completely orthogonal or perhaps there's a linkage in that
18:48
Web, three and decentralisation, forcibly take more responsibility personally. For the outcome of these systems that we participate in because now you can no longer just be an oblivious user. You're also an owner, your steak or your validator, your Governor your creator. So in that sense, anything that gives humans more agency is going to overtime, force them to be more self-aware, which may lead to a form of higher Consciousness, but it's not clear to me that the to connect by default and I would caution you to be careful about connecting them by default because then you,
19:18
May end up building a business that doesn't actually make sense in the real world and we want you to be successful so that you can go ahead and spread the Consciousness that you want.
19:39
Cool. There's a monkey on the stage. Actually, there's two.
19:46
Foundation 0.85. Sorry, I was on mute. Thank you very much for hosting these. I love these spaces. You have very clear thought and I'm wondering if, if that would have been a hindrance to your career earlier on, in your life, to be so clear. And so self-aware, like you just mentioned or if or how do you think that timing is point out for you basically?
20:21
Yeah, it's a fair question. I think part of it is age, you know, little natural live long enough and you'll naturally become a philosopher. I think some of it is a Time the times themselves people are more self-aware these days in the language of the knowledge of Consciousness and self-awareness, either through tools, like meditation or meditation assistant, or, you know, books or psychedelics or whatever sort of spreading. So maybe people, I'm meeting more and more younger people who are more self-aware and more conscious than I think was true in my generation.
20:52
I think there's a, there's an underlying question that you didn't ask directly, but you kind of hinted that which is like hey, can I make money now and be conscious later or and be self-aware later or it or flipping it around is being more self aware or conscious going to get in the way of my making money, possibly. I don't want to see it as a free lunch here because I don't think there is some of the most self-aware people that I know are not highly motivated but I suspect those people wouldn't have been highly motivated to make money regardless.
21:20
I find that clear thinking is incredibly rewarding not that I'm saying. I'm a clear thinker but on the occasions where I do have Clarity of thought it pays off. So I would I wouldn't pass up Clarity of thought for anything. I think it look intelligence to cheat code, right? You can use it to control. You can swap it. If we were playing Dungeons and Dragons and you had high intelligence. It's probably the thing you would want because you can swap it for almost anything else in the modern world because the modern world is
21:50
Of so much leverage as smart. People can employ that leverage with the code or Media or labor Capital to kind of magnifying what they want. They can make good decisions. And then the impact of the good decisions is magnified by leverage. That's really what my whole how to get rich tweet storm is about and so I think clearer thinking Clarity of thought is incredibly valuable. And I would say as I've gotten older in business. It has become even more valuable. So I do think it has helped me a great deal in business one. Huge way in the clarity of thought helps you.
22:20
Is that I do believe that 99 percent of effort in life is quote, unquote wasted and it's not wasted in the sense that you don't learn something, you do learn something. But if you look back at all the term papers, you wrote and all the classes you took and all the people you dated. And on all the thoughts, you had not only things you stressed about and all the decisions you made 99 percent them didn't matter. They were inconsequential and there were a few 1% decisions that did matter. Now. Could you have gotten to those one percent without the 99? No, you have to do the work to get set up.
22:50
For the right decision, but could you have gotten there with may be wasting 90 percent or 85 percent or 80 percent? What if you had gone from night, a ratio of 991 and obviously some made-up ratio, but you're gone from 91 to 95 5. Well now instead of 100 to 1 against your 20 to 1 against. So I do think clearer thinking allows you to make better decisions and better have better judgment and better judgment is everything. If you have good judgment in this life, you're going to thrive in the modern world because judge and you will be applying judgment everywhere.
23:20
For example, is what news do I consume how personally do I take it? Do I get a covid shot or not? Do I walk into this environment or not? Russians are coming in to Kiev. When do I leave? You know what profession, am I going into? Who am I going to marry? What city am I going to live in? What work out? Do I adopt? What diet do I adopt? These are all judgment calls, every single one of them is Judgment call. And if you make the right judgments and and you will have a healthier happier and
23:50
Healthier life. So judgment is everything. It is the foundation of life at this point of a high quality life and Clarity of thought leads to good judgment examples of how I now exercise or how much I value Clarity of thought. And I compared to how much I used to is, I don't keep a cluttered mind anymore because it makes bad decisions. So, if I have to make a decision, I will clear my calendar, which actually is already clear, but, you know, in the old days, they used to clear my calendar and make sure that I spent time on the important things, a clear calendar. Lets you focus.
24:20
Focus on the most important thing rather than I'm just the most urgent thing that happens to be staring at your at you back from the calendar. So another way as you know, people will send me explanations or emails or they'll say, hey, read my blog post. I'll go in and it's eleven pages of gobbledygook and there's maybe like two or three clear points in their. Well, if you, if you cannot communicate clearly then it is a sign that you cannot think. Clearly. It's sort of like, when you walk up to someone whose desk is a complete mess. Yes. At some level, it reflects that they're busy.
24:50
But at some level it also reflects an underlying clutter that they're tolerating their lives. And so, is this person going to be organized in other ways? These are signals. These are indicators. They're not dispositive. It doesn't mean that a messy desk is automatically a cluttered mind, but it's an indicator. So I think that having a clear mind and clear judgment and clear thinking is a cheat code to life, and I tend to find there is a correlation, maybe not completely dispositive. But there is a correlation between people who are
25:20
Communicators, clear thinkers and have good judgment. And you want to surround yourself with people that good judgment because that that's how you got away in life in general.
25:42
I Cherie.
25:49
Don't forget to unmute high and above. Thanks. I wanted to get your perspective on pseudo, know me and accountability.
26:01
I think there is there's probably a compelling rationale for it in the socio-political
26:06
space. But when you talking about
26:08
financial implications Financial models,
26:11
especially in web
26:12
3, how do does
26:14
tsunami on accountability really come together is
26:17
The model that's really sustainable going forward. Thanks.
26:28
Yeah, so the question is about accountability and pseudonym athene, web three and they have the kind of intersect. I do think you generally have to have a high level of accountability to get properly quote-unquote paid. Because if it's not associated with you, then people will steal credit. You'll have a hard time, having good branding. You have a hard time getting leverage, but things are changing in the olden days, olden days being, you know, called 20 30 years ago if you wanted to be if you want to
26:57
Brand you were talking about spending a lot of money in marketing. You're talking about having t-shirts. Maybe like a your name on a tower may be going on TV, maybe going on radio, maybe showing up in the media. So there was no concept of pseudonymity and pseudonymity is this halfway ground between anonymity and and no material, which is being named. And it's a new phenomenon that only exists on the internet essentially, or only really exist on the internet where you can build up a reputation and it
27:27
Track record, but you can put it behind a DOT each domain name, or you can put it behind a board, a poor a crypto Punk, profile, picture Avatar and you can do your work completely online. So I think this is a very interesting model. It's a good defense against cancel culture. It's a good defense against, you know, all kinds of things. It puts people on even footing whether you're male or female or black or brown, or white, or what have you or older young. So, I do think it is very powerful, but I think it's emergent and I think this suit
27:57
The only applies within the narrow web through domain. So if you're in web three and you know, you have a reason for the pseudonymity, then I think it's a very powerful weapon and by all means you should use it. I think it's as good as accountability. It's just not the accountability is accruing to your avatar instead of to you personally. I think it's a fantastic new model. I mean, if I were starting out today, I would probably have a pseudonymous avatar, maybe not because I like talking to and the boy is hard to make a voice pseudonymous with your voice Anonymous, but
28:27
You know, I would probably have less of a revealed identity out there that said, I think outside of web 3 doesn't really apply and it may never apply. But then again, I think web 3 is going to be a very, very big part of society and the economy going forward. So more and more people will be pseudonymous. One other point is, there is a place where student it is quite prevalent outside of web three. And that's on Twitter on Twitter. You have all these in on accounts. And there are occasionally people who call for
28:57
Banning in on accounts. And I think that's a big problem because to me though, of course the worst announcer accounts are in on the the trolls and like the real haters and the automated account sir. And a Spam accounts are largely Anonymous, but I think the best accounts are also anonymous because they can speak truth and a level where named accounts can. Because there is a collective set of lies that we have to believe a society to get along and that set of lies all this shifting within the Overton and there's a small Overton window.
29:27
Oh, that's always moving around. And if you say the wrong thing, you can get cancelled. You can get attacked, you can get ostracized, or I can get just shamed and humiliated but they're true. But there's saying true things and what's even worse and I was that cancel culture will reach back to your tweets, 10 years ago and cancel you over that. So I just think it constrains the discourse, if we only have named accounts, it constrains it unacceptably because now those people can be punished. So for the same reason, the secret ballot isn't very important and the nom de plume with the pen name writing. I think I've been
29:57
Could you sweat in a nom de plume? For example, and several of the founding fathers of the United States, did I think it's a very powerful thing and I encourage it. I do think there should be more in on accounts, not less. It's very easy to block or mute annoying in on accounts and in exchange, you get incredible truth. Speaking from some very, very high quality accounts. I think of Twitter whatever to do away with it. In an accountant would essentially be a much less interesting platform even to the point where it might get,
30:27
Laced by a platform that embraced in ons I I'm not 100% sure about Facebook, that deleted my Facebook account a long time ago, not out of any Prejudice, which is because I found it more annoying than anything else. But I believe Facebook does not allow in on the counts. And that right there makes Facebook way less interesting as a medium where you going to learn anything or encounter anything truly interesting, or off the beaten path?
31:14
I'll get the reading habits guy over. Say anacott the reading habits guy.
31:26
I like it. You're on there.
31:32
I know you can hear me.
31:35
Yes, so we have heard you stock so much about reading and reading books and with us moving into this entirely digital generation, where people are not reading books. Where do you see people? How do you see people reading in the generation or years to come by? And where do you see books, Co and authors going from here, onwards?
32:01
Futura books.
32:06
Yes, I mean I obviously grew up reading a lot of books and I love books. Doesn't mean books are the only medium of learning, some people learn from YouTube videos. Some people like audiobooks some people like tweets, some people like blog posts. I mean, at the end of the day it's about where you can find the highest signal to noise. Ratio books are uniquely interesting for a number of reasons. One is unlike the synchronous media of YouTube and audiobooks. You can consume books asynchronously, which means that on one sentence, you can spend an hour and then the next part,
32:35
After you can spend a minute and the next chapter, you can spend a second as you slip through it. So for anyone who's serious about absorbing knowledge books are a much better medium. They're much more efficient. And the point of reading is not to stack up a giant stack pile of books that you then tweet out and say current reading this week. Look at how many books I read thumping, your chest. The point of reading in the point readings, not even to miss Ali absorb knowledge in age of Google. There's the knowledge is always a fingertip away. Be
33:05
The act of reading is to spark. Your, the point of reading is to spark your own creativity and to spark your own thoughts. So it's almost like, you know, you're starting to try. You're starting a fire in your brain. And so a really good book has to be read slowly. If you're reading books quickly and you're proud of the speed at which you're reading them. You're reading the wrong books. It's like lifting weights, that are way too light. You're just cranking through the exercise on the other hand, if you read a book, that's way too difficult for you and you're just stuck and can't make any progress.
33:35
It's like trying to lift a weight. That's too heavy. You can't even get a simple, simple, single rep off. But what you want is you want to lift a weight or read a book that is kind of at the edge of your ability where you're learning more and but it's a struggle. It's a little painful. It's a little confusing. But at the same time as sparking ideas and thoughts that, then you have to add your own creativity, in your own interpretations and apply to your own experiences to learn something. The books that excite me, the most are the ones that make me smarter. They don't necessarily give you more knowledge or information.
34:05
Relation. I'm not going to necessarily read a book on why water is the most important molecule in the world or you know, or a biography of a famous General but those books are always a fingertip away. I can pull them up and you know, read them very quickly and easily if I need to or want to but I'm not going to just absorb useless knowledge that I can just Google on demand. Rather the books that I read are the ones that make me smarter. In fact, Brett Hall just joined the chat and Brett is a teacher of physics and epistemology in runs.
34:35
Great podcast called the theory of dollars podcast, which I've I've Shield before on my Twitter because it's them, it's actually probably the only podcast that I listened to religiously because it makes me smarter and because bread is exploring this book called the beginning of infinity, which also is probably the best book I've read in the last decade and also made me a lot smarter. I wish I could counter did earlier but that's not to say that reading that book is the end all and be all and there's nothing magical about the book format. In fact, I don't think Deutsch, you know, no offense Tim. He's a brilliant thinker.
35:05
I don't think he's the best Rider because I think he's writing for other physicists. And so he's not writing for you and me or maybe if he tries, but it's hard for him to operate down that are literally level. So people like Brett and myself and others can help interpret it. And as we chew on it, we can digest it and sort of pass it down and there's a few chapters in the beginning of infinity in the first few chapters. Actually. Luckily enough MBA, last few ones a weirdly enough that are the most interesting and applicable for normal people and I encourage everyone to go and die.
35:35
Those and it took me, and I'll confess to really get through the beginning of infinity and the fabric of reality, which is the precursor to the university. It took me about two years to get through it. And I know it's not to say it took me two years to read it. I'm a very fast reader. I probably can. And, and did at some point, read both books and, you know, a weekend. But it took me two years to actually understand the concepts in the book and there are single paragraphs in there which sent me down rabbit holes.
36:05
As our videos and podcasts and reading and looking at papers and opening up a physics textbook. And so on that, that consume two months at a time, you know, like there were some comment about Multiverse in the Schrodinger. Wave equation, that had me in a tizzy for quite a while and it's not to say that I still understand all of the beginning of Eternity, but I understand, you know, from the concepts that now I've integrated into my core philosophy of decision-making and judgment, so I don't think books are necessarily a sacred medium, but I think they're an important.
36:35
Medium because well, there are other reasons. Well, besides just asynchronous consumption. Another important one, is that a lot of the best work that has been written especially if you're talking about philosophy or something. That's not that modern. Remember the old questions have all the answers, those are written a long time ago and a lot of the things that they wrote down back then would be socially or Politically Incorrect to write today, many writers are only famous after their own time, simply because their peers have
37:05
To die out and stop condemning them for a new generation to come in and absorb, whatever they wrote objectively rather than through the lens of. Well, this can't be right because my current Society is not ready to absorb this truth. So I do recommend reading a lot of old books because I think for philosophy and wisdom little, most of it is been said better before. You can always rephrase it and you way maybe apply it to a brand-new thing that showed up but the Timeless questions and Timeless answers. Another advantage of a reading it through a book rather than watching it through.
37:35
Video is the author is a little more invisible to you. And that's good because that removes your ego from the equation. It's not like your friend next door, telling you something. There's the old line. No, man is a prophet in his own land, and I think there's a lot of Truth to that. I see this in my own Social Circles, where I literally sit around with 20 people who are talking. Let's say about crypto or wealth creation and I know what they're saying is wrong, but they're not going to ask me because I'm their friend. They've already kind of, you know stuck me into a the friend bucket. So we're peers. So they're not going to
38:05
No, that's we look up to me in that regard or may not. I may not look up to them and their areas of expertise. So if you can remove the speaker from the spoken, if you can remove the writer from the writing, then it allows you to absorb it with less, in the way. It allows you to make it your own and, and then regurgitate it later. But again, through your own lens in such a way, that it becomes a part of the fabric of your thoughts. And so I do think that absorbing Knowledge from a book. I find it to be higher quality absorption.
38:35
Then if it's coming through a speaker, maybe that's just me. There are some extremely good blogs out there. Unfortunately, due to cancel culture and just the decline of logging in general. A lot of them have been disappearing off the internet, but I do think that some of the best content and writing that I've ever encountered was in blogs. Long-form blog post floating around the internet, but that's that's hard. That's a hard problem to dig through. Now. Google doesn't do a very good job of servicing blog results. There was a time
39:05
when they used to prioritize blog results, much more highly the search these days. If you search for anything on Google, you're just going to get a list of like a hundred different officials sources, which this kind of shows you that the manual tweaking of Google has been taken over by the usual, trust and safety teams. So if you're going to find these good blogs going to be through personal recommendations or social media again, kind of the dark corners of social media. So, again, nothing magic about books, but you know, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett kind of say that everybody.
39:35
Who's smart is an Avid Reader? And I have a hard time refuting that I have yet to meet. Someone who had considered a very high functioning, level of intelligence who doesn't read for fun? Underlying, those last two words for fun. And which is not to say that you should go and make it a chore to start reading. But you know, at one of the tweets, I'm proudest of is read what you love until you love to read. So the goal here is not to go crack a physics technically immediately, but just develop a love for
40:05
Or reading, if you can better than an early age because like everything else, and if you can develop a love for reading that eventually, you'll navigate your way to the things, your quote unquote, supposed to reach just because you get bored of the trade stuff. A lot of the same point, same joke, same observations, will kind of strike you as pedestrian. And and there is a certain magic to quantity, right? Once you get through enough books. You just become a better reader. It's like anything else. That said, the goal here is not to read the
40:35
Quantity of books. It's a read, the highest quality of books. I will, once again, plug the beginning of infinity, and I'll say read it, and spend two years on it if you have to, and listen to breads podcast, because if you can get through the beginning infinity, and really understand the core principles at a deep level. It's going to improve the quality of your thinking so much that your future books and blog posts and tweets that you pick up, you will be able to determine very, very quickly, which ones are talking truth. And which ones are talking trash and then believe me.
41:05
Your theory of knowledge. Right now is not good enough. Whatever you think it is. You can upgrade it as we're talking about before judgment is the most important thing.
41:17
Hey Brett.
41:23
Brett. You got it. You got a special. Dispensation. I'm not going to bounce you after a question. We can just talk for a bit. Or maybe I'll let you talk for a bit.
41:38
Brett, do we have you?
41:44
There we go. I muted myself. Yeah. Yeah. People want to know stuff, don't they? And so if you have a scattergun approach to the way in which you approach books, then you might be going for breath rather than depth. And the thing about depth is that depth has inherit breads. It has Brett, because the deeper the ideas, the more different subjects. Those ideas are going to touch and so this is why were drawn to something like the beginning of infinity and to the work of David.
42:13
Torch generally because he has devoted his life to drilling down to find the most foundational principles across physics, epistemology mathematics. And so, once you get down there to that level of depth, you really are talking about all the ways in which knowledge is created in every other subject and the limitations that the physics actually places upon our ability as human beings.
42:43
To construct knowledge. So, once you've got those fundamental ideas, you've got a really interesting way of critiquing all the other ideas that are out there. And so, that's why we're so thrilled with the beginning of infinity, because it's one of the most profound books with respect to depth of ideas.
43:02
Yeah, I don't want to keep plugging be of I forever. But I would also say that I just think physicists are among the smartest people in the world. There was a study that came out recently where they were showing, like average IQ of students would finish their PHD across different disciplines and it says, something like archaeology was in the 140s and psychology was in the high 140s and so on and so on. I went and the highest was physics. I think it was like 162 or 160 something and I actually took umbrage with that. I was like, no, there's not that.
43:31
That small of a gap between psychologist and physicists, because a lot of modern psychology to me almost borders of Charlotte's in his mmm. Just look at the look up, the replication crisis. If you want to see an example of what I mean, so I didn't like I didn't trust those numbers off the bat. So I looked at the underlying paper and the underlying paper was really interesting. The methodology that the author used was. She basically gave them all tests in various disciplines and subjects, but trying to be broad like the sat right so she gave them for
44:01
Going to give them math and critical thinking and all that and what happened was the physicist. Aced the math tests almost to a tee. All of them nailed it completely. Because any test that is challenging for a psychologist or can mentor or psychiatrist is essentially trivial for a physicist or any any test that, we could measure the difference between two physicists would be impossible for any psychiatrist or psychologist. So she dropped the math results for the physicist. She didn't take it into
44:31
Account when calculating their scores. So basically they crush the entire field just on verbal and basic logic reasoning. And the math was so off the charts. She couldn't even included in the results. So that that to me was very, very telling. And I think the reason why physicists are so intelligent is, it's not that being a being a physicist makes you intelligent. It's just the bar to being a good physicist is very high intelligence because you're dealing with the reality and its ultimate form. You're dealing with absolute truth. And so you
45:01
To you to rise to the occasion. And to develop such a such a rigorous way of reasoning thinking and calculating and all the skills that go with it, including the advanced mathematics that you can communicate with. The reality is own terms. You're not communicating with other humans who limit you to to human levels and we'll give you a pass. For example, if I'm trying to be a macro economists. Well, macroeconomist pretty much get everything wrong. You'll never find a macro Economist who can consistently predict the direction of the macroeconomy. Nor. Can you run a counterfactual?
45:31
You'll test so macroeconomist in macroeconomics, even though there's a lot of good rules of thumb and some explanations in the field. In practice. It ends up being about pleasing, and convincing other people. So your feedback loop just isn't as tight. I would argue that someone who's trading cryptocurrencies or stocks actually has a title feedback loop because at least they're taking feedback from a market, rather than say, from a publication or small group of individuals. So in that sense, they're closer to the truth, a closer to truth seeking.
46:01
Our feedback from what is true, but physicists have the ultimate feedback and what is true because you know, a particle is not going to listen to a physicist because they have a PhD or a high rank. And so they're forced to correspond to reality and obviously the physical chemistry and other Sciences the hard sciences and Natural Sciences all have the same type feedback loop all this probably tight test in physics and Mathematics.
46:23
Yeah, I guess physics isn't unique in the fact that it Bridges. Both the abstract and the highly practical and it's called physics.
46:31
So, it's about the physical, but it has characteristics of engineering, which is, of course, concerned with what is practically. Actually the case not so much what's theoretically the case. But pure mathematics on the other hand is interested in what might possibly be the case and need not practically ever obtained in the real world. And yet physics Bridges both of these domains. And so we can enter into the kind of theoretical dream world about what could possibly be the case. But are also constrained by what physical reality is telling us.
47:01
As well. And so, I think this is why a lot of people are attracted to physics. Anyway, has aspects of both. If you like pure mathematics, then you can get a little bit of that. And if you like engineering and solving practical problems, you can get a little bit of that. And so physics occupies that real
47:15
sweet space in between them. It's not the only one, I would guess theoretically computer scientists or probably at the same level, but the problem is, if you're a physicist, you're basically all into Theory or academic and you're dealing with the highest levels of
47:31
Attractions, whereas if you're in computer scientist, you may just go into very practical things and end up being an entrepreneur. So the set of computer scientist is actually the set of practicing computer science is probably far greater instead of theoretical physicists. And so just the barrier to entry in the computer science field was lower. But I but probably at the very top levels of the top computer scientist, the top physical chemists, maybe the top molecular biologist, you know, top material scientist top Engineers are at the same level of intellect as
48:01
Top physicists again. It's not to say that being one of these professions makes you smart. It's just the bar to getting into one of these professions that the top levels indicates that you are. Very smart, doesn't mean you're smart and everything. If you go back to my definition of getting what you want to life than many of them would fail on that regard, but I'm talking about a certain kind of theoretical smart about abstractions logic, clear thinking reasoning, mathematical capabilities etcetera, and, you know, we can split hairs on what the definition of intelligence.
48:31
Agents is, but then we're falling to his wittgensteinian trap of like, what is the meaning of meaning? Anyway, and then you can't have any conversations?
48:37
Yes, like everyone is equally, an infinite ignorance. We might have our own areas of specialty that we know about, but we are infinitely. Ignorant of a whole bunch of things, you know, you can name the physicists in, you can name the crazy idea, you know, of course, we all respect, Albert, Einstein, but I only learned recently and I probably shouldn't have learned this recently that he was a real supporter of One World Government. Now, I could not think of
49:01
A more dystopian view of the way in which society could be organized and having a One World Government. But, you know, I guess he was speaking at a time when the crisis that he was facing a that time was different to what we're facing now.
49:18
Yeah, I think that the One World Government folks, especially in the physics domain, they came from a background where you had World War 2 going on and they had helped in the creation of nuclear weapons. And so to them.
49:31
Mad mutually assured. Destruction is a game. Theoretical thing that worked in, practice didn't exist yet and Matt has been surprisingly effective in practice to date. And I don't think any of the physicists involved predicted that it would be that good. So they thought that they might have destroyed the world. And the only way they could think out of that was that there was one government that government would not want to use nuclear weapons against himself. So I think that that was the underlying motivator for that reasoning, although I don't think they were articulated as such, let me see if I can
50:01
Will somebody else up? So it's not just me and Brett talking the whole
50:04
night.
50:18
I'm just looking to be able to buy us.
50:25
But in the meantime, if you got anything to say all, I
50:28
just want to Riff on it what you began with I was actually here at the beginning listening to you, talking about life as a single player game. And it really evoke for me. You know what Carl papa says about? How life is all life is problem solving. And so what we're trying to do constantly is to solve our problems in the more knowledge that you have the greater the repertoire of different problems that you are able to solve, and we want to solve things like suffering. And we want to be able to improve our lot in life.
50:54
And so this idea of being a single player game, I think really gets at the heart of that idea that you're just constantly trying to avoid. The next thing that is going to thwart you in finding happiness and making progress in generating wealth. Yeah, and so I think that it's interesting. David Deutsch has pointed this out that people who Converge on the truth converge together, and it's interesting how you were coming to these ideas before you encounter deutschen before.
51:24
You encounter Papa, but when you found them then it began to resonate with exactly what you'd been saying and what you've been sort of promoting out there.
51:33
Yeah, I mean the set of truths is, you know, depending on what truth were talking about, but the set of Truth is quite large but it's still infinitesimal compared to the set of potential falsehoods. We can create a lot more falsehoods that we can create a truth for sure. And that's why one of the reasons, one of the things you kind of have to do is that there's a whole class of conjectures and
51:54
You know where people will say to you, well prove to me that this is you know false you should you should consider my theory but most theories can be dismissed without deep examination. And in fact a lot of it. Okay. So here's a recent one, that's getting me burned a lot. So I'll go right into it, which is somebody who I thought was very intelligent. Otherwise intelligent approach me on the aliens, visiting, the Earth theory, right? That these UFOs are flying around and they kind of hiding for us.
52:24
And you know, I have a lot of good arguments against it. There are many ranging from the fact that the photographic evidence seems to be still grainy and sketchy to. Why would they even do it in the first place to what are the odds given the distances involved to? You know to it's more easily explained by just being a military program. That's clandestine. Even from the kind of the lower ranking or the less people if people in the military who are not giving access, same level classification to the fact that eyewitness accounts are incredibly unreliable etcetera, so arrogant.
52:55
But at the end of the day I had to respond with just one phrase, It's just extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and the evidence that you provided for Extraordinary claim just isn't good enough for it to be a theory that we're going to go through and consider. So actually maybe you can talk a little bit about UFO sightings bright while I hunt down, somebody else to pull up
53:11
here. Well, I think it was a long mask that he shared that graph. That shows the number of the number of cameras that are out there. Now on smartphones that everything has gone up.
53:24
Actually, but the quality of pictures of UFOs apparent UFO, sightings has not gone up exponentially it to remain. Basically the same that it's sort of the 60s kind of thing. It's always grainy. Like you said. Yeah. I don't think that we've been visited. I'd like to know that we were but specifically for the reason that either the aliens are doing a particularly good job of remaining hidden or a particularly bad job of remaining hidden. Depending upon how you look at things after although they appear to keep on.
53:54
Being spotted by people who live in the southern states of the United States more often than not. And so but we have one of my arguments about this is that it seems to be the case that biology isn't necessarily friendly towards getting the project of life started here on Earth. It appears to have happened once life began once and we don't know the mechanism whereby that life is actually able to arise again, it's not.
54:24
We can create artificial life in the lab. At least. We haven't figured it out. It
54:28
must be a soluble. Yeah, there's lightning in the bottle experiments have been grossly exaggerated. I think when I was going for the kid, we're like, yeah, we just put a whole bunch of junk into in an inn or inorganic compounds to bottle and we throw some electricity and then poof we get life and
54:44
it's just not true. Yeah, and but but we do have this interesting Challenge on the one hand. Yeah. That those are the, the so-called miller-urey experiment and they're still going on today and they're trying to
54:54
Put, you know, ammonia and amino acids and various things into this flask and add electricity, add uv-light, see what comes out and they haven't managed to have anything crawl out of the flask. So to speak. They haven't created simple cells, even they haven't created anything. That appears to be anywhere close to what life is? So on the one hand. It seems like life is difficult to make. But on the other hand, the geological evidence says that after the so-called late heavy bombardment. This is the period in geological history, where the Earth was.
55:24
Just being inundated by comets and asteroids and being sterilized by, you know, Global kind of cratering from all of these bodies in the solar system that has crashing into the Earth. And so therefore, the Earth was entirely unfriendly to any kind of biology that could have Arisen. But as soon as that ended, as soon as it stopped being unfriendly to life life appeared on Earth and so that would suggest life does arise as quickly as it possibly can. So do we say,
55:54
Life is easy to produce or do we say it's hard to produce at the moment. We're in this really, really interesting place where progress is possible. Hey, here's a problem. So if there's any young person out there interested in the physics of the origin of life. This is a real important open question.
56:12
I got a couple people for questions. Aloha Europe, next, if you've got a moment, sure, thanks for having me and of all good to see you. Again. My question is around prioritization and guarding once time, you know, I see you at someone who is good at saying, no, so, I'm going to know. Do you have a mental framework? That helps you decide what is worth your time? And what is not and saying no to those things without feeling guilty. Thank you. Great question. Yes, I put a lot of effort into this. So I'm going to move you back to the audience that I
56:44
Yeah, so things to Aspire to move past in your life. First. You want to get out of your parents basement. Then you're living with roommates. Then you're going to get away from roommates. Then you're waking up to, then you're driving, commute to work. Then you want to get of a commute, then you're waking up to an alarm clock. Then you want to get away from an alarm clock. Then you're basically living a highly calendar and schedule life. You want to get away from a calendar. Then finally, you want to get away from email and text messages. So I'm sort of working.
57:12
In my way through this rabbit hole and where I currently am is I'm currently trying I've gotten rid of calendars and schedules and I'm trying to get rid of emails. All together. I want to and now check my email once every three days and I eventually want to get to the point where I never checked my email and obviously this is a luxury but you can you can get there. You just have to engineer your life towards it and you're to be uncompromising. You have to reject social obligations. You have to reject meetings that are a waste of time. You have to be okay with saying
57:42
No, you have to give up your fomo. You have to not be afraid to disappoint people, and cut people out of your life, who are comfortable, with spontaneity and lack of schedules. The email one's gonna be a little harder, but I'll get there. But yeah, there are sacrifices involved along every step of the way. Nothing is cost free. But what do you get on the other side? You get your time back? And if you have your time, then you have spontaneity, which I would argue helps with the flourishing of joy in your life. You have creativity.
58:12
Because you now have time to get bored and time to think you have proper prioritization. Where now, you're going to focus on? What's the most important thing, as opposed to just what happens to be scheduled, you're going to have productivity because you're going to work on things when you feel like them as opposed to when you are forced to grind through something, when you don't feel like it and you're going to say, but wait the ball, I can't do this. I have a job. And my answer is, well, change jobs, get a job where you're in control of your own time, or you'll say, my extra time is worthless. I
58:42
Learn more, if I'm working harder or working different hours. Now. I'll say change your career, to where you can or you will say, but my family won't tolerate it. And I'm like, well, retrain, your family, change your friends, change your co-workers, disappoint people. If you're not disappointing them, if you're not leaving people behind, if you're not really changing changing, is also growing growth involves change. So if you want to be productive, if you want to operate at maximum productivity efficiency and creativity, you're going to work on things.
59:12
Is that you're excited about at the moment, you're excited about them and accept nothing less. It is better to sit on your butt and do nothing. That is to work on things that you are not excited about. Because now you're just grinding and you're robbing yourself of the time that you need to have the good thoughts for proper space to find what it is that you're meant to work on and where you're meant to live and and who you're meant to be with. I have been utterly ruthless about prioritizing my time and say no to things and I disappoint people every single
59:42
All day on it every single day and I will continue to do so until I have complete control of my time back and I'm not too far from it.
59:52
Daniel you're up next Brett. You may want to meet there was some paper shuffling noise in the background while you were not speaking. Thank you.
1:00:01
Yeah, thanks for letting me come up.
1:00:03
So I live and work in the developing world and sort of got sucked into
1:00:09
the way three rabbit hole because I saw the potential for like this this new potential for the developing world to access Global markets and that in a whole new way. And so I'm just wondering two things. Number one what you think about what 3 and the potential for the developing world? And then also,
1:00:31
The question of scale. So what do you think? It will take to scale with 32 lifting up those communities that have by and large been left behind. Thanks.
1:00:48
Yeah, I'm not I'm not an expert on developing World challenges. I would just say that the decentralisation decentralizing permissionless nature of crypto means that we can build financial instruments and governance instruments that can be adopted regardless of the dysfunction of the local government. Right? A lot of the developing world. The problem is dysfunctional, local government, not always, but it happens a lot and crypto is self-governing. You have tokens. You can
1:01:17
Oat you have doubts, you have distribution distribution of power and according to proven judgment and contribution to the network. So as long as you're dealing with an all-digital problem, like transferring money or trading stocks or investing in companies or issuing loans, the repaying loans, and those kinds of things then very naturally and very easily you can adopt crypto in a way that the people can opt into what instrument to take and not have the government.
1:01:47
Volved, I do think it's a little early in the sense that the first app that I would expect to be adopted in all of crypto. Not not just in the developing world is Bitcoin as a reserve asset. So for example, you see what's happening in Russia and Ukraine, you know, if you're a wealthy person who is in Russia right now or even a poor person was in Russia right now and you cute up at the ATM and you're told you can't get hard currency out, you can get rubles, but you can't
1:02:17
Dollars and all your Ruble deposits, eur/usd deposits in your bank account. Even if you were lucky enough to have foreign Bank, deposits are being forcibly converted into rubles. And anybody who has earning power internationally is currently trying to flee Russia because they're afraid of the sanctions at regime and just sort of the impoverishment of Russia's slides back into the coming in so called a torque or turkic economy, where everything is locally producing locally consumed.
1:02:47
And but which is really bad for things like semiconductors and information technology and medicine and so on. So a talking sorry, so I think that
1:02:58
There are a lot of people who are in Russia who they don't understand Bitcoin, but if they did, but boy, would they wish that they had Bitcoin right now. So I think in the developing World, similarly, there's a lot of kleptocracy these where the local government just prints money and steals money from the people. I think 100 years from now, people will look back and will be considered laughably archaic that we used to pass around people pieces of paper that somebody had something literally called a money printing press with that. They could print as
1:03:27
As much more of as they wanted in the background. And so by doing that they impoverished all of society in a hidden way. And so, I would expect in the developing world as you have more and more economic and social collapses. Because of these kleptocratic printing presses that Bitcoin will eventually get adopted. It started to happen in El Salvador, where they declared Illegal Tender. I'm hearing about a few other places. I think the new South Korean president is very Pro crypto.
1:03:54
And as we see more and more people kind of adopting Bitcoin across from corporate, treasuries to you know, kind of these developing countries situations. I think the killer app that said the fact that we have not yet seen Mass Bitcoin adoption in developing countries is a bit of a yellow or red flag for the industry. It means that it's still super hard to use. People don't understand the concept and the still having kind of figured out the advantages. I do feel like a couple of several global.
1:04:24
Crises have already come and gone. We're Bitcoin would have been a great answer to them but we still did not see Mass adoption of Bitcoin and and make no mistake. Like Bitcoin isn't perfect. You know, it does suffer from certain issues. It's obtaining the still quite hard to do. So you have to buy it through a centralized exchange and in your tract is transparent rather than being opaque. Although it was opaque like Z cash, should probably be banned in a lot of countries as well, if they really understood the capabilities, but I think in the developing world just
1:04:54
Basically protecting the assets that you have already accumulated and created right there, or a huge could use of crypto. Web, three is a little more fanciful. Now we do see in the Philippines. For example, people are playing games for money, like actually infinity and, you know, people like yield Gil games have have built Guilds of players and people can make a living playing these games. I don't really view that as sort of the best use of web three. It's a fine intermediate use case.
1:05:24
And it's helping people in developing World get salary digital salaries that are on a par with the First World countries or developed Nations, but that strikes me is like an intermediate step. It's not really making the underlying people better off. It's not training into computer, scientists, not helping them start new companies. It's not protecting their assets. Rather. It's just giving them sort of a new job, but it's fine as an intermediate stepping stone, but it's not really it's not really the web three Revolution. We were promised. I'm afraid the web three.
1:05:54
Lucien in the developing world is still going to be largely limited Bitcoin, or Z, cash or Monero for anonymous transactions. And I think it's or private transactions. And I think it's still. It's still on the horizon and it's gotten closer, but it's still not quite there yet.
1:06:12
Let's find someone else who's speaking, but I think you did an episode on your podcast and Bitcoin didn't you?
1:06:20
Yeah, I I tried to take a different Tack and I was talking about etherium etherium as being a potential Universal computer of a kind and, you know, Baptist they're far better than I do, but it's really interesting to me that here. We have a another case of universality whenever human beings, create another instance of universality, another case, where we can literally do everything within a certain class of projects. That is possible. You know this
1:06:49
Happened with the classical computer at will. Actually, it happened with language. Of course, then it happened at the classical computer, quantum computer and I think aetherium and other kinds of blockchain like that. I don't know, allow computation a universal style of computation, which is absolutely going to change the face of society. In the same way that classical Computing did
1:07:14
Great. A few more people. Emmett. I think you're up next. If you want to go.
1:07:20
Yes. Thanks. Thanks for taking my question. First of all, thanks
1:07:23
for doing this. And I love your, the music that mean wave puts up over some of your riffs on some of your interviews with anyone else. Yeah. That's yeah. If some Akira the dawn. Yeah, he's great. A DJ question for you is, is there anything in particular? You think like, in the last few years?
1:07:44
Years that you've been, you know, that you've thought that you've been wrong about, like, you know, we all, there's so much to press to know we can't, we only know, like, so a little, the universe or whatever it is, and human nature, you know, physics even. But is there anything in particular personally that you feel like you strongly believed in? But you change your mind completely on the last few years.
1:08:09
Yeah, hmm. Good question.
1:08:16
Yeah, I mean there's a plenty of things I've been wrong about. I don't fixate on them. You know, I take the lesson and move on. I basically dropped out of paying attention to crypto in 2018, 2019. And even part of 2020 because I was sort of put off by the whole Ico craze and all the, you know, terrible get-rich-quick schemes that were being launched and scamming people. So I kept, you know, talking about Bitcoin and Ethan, a few others, but I sort of lost interest in the space and I completely Miss D, Phi.
1:08:46
I also completely Miss 10ft. They were right under my nose. I had friends talking about them. Participating in them. Literally. I was in a weekly call with a guy who turned out to be one of the biggest collectors on the planet. He would tell me every week about how he's buying this digital art. And I just kind of roll my eyes and didn't get it. So I completely missed that, you know going way back like I'm an old-school military history buff. So I grew up as a kid. I could have told you the throw weights of different nuclear missiles and you know, I had Giant Book
1:09:15
Us about military fighters on my, on my bookshelf. So I was kind of a anytime War comes on. I get obsessed and I just dive into it. I tweeted Out of Water. This recently, don't ask me why some child-driven testosterone thing from playing with too many military, airplanes, airplanes and tanks and and I used to play a lot of organs and there was a time when I bought the whole Bush era, Saddam has has wmd I fell for that line hook and sinker, so I was wrong about that.
1:09:45
I was wrong about covid. Very early on very early on when you know people were dropping dread dead in the streets and the videos coming out of China. I thought. Wow, maybe this thing has a very high CFR confirmed fatality rate or but I turned around that pretty quickly and you know, and I kind of came to the conclusion that no it's kind of like a novel 10x flu, which is still really bad for older people, but my mental model then shifted to it impacts you as sort of the the square of your age. So the older you are the more
1:10:15
Each worst time you're going to have. So I think that was wrong in my initial assessments about covid, but I kind of Stand By. So my later assessments or my current more refined assessments. And what I would say, my whole theory of knowledge was pretty shaky and quite bad before I discovered deutsche's and poppers work. So I was, you know, infinitely wrong in many of those cases. I never bought a string theory, but I wasn't a fan of Multiverse Theory until I read some of the more compelling.
1:10:45
Arguments from Deutsche and Sean Carroll. Look, most of us are wrong most of the time but you don't need to be right a lot in this world, especially in the digital domain, in the physical domain, being wrong, can have very large consequences. But in the digital domain being wrong, can have not much consequences. You may lose the money, you bet, or you wrote a piece of code that was useless. But being correct. Can have huge consequences, positive. You can make a symmetric upside, you can make a hundred extra 1000 extra.
1:11:15
Money and Tesla stock or on buying etherium at the right time or you can you know, reach a million people with the right tweet or the right message at the right podcast. Perfectly crafted while being wrong. It doesn't cost you much. So, in certain domains, it makes sense to bet much bigger these days. I just try to have less opinions about things. I kind of feel like, I don't need to have an opinion there on everything, and that's not for being right or wrong. It's just a cat.
1:11:45
Have mental Clarity and to have peace of mind. You don't need to have an opinion. Every person walking, down the street or everything you see in the news or even about every form of government. There is an infinite set of things out there that are demanding your attention and trying to hijack. Your attention. Like, I think, like, this is a little tongue-in-cheek, but the goal of media at some level is to make every problem. Your problem and it's always offering you up and social media. Does this in space, it offers you up a new tweet or a new post and says are you angry?
1:12:15
No, are you angry? No, are you annoyed yet? No, are you angry and just keeps going through like all these different sets of them and tries all different kinds of find something to get you hooked. So the way out of that trap is you almost have to resume. You have to realize the mental load that happens on you. When one of these Loops get stuck in your head. It's like when you listen to a song in the background and you don't necessarily love the song, but you just listen to a couple of times and that's looping in your head. Well, the news can do the same thing.
1:12:45
Anger can do the same thing. And I think we're to some level. A lot of the anxiety that we suffer from is because we've taken on unconsciously all these problems and and then other people are coming in and trying to get you to solve their problem that they that they believe is a greatest problem in the world. So somebody will come along and say the greatest problem is that we're killing all the animals. And so you got to go vegan. Somebody else will say, you know, it's climate change and you shouldn't worry about anything else to worry about that for many people. Realistically. That's what's going on in Ukraine.
1:13:15
And for some people that might be what's going on politics, but everybody has a different set of problems and and you really have to learn to not take on other people's problems. This is not to say that you take on, absolutely no problems. But first make sure that you are doing a good job of solving your own direct problems and that you have a clear mind before you then selectively choose other problems to take on which you can actually have an impact on. Don't just take on problems that you can't solve.
1:13:46
If I could just add a little bit to that, I think that if we Define a contrarian of someone who's simply takes the opposite position to whatever the prevailing view is. I don't know that there's a lot of used to doing that. But if you can identify the places where the overwhelming majority of people on planet Earth are holding a particular opinion, that actually is false and you have some insight into that, then that is a place for you to make progress and to make a difference in the world. My favorite example of this is that
1:14:14
That everyone seems to know that resources on planet Earth are finite. Everyone seems to agree. And so therefore we've got to conserve our resources, our natural resources, but this is completely false. There's a YouTube video that I did about this about the fact that I resources only a resource. Once we have the knowledge about why, and how it is, you know, the simple example is uranium uranium exists in the rock or pitchblende, which is an otherwise useless Rock.
1:14:44
Until you have nuclear physics. And this is true of every single resource. And the thing that makes a resource of resource is knowledge, which we can continue indefinitely to produce more of, and if we can continue to do that, which we will, then we won't run out of resources because we'll find new resources in the future. And this is not simply to be contrarian, and a lot of people balk at this and people get very upset when I say this, but it simply means the case that we're not going to run out of resources.
1:15:14
Sources are infinite because our creativity is infinite and so we can solve the problem that for any finite particular resource, any individual resource that might run out, we'll find something to replace it. And so we don't need to be pessimistic about the future about running out of resources about how we're coming to rack and ruin and that we're going to end up existing in poverty. In fact, it's quite the opposite. We're going to be more wealthy. We're going to be more happy, we're going to have more resources. And so if you're going to take the opposite perspective to what,
1:15:44
Filing view is if you can find those examples like that particular one and that's just a random example where you can actually take the position that is held by only a very tiny minority of people. That's an Avenue for you to certainly by the make a difference in some way philosophically or perhaps to generate wealth in a way that other people who are pessimists, who don't think it's possible, won't bother trying but you'll try because you'll have a different perspective.
1:16:12
Yeah. As they've said like don't do
1:16:14
get them in the media when you can debate them in the marketplace, but if truth is on your side, by all means, you'll feel need to get them in the media to. I do think Brett sustainability episode is one of his best. It's a mind Bender. It will challenge. Many read deeply held assumptions. It's worth reviewing. I remember the peak oil debacle when everybody was saying, we're gonna run out of oil, then turns out. No shell and fracking came along and we actually have unlimited Royal. We just choose, not to use it for other reasons now, but there's no shortage of all on this planet at least for the foreseeable future and just and like, or essentially
1:16:44
All boys aren't and knowledge. It all boils down to how much do we know. And the more we know, the more we can do with what we have, all the resources that we need are available to us on this Earth, in the solar system, in the asteroid belt in the sun in this galaxy in even in empty space. So called empty space. There's a lot of resources. It's just a question of how can we create a powerful enough for discover and utilize a powerful enough? Energy source to extract whatever resources we need and understand the processes required.
1:17:14
Wired to convey convert, one thing to another Deutsch as a great definition of wealth. You know, I Define wealth has more practically as assets that earn while you sleep, but he defined it as at a civilizational level, as the set of physical Transformations that you can affect. And I think that's a very powerful one because the shows were only limited by our knowledge. It's not to say, you can't run out of things in the short term, but economic incentives are set up in such a way that as long as, there isn't a lot of government interference that
1:17:44
Tivity can help you out of that trap. Now. It does have to proceed as natural level. There are not that many shortcuts in life. But I think we can find our way out of these so-called sustainability trap, which is really just a deeply pessimistic. The world is ending Cassandra approach that people like to take the regular basis because pessimism is intellectually seductive a lot of intellectual tend to be pessimistic which is not to say that being pessimistic makes you smart, but people confuse that so their signal their intelligence by pessimism, where's I would argue that pessimism.
1:18:14
Ism is actually the opposite signal. It is the cynicism that goes with it. It shows a lack of imagination. It shows a lack of reading history. It shows a lack of actually looking at the Arc of human progress. And if you become, if you fall into the Trap of being a pessimist or sin, or a cynic or in victim mentality, I would say. Pessimism and cynicism is a societal level version of victim mentality. It's even worse than victim. Entire victim, entire day, just keeps you down.
1:18:45
Pessimism and cynicism, especially when articulated by very eloquent, people keep Society down and that's not so good. Hey and pessimism is
1:18:55
so you very briefly. Our pessimism is a linked, very strongly to prophecy as well. There are two ways of talking about the future either. We can predict the future or we can prophesy the future. The only way to predict the future is to have a robust scientific explanation and that's so scientific explanation allows.
1:19:14
To logically derive certain claims about the future. So in physics, we do this routinely, we can predict when the ball is going to hit the ground trivially, but when as soon as we get outside of the physical sciences, once we start getting into economics, once we start getting into sociology and Global Affairs and even something like the global climate, it becomes far more difficult to make those guesses about the future. And so they cease to be predictions, they cease to be based upon.
1:19:44
Good scientific explanations and they become prophecies and it doesn't matter how many letters you've got after your name. It doesn't matter that. You've got a PhD in meteorology. If you're claiming to know what things are going to be like a thousand years from now, or a hundred years from now, or 10 years from now, you're being a prophet. You're being the same crystal ball, gazer as people in the past have been,
1:20:07
I want to things that annoys me about the hole current stay in your lane attack or people say well you can talk about that stay in your lane what they mean is, you know the expertise and if you dig one level further what they mean is that you don't have the credentials and if you dig one level further, what they means is you don't have the right academic stamp. And so all that's doing is reducing Society to a small set of academic credentials people who are sort of in a circle jerk, issuing each other credentials. And they're not going to think out of the box. And this certainly not going to think anything that goes against their profession. So
1:20:37
Would trust a physicist on climate science much more that I would trust the climate scientist. I would trust a computer scientist on AI much more than I would trust in AI researcher just because once you adopted a point of view as your identity, your unlikely to say anything that might contradict it. And that sense, you know, I don't like to put any labels on on myself nor do. I think that we should be worshipping at the altar credentials, a lot of the great advances in human history. Came through polymaths came through mixing.
1:21:06
Zeppelins Nature has no concept of disciplines Nature has no concept of, you know, different professions. That's just a human-made construct. Sure. If you going to get operated upon, you probably want someone with a medical degree because dare you try to minimize the chance of something going wrong and the barrier to entry is very high, but it comes to, for example, you know, figuring out even deep Trends and things like epidemiology and evolution. Some of the best work has been done by people outside of the field and certainly in everyday Affairs. Like what is the
1:21:37
Right. Role of government. What is the right spending level? What is Right? Taxation level, you know, should we wear masks or not, which is a multivariate decision. Should we force people to get vaccinated or not, which is more than just a pure biological decision and also impinges on human freedom and human rights. I think everybody who has done a little bit of homework as a clear thinkers entitled, to have an opinion. And so the stay in your lane attack is one that automatically leads to a block from me.
1:22:06
Me because those people are essentially just advocating for University academics to run the world flywheel. I'm going to let you talk.
1:22:16
Awesome. It's incredibly difficult trying a time when I was going to enter and come up with a quick web. But one I wanted to say from earlier, when you were mentioning physics and whatnot. I had lost a bet that you would mention now Fineman. And so I thought that was quite funny to share and I
1:22:37
want so close to Mission. I knew it was gonna, I was going to bring up the, you know, nature always. We use threads out of the longest time.
1:22:45
This trees and so there's only a few theories you need to understand. I was going to follow that on to bring about and deep explanations being better than broad explanation. So yes for Simplicity. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So so that was one. That was one
1:22:59
quick. What? Then the next one that I had was when you guys were moments ago, discussing when you were mentioning pessimism and I was going to say, well pacifism is Media needs to generate money in some Manner and if you want to
1:23:15
Have a one-sided opinion. The easiest way to validate people's emotion is to create the issue at hand and when you create the issue and you create the narrative and then you Empower, someone's thinking letting them know that it's correct because it's a part of the masses. Well, now you've compounded the initial idea which is the news that you're giving to them, which is something that was not something, they were concerned of, you know, prior to tuning.
1:23:45
In and it has these, these compounding effects, which ultimately gives control of somebody on a TV screen, you know, your entire mental capacity and people don't necessarily have no time to think for themselves. Those were all those were all
1:24:03
sides. And yeah, that's that's a great, great point. I mean, it reminds me of this moose idea that I have which is probably wrong, but I haven't really thought it through but that
1:24:15
Of modern society, the media rails against agreed, but I don't think greed is as bad as fear. You may want to mute by the way flywheel because I'm getting an echo back from you. Thank you fear because greed, you know, what's the worst case with greed? The worst case with greed, is you go off and do something for your greed. But especially in a capitalist environment, you're almost by definition have to create a product or sell something, and it's probably a voluntary transaction.
1:24:45
Fear on the other hand and the way we designed is, yes, we get greedy, but we only get greedy to a certain level because in evolution the rewards to being greedy were fairly low. You, you know, before human wealth existed. If you're a greedy, you might get an extra deer. Carcass. You might get an extra meal, you might find a better place to sleep, but I'm sure huge. Yeah, exactly. Fear, on the other hand had huge consequences, which was if you if you were not afraid when the tiger showed up, if you didn't
1:25:15
Lies when the screen went out, you were going to get eaten or when the neighboring tribe attacked you were going to get skin. So the consequences to fear have historically been much greater the rewards to Greed, which is partially, why I think we are fearful and pessimistic species. Now, why do I bring that up? I say that because I think that the people who control you through greed, actually have a lot less power than the people who control you through fear. And that is why a lot of media is about fear. So I think, if you're, if you if you're getting angry people have
1:25:45
In Greedy, I would be much more careful about the people who are enticing or inducing fear review because it always starts out as like, hey, I'm giving you a public service, you should pay attention. And so you look at them as a good guys, they get to Virtue signal and then they drive you into a fearful State fear naturally leads to anger because now you're angry that you're driven into a corner, you're afraid and that leads to conflict. So I think a lot of the modern conflicts, that are otherwise avoidable are driven through fear.
1:26:15
So always be very, very wary of people who are trying to scare you. Usually they're up to no good. They may be genuine or not entik and think they're trying to your public service, but I think that as a society, we push back and greedy people too much and we don't push back enough on the people who are inciting fear.
1:26:32
I would go so far as to say that in just to elaborate on that. Thought in this, I have, I do have a question, but to elaborate on that thought is I think the they are fearful.
1:26:44
There's there's especially with the new technologies that come about. There's no other way to try and quiet. Someone who's saying, even the smallest idea that gets planted into someone's brain to begin to sprout. They wanted to cut that off at its at its root, because sorry, before if there was any water, that would even water that seed in the reason being is they are incredibly fearful.
1:27:15
Because the technologies that have come about from nowhere early and you know, the 90s and the.com bubble where you had this significant new Underdog where you had so much wealth creation that was traditionally rooted in oil gas and your real estate. And other types of traditional means that now can be combated with this newfound opportunity to create something to fight back with which
1:27:44
Which is this wealth from monetizing and all of our information? And so in that I think there's been this this decade or two decade struggle for power where you've had people knowing that we can't actually can't respect people and give them the opportunities to, you know, think for themselves in. We can treat them though with pity. And I think that's a, I think, I think a lot of our issues in Society come from the lack of belief in somebody else's.
1:28:15
Ability in, in order to enable a person to feel more competent for themselves, put them down and not even give them an opportunity to think for themselves where if it were to be you. If you were to start to replace that with empathy. You would really have a much different view on. You would have a different view on people and give them capabilities, but they're they're grasping for power.
1:28:43
I'm going to have to thank you.
1:28:45
Those thoughts with Advanced you for a moment just to make room for others because we're running out of time. It's already an hour and a half in, and people probably getting pretty tired shorter. Thank you for that. Thank you.
1:28:55
And then we have on kid, by the way, I would also say people should feel free to act actually ask questions about a topic where I actually do have some expertise, which is, you know, making money and wealth creation. Because I studied that pretty heavily or not studied. But, you know, learn that where I do consider myself an actual expert and not just on philosophy, or physics or politics, or where I'm kind of more of an amateur. Not that I need. Not that I'm going to stay in my Lane, but just feel free to ask questions about your business.
1:29:25
Or business problems you're having, I'll get your up if you want to take it.
1:29:39
I'll get your on the air.
1:29:58
Alright, let's try to give me. Hey, so great talk. So far. One question I have in something, I seen a lot happened recently is the fervor and the excitement over web 3. And This Promise of a great new future has a lot of people obviously getting into the space running in Full Tilt ahead. But I think the thing that a lot of people misunderstand is that you can't simply move into a new economy but digital wonderfully. Do the one and just a shoe, the old one, which is, I think kind of the pipe dream of a lot of new companies. Now,
1:30:28
The question I have is how exactly does the society sort of fundamentally rewrite the rules and pay the piper so to speak? So that the Old Guard doesn't just spend every last bit of energy. They have attempting to dismantle the new because it threatens sort of the safety and the security that they're hoping to get with the systems that they built and brought up to speed for today.
1:30:56
Yeah, so how do we prevent the olds from stopping web three? Look, it's just the nature of humans that you know, actually Douglas Adams the late, great Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy said this brilliantly. He I'm paraphrasing him but he said something along the lines of like, you know, everything that happened, you know, before I was 20 is like natural and normal. And just the way the world is and everything that happened, you know, happens between the ages of 20 and 30.
1:31:26
Is new and exciting and fresh and something that I can build my world view in my career upon and everything that happens after I'm 40 is suspicious and terrible and not to be trusted. It must be suppressed and stop, right? And it's it is true. It is kind of the way the human mind works, when you're young your impressionable, you're absorbing. You take the world as it's given to you. You're adapting to the world that you're going to live in. Then you go through this phase where you're looking for opportunity, looking for in tears. You have excitement, you want to build
1:31:56
Nothing, you want to create something, you want to change the world, you want to get your message out there? And so you tend to naturally, hopefully view things as opportunities. And then at some point you get tired, you have a family, you have kids, you get a little older, you want things to be calm, you want them to be simple. You you don't want to, you know, expend too much energy and you want stability. And so you tend to look with with a - I with the jaundiced eye towards anything new coming up. And so that's just human nature. How do we
1:32:26
Stop it. I mean look, we don't necessarily stop. It. Not all change is good. I think Brett is talked about this, but changed it destroys embedded into institutional knowledge to quickly. You know, it's bad. Like there's this whole crowd. Now that says, capitalism doesn't work. We do with capitalism and you ask them what we're going to replace it with. You get crickets because we know that communism doesn't work and we know that socialism is this communism light. It slides towards communism and maybe Works in some very, very small societies like Sweden Denmark where they're you know homogeneous race.
1:32:56
And they're protected by the United States and they're hidden behind mountains and they have huge natural resources. But even there I would argue that it's not exactly a hotbed of innovation creativity, but regardless so people hate capitalism, but there's nothing else to replace it with. So not all change is necessarily good but something like web three. Heck. Yeah, you bet they're gonna try and stop it. You bet. They're gonna try and Outlaw it you bet they're going to crack down on it. If they didn't then it wouldn't actually be that valuable. It's not actually that disruptive that said I do think that countries that try
1:33:26
To ban or stop or slow down web, three are going to find themselves increasingly on the wrong side of History. Even today. For example, a lot of the new crypto token offerings are only available to non-americans, which is kind of sad your cutout as an American investor. A lot of the, you know, new products are being forced overseas. A lot crypto teams that are, you know, settling with the SEC or cftc, often end up relocating their products overseas or their operations team overseas or only serving overseas customers.
1:33:56
This is literally driving Innovation out and it comes from this mythology that the United States somehow creates entrepreneurs. That's not true. The United States attracts entrepreneurs and attracts entrepreneurs because they're from the environment for entrepreneurs or used to be anyway, and now those entrepreneurs are going to be attracted elsewhere and the internet or at least the part of the internet. That's high quality and work since Innovative is global. And So eventually we're just going to see of wealth flight mean, we're lucky that Bitcoin was probably created by an
1:34:26
Second, our group of Americans are spreading the u.s. First, but if the next Bitcoin, xith is created in some other part of the world, we're going to watch those other countries become rich. And by the time we figure out that they're the Forefront of knowledge creation. It will be too late. There's nothing that guarantees that you know States will stay at the Forefront of human history. What's taken it so far? Has been the unprecedented freedoms that are offered in the Bill of Rights. But those those freedoms are being increasingly circumcised described.
1:34:55
And limited by a sort of this bureaucratic State that's taken over of Administrators and courtiers who are, who are essentially controlling, you know, what is allowed and what isn't, you know, people like the SEC and the cftc and all these three letter agencies. These are just cops by another name who make rules put people in jail, throw people, you know, put take people to court and even worse they don't necessarily and try them. They, they basically use their influence with banks and lawyers and scare tactics to crime.
1:35:26
Done Innovation. So I've always said, you know, going way back that for crypto. The final boss is the state. It's the governments of the world and there will be a few of them who are enlightened and who embrace the future. And usually, those are strange and uncommon combination of both enlightened and desperate. They're looking to gain rather than to lose. You're looking to the future rather than to the past. And unfortunately, I think most of Western societies now are sort of entering their, decadent Empire stage, which can
1:35:55
To be a great and fun place to hang out. I'm sure Roma the decline was a blast but it's not necessarily the place where the frontier Thrive is not the place where Innovation happens. One of the more interesting things I've seen is there's been an exodus from San Francisco during the pandemic partially due to the pandemic but partially due to their horrible governance with just an awful da won't prosecute crime and a board of education that doesn't believe in education and so on and and just a huge homelessness problem.
1:36:26
Just multiply 2 multiplied and basically unparalleled single-party rule, which is never a good idea. Whether it's left or right, but in this case, it's harsh left. And as I've seen since go crumble, you know, eventually I think people will start coming back, the network effect. There is very powerful. Unfortunately, this case, but it's hard to argue with reality. But I have noticed that the crypto teams are gone like the crypto Innovation. Even to the extent that there, you could have argued two years ago.
1:36:55
So it was a struggle. Yes. The majority of crypto Innovation was outside of the San Francisco Bay area, but a large chunk of the of the high-quality companies were coming out of the Bay Area and that range from regulatory one regularly, once a coinbase to dex's like dydx and even, you know, salon and Phantom. And a lot of these things were built and operated out of the Bay Area.
1:37:19
But now I think the it's very clear that very few crypto companies in their right mind are going to start in the San Francisco Bay Area. Let alone the United States. Sorry in the United States. Let alone the San Francisco Bay area. So I do think the crypto Genies out of the bottle with three Innovation is going more and more Global are certainly going, you know, Cross City. And that's not going to come back. And I don't think the actions of regulators are going to be helpful. I'm a huge fan of divided, government and gridlock.
1:37:49
Sleep because I view government as being good at a few things or on public goods like National Defense and Roads and that kind of stuff. But mostly what we spend money on is not that and the huge number of laws that we pass. As soon as something becomes interesting means that we restrict the frontier. We restrict the opportunities and we sort of freeze Innovation and that's why there's been, you know, Peter Peter teal famously ass like, you know, where my flying cars and Rockets. Well, it's because the
1:38:19
I got involved, you know, why are the prices of healthcare and real estate and education skyrocketing while everything else is deflating on the government got involved. So generally, I think it should be left in the private sector and obviously the government can have some work in ensuring true competition. Although they're pretty incompetent there too, but it would be nice. For example, if they got Facebook and Twitter to open up their apis or something of the sort, but no, or if they would be nice if they kind of broke, you know, Apple's App Store Monopoly, but I'm not counting on them to figure out.
1:38:49
That properly or at least not until like it's way too late in the wrong way and so on. But that said, I think the government that governs best is the one that is that govern slowly that makes very few changes and tries not to fix things because you know, when it tries to fix something, it generally ends up breaking it. Look at the TSA regime that we live under. Now, the transportation Safety Authority, now that you medical industrial complex will probably be wearing masks and airplanes for a really long time.
1:39:19
I'm their travel, just get slower and slower. Anyway, this is not meant to be a polemic against government but I like divided government and because then it gets out of the way and let the private sector innovate. Anyway, probably too much some of this topic, but I think that web 3 is web 3 is. I wouldn't say design because not designed by any single person, but I would say it is an emergent property of the internet and it is the internet's immune response to over-regulation. And so it is designed to resist.
1:39:49
Relation and the government's are try to over-regulate web 3, will find, that it slips away from them. And it takes its massive wealth creation, and Innovation elsewhere and the u.s. Is no longer, the default place where Innovation is going to happen in web 3, the default place for Innovation. Web 3 is the internet and the internet is
1:40:07
everywhere.
1:40:11
Yeah, for the first time in human history, we have this thing called a tradition of criticism, which perhaps is the defining characteristic of the Enlightenment for the rest of human history. And in Tradition was to keep things the same. That's what a tradition is. You traditionally do the same thing over and over again, but uniquely our society by which, I mean the United States. Canada, Europe, Australia, we have this tradition of criticism where over time things change.
1:40:39
And it's sustainable and it's stable and that's really unique. And I mention it now in the context of what you've just been saying, because there are so many attacks on it. Now. There are so many attacks on the traditions of criticism. People involved in cancer culture. People saying that we should censor this that or the other people imposing regulations where they don't need to be regulations. These all act to prevent criticism to prevent new innovation. And these are anti Enlightenment ideas and we have to guard.
1:41:09
Stalin. If you have a chance to stand up against something, then stand up against over-regulation stand up against any impingement on Free Speech United States, you know, unfortunately, for me as an outsider is a person who is not in the United States, the most disappointing thing about the United States is how anti-American. So many Americans are, they're really, they're really against things like free speech, not all of them, of course, but there is this this unique feature of the United States that we don't have else.
1:41:39
We're stray, Leah. Doesn't have free speech to the some of us claim we do but we don't, we do not have a Bill of Rights in the same way that America does. So you really need to value that you need to understand that you are in that tradition of criticism. You are following on from the early Enlightenment thinkers and of all the countries in the world. Still, the United States is preserving the best parts of the Enlightenment, where, unfortunately others in that tradition aren't doing it as quite as well.
1:42:07
Yeah, the first amendment the Second Amendment are quite unique in that states and every now and then some people get triggered in my mention the say, well, I'm really free and they don't sort some European country and the answer is no, you're not. You can be arrested for saying things that are against the so-called law, by the way, even the fire in a crowded theater thing is bad law. Most people will tell you that that was done in the context of draft dodging in the war. It was a bad ruling and would probably not survive today. Free speech in the United States at least constitutionally is very, very protected, but because of the monopolization,
1:42:37
Of media by small number of social media companies, who themselves then engage in politicking because they protected by section 230 of the communications decency act, which makes them not liable as Publishers, even though they censor and choose what content goes into platform. They get this weird protection for the government. That was meant to stop child porn. But then of course, got abused and used. So that now quality second-rate, failed, journalist joint, trust and safety teams for all these different platforms.
1:43:07
And then they tell us what they think is, right and wrong. So now all discourse in creativity and debate and criticism is, is relegated to what a second-rate failed journalist on one of these platforms thinks and of course, they're just going to listen to the academics, you know, anyone with a PhD at them their name, which is kind of a BS credential passed on by another PS. Another PhD in circular reasoning and so I'm not afraid to call them out because you know, I figure I can cancel at some point anyway, but I just feel like the the attacks
1:43:36
Free Speech are the single most disgusting feature of modern, technology and modern society and the fact that Twitter and Facebook sensor so often. And so freely, you know, if I could wish anyone, if I could wish anyone out of existence, I would wish to trust and safety teams and their jobs out of existence. So I think censorship is no place in these platforms. We are absolutely capable of taking care of ourselves. If they just let us publish And subscribe, blockless. We could pick our own editors. We could we could you know, mute and blocker.
1:44:06
Our own accounts on an individual basis and we share them with people that we trusted and this whole idea that we need to be babysat is just absurd. And I think history will look very unkindly upon these people. Anyway, I think I should probably wrap it up. It's gone on for an hour 45. It's been good. Catching up with everybody. Thanks for tuning in. I hope it was useful. I think I recorded this if I didn't do this wrong, so people should be able to replay it. I'm sure somebody will put it on YouTube. If you are going to Tweet out of
1:44:37
Please be kind with the excerpts try and produce try and replicate the context. And remember I, you know, if you're going to strawman, you will get blocked. So be kind. Thank you, everybody. Thank you Brett, especially for showing up and thank you for waiting and take care of Buddy and apologies, the Joseph who accidentally bounce the beginning when I was trying to figure out the controls. Take care. Bye. Bye.
ms