Infinite Doomscroll Capitalism: Market Efficiency or Eternal Torture?? w/ signüll

Transcript

YouTube automatic captions, grouped into readable passages. Names and wording may contain transcription errors; the recording is the source of truth.

00:00 Do you guys know how much it costs to do like a testosterone check at Lab Court? >> I have no idea, man. >> I think it's like 40 bucks or something, right? >> Dude, it's $500. >> What? >> There's no way you're getting adversely selected. >> I swear to God, >> I'm going to keep it real. This is like you just walked in and you're like, "Dude, do you know how much it costs to get a drink?" And you're like, "It cost $100." It's like, dude, yeah, man. >> I literally went in for my physical and I asked my doctor. I'm like, "Hey, I want to get my testosterone check. >> It's very high." Do you have like a normal doctor or do you have like a special doctor? >> Normal like a primary care. I have one medical. >> Dude, I just got my full I just got full blood labs. They took like six vials of for like 180 bucks and they took near like >> signal. I'm like I just think there's a

00:45 0% chance that you go and see like an average doctor. >> Wait, what? >> I just think that the >> You think I'm I'm I'm going to like a really high-end doctor that's like tonier. Remember how we started this podcast and we were like, "Uh, hey, maybe you want to find a smaller room so there's less echoes." And you were like, "I don't have any small rooms, right?" I >> Yeah. Wait, can you tell us? Can you tell us? Let's make him say it. So, you come into the podcast and it's like slightly echoey and we're like fiddling with audio and like saying hi and talking a little bit about the format. What exactly did you say when I asked, "Do you potentially have a room that has like more things inside of it or is smaller?" What did you say exactly? I mean, I think I don't know. I don't remember, but I said something like, "Uh, I'm so sorry. This is going to sound douchy, but I don't really have

01:31 like a small room. I I only have I only have 17t ceilings, guys. Jesus Christ. Sue me. Okay, sue me. >> 17 foot ceilings." >> Signal lives in some like modern like Greek like transhumanist Greeko like uh type like AI generated. >> Is it actually 17 ft ceilings? That's like a >> It's I would say most of the house is that, but then I think some of them probably are about 12 to 13 ft maybe. >> I can't tell if it's or not. I legitimately can't tell. >> That's I I like high ceilings, guys. >> There is 0% chance that you go to a normal doctor signal. Like actually >> No, no, no. Even this is the other

02:16 problem with this. Even if you do go to a normal doctor, by going to them, you transform them into a scammer doctor is what I'm guessing, right? You could go to the most normal doctor in the world and they're gonna be like, "Yeah, that testosterone sample that's going to be like uh like checks notes like $4,000, bro." The doctor the doctor like keeps like saying prices that feel outrageous and then signal keeps like not even blinking and the doctor just like walks into a back room and like smacks his head and goes like stupid stupid like no I could have made so much more. It's like a it's like a white person traveling to like a a third world country where they automatically jack up the prices or whatever as soon as it's

03:01 like oh Mr. It's Lucas. It It's no longer It's no longer 10,000 rupees. It's like 50,000. >> I paid like >> And then Lucas also feels like he got like a scam bargain. >> No, they will make Lucas feel so good about himself because he he will feel like he got a deal cuz they they typically the price. Okay, a normal person that price would have been like 500 and then they're going to tell Lucas it's going to be like 10,000 and then and then when Lucas says [ __ ] you, no. They're going to be like, "Oh, you can have it for 5,000." And it's still a, you know, he'll feel good about it because he feels like he got a deal and then the person feels really good about it because he just totally scammed the [ __ ] out of it because he just increased that price by 10x or 12. >> I had my purchasing moment in uh in Taipei. There was this guy who had uh a

03:48 price for I I was buying like a computer or something like that and I just walked in and I said, "Yeah, I'll take that thing." Uh and then he starts like haggling with me over the price and I was just like, "Dude, just let me [ __ ] buy it." Uh, and I I didn't even realize what was happening, but like after like 30 seconds after I was like, "Oh, god damn it." Like this was such an exorbitantly high price that he expected me to like barter with him over it, but I was just like just give me the [ __ ] thing I'm willing to pay. And I like completely he was and he gave the worst part is that he gave me a second shot, right? Like he tried to tell me what was going on. >> He's like, "No, dude. You don't get it. were supposed to go back and >> one of my ex-girlfriends uh we were in Morocco and um I remember we sort of got

04:35 into a little bit of a fight because um she went to go to a shop and she just she was like, "Oh, I love these little leather sandals or whatever." And uh the guy was like, "Oh, this is XYZ price." And she was like, "Okay, here you go." And I was like, "Wait, what what are you doing? It's not how it works here. Like we have" and she was like, "No, I don't care. I just want to buy them. I don't want to deal with anything. And I was like, wait, that's not how it works. You're you're violating you're violating >> you're violating you're violating like Somalian commercial law. Like >> it's like probably extremely rude. It's like you're kind of flexing on somebody if you don't negotiate. Like I >> go back and forth once or twice, right? It's like disrespect. >> So I was like, wait, I mean this is it was remarkable and her entire world was never about bargaining and or you know

05:21 haggling and whatever. Um >> women hate this [ __ ] Women absolutely are like uh at least western women they like I I had a lot of people who came from >> it feels really icky for western women to do this. >> Yeah, they they came from the US and they would visit Taipei and they would Okay, so when I was living in Taipei, I didn't have a bank account in Taiwan. And so you can't without a bank account in Taiwan, you cannot use uh PC Home24, which is like their version of Amazon. So if you want to buy something, you frequently just have to go to the store to get it, right? But like uh they don't have like the place where you go to get text uh tech supplies is this tech bazaar like Guanghao digital plaza I believe. Uh and you literally have to go

06:07 and barter with people in this like sevenstory building over like a screen protector for your phone or something, right? So you have to go and it's like a 30 minute cab down there and then you have to go up to story four and then you have to barter with this person and their whole thing is like it's hyper optimized for just tech bazaar bartering because they assume well if you're coming here you want to barter like you want the experience right because otherwise you would just use Taiwanese Amazon and you're not doing that right so you're just trapped into this thing of infinite bartering over like $4 items whenever and it's like you can't just go and buy the USBC cable, right? Or like the weird HDMI adapter. You need to go barter with somebody. It was like the

06:54 worst part of every month. Welcome to the plausibly deniable experience, sponsored by Poly Market, Zcash, Network Press, and Citizen X. We have on with us today a very special guest, one of the top posters, the greatest posters ever, Signal. Welcome. Do you want to uh introduce yourself in any way? >> Yeah. Well, first of all, I I just want to say uh this is great. I've never really done pods before. Um I personally think podcast equipment should be taxed heavily, but that's just my personal take >> like as some kind of social ill. >> I think podcast >> the hours wasted. It's like a it's like a like a syntax like it's like

07:39 cigarettes. Like nothing good is going to come of this. No, I mean in general it's fascinating the culture around podcast. I mean your podcast is obviously an exception. It's wonderful. I listen to good all the time. So I appreciate you guys having me on >> the girl reading this. >> Um no, my friends and I joke about like whenever we're together at the end we're like damn that could have been fun if it was recorded. Other people would have enjoyed that conversation because we just spent the entire time making jokes and laughing. And then we realized if other people had actually heard our conversation, we would not be a able to exist on planet Earth in any way, shape, or form. >> You would be really surprised, man. You would be extremely surprised by how much you can exist while recording everything

08:25 that you say in your life. >> It's it's this it's incredible, man. This is why I hate the goddamn meta meta glasses or whatever because it just creates this sort of discomfort when somebody has one of those things on and you're like, "Be I can't be myself." And uh with these all these AI recorders and whatnot, it's just a fascinating time to be alive like Granola or any of the meeting recording software just casually somebody's recording in the background and you don't even know it. Um and it's a fascinating world. And going back to the podcast point, the joke that I I was like, I don't know. I mean, I I listen to I've listened to Caller Daddy and all these other pods and I'm like, "Oh my lord, >> wow, that's like actual like pod slop.

09:10 This is crazy." >> Like total slop. >> Well, I mean, this is what this is literally what people are consuming, dude. Like, it is absolutely nuts. Like, if you look at the top 10 podcasts, right? Like, what are people actually listening to and consuming? This is the type of content. And then all these clips are going completely viral. If you don't listen to the end to end episode, the the clips themselves go viral on Instagram reels or Tik Tok. And so the zeitgeist or the population is consuming roughly the same content, the same top x number of people are producing this and that is proliferating. So man, very few people are setting the agenda on on on sort of the what and what constitutes as part of the zeitgeist and what people are focused on or what not. And it's uh it's fascinating power laws. I mean

09:56 that's what the internet does is it removes a lot of friction to create ultimate optionality like everywhere no matter what. >> How do how do you think because this is something that we've talked about a lot on here actually is just that like every single internet technology appears to improve liquidity conditions and decrease friction. Uh and our kind of thesis is that like uh generally humans do this and then they say oh no like actually both of those things were kind of good. Uh >> I mean you guys know that quote where it says traditions were were just um experiments that worked and so they turned into kind of like traditions or whatnot and then traditions are what kind of held society um in check if you

10:41 will. I guess there were some barriers to entry barriers to to a lot of different things. There was shame. There was all these like feedback loops which I think capitalism plus the internet kind of removes right. It remove it is the ultimate combination of removing any obstacle in your way. Like I went to the store and there is a diet cream cherry coke. Okay. Think about >> the new one. Yeah. >> So there are three different things in that in that that remove complete friction. Okay. Okay, well you you don't want to have caffeine. Great. Or it was caffeine free as well, by the way, which is absolutely ridiculous. So, okay, you don't want to have caffeine, we've created caffeine free. Oh, you want cherry? Great. We've got cherry. Oh, you

11:26 can't have sugar. We get recreated diet. And that all exists in one product. Imagine how much friction that product removes. You could drink diet coke, diet cherry, cream, coke any time of the day. And what is that as a result of? It's just removing barriers to access of that product. I think there's one that's actually stevia, too. Like I think we're thinking of I think we're thinking of similar products here. And there's one that's stevia. So for people who don't like the artificial sweeteners, they also have a zerocalorie stevia version. >> Yeah. They'll make one without like water or something. >> They'll find a way. >> So this this whole process goes through everything, right? And we've done this with uh we've done this with like dating is the classic one where you don't want to leave your house, right? You want to

12:11 sit there gaming while smoking weed, but you still want to find love. Uh, and now you can kind of do it, but it's like this [ __ ] up version. It's it's the same thing as the Coke, right? Like there is a product for you. You do get it, but it's a very much like the monkeykey's paw curls, right? Like it's not what you want here. One of the one of the things that people need to I think one of the distinctions here is that there's a um the everything in the world has either a single opt-in or a dual optin, right? So the single optin is when you just go and can acquire anything with pure capital, which is like buying a Coke is a single opt-in. You don't have to ask anybody else. You just opt in to buy that product. Whereas a dating app or anything else that

12:56 requires more more human elements, that's a dual opt-in system, which means both individuals have to opt in. And that creates a huge level of complexity. So like if you were to talk to, you know, the guy who invented the swipe functionality, left swipe um is a no and a right swipe is a yes. And then now both individuals have to do a right swipe to be able to even chat with each other. That's a that's a canonical dual opt-in system. And that creates a lot more complexity. So like when you talk about the coke example that's a easy right so that's why I think a lot of people tend to treat the the the sort of problem spaces that they are in as a shopping problem. So canonically if you go on the internet everything is kind of a shopping problem. you know, it's it's

13:41 kind of like if you go to the shopping funnel, there's a discovery and a you know, uh consideration all this whole loop in the shopping funnel consideration and then you know, obviously the transaction or whatnot. And so a lot of people think that dating is kind of like a shopping thing where people are like, "Oh, I just need to like find this right person, add them to cart, check out, and they're going to get delivered to me." Um, you know, but it's a dual dual opt-in thing. So that's a very different type of transaction. Whereas, you know, I I mean I was on Amazon today and I I ordered one product and it came in in one hour at my doorstep and that was absolutely insane. I I can I mean and I was at I was doing a little market research for a product that I was like interested in. I tweeted about which was like salad dressing

14:26 which was protein. So I went to Costco. I'd never been to Costco in a long time. I went to Walmart and I I was just browsing these aisles for fun and the amount of choice is insane, dude. I don't know if you guys have have been to a grocery store like a Walmart plus or whatever. >> I'm just a huge Costco fan. We actually have had multiple Costco bits on here because the the entire premise of Costco as just super capitalism in so far as it's like uh they're going to do like Chinese level like minimum order quantities but instead of saying like oh yeah you have to hit our minimum order quantity. They're just like the order quantity is one and it's the biggest package in the world, right? Like if you purchase this it's 100 salad dressings in one enormous

15:12 >> old dude. >> Yeah. It's like you get a year's worth of salad dressing. I think >> the volume and scale, yeah, is ridiculous, man. I can't believe it. And then you see all these people with giant shopping carts that are completely full of stuff. >> The best part, the best part is the Costco shopping carts that mog every other shopping cart. Like you can go every other local grocery store and they have these little [ __ ] carts, right? And they always even they have like the [ __ ] carts that are shorter, too. Uh and and then Costco is just like, "We have one size. Guess what size it is? Guess what size? And it's like XXXL, right? Like you can barely fit it through the door. When I was living in Taipei for a very long time, there was a Taiwanese Costco that I would go to and

15:57 it's just like no matter where Kirkland goes, they're just the best. Like nobody does it this well. They did Asian food better than all of the Asians. You would get like the most absurd Oh. Oh, the one thing is the rotisserie chickens were actually more expensive in uh in Taipei than they are in the US, but everything else is pretty good. All pretty cheap. >> Factory farming, baby. Although I guess they probably do that in Taipei as well, but American factory farming is next level. >> It's it's next level. I think the one thing I'll I'll like maybe push back on a little is I don't think it's like I think people use capitalism as kind of this catchall, but I think it's more this is more the result of like optimization processes that also like technically occur like if there's not private capital to to 90% of people this like this distinction means nothing. But

16:43 I I think it's just like when you hyperoptimize a thing like you know let's say you really enjoy I don't know you know I was talking with my mom the other day she's doing like pottery nowadays. that you really enjoy like doing pottery and so you start a pottery business and you're like okay I'm going to optimize this a little like I'm going to get an industrial like kiln and you know whatever going to upgrade I'm going to like hire a couple assistants I dislike the sales process so I'll like hire a person to do sales oh like you know now my my time is like better spent managing and like at some point you stop doing pottery and you're doing a whole other thing and this happens I think for everyone right and and like across every function of life like if you try to hyperoptimize and cut away all the frictions at some point without realizing you're now not doing the thing that you originally started doing and it's it's become an entirely different thing and you might enjoy that other thing but you also might not like and

17:29 this is why you get people who like build these huge empires and then go like hey I'm quitting I'm selling this and I'm starting like one little shop because I realized what I really enjoyed was this little shop and I think that happens with like dating apps and whatnot right it's like it it moves from like oh you know I enjoy like talking to a girl that I'm interested to to like wait what if we remove the friction I didn't have to go to a party I didn't have to like get her number it's just a dual optin And you know, I don't even feel the sting of rejection really heavily. Um, you know, I get to to choose from this like buffet table of human capital. Um, and at some point you start removing so many things and then, you know, it's it's an entirely different thing. You you start with the idea that I want to get married and then you eventually wind up two years later with like a spreadsheet measuring like 372 personality traits where you're

18:14 tracking all of your last 192 dates trying to rank them with your like algorithmic scale and you're like wait a second like >> this is not actually related to the part where I find a wife like something's gone extremely wrong. the the contrarian or the the sort of counter take here is yeah totally agree with you you know capitalism is effectively a system that is designed to remove friction in everyday life everyday access make things and generally that's a good thing uh but I think a lot of life is where friction is actually quite valuable that actually makes things more valuable if if something was just so easily accessible that that has inherently less value it becomes kind of commoditized And so if you think about it, um when

19:01 capitalism starts to remove friction on creating relationships or marriages or whatnot through these entities, um you know, you would think, okay, great, more people meeting, more people, you know, sort of interacting. It's easy. These apps make it so easy. However, the when people go to value that, it's now inherently less valuable because it's just too easy. And so some of the times when capitalism or the idea of removing friction uh turns out to be a bad thing as opposed to a good thing. And there's certain areas um generally I think it's good. I mean capitalism makes uh haird dryer uh $5 at Walmart. That's that's ridiculous. Like it is absolutely insane

19:46 to think about the fact that you have access to a very relatively sophisticated product that most people didn't really have anything 100 years ago and now everybody can buy for five bucks. Um that is phenomening now. I don't need a hair dryer. I need a hair growth serum. And the hair growth serum cost $100 million now. >> Turkey making turkeyy's making hair transplant easily accessible and useful to everybody. Like, have you guys seen how easy it is to get a hair transplant in Turkey? They pay for your hotel. >> I have. I'm gonna do it later. >> Bro, you have the greatest hair ever. >> That's not true. >> You guys know what massitor Botox is? >> I did that to myself. Actually, this was one of the first things. >> It turns out a lot of people um uh use

20:32 mass Botox to improve their jaw lines, right? Because it tightens their muscles or whatnot. And this is a very common thing. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Massive Botox is also utilized to you know they it's utilized for multiple things like it's utilized to treat like medical conditions where people have like a clicking on the jaw or whatnot. Um, or like >> I did it to stop I did it to stop my teeth grinding, but I stopped after I used the bottle because it was my assumption that if I keep Botoxing my jaw, I will eventually just atrophy the jaw muscle and I will look like an emaciated uh >> well so it turns out, you know, it's a medical procedure for for treating a variety of symptoms with the jaw, whatever, but it actually has some aesthetics because it tightens your jawline. It it sort of prevents that muscle from moving around. And so a lot of people will try to, you know, fake

21:18 some of these issues just so the insurance will pay for mass or botox. Um, so they they access the aesthetic version of it uh while actually not having a real medical condition. But it is actually like a hugely like popular aesthetic thing. nor like a lot of if you look at if you ask a girl like in New York or whatever I'll show you like oh I get you know 24 units in my forehead or you know 10 units in my um uh crow's eye crow's feet or whatever right um and then and then like five units in my massitors or and that's like a monthly like not a monthly every quarterly thing I guess but it's a very common procedure now and a lot of people will um I knew somebody who had who who didn't really have any jaw issues, but

22:03 she would be like, "Oh, I I I my dentist prescribed this to me, so therefore I you know, insurance will now pay for it." So, it was actually pretty interesting. >> I just did it myself because I went and uh when I realized that you could buy Korean Botox for like no money whatsoever, I >> What the hell is Korean Botox? >> You You literally just buy a bottle of the bo botulin toxin or bot whatever. >> You just inject it yourself. >> Yeah. Wow. So, I I went on and I was like, there's surely got to be like a tutorial for this thing, right? And then all of the videos that I found, I looked at the people doing the Botox self- injection or the Botox injection videos, like the uh how-tos, and I was like, no offense to this person, but this is this is like within the bottom 25th

22:48 percentile of intelligence of the human race. If they can figure it out, surely I must be able to. >> You guys know uh this company called Peachy by any chance? know PG is like they have all these like studios and it's basically a Botox shop and it's like a Starbucks for Botox and uh the injectors there don't really need to be that skilled because they have an iPad app and so what you do is you walk in and you take a picture of yourself you just it just takes a picture and the iPad app is intelligent enough to tell the injector where to inject the units based on your photo and it's really really smart so it removes all of the friction for an injector to figure out where and exactly how to inject um somebody Botox and they just turned it into a software problem. They took the human element roughly out of it. >> That's kind of funny. I mean, the only thing that were the only things that

23:33 were a little bit confusing are when you have multiple different muscles layered on top of each other and you have to figure out how deep you need to go in to get to one. uh like I can't believe injected on their uh their eyebrows and uh I think this is one of the specifically more dangerous areas to do it because I think there's a couple layers and uh if you hit the wrong thing you wind up just like sinking your eyebrows. >> Yeah, it's called droopy eyebrows. Like it's actually a very common side effect. Um and also you get the surprise face. Do you guys know about the surprise face? So if you >> that was >> where you always look surprised because you were always surprised like Yep. >> Um it that is you're right that is actually a really dangerous area rough roughly because and also I there's a hu

24:18 even if they inject it properly the there's a non-trivial chance you'll get this droopiness for at least like 24 hours or what whatever um given the fact that there's all this like neurotoxicity going on in your muscles or whatever. But >> how how do you feel about do you have an opinion? I feel like you would have one on like the fact that people are just injecting these things that are like very toxic, right? Like famously some of the most toxic chemicals. >> I mean is Go for it. >> Not not to be a not to be that guy of like citing my own tweets, >> but but I posted about this. I was like, "Isn't it fascinating that I meet people that are like completely healthy eating organic, you know, they they take care of their bodies or whatever and then they go and inject a neurotoxin pretty regularly into their face and

25:04 >> this is literally just Lucas." >> And it's like it's like 80% of us also didn't get the COVID vac but will inject themselves with like the most >> the trade-offs that humans make are really incredibly fascinating. like the way they think about, you know, everything. Man, I don't know if the human mind is made for uh making tradeoffs. Like it's just a hard thing to do. Like you're going to effectively do whatever you desire to do and you just try to convince yourself that it's good for you uh in whatever mechanic that you have your >> There's something kind of fouian to it, right? Like the modern condition, I think, is like very fouian where you you have to take all these trade-offs because other people are taking these trade-offs and so if you don't, you're like the only idiot who's not doing it.

25:49 And so maybe 30 years from now we all get like face cancer or something, right? Everyone who's doing this stuff. Um but it's like are you gonna be the only idiot who has like 2% more wrinkles on your chin, man? >> Yeah. Do you guys know about like >> it's like we're all jumping off the bridge and it's like yeah in theory like once we hit the bottom it's like lame and we all go splat on the water and die but like you're missing out on the sick party in the air, right? Like come on. >> The bridge jumping problem, right? is, you know, your mom will always be like, "If everybody else jumped off the bridge, would you do it too, Lucas?" And you're like, "Actually, if everybody else was jumping off, I would probably just do it and assume that it's okay." Like, I'm going to be honest, I know myself well enough at this point. I would also just jump.

26:35 >> Lucas would not jump. Lucas would like look up on like a bunch of Korean forums like about the optimal jumping like uh like the optimal jumping forum and like >> I would do so much research on the optimal jumping launch angle that by the time everyone was dead I would have realized that it was a bad idea. >> I I think the >> you would still do it though. You would do it and you would like more spectacularly than everybody else. >> Um >> and you the whole time while you're doing it you'd be like all these people wrong and like look none of their organs like the Yeah. the you were you were the best jumper off that bridge, bro. >> Um, you know, going back to the capitalism thing, it does remove friction in terms of the supply side, but what what it also does is it creates demand where it was necessarily didn't

27:21 exist before. So, a canonical example is going back to Botox. So the number one thing the way that Botox is marketed now especially to like uh downstream like to younger and younger people is that it is it is you there's this whole terminology called preventative Botox right and so the whole point is you you don't even need wrinkles to get Botox. You just are doing it therefore you don't get wrinkles in the future which has created a a larger market. So the entire mechanic for creating more demand is also built into the entire infra which is you know you try to increase that TAM as much as possible. So like girls who are like 14, 15 are getting

28:06 preventative. No, >> no shot. 14, 15. Have you actually I've heard of like 18, 19, 15. >> Obviously, you know, it's hard to to get >> it's hard to tell what's real and what's not real, but are there like 14, 15y old girls on TikTok that are like promoting Botox company is making an AI influencer pretending to be a 12-year-old girl saying that she's getting preventative Botox to like maximally maximally knock the age at which people try this down? only found some measures except like a Botox guy. >> Even if it's 18, even if it's 18 to 21 or whatever, that's still quite young. Like you don't really like typically Botox was utilized to to treat wrinkles and to tighten up your skin. And so the idea of preventative Botox is just incredible to me. You know, that is now

28:52 downstream you created an entirely new market for the same problem. >> And then they'll sell you the cure 10 years from now, right? It's like it's like that meme like uh you know, they They they outlaw the cure so they can sell us the poison. >> Extremely Reddit memes. >> Actually, this is a good the way that we can connect this back is that none of this is nefarious or evil or anything like that. Like I think it's just people catering to demand and supply as it exists. And >> um I mean that's like kind of I think that depends how you look at it, right? Like I mean like certainly like selling arms to some guy in Iran. I don't know how far you can get off with like like ethics wise being like oh I was just catering to existing supply and demand deficits you know like I was just there was a lot of demand for AK you know for

29:38 AKs unmarked bullets in Iran like >> that sounds less for 12-year-old girls bro like it actually sounds less morally uh quanderous to sell illegal weaponry to a foreign militia than it does to convince your own nation's 12year-olds that they have to do Botox I think it's evil, but I think the way they get you is like all evil is pretty mundane, right? It's not like some executive is like, hm, how do we really destroy the psyche and like physical health of 12-year-old girls? It's more like, you know, how do we increase like user minutes by 10%. And you know, that just kind of, you know, at a certain point it's like, okay, yeah, we we need to start showing them like this insane stuff on their feed. Like, yeah, we can't show them their friends on their

30:24 Instagram feed. we need to show them some girl who's like 30% more attractive than them every single time they open the app. >> It just goes back to it goes back to our very first point which was incentive structures, right? Like >> you don't you don't really see them anymore or or can even feel them oftent times and so these individuals are just operating at whatever incentives that they have around them. Um the same thing with like Facebook or or dating apps or whatever, right? their incentive structures are yeah maybe time spent um you know increasing happiness is probably one of them but maybe that takes a little bit of a backseat because of the fact that they have to cater to advertisers and advertisements and therefore time spent makes a lot more um uh a lot more sense in terms of what to

31:10 prioritize. So I mean it goes it's funny how all of this stuff is just a connect connective tissue goes from incentive structure to product creation to demand creation to fulfilling that demand in some mechanic and then that cycle continues over and over again and ironically it actually does make life much much much better more often than not. So, do you guys remember when um the Cambridge Analytica stuff happened with Facebook when Trump got elected the first time around and people were like, "Oh my god, >> that was the most insane like nothing burger." >> Yeah. So, people were like, "Oh my god, Facebook." >> It's that's exactly like the Cayman papers. It's like uh the Panama paper, sorry. It's like one of those things where like people just get angry about it because they just hate like people just hate Trump or they just hate whatever or they just hate rich people.

31:56 Um, but when you actually explain like the morality of it and you're like, "Okay, what would you have them do differently, it's like there is just consistently no answer, you know?" >> You know, I think um >> you got we got to summarize this for viewers. What are we referring to here? >> Um, well, this was the this was the sort of um thing that the Cambridge Analytica took a lot of Facebook data and helped the Trump campaign potentially uh target individuals better or whatnot. And people were really pissed off that their private data was went from Facebook to Cambridge Analytica to you know helping Trump >> Trump campaign >> Trump campaign and um and that was that was a fascinating world and you're like well how valuable was that data like what was the interesting part of it and it turns out there was not that much uh

32:42 out of it that was like not readily available or publicly accessible or whatnot but yet people brought out their pitchforks and really went ham because the narrative was not really fun or friendly at the time where Trump got elected. Um, and I guess I I say this point because it's like, well, how valuable is your data, right? Like I think I believe in privacy. I think people have a right to privacy and what not. And in general, like I think look, the the tech companies have a much larger incentive to protect your data and not sell it or give it away or leak it, whatnot, because that is entirely in line with their incentive structures. if that if that ever changes or if there's ever a leak at OpenAI or Anthropic or

33:29 Google or whatnot that has a profoundly negative impact. So from that perspective even as a startup look we I have a consumer startup that requires people to potentially give access to their to their world and uh you know that's going to be a really interesting job for me to be able to communicate why as a small threeperson startup people should trust us and why they should give us some of access to their data and why we can help them and make their lives much better as a result of it. And that's that's going to be a challenge, but the way to frame >> I don't think it'll actually be that much of a challenge. I think we're kind of in the era of uh I'm very much so like AI I think kind of ushers in this post privacy era uh where everybody has just

34:14 accepted that it's over kind of. Uh >> and there's always going to be like the guy using like an encrypted XMPPP server to like message his like cousin and stuff like that. eye. But for the most part, I think everyone is just like it's a little bit cooked because you can take all of my writing samples across all of my internet use and triangulate exactly who I am uh over the years just based on writing style and like word incidents of uh you know just like how frequently you use XYZ >> which is famously how they got uh that's how they got Uncle Ted and that's how they got the >> which is also funny because um it protects the AI slopers, right? Like if you're if you're just writing slop with AI, then you're ironically not

34:59 able to be triangulated. >> Yeah. >> Um >> I mean you can also you can also fight the concept of like a bunch of spies like using like the most LLM speech possible like uh >> they do though. That's the thing. This is the thing you know this is why people don't realize second third order effects of all of this stuff, right? Like we think AI slop writing is trash or whatever. It's not fun to read. But maybe if you wanted to preserve privacy and communicate with individuals, you're probably going to try to just go through an LLM that will offiscate whatever you want to say into into words that are not triangulated or triangulatable or whatever. Uh which is ironic. >> Sam Oldman, champion champion of

35:44 privacy. >> If you're like a CIA operative, uh you're going to just produce a lot of AI slop. Wait, actually I have a question. Would you guys give email access to like a random AI company? >> You have to explain what you mean by email like read or write >> access for example >> to everything? No, Sean. No, not on like a on like a sub email. Doesn't Gemini just already have this? >> In what sense? Gemini does this very like >> I think in theory >> it's it's like a very over parrot that comes up and whenever I'm talking to Gemini I'll I'll be having like a regular conversation and then it will randomly be like >> I looked through your emails and it seems that based on these things you may be referring to and I'm like oh that's like not like I didn't tell you access

36:32 at some point >> I think you probably >> I think it would be insane for you probably connected it would be insane for Google to default connect it would be all that stuff you Like I 100% connected it, but it's weird that it does this even in situations where I don't call it, right? Like it like usually LLMs are very lazy about making the tool call. So the fact that it like, "Hey buddy, like I just wanted to let you know based on your last three months of communications with these people, that's a little uh unsettling." >> That's just like the the creator of Gemini has like an intra company like beef with the like product manager who runs like Gmail right now. Oh, and so he want like there's all these like funny things that affect like billions of people that are just like someone at Google in one department hated someone at Google at another department. And so

37:17 now there's like massive, you know, like billions of users are affected downstream from this. like that one guy uh that one like extremely woke guy who was like no we can't have like scenic routes on Google because that would mean less people would go through like you know like at risk areas less people would >> the most dangerous parts of town >> you're diverting walk through the south side of Chicago anymore street in the entire universe which is bad >> it's like no one would go through you know Oblock anymore man you know, they lose all this festive social energy. Um, I have you talked about what you're doing, Signal, by the way? You know, do do you want to feel comfortable? >> Uh, yeah. So, one thing is we're going

38:02 to try to launch in a couple days, actually. >> And, um, >> well, you should talk about it then, man, because by the time this will be out like next week. >> Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Um, >> our act chill away. >> Should we do it? Okay. Uh, maybe we we can >> We're interested. >> Let's see how it goes. Um what we're what we're up to is um uh we're building an agentic home screen for your iPhone. It's actually a pretty cool product. And you guys, you know, the the the underlying thing is your iPhone, if you look at it at a glance, hasn't changed in 20 years. It's a bunch of static icons that exist. And you know, you can't really get information at a glance or things that happen automatically as a result of you just looking at your phone

38:48 or whatever in the background. And uh we're building a cool product that's like an agentic home screen. It utilizes widgets. And so it's two simultaneous widgets working r uh together to to and it's a bunch of agents that run on your email, your health data, your finance. you can just connect whatever you feel comfortable with and um it helps you sort of synthesize uh signal from the noise and it's all just lives on your home screen. These agents start, you know, going through your email and drafting replies that might need replies or summarizing things that might need summarization, producing reading digests, um trying to complete your reminders on your reminders. Actually, one of the interesting examples that I

39:33 personally had was I needed to renew my passport. And so, I just added it to my reminders, a renew passport, and the AI agent that we have that runs and listens to your reminders, um, found a form that I needed to fill out, filled out the form, told me, "Here, here's the filled out form. You just need a passport photo and here's where you submit it, and all just works in line." Um, so we're building a really fun agentic product that lives directly on your home screen. And I'm I'm very excited for it. It's it's the easiest mechan easiest way to for normal people to use AI agents. We don't even call them agents. We have these library of like you can turn on some of these agents, turn them on depending on what you feel comfortable with. Like for example, we have a health

40:18 agent that's really cool. So you just connect your health data and it gives you a little health check every day. um depending on your your metrics, how you slept, what kind of movement you've had, the workouts you've done. Uh it even monitors things like your you know any lab reports that might live in your health data and tries to understand and learn from it. And so all of this just works as background AI and nobody has done that very well. If you look at all the AI apps that exist today, they just open up to the same screen which is the chat box and the keyboard and we have nothing like that. Uh it's all just like background AI that runs via agents and it's all beautifully organized on your home screen. And uh I'm I'm excited to to launch this. It's it's a very difficult product to build. A and and B

41:06 um you know there's certainly privacy elements that we'll have to address over time. Uh we we thought about that. I'm like a huge privacy person and uh so yeah, we're making accessible and useful AI agents that live directly on your home screen. So do you think that like text is not the right uh interface for this stuff or do you think like the chat box is is not correct? >> I think you know if you talk to a lot of individuals like most people don't know how to utilize it through the text box they ask very few questions they it's like a blank slate >> it gives a very bad idea of like the full uh extent of the capabilities of the thing if you just see a chat. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think OpenAI actually talks about this in a variety of uh blog post codes which is like you

41:51 know the models are capable of so so so much advanced things uh but yet the people that are utilizing it if you look at like the top five use cases it's like very primitive stuff that could be performed by a really dumb model you know whether that is a summarization thing or writing an email or fixing some you know post that you want to write like people are utilizing AI for very very very basic things and yet we're inherently focused on a lot of these advanced benchmarks. Um but yet I don't think AI is as useful or accessible as it could be. And I think that's a preliminary thing that I personally love thinking about is how you make it much more accessible, much more useful for a normal individual. Like what is a phone

42:37 that is AI first going to really look like? like wh why why would you always have to go into applications to try to get anything done or why would you have to go and type into a prompt box over and over again potentially the same things and I think the idea of agents running in the background like open clause has has sort of uh kind of shown a little bit of what the future might look like uh also but deeply inaccessible right like it's a very hard thing to utilize so I think we're making the world more accessible and useful for normal everyday individuals in terms of how AI can impact the minutia of everyday life. Um, >> so how is this uh I imagine you just had to jump through an insane amount of hurdles to get anything like this

43:23 running on iOS ecosystem, right? >> Like >> I've been doing iOS since uh since you know the inception of the iPhone and uh we have some amazing people. It's hard. It's hard. And it's actually, you know, this this stuff that we utilize is just readily available, but it's unexplored, right? Like people haven't really explored what it means to >> Well, I think widgets is like a creative way to plug it into I know some people who are doing voice AI, for example, and there's no way to plug voice AI natively into is just so handicapped. It's so awful. Apple does have a lot of restrictions uh in terms of what you can and cannot do and how you can operate in the operating system, but we leverage the things that are exactly there uh in a unique way roughly and and market it

44:10 and storytell in a unique way. Like the way that we present our product is it's a live AI home screen on your iPhone. It just works out of the box. And I think I'm I'm excited to get you guys the the the the first version of this. Um, but it's a it's going to be >> I'll give you all my personal information. I'm not >> I'm looking forward to Lucas. >> You're not Daario. So, >> yeah. Exactly. Well, uh, you know, we're going to harvest and look at all your data and and archive it and >> you're just gonna you're just going to find out that like uh so you know how you were saying that people largely use AI for like totally uh like meaningless much less than they could be using it for etc. tasks. Like that's totally me. Like I my my biggest use of AI is still some version of like anytime I have like

44:56 a form or like a menial email or I need to schedule a meeting or something, I'm just like Gemini, please do it. Like Gemini, please just like handle this for me. >> And I'm waiting. Oh, this is okay. Two two questions here. one uh is this basically like uh you know the iPhones have that priority notifications thing and it just sucks because it has no idea what you actually prioritize and so you have these it's like what you now have instead of actual priority notifications is like I've randomly selected 30% of your notifications to show you these are more important than the other 30% and then they're not so you just have to now you have to look at even more notifications to realize that Right. >> Notifications are on iOS and I think in

45:41 general are a giant mess. They're just so the the noise is insane. Like there is just so much. I actually personally don't turn on notifications for 95 >> basically. My entire phone is like just don't send me this [ __ ] And then if I ever forget to do it for an app, it ruins my entire notification panel for the phone. I mean it's incredibly insane because we built a you know Apple built this channel that was really powerful at the very beginning but it it turned into a lot of noise and I think I mean my account is called signal right like the reason for why is is that my obsession in in everyday life is how do you parse signal from the noise and I think one of

46:26 the things about our product is very much that it sort of parses through all of the things that you might actually care about in your daily life and just makes it very accessible and useful to you right away without you having to prompt without you having I I'll give you another cool example. So our app it runs uh location services in the background. So if you with your permission you can turn on always on location for Sky which is our app and um it looks at you know where you are where you could be like if you're at MoMA or if you're at a restaurant and it has this confidence score and if it does it automatically triggers an agent what we call the location agent. It aggregates a bunch of information live about that spot. If it's a restaurant you'll get

47:13 like what to order and how people are thinking about it and the sentiments directly. If it's like a museum, you get to see what kind of exhibits that exist right now. And intelligence processed through AI is not one prompt away. It's one tap away. And that's extremely powerful. Like imagine going into any place and you just see at the top of your home screen, it's like, "Oh, Lucas, you're at MoMA. Here are some cool exhibits that you might actually enjoy. Uh here's where the restrooms are if you need to use them, whatever that may be." And I think those are like very minute, seemingly weird, potentially, you know, small things that make a huge impact on everyday life in terms of how you utilize your device. Um, that's one agent. You know, there's a there's a lot of these that are working. And we're going to have one of the greatest

47:58 libraries of agents because we can build we can build an agent in one hour now because we've have all these infrastructure in place. And those agents just run securely. Uh, we don't store any data. There's zero data retention stuff with all of our model providers. Um, and all of that just works without you having to create an agent, you know, viode one, install one, god forbid, have to have a Mac mini in in whatever that may be. Um, and all of that is just super easy to use. Uh, it will be like it's like turning on a light switch. You know, people don't think about how to utilize uh lights in their home because it's just intuitive UX. And so, you know, we we think agents will be exactly the same way and that's

48:44 what we're building. Um, and it it is it is universally accessible and useful. Uh, I'm excited to to to tell this story and it's going to be unique because you know how most startups have this they have this like oh they put like a three minute long video uh Parisian love or whatever and half of it's like what I I I don't remember. Um, and then you know they don't they just go silent afterwards. Uh we're going to have a unique version of this which is you know we're going to have a small initial chapter zero here's what we're working on and every day I will post about very simple human terms it's like well what are we doing what what's a good what's a feature of this why does this matter in the world what makes it unique and why does it improve your life um and that's

49:29 going to be the thing that I do every single day on my account and uh instead of going from like um uh here, you know, like I I think I posted about this earlier, but it's like instead of instead of telling people, we're going to do it and show how it's done. And I'm very excited for that particular part for sure because building products is just it creates more dopamine loops for me than anything else. Uh the idea of building a great product is just >> I think I think you're completely right. A lot of startups do communications or marketing really really really poorly. like incredibly poorly and they do I think the worst thing that people do is they spend a bunch of money like you're saying on like one really big launch video, you know, then they get overwhelmed and then there's no followup

50:16 ever. Like there's no continued anything at all. >> Um I I I also think like a lot of products fundamentally are like boring and and shouldn't try to go down that route, but they want to go down that route because they see that some of their peers that it does make sense for doing it doing like the big, you know, YC launch video after demo day or whatever. Um I I I think a lot of that playbook is getting rewritten and you know I think a lot of companies have realized that stuff like hey having one person who's like an unofficial spokesperson who has actual personality and interesting things to talk about on Twitter is like a does great things for your brand right um there's a lot of stuff like that that I think is is is yet but it definitely sounds like a very interesting >> and you know we're operating at like a >> look consumer products are incredibly ly

51:04 difficult. Marry that with consumer software, that's even more difficult. And then you pair it with the complexity of what AI is and how to make that uni accessible useful that makes it more challenging and you know getting that package correct and having a simplicity and and ease of understanding of an individual like man I feel like we're playing not to you know we're not like I'm not trying to like put myself on a pedestal or anything but man is it is an enormously difficult game to play like it is a it's like playing Hall of Fame difficulty. Uh, and that's why you see most people are not working on consumer stuff. Like every single like you know like 80 90% of YC companies are all B2B or whatever. I think Brian Chesby just had a post on this and um and there's a

51:50 reason for that is because it's actually a really painful thing to get right and you know that's why most of if not almost all of the consumer startups just completely fail. But it's a really fun thing to do. And if you enjoy telling a good story then it's actually the perfect vehicle for you to be able to to you know it's like having a baby. You know how like the influencer accounts change from like a single girl who talks about dating and then she gets engaged and then her content goes to engagement and then she gets married and her content is all about wedding planning and then she has a kid and she turns into a mommy blogger. It's like a natural evolution of content life cycle for an influencer. Like for me the equivalent >> what what I've learned is you really don't want to start making your relationship your core of content. I've known a lot of the people I've known a lot of the people always bearish man

52:36 >> and it's like >> okay because what what happens is like you wind up in this situation where you're now chained to the like you know and there's always a way in which you can get more views on this content and it's not things that are good for your marriage right like it's never things that are good for your marriage >> if I could uh if I could if I could uh eternal sunshine my brain about some of this stuff with respect to that content And I would because honestly it's like uh at this point it's it's the the it's like beating a dead horse. Like there are too many people. The zeitgeist is already picking it up and whatnot. Like it just doesn't you want to focus on things that are the frontier and uh when when when it becomes part of the the the core culture or whatever and everybody

53:22 is just exposed to it or they know it. They're it's there's just not enough signal anymore to be able to talk about it. What would you ever talk about in dating and relationships anymore? Like everything is just being >> I think that you can really I do think you can really just do anything at this point. Like Soul Bra was the guy who made me realize that like uh he looked at the global market, right? And he was like, "Okay, it appears that health and fitness supplements are the most picosaturated industry of all time. It appears that being a health and fitness influencer is like this is this is the most common job in America, right? Like we've surpassed truck drivers, uh grocery store workers, all of that. And he's like, I'm going to do it anyway. And he still wound up carving out his

54:08 niche by being uh enough of a freak about it basically. So like >> yeah, you have to do unhinged things to get traction at that point because the barrier to entry is kind of low. Any I guess for me anytime I think you always do though. I don't think there's any spot that doesn't get blown up by the incentive pressure to do the crazy things, right? Like every single time where you can do a normal thing and talk about a normal subject in a way that doesn't endanger your life meaningfully. >> Yeah. You've got like three months, >> dude. Look how look how Trump started his campaign in 2015. He literally started the entire campaign by calling, you know, Mexicans XYZ, right? there, you know, he literally utilized all these terms and that that was like a

54:54 very profoundly different thing. No politician would ever approach it that way. Like no polit like if Trump had to get into the arena to be able to be heard and and understood, he needed to be kind of crazy to about it. And that was like a canonical example in my opinion where it's like >> I think that Trump just naturally does that stuff though. Like I' I've always had the impression of Trump is that like as as Mr. uh as Mr. Fighting Show guy, his entire life just like accidentally virality optimized him for the medium of video and now he's like, "Wow, it's awesome. It's awesome that politics became what they did. This is like my calling." >> Do you guys ever watch old Trump videos of his interviews and whatnot? And you know, this guy is a very sophisticated individual in so many different dimensions like he well spoken and he

55:42 was actually like quite professional and he would not say some crazy stuff in the past. But I think to your point, Lucas, I I do agree. But I do think that if you're going to operate in a new arena, uh even for Trump, right, like politics, he needed to be different. He needed to have a different voice, a different mechanic, a different vehicle than anyone else. And it was actually ridiculously different. Like he literally like it was incredible, dude. The Did you remember the way he started his campaign? Like the first ever speech was all about like how we're, you know, XYZ individuals are rapists and they're, you know, coming across the border and completely uh, you know, that that is that that language was not ever utilized. And I don't think he even utilized some of this stuff. Uh but you know that was a way to get attention and

56:27 to be able to you know uh stand out from the crowd and really speak the truth as like I don't I'm not saying it's a truth but I say like >> there's always this secret hidden alpha with anything where like uh if there's something that sounds really extreme but secretly 90% of the room agrees with you can always be the first guy to say it and you get like a double benefit to it, right? Because you get like if people agree with you, you get the benefit of that. But then also everyone sees you as being like excessively courageous for doing this thing that nobody else had the balls to say in the last 5 years >> in the Zerp era. >> Yeah. I I think before it was a lot of this quote unquote low hanging fruit had

57:12 like a lot of risks attached to it which is why no one would pick it >> during the 20 2020 or like the 2010s or whatever. Like this was a >> like a ticking time bomb, right? like you would not be able to even approach it in any meaningful way given the fact that like there was a lot of um underlying repercussions for your professional life, personal life or whatnot. And so it was inherently like a world where you couldn't really say things that you like how many closeted uh conservative people were in Silicon Valley uh that that no longer are. >> A lot of people still are like deeply closeted about it by the way. And one of the things that like Trump does I will say by pushing the bar on some of these conversations is he gives people air cover like you know he goes and says like oh so and so are like rapists and

57:58 traffickers and whatever and other people will be like oh well I don't agree with Trump but and because Trump has put himself out there in the line of fire you get to say what you really wanted to say right which which is like well they're you know they're like not sending over their best which is like one of the funnier phrases. And Trump always weeds in humor like that too, right? like he remember the debate where he said um you know I think Megan Megan Kelly was like you've called people you know you've called women xyz and then he's like only Rosie O'Donald and like the entire debate crowd just bursted out laughing and like this turned into like a comedy session and that is ne like the crowds were never a thing in debates like they were all silent and he turned that entire thing around so quickly like

58:45 he his comedic timing and the underlying ing things that he says is just ridiculously good. Like I post about this often, but like man, what a what a unique individual in so many different ways. He just >> I think another really really big thing that Trump saw was that uh we were changing the distrib or maybe he might not have even seen it. He might have just stumbled into this accidentally, but he saw that we were changing the mechanism of distribution of all sorts of political content. So previously you actually were kind of held to a standard of consistency in politics because you would go onto a show with an interviewer and the interviewer would like ask you questions and he would have researched about what you've said in the past and if you deviated from your previous stances or positions on things they would be like you've deviated like I

59:31 noticed you switched up. Why did that happen? And they would like call you out on this right? uh and you would really only have exposure by talking to one of these sort of gatekeeper mediums. And then as the internet became the thing that did distribution. Now it's like you can be a politician, you can say talking point. A you can say totally contradictory talking point. B you can just ship both clips out. Like you can just send both of them out and they they'll both find their own audience of people who like your content, right? And now you just you independent you can literally just saturate every single position on like uh you know like the ideological Punet square thing. You can do all of them. You can just have everybody from everybody who likes your personality in all political realms say like yeah I consume Donald Trump's content or whatever and then uh if they

1:00:17 see one of the other clips that they don't agree with later on, they'll just be like no dude like they that he just misspoke there or like you don't get it. You don't get it. He's saying something different. Trust me, trust me. I know this guy. He's based. Let me go. >> Well, now like all these um all these things are being filtered through influencers and or people who have a large uh following, right? Like if you have a brand today, right? Like if you want to promote a startup or if you want to promote whatever product, you know, the the number one mechanic for people is just to find a bunch of influencers to get them to talk about it. like now there's another set of potentially more distributed gatekeepers but still those have not disappeared in any sense and I

1:01:03 think politicians are well aware venture capital firms are well aware startups are well aware anything anybody building anything and um man the the idea of the influencer becoming so powerful is just a ridiculous thing like you know I don't know I think about this a lot is that before I used to I used to just talk about the zeitgeist and culture and AI and tech, but now, you know, I feel a sense of like, wow, I can I can kind of influence the world too by what I say and how I say it and how I understand things. And that is a legitimately powerful thing for for anything because wow I I can I can start to to add my um

1:01:50 influence or my perspectives back into the world and then they they sort of get folded into the zeitgeist in many ways. And that that is a either ridiculous thing that I've never really was like wow is that's not even possible um or just a new normal. And I think it's it's it's just insane to to even think about um about how these accounts are just you know how many how many accounts do you think on Twitter control the zeitgeist? >> Like 100. >> Yeah. Like 200 to 300 like I was saying at the start. >> It's very few. >> Yeah. It's very few man. >> I mean that is quite >> it's very few. And then the other thing is like not only is it very few but like many of these are in very similar sim clusters and talk to each other. >> They're all in the same group chats when it comes down to it. Like there's four group chats. You could you could draw a

1:02:36 circle around that have every single one of these people in them. >> Well, if you now I mean, holy [ __ ] guys. Just just put this together. A few hundred people uh are able to pr proliferate a narrative into the world into a medium where the most world's most powerful people are listening. Ridiculous. When was ever that was never the case. >> I just assume it's always kind of been this way. Uh >> it was never this way. what what we considered the world was just smaller, right? Like I just assume that it's all been group chats and they've been acting on like progressively larger, you know, it's like uh >> I think I think it was like this, but it was more institutionalized, right? It was like the New York Times and now instead of the New York Times, it's like Rune and Signal and Growing Daniel and

1:03:22 you know, like whatever other 250 accounts. Um, and so it feels less organized and even for a lot of people who control these accounts and have a ton of um, power, which is funny. It's it's kind of like very woke language, right? Like you almost expect if I if I say that, you almost expect it to be in like a Twitter blog that's talking about like how dangerous this is to democracy or something. Um, but it's like not their main thing, right? Or like it's become a complimentary part of their main thing, but it's not really their main thing. >> Yeah. You know, going back, this is a great point by the way, going back to our previous thing is like like the we were talking about capitalism and the incentive structures. The other aspect from an outcome perspective is that capitalism drives power laws and power law outcomes. And the fact that a few

1:04:07 hundred accounts, maybe even less, have this ability to control the narrative is also just a simple power law outcome. like it. Now we we've talked about the distributions and how how they normalize or how they equilibrium and yet this is another area where a handful of individuals aggregate almost all the attention >> which is absolutely remarkable if you think about it and you know even on Instagram there's you know a thousand accounts that maybe get most of the views. Um uh you know there's another fun fact. Okay, if you on Google search um you know 90% of traffic is sent to 128 domains.

1:04:54 >> That makes sense. Yeah. >> I mean it's a it's a high >> like we had this idea when the internet came out that it was going to be like this big wild west of sprawling somewhat like equally popularized uh domain names and then in actuality it's like Facebook. >> Yeah. like Facebook because it's it's us it's easy to use. It's easy to digest. It's easy to understand and it's and what has capitalism done? It removed all the friction for accessing it. It's a great mobile app. It works fast. It has infinite scroll. It is highly visual. It gives you exactly what you want. The algorithm is incredibly powerful. Um it it strikes at the thing that you care about so so so quickly. If you're going through a breakup, it's going to show you some breakup content. You know, if

1:05:39 you're going through XYZ, it's going to do that. I mean, that is remarkably insane. And that's operating at scale. It it is just hard to even think about. And I think most people don't really, you know, they just utilize it. But I I haven't seen anybody talk about it well enough from a technology and culture perspective. Um, even even thing like a infinite scroll, right? Like the infinite scroll changed the entire dynamics of how humans operated on the internet uh at scale. Like I would say the infinite scroll probably added maybe a half half a trillion maybe a trillion market cap on Facebook, right? Like >> well and then even Tik Tok did uh was the the purveyors of like the next thing, right? Which was not just uh you know not just like the infinite scroll

1:06:24 but the auto play, right? The short form autoplay. Like I think the short form autoplay and the reason why these short form apps you feel a lot of like user regret after using them and it's so hard to get off of it is because it's basically a slot machine for content where like the the cost of pulling the lever is like oh I'll just look at this for 5 seconds and if it's boring I'll close the app but then it's like wait I can just pull that same lever again and see if like the next 60 seconds are interesting and maybe the next 60 seconds aren't interesting and so you're all the time getting flashed with this new content and determining in 5 seconds whether it's interesting to you or not. Um, and that that feels low cost because the act of searching takes so little time whereas like on the other hand like you open the Netflix homepage and like it takes time sometimes to like find what movie you want to watch, right?

1:07:09 Like what's interesting like oh nothing to watch on the Netflix homepage whereas Tik Tok just takes that decision process away from you. It's like no, you're not going to choose what to watch. You're just going to choose do I like what I'm currently watching or or what's new. And obviously you can't do this with a movie, right? So funny that the person who like exclusively watches movies can meaningfully flex that they have a higher level of agency than the person who spends the same amount of time watching YouTube shorts every day just like autopilot. >> Do you uh you guys remember the famous Netflix um algorithm contest, right? the the sort of they they had a whole prize about improving the Netflix algorithm and they had like a whole thing about rem basically Netflix wanted to make be the best place to figure out what you what you should watch next and they had

1:07:54 the whole incentive for the algorithm and turns out you know uh the greatest way to remove all that friction was to just don't even tell you what's possible just show you and then you just go to the next thing >> yeah just show you >> it's just capitalism removing friction again right like time and time Again, if there are any barriers to entry or there's friction, uh people have an economic incentive to remove that friction, which is generally a good thing and sometimes it's a bad thing. But >> I totally always filter and not in the cool way, right? Like removing friction is inherently an IQ filter. >> Tell me more. What What do you mean by that? >> Uh like like what we're saying, right? Like in order to actually be able to type out like now you have the idea of like uh you have to like introspect and

1:08:39 think about what you might like. You have to think about how you would prompt the search engine to give you content that fits into this uh role and you have to type it in, right? Like all of these are separate skills that get obliterated when you just have infinite self-prompting driven by you poking a screen once or twice in a different direction, right? >> Damn, Lucas, you're promoting our product, bro. uh in some sense you know we're we're making AI as accessible and useful as the as a as as a you know scrolling a feed in some sense uh but you know I think we're mindful >> I I have a question about your product actually I meant to ask this before uh >> so Gemini is going to be implemented into iOS uh and I think the Apple ecosystem pretty heavily it appears that

1:09:25 they're really going for something pretty deeply tied based on the fact that like they've announced this partnership a month or two ago and still nothing has shipped. So, it doesn't look like they're just rolling out Gemini 3 Pro to the iPhone, right? Uh do you do you have any >> Apple has managed to do nothing and win >> uh for like a while? >> Um you know, Apple intelligence was announced two years ago. Uh and uh you know almost like I think a little bit of it has shipped and whatnot. And I think the underlying thing about consumer products is when big companies approach consumer products, they really have to take a very large macro lens and cater to, you know, two billion people that are utilizing it and make sure it works well for everybody. And it's kind of a

1:10:11 uh least or common denominator type situation when they build products and um they can't take as many risks. they have to be really um thoughtful and you know almost kind of generic element. Uh they can't be bold about it really. Um and that's I think that's the premise of why startups can exist. And so I mean to your point they are integrating it. I think Siri is going to get much much smarter. You're going to be able to talk to it. You leverage all of that stuff. Great. I think what we're focused on is kind of like the enduser interfaces and the experiences around how normal individuals might be able to access and utilize um you know what what in Silicon Valley we're referring to as autonomous

1:10:56 AI which is like agents right like agents that kind of just run and do things and you know it's a profoundly difficult problem to make that functional work well like nobody's solved this problem yet right? Like there's no there's no agents in chat GBT. Uh there there's there there's nothing like that in in in Claude and uh you know I think the closest version of this is openclaw which runs on your texts or whatever or through telegram but it's a very monumentally difficult problem to get right to make it work and make it useful. Um and you know Apple Apple has a lot of customers and a lot of people focused on them so they have to get right and it's going to take time. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think we're we're we're doing something slightly different. We're looking at the

1:11:41 interfaces. We're we're kind of more forward thinking where where Apple has to really make the core functionality work. Like if you ask Siri three things, Apple has to make that work. It's like tell me the weather, you know, add this to my calendar and then add this to my reminder at the same time. Like that is a very basic task that Siri fails at today, right? You cannot ask Siri more than one thing and it might it will do it. It just doesn't work. >> We're big Siri haters here. We're enormous Siri haters. We're actually we've we've been somewhat shocked by the like feature stripping of Siri over the last I don't know like ever since its inception what was it the 4S or something and how it's like actually meaningfully despite now having access to like LLM supercomputer AGI technology like it now is worse at telling you things about your calendar right like it

1:12:26 just can't do anything >> I mean it's just a neglected product and I think it was never it wasn't a priority I think you know uh you guys know the history behind Siri right like Steve Jobs, there was like a little uh D all things DP conference and there was a small company called Siri presenting there and Steve Jobs apparently uh I don't know if he saw it there but I think that he was asked there and uh he was like yeah he quietly went and went to the founders and said you should join Apple or whatever and I think those guys they it was his pet project and I think ever since you know jobs no longer there I think the the the focus on Syria was just less and less and less over time >> that's extremely That's extremely depressing. So you're saying that like we actually instead of just like Apple totally neglecting AI for the last like

1:13:11 decade, we would have had pet project AI designed by Steve Jobs had he not tried to like self-cure his cancer with like esoteric soul raw meat remedies. >> Dude, I I made a post about this. I was like, wait, what would the world look like if Jobs was still around? And you know, what would Apple look like? How would Apple be different? Like would Steve Jobsson realized what AI really was, which was the ultimate bicycle for the mind more so than the computer and the the phone itself and went out and bought an AI lab or even did something more radical. Uh maybe even missed the boat, who knows? But the point being is it's really interesting thought exercise to be able to think about where Apple would be had jobs still been around and and AI had finally come around because

1:13:56 AI is the true bicycle for your mind. Like that is that is exactly what the bicycle for the mind is more so than anything else uh Jobs referred to as the bicycle for the mind. Like AI is the de facto canonical um metaphor that fits really well. I mean the the sort of bicycle for the mind metaphor fits really well and uh so I mean it's just really fascinating thinking about would would Apple have acquired anthropic early would Apple have acquired something else would they have had their own models and would you know iOS devices would be really really smart the computer would be really different right now or the Mac OS would be very different uh >> I mean Siri would work right like Siri would certain like this is the big thing for me is I was always kind of in this boat of uh so you know like I was an

1:14:42 Android user whenever I have the option to use whatever phone I have uh whatever phone I won't and I don't have an employer forcing me to use an iPhone. I use an Android. Google Assistant in Android actually is very good. Like it's it's monumentally better than Siri. Like >> do you know what uh Lucas? Do you know what most people utilize the Google Assistant for? Like the top five, top 10 things or whatever? >> I assume it's like emails out of photos. Uh >> no no it's very basic [ __ ] dude. It's like what's the time, what's the weather, you know, like it is incredibly insane. All the things that are very sophisticated as products, the high order bit or the the things that people utilize them for are insanely basic. I mean, goes back to our chat GBT and AI

1:15:28 point, right? Which is like, hey, the capabilities of these products are enormous. They can do PhD level tasks and insane math problems, but yet here I am asking it about my relationship issues or or my summarizing my text or something like that. >> And nobody like this was the this was this is also like the bulcase for your product, but it's also how like you it's already been tested for you, right? Is when the LLM started answering your question and then giving you like suggestions for next steps at the bottom of the answer. That was the point when a lot of normal people were like, "Oh, oh, I get it." Like you can do all of this [ __ ] right? Yeah. Exactly. Like I remember I remember talking to my mom when like uh Gemini suggested like two or three additional steps when she asked it some basic uh

1:16:14 >> I don't know it was it was some question about like the logistics of home ownership or something like that and it suggested a few more things after that. and she was like, I just it never occurred to me that I could use it this way. In the same way that I assume the majority of things that your app can do are things that like yeah, it's like it's technically very easy for an LLM to do and they've probably been able to do it for like a year, but just the average person has never considered that it was possible. So unless this thing shows up and says, "Here it is. I've done it for you. Click on it if you like it." Uh they just will never know. >> Dude, it's insanely powerful, right? I mean, if you think about what AI really is, like right now it's being sort of I mean, Google's really famous for this is that they're just adding AI to everything. You know, that guy uh what's that guy called? Salt Bay, whatever. And he's just adding salt to

1:17:00 everything all the time or whatever. And then there's like a meme about Google's >> Google's adding AI of like varying levels of integration to everything too which is like the like you can tell like which department heads get along with each other better or worse than others. >> Dude, it's all you could tell it's like um they're shipping the org chart oftentimes, right? Like you can tell that there's like a lot of um conflicting products and conflicting elements. You know, who should uh who should do um you know, productivity AI? Should it be Google Labs or should it be Google Workspace? um these are two different organizations. Uh should it be like and so all of these companies have such a radical um complexity to them that it's hard for them to do things well and even when they do them it's hard for them to communicate those

1:17:45 things and even if they communicate it well then there's these in conflicting incentive structures and the continuity levels are different and and whatnot. So I mean this is what it's why it's so beautiful to have you know we're three people man we have three people we've raised less money than the salary of a or the the compensation package of a typical open AI product manager you know uh like we we have such very little capital very and we're having a lot of fun here and we're building something that I think we personally would love to utilize and that's how I think about it you know and every consumer product has to be that way And we don't have to deal with the complexities of large organizations. We don't have to deal with, you know, having to deal with two billion users. We don't have to deal

1:18:30 with metrics. We don't have to deal with revenue. We don't have to deal with any of >> Also, you're three employees, right? What what uh I mean, obviously there's you. I assume you're like product CEO. What What are the other two employees is like someone who's designer and far forward into >> Got you. And um yeah, that's one of the things that's interesting is like I actually think design like high-end design will become super expensive. >> It is I think I think design is >> I think low-end design will basically go away as like a thing that humans do and we'll have like AI slop websites basically and AI slop apps. Um and I think a like high truly high-end design will actually become more expensive. >> My uh you guys know I I would say my contrarian view is that um uh AI slop is not really like it's visible and people

1:19:17 are kind of annoyed by it. But actually, you know, I would much rather have AI build a lot of things than humans build a lot of things. I would much rather have AI write a lot of things than humans write a lot of things. You know, >> this is another referring that we've had, which is the concept of like AI did not invent slop, right? Like >> you can go around a person. >> Yeah. >> I mean, there's a person out there who's been posting AI slop since like 2005, right? And if you were supposed to return, everyone would be like 100% return tax return. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It did send the cost of generating said slop to zero and like multiplied it by a million times over, right? Uh but it obviously existed before. I um

1:20:03 yeah, it's it's certainly like interesting. Um I I think AI swap, the reason people dislike it is the same reason people dislike pre premium mediocre. um which is like well I've tasted the actually premium stuff and it feels so much better and it's like okay but are you willing to pay the actually premium prices and it's like no and it's like well then you know either get the medium pre like the premium mediocre is the best thing you're willing to pay for it if >> we should we should charge uh $999 a month for our AI product just to >> I think you'll have people I I think that will be I think $100 is like a will start to be a common uh price point actually >> I think so too and I think it actually delivers more value than that. Uh, you know, >> I I do think it will be $100 with like AI usage included, right? Like it's $100

1:20:50 and you don't have to like fork over your API keys. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I think generally most people look like I don't know most the individuals in the world who have not experienced AI at any given scale beyond just a few messages to chat GBT um don't know that the the you know value structures of this of this stuff and you know um this all has to be demonstrated. I mean guys we're so [ __ ] early in everything like it's just ridiculous. I mean I think we on X and Twitter or whatever like oh my god you know we're the world is coming to an end and you know 80% of the people have not really experienced AI in any meaningful way. >> Everybody thinks you're a huge if you try having like a singularity based freakout at any normal person they're just like wow like this is like Lucas

1:21:35 you're renowned for having like freakouts but even this is uh even this is a little far. Most people have some very basic problems to deal with beyond, you know, I think the American lifestyle. So, um, you know, the a lot of the basic uh problems in America have been almost entirely solved, right? Like you can go buy a a hamburger for 99 cents. Uh, you could >> No, no, no. That's This is a scam now. Our hamburgers are expensive. They did get us with that. We can we can go you can go and what you can buy is a 62 in OLED TV for 99. But unfortunately the hamburger cost $5. >> Oh yeah, the TV prices have been so crazy, man. Okay, I I will uh I will say this to to to um counteract some of

1:22:22 this. You know how people think people are like, "Oh my god, who eats McDonald's?" Like why would people I was uh driving and I went to that, you know, the Costco experiment or the Walmart and there was a McDonald's outside and there was a few other fast food places, Taco Bell, whatnot. Uh guess guess which one had the the largest drive-thru line? It was McDonald's. Like ridiculous. Like it was so it was like on the street. And I'm like, "Oh my god." Like the demand for McDonald's is still ridiculous. And when you talk to my friends or our world like like oh my god, ew, you eat McDonald's? That's so disgusting. But yet here are like mo lots and lots of individuals and people are McDonald's eaters. Um but again, I think the macro point I would make here is that our our world in X and Twitter is

1:23:11 is uh not real. Like we we are >> Yeah, we're all insane freaks. Nobody else cares about the singularity. I found >> they don't even know what it is. relentlessly asking my girlfriend about the singularity in her opinions on it only to be ignored for the 475th time just continues to happen. >> What is she like to talk about, Lucas? >> Nothing. And this is this is hypothetical. I would never date a woman. That's [ __ ] disgusting. Uh so it's >> um >> but >> you you're you're you're actually uh you're part of the majority there, Lucas. >> I know. I do. I do believe that we are about to enter the golden age of homosexuality. Uh for many reasons. >> When was the last golden age of

1:23:57 homosexual? >> Rome. Probably Rome. >> I thought it was like ancient Greece. >> I I think the Romans were significantly less gay than the Greeks. Man, >> I don't know. I'm not one of those uh those right-wing guys who knows anything about history. Like I just when you say Rome, Greek, I'm like, "Oh, these are the statue countries, right? Like these are where they have the statues. These are the PFP. >> Yeah, that's where the profile pictures came from. It's where they grew them. >> Do you think we get AGI? Do you think we do it? Are we going to AGI hard takeoff? Like the world has changed. We developed Star Trek in three years type [ __ ] Or is it like uh >> I think it's a dumb >> nothing ever happens because everyone is slow like the normal people are still eating at McDonald's even despite knowing all of the health risks of

1:24:44 sunflower oil or whatever the [ __ ] They continue eating at McDonald's. Uh, and none of this matters. >> That's because the McDonald's presentation layer is incredibly amazing, dude. They they abstract away everything. You know, you don't know how the chicken was killed or you don't know how that beef patty was prepared and it just has an incredible amount of great things like tastes like, you know, salty and, you know, just an umami flavor. >> It's it's just the the premium mediocre formula is like really good, right? >> And they hyper optimized the [ __ ] out of it. I guess going back to your point, uh, Liberty, >> and they it's always the same thing also, right? It's like it's it's like you go to McDonald's and you know exactly what you're getting. >> Well, did you know the the whole premise of McDonald's was that it was opened up on highways and when people were traveling, you would just like get get

1:25:30 off and you know exactly what to expect. Whereas before in the back in the days when the highways were being built, you know, you go to a random diner and you don't know what the [ __ ] you're going to get, you know, and this the consistency aspect. Oh, okay. Here's the fourth layer of capitalism. We've talked about reduction of friction. We've talked about increasing supply, creating demand. The fourth world element of capitalism is consistency. So it creates a layer a consistent experience. You know, all the Starbucks feel similar. You know, all the McDonald's the food the food is exactly the same no matter if you order it in Tokyo or, you know, Pod Dog Kansas or whatever. like the the the capitalism uh because there's a the the sort of efficiency aspect of it. It creates a consistent layer- because

1:26:16 consistencies actually um economically better from a supply perspective. It reduces costs. It makes processes better. It makes the supply chain much easier. >> It's also just so much so much less frustrating to deal with. like uh do you remember in the early days of tech where you would buy a product and it's like it would actually meaningfully matter like the binning of uh of a chip that was in it like people would be like yeah I hope I got one of the good processors bro if I got one of those [ __ ] [ __ ] ones be real mad >> there's a great uh Steve Jobs thing around this is that you know the way that Apple thought about the world was he's like we don't think in myips and bips like we don't think about megahertz and we don't think about all this stuff we don't market our products in in a way that people would be like confused. It's

1:27:02 like this has 25 gig 26 28 gigs. I don't know. Okay. Anyway, the point being is >> it was the Android thing. It was when Android was talking about how they have 320 cores and iPhones. >> This stuff does not matter, right? Like normal people don't give a [ __ ] about this. And so Steve Jobs was the was the guy who was like, "Okay, well, we're not going to market in this way because it makes no sense." And all by the way during that time during the whole Mac versus PC era um every single thing about a Dell computer was around like this has 1600 megahertz this has you know you know 2 gigabytes of RAM and it's so powerful and it has Intel inside and nobody like who gives a shut the [ __ ] up right I just want >> nobody knows what a megahertz is the

1:27:47 craziest part of that entire era like I had I had many years of conversations with people where they were telling me that it's this many megahertz versus this many and like just as like a fun thing I would always ask them what does any of this mean? Uh, and no, they're like, "It's the speed." >> Dude, it was it was fascinating. Um, in and if you were if you ever take like a hardware um or like a processing class in college or whatever, uh, the previous era's uh, computing was all driven by clock speed, which is what mehz is, right? You just increase, you had this ability to increase the clock speed over and over again till you got to like, you know, I think we we got to like four megahertz or 3.5 no 3.5 gigahertz or something like that. remember all these computers would come out and it's like the Intel processors and then you know

1:28:34 you couldn't you can't really increase the clock speed anymore so now they started marketing all the cores so we have like six cores or you know eight cores or whatever and then that era ended in terms of scaling I think still sort of matters in some sense but it was a fascinating world of how people marketed technology um again all of this stuff is more of an art than a science like how do you how do you tell people uh about how fast something is or how uh like my latest fascination is like the the latest product MacBook Neo that Apple launched. >> Do you like that thing? What do you think of it? >> Dude is probably one of the most gamechanging products. Uh, and and >> the thing about >> I really believe it's a gamechanging

1:29:19 product, but I'm just like, dude, I'm I'm on a 36 gigabyte MacBook Pro right now trying to >> I just I crush that memory all the time. Like, I'm always swapping, man. I cannot imagine anyone doing anything >> like I mean, doesn't Mac OS boot in like 6.7 gigabytes just like base? >> Uh, so it's like you open Safari. Well, that's what the beautiful part is. I think if you look at markets, um Apple has never operated um in the sort of lower end of the market. They've always been I think there's a famous Steve Jobs quote. He said, you know, we don't know how to make a computer that's $500 that's not pure junk. He literally said that like we don't know how to do that.

1:30:05 And because we don't know how to do that, we're [ __ ] not going to do it. And they never did. But now with the economies of scale that Apple has, the ability to be um really nimble and flexible, having their own um hardware, you know, particularly the processing or the M series chips, all of this stuff makes that world accessible. And so Apple is now, you can tell, traveling down market. It's making things that are normally they would never have touched a $500 computer that is actually really incredibly good. It it it it just it just obliterates all of the competition at the lower end. Um >> on the other end, like while you have

1:30:50 Apple doing all of this, uh you also just have the absolute exponential decay of Windows, right? Like that's the flip side of the coin. Apple is just mogging everything. Uh everything that they have done has been golden perfect move recently. And then it's fascinating how much >> Yeah, sorry. >> I was just It's just crazy how shitty Windows is. It literally everything like every single product that they make uh just gets worse and worse and worse and Windows as an operator. >> I don't think Apple's doing anything particularly good. I just think they're one of the few people not like really shooting themselves in the I don't think anyone's like particularly feels like any Apple update is getting a lot better than the previous >> Well, you know, I think >> like the the last good update I can think of is when they started

1:31:36 automatically grabbing the SMS codes. >> I mean, >> um when you needed to like verify it, >> but Okay, let's just let's just This is a great >> I mean, holy [ __ ] guys. That's a small thing, but it makes a profound difference. in everyday life like that that SMS thing, right? Like why? Why? And nobody else did that first, right? Like it was actually really >> I'm pretty sure Android actually did that one first. I might be wrong, but I'm I'm pretty sure this is >> I don't know, but I I've experienced it. I'm not an Android person, but in general, you know, all of these things, I think the biggest attribute of Apple is it has still intense focus. um they they are they are very much um a company that says we're not going to do this and

1:32:23 there are very few companies that do that you know um I mean take a look at open AAI like there there OpenAI has has tried to do and be everything in the last year two years I mean to the extent that they had to like quote unquote kill side quests whatever that means right and focus is very difficult saying no to things is very difficult particularly in a what's next type world where everybody has ADHD everybody wants to focus on what's next and what's what's new um having intense focus is very challenging it's like taking a lot of adal and um you know Apple is really good at that and still I think it should be credited in terms of what it chooses not to do

1:33:09 more than what it chooses to do now the products you know not iterating or you not great sometimes. Yeah, that's true. But generally they create a great experience. And going back to your Windows point, right? Like the reason why Windows is just not good is because the person that's buying Windows is not the end user. Most of Windows software is sold through enterprises and businesses top down. So the person experiencing Windows doesn't is not >> this is the huge thing. It's it's the the user is not the the person who's like to deal with all the crap that Windows does. It's like the the real user is a person who's buying for a 10,000 person organization, right? Or they're already locked in because Excel has become like standard and for

1:33:54 whatever reason like Google Sheets or whatever doesn't have exact like minutia feature parody. I do think that's kind of under attack with like claude code and chat GBT are pretty good at running through and doing basic Excel monkey stuff. Um, I will say I I think um I I think with the side quest thing I think that's usually cope when a company's like we're doing too many side quests. I think the real issue with doing too many side quests is whatever executive is at the top is not comfortable delegating these things fully to people and so you waste a lot of time at the executive. Like obviously what's going on with opening eyes like they feel like Enthropic is eating their lunch right on like it seems that most people who are in the know like the Anthropic Claude product better than the Chad product.

1:34:40 >> Um >> why why do you think that is? >> I don't I'm not I think it's a combination of things. I think people like Claude's personality more than Chad uh is probably the biggest driver. I think there's like a couple smaller drivers but beyond like the why that might be I think that's why they're saying hey we don't want to do side quests. But I think a big part of the story of like Apple, Twitter, Meta, Microsoft, these big organizations, is like hiring 10,000 engineers is not necessarily a positive productivity thing for your organization. >> Definitely >> people think people think productivity scales linearly with people, at least before the AI era, and that's diffic that's it's not necessarily the case. Maybe that it's definitely doesn't scale linearly. Um, but I guess I mean focus is so so important. I I feel like a CEO

1:35:25 should be defined by what they do not do versus what they do do. You know, I think that's actually the most important metric for a company and the mission of the company is to figure out what you are good at. And I mean kudos to anthropic. I know you guys think I'm an anthropic shill and maybe I am, but the point being >> No, no, no, no. To be to be clear, you are an anthropic shill. You are an unpaid shill though, right? Which is an important distinction to be made. >> When we say shill, we don't mean no. I don't mean it negatively. I was just trying to make fun of myself in some ways, but I think >> I I am an open AI shill. Uh because I like that they've named every product Codeex, which is really funny. Like I like having 16 different products. All you're like, "Ah, [ __ ] We made this new thing. What do we call it, dude? If only there were some solution. If only there

1:36:11 were a way. Just use the same name we've been shipping, man." But what I was going to say about the side projects thing is I just think like side the idea that like side projects are really taking all this energy from your organization is wrong. Like it's it's not that there's a bunch of people at OpenAI that are like working on things that aren't the core product and that's what's going wrong. Uh what's going wrong is like someone just doesn't have the juice, right? And or like they're not willing to make certain choices that Anthropic is willing to make. It's it's almost always one of those two things. Um and the real issue with side projects is like that's taking Sam or whoever's time. Um but really that's cuz he doesn't trust the people under uh to do this. And then it's also like very funny obviously the timing around like they acquire you know an independent media brand uh for like you

1:36:56 know low hundreds of millions while saying like no more side projects. >> Yeah that's a no more side project. Someone is like we have to get rid of the side projects. It's literally just saying like we don't have competent enough actors to carry these side projects autonomously and it's >> yes blowing my foot off. Right. The thing about side projects, it's more than competence. I don't I actually it's not about competence at all. I think generally when you bifrocate attention in terms of what you're doing, um you have too many people, too many different types of customers, too many different types of users, too many things that have to work well with each other. And that's actually non-trivially difficult to get right. I mean, look, I think a good example of this is, you know, OpenAI built a a Sora social network app, right? And um that thing is a

1:37:44 phenomenally different product, a different headsp space. It requires a different everything. And okay, beyond all of this, by the way, the reason why side quests are are challenging is because every AI company is roughly bottlenecked by one resource, which is compute. You cannot allocate compute in in meaningful ways across everything. There's just not enough of it. In fact, that's a huge huge bottleneck when you start having side quests that require compute like like a Sora. I mean, I say profoundly like, oh, it takes up resources. It burns compute. We can't dedicate it to something else. We can't really >> I I think the bigger waste of time than the because the compute in some ways is

1:38:29 kind of I'll counter signaling pretty hard here. I think the comput is kind of a footnote for Sam where like Sam has clearly made the decision that they're going mass market and so it's like we're going mass market that's part of you know the intangibles whenever we raise money from whoever and then also a lot of the compute like these companies are not actually paying for it because what happens is like Amazon goes like hey we're investing $50 billion in open AI and then open AAI takes those $50 billion that's what I'm saying but I think there's still a bottleneck correctly >> I think what is waste of time is like spending time on decisions that uh relate to like a social network like doing social network you know like backend infrastructure etc that probably is a waste of time. Um, but yeah, I'm

1:39:15 I'm with Lucas. Like I think anytime people go like we have to stop doing these side projects, it's either like an executive team that is unwilling to delegate things or, you know, in one way or another, whether whether it's because they're right and the people below them just can't handle those things and their primary objectives or because, you know, they just can't let go of the, you know, decision-m process and they're like obsessive on owning every part of it. And you know I think um yeah I just I think radically okay beyond all of that even if you do get it right you know the messaging becomes much more difficult like what your mission is much more difficult to explain like who do you stand for what do you do what what what like if if you do everything and it's almost unclear of what your you know what your what your mission is quite

1:40:00 good at this >> look I mean just said we're going to make the best we're going to make the best robo coders right and then from there because LLMs are really really good at coding. I mean, it is a profoundly important element. And by the way, you know, there's a giant [ __ ] market for coding because software engineers are getting paid a million dollars or whatever compensation because coding was such a huge bottleneck. And so, not only was there a, it's basically the most incredible product market fit where LLMs are able to produce code in such a high, you know, quality, high vector way that um, you know, it's profoundly weird that OpenAI didn't focus on coding until anthropic really

1:40:46 showed them the way, which is like claude code. And then OpenAI came back and said, "Okay, you know what we're going to do? We're going to cut all the side quests. We're going to focus on Codex and Codeex is going to be a first class experience and we're going to devote all these resources because A there's an economic thing where there's a huge demand for it. B the LLM's make it work really really well and Anthropic showed holy [ __ ] you know who [ __ ] pays for this? All the [ __ ] enterprises. They're going to pay a lot of money for coding because software engineers are expensive. Everything was just like a it was like a puzzle piece. It was like a three puzzle piece. It was obvious in some sense and now it's hindsight and um Anthropic really saw that earlier and they they focus on it. I mean kudos to them like cloud code really is like part of the zeitgeist when people are in enterprises they they

1:41:32 they use the word cloud code more than they do use codeex weirdly enough. It was such a weird thing to uh watch because like OpenAI actually I think achieved a very weird accidental inverse goal which is that OpenAI through the process of just doing every product possible like Sora Chat GPT like all of these other things. Uh, I think they actually confused the world about what AI was and what it can be used for by spitballing so many things, right? Like I think if Anthropic had been the big mass consumer adoption one, people would have a better, more clear picture of what this thing was good at. Uh, and all of this weird Sora social network stuff,

1:42:17 etc. wound up basically just confusing a bunch of average soccer moms about what any of this did or how it could be used, right? Because like >> OpenAI tried to do everything, right? They tried to do everything. By the way, there's there's in history like where have have we seen somebody build a consumer and an enterprise company simultaneously? Like wh which company does that? Like I I can't think of one. I mean Microsoft guy here, man. I don't even But if you think about it, it's an enormously difficult task to build a consumer company at scale and then have an enterprise on enterprise. >> I think people people always say this that they think like consumer is so difficult. I'm I'm actually not sure I agree with this. Um I I think the issue is just more might just be uniquely tuned for consumers, right?

1:43:03 >> Wait, why why I'm curious I'm curious to get your thoughts here. Why why do you think consumers are not difficult? I I think this is like one of the mega cope sure >> things that people always say and I think the big problem here is that consumers just don't want to buy that many different things. So there's less markets to go after. It's not that consumer is in and of itself more difficult. It's just that like the the normal human experience is like re relatively condensible and there's only so many products you need, right? Like you only need a map product, a search product, a communications product, uh you know like a money product or maybe like two money products. Um, yeah, certainly very important. Maybe you need a bunch of podcast products for all the different platforms you listen to the plausibly deniable experience on. That's for certain. Um, but like you you just

1:43:48 don't need that many products whereas for enterprise like things become much more niche and much more specialized. Um, it is true that like enterprise revenue tends to be a little bit more um like you know the the average smallmedium business will not like abuse like free trials or whatever. That is true. Um, but I think a lot of times when people say like, "Oh, consumer is so so so hard. So so so hard." I I don't think it's actually that consumer is so hard. I think the problem is you're trying to create a new product category and there just isn't that much stuff that like normal people want to do. So when you try to create sore and you go like, "Wow, that was so hard because it was consumer." It's like, "No, what was hard was getting people to go into an app titled AI slop images and videos and like consume that." Um, but actually

1:44:34 like I don't even think it's that hard. Like I there's probably a bunch of like Facebook moms that are like basically consume exclusively like AI minion slop right now. It's just what is the big like unlock there in that specific case is like people are okay with consuming AI slop. They're just not okay with like admitting to themselves. It's like Starbucks, right? You don't want to admit to yourself you're getting a milkshake so you buy quote unquote a coffee. >> You want to go to the video store and accidentally get shot with the slop cannon, right? You don't want to sign in to slop R Us. >> You don't. Yeah, exactly. You're like walking by the blockbuster and you randomly see, you know, the the the scandalous um you know, movie where like Kate Upton has her boobs out. You didn't walk in looking for that, right? Um >> you're right. I think >> but I I just don't think I don't think

1:45:20 consumers that much harder. Actually, I think this is like common cope. It's just that people try really really hard to sell things to people who don't need things. Whereas the blue ocean space for enterprise is a lot larger. Um >> creating demand for consumer markets is very uh because for business you can almost always find some vision. Like this is the other really funny thing about like the the uh enterprise market is once you get a smart and uh high openness enough person if they like you they will just like talk themselves into believing that they need whatever the product it is that you're selling to them, right? Like you can totally do this as a uh as a sales engineer all the time. Uh if you're doing this to your average soccer mom, it's much much

1:46:05 harder to convince them that they actually need something that they already know that they don't need. I think >> the markets are the markets and consumer are are you know seemingly larger, right? because you have a population large population tam >> they're broker and they're more annoying and they don't pay you >> and they're very fickle and it's hard to like get their attention and >> I think that's also part of it is like at enterprise when you're starting off like think about your modal like enterprise founder right has probably worked at a couple companies um has like some goodwill built up is raising from a couple VCs you can convince 20 companies especially because none of these people are actually technically spending their money or they don't feel like they're spending their money they feel like they're spending like VC money or they're spending like the money that you know is like some large consumer brand's

1:46:51 money. So like the individual person who's buying your like enterprise resource planning B2B SAS um is like oh yeah I know SA you know he used to work with me like yeah I'll buy his product and all of these products are scams anyways because what's happening with these products is like you you have how much it costs to sell the product and then how much value it adds and the gap between these two things is so large like how much does the marginal instance of Windows cost of office cost Microsoft zero right that's the whole business model that's what it's built off of um that the the marginal cost of software is zero and on the other hand like the marginal value of office to some investment bank is like infinity like they can't exist without it and so the price has to be set somewhere in the middle um and so it's actually quite expensive so you can you can actually

1:47:37 have like a higher marginal cost than Microsoft and still be competitive because your marginal cost is not a relevant factor in the pricing conversation. >> Yeah. No, I think I think in general >> I mean that was a lot of stuff. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a fascinating world. I mean like I think there's a reason why YC has this kind of network effect which is it draws founders and they create B2B software and then there's demand from other companies to buy that B2B software. Um and then you know you almost immediately have that traction uh or validation you can test it with other companies and whatnot. So I think that community makes sort of B2B world much more valuable or approaching B2B world much more valuable than say a

1:48:23 consumer product for example like if you're a consumer product you're typically not applying to to Y cominator for example. Um, but anyway, I think I think the macro thing is um, yeah, it's going to be fun to to see how well we can achieve um, some sort of product market fit. Uh, when we when we sort of talk about what we're up to, uh, I'm very excited for that. I think generally we're going to approach it in a very fun, friendly way that you're it's like a human story about why and uh, why why it matters in the world and why how it's going to iterate like. So that's that I'm I'm like deeply looking forward to that. That's going to be really fun. >> Yeah, we can we can do a break whenever. Okay, we'll do like a five minute break. >> Yeah. Yeah, I'll come back. >> The China live stream, she gets one dress, shipped down, she holds it up,

1:49:09 moves to the next, averages 1.8 seconds per product. Chill, just keeps going. >> It's actually quite incredible, man. And those girls have like insane amount of audience. >> Yeah, I I don't understand. I I never understood how uh like what are you even processing when you view that, right? Like I always assumed there must have been some massive amount of context that I was missing that was allowing all of these Asians to understand whatever the [ __ ] she held up in 1.8 seconds in some way. >> It's like um Lucas, it's like cooking videos, right? You're not watching cooking videos because you want to cook that thing. You probably never will cook it. But it's the the entertainment value that results from it, right? >> Really like >> Food Network. >> I I just don't watch like I'm like a notorious doesn't consume content at all guy. So, I have uh this is like one of

1:49:56 my areas of like extremely low theory of mind for anyone, >> man. It's this is probably like a little dark thing to say, I guess, but in many ways, you know, people say that they don't have time for things. You know how like a lot of people are like, I'm so busy. I don't have time for things or whatever. I think people have too much time on their hands such that they have to allocate it somehow and watching these videos is basically what I The average American just comes home from work and watches TV and goes to bed. >> Yep. >> Um, >> yeah. I mean, I I think it's basically like the average American comes home after a given amount of work. You have like cognitive resources that are middling to completely burned out. Uh, and you need to do something for four

1:50:41 hours, right? So, you're like, how do I expend like very low cognitive units for the next four hours, right? >> Yeah. And get the highest reward. And you know what delivers that? Tik Tok that literally the ROI on the al like from a from a usage perspective is just insane that it's crazy that the the dopamine per minute delivered is the highest that you can possibly get without exertion. Um >> I I really >> So there's got to be some sort of an uh like an alternative thing that you can do with this time that like like if you were to instead do cardio, does this like somehow restore your brain more or is it like these people are just like

1:51:26 cooked when they come home from work and then you >> do people are addicted to gyms and fitness? Like what what do you think the the >> I think it feels good. It's like brain off. I think it's also I do think it's like legitimately very good if you get into the rhythm of it. It's like very good for your circadian rhythm. Like I I have a very hard time sleeping if I don't go. >> How do you think how do you think about most people? Do you think most people do fitness and health because they want to signal to other people or they genuinely enjoy it for both? >> I think it's like I I don't think they want to signal to other people. I think they want to like look good. >> Yeah, I think if you reframe like uh looking good as signaling to other people that you are healthy or something like that, >> looking good is is the ultimate signal, isn't it? Is it is the de facto way humans process.

1:52:11 >> Yeah. But I think when most people hear like signal to other people, what they hear is like you want to pretend that you really enjoy going to the gym. And I do think that's a category. I think there's like a category of person that does who like never picked up weights in his entire life and has a wardrobe composed 100% of bodybuilding.com t-shirts. >> I mean >> many such cases >> it is uh I mean it's also highly mimetic right you see other people doing it and there's like huge wellness industry and all these wellness influencers exist and the idea of wellness as a category is really fascinating to me. Um, the fact that like there's an entire lifestyle and a model for what I mean I don't even know what wellness means anymore, but the fact that all that exists at scale on on these platforms is is is remarkable.

1:52:56 >> It's so funny to me that wellness now means anything from like uh I'm going to go on a run this morning to like I'm going to inject myself with like 40 cc's of Chinese horse tranquilizer that I got from this bathtub, right? like anything anything in that entire bucket is now considered wellness. Uh and I I don't know like it's kind of funny because you have a huge portion of like the uh what was historically like the wellness community just blown up by all of these weight loss peptides just instantly and uh they're they're not coping with it super well. Like uh it's almost it's almost the same thing as the coders. like the coders there's a specific type of like uh I don't want to say like code monkey

1:53:41 but like someone who didn't write like really high level infrastructure level code uh and they actually liked the act of writing code and now they're realizing like well they actually took away most of this from me like I >> I can do codegen and that's most of the time better for very simple stuff uh and they're kind of sad about that and I think these same people that like really enjoyed the process of like uh I'm going to diet and I'm going to count my calories and I'm going to do something that other people can't really do. Like I'm going to I'm going to flex my dedication muscle. Uh and now it just gets injected and like I think it took meaning loss of identity. >> I read this like very breathless piece about like oh the magic isn't there in like making products anymore. You know,

1:54:27 I just tap the button and I don't feel anything. And it's like yeah like you fell in love with the process and not the end result which is fine. And like maybe you do just enjoy like the act of coding or playing code golf or optimizing or creating performance systems, but like in theory you like we were building these things as products that people wanted to use, not like to build things. >> Well, it's like um you know, imagine a farmer having to manually plow something and then there there's a tractor that does it and now >> I don't think anyone liked plowing. I think plowing is very funny. There's like two things% >> there's definitely somebody that love the [ __ ] out of this, bro. There's >> no there's actually very few like even so you have the Amish, right? Um who like reject all technology and live

1:55:13 primarily in Pennsylvania. Um and there if you live anywhere near there, that's where you have to get your like raw honey and your tallow or whatever because they literally like it's against their religion to use like chemicals and stuff. Um, and >> I'm just saying like even the thing the one technology that they've all the one technology that all of them have adopted across the the whole spectrum is uh washing and drying machines or or washing machines, not drying machines, washing machines. Every single Amish group has adopted uh every single major Amish group has adopted washing machines. Even the ones who are like no cars, no lights, like you're dying, you can't go to like a modern hospital, doesn't matter. [ __ ] die. Even those people have adopted washing machines which is like very funny. Um and then I

1:55:58 think modern plowing equipment almost all of them have like 60 or 70% of them have adopted modern plowing equipment. It's super interesting to see um these groups of people who are like you know very committed to being lites. >> It's it's an identity. Everything that people do is in service of their identity and a job is just in some sense if you've you know been doing it for such a long time you're getting good at it and you're becoming really you know a good coder for example that really becomes your identity and suddenly something or a tool or a magical thing that comes along that does it incredibly well better than you even though you're at the top of your craft that cannot feel good for a lot of individuals. because it is upon their

1:56:45 >> identity. >> That's exactly what we were talking about before with the dating apps too or uh with like let's say you start a company, right? Like you like startups, you have a threeperson startup. You you do the thing at some point you scale and the things that you're doing on your day-to-day are no longer startup [ __ ] right? You're now a CEO of a large corporation. You have to manage things that you've never once given a [ __ ] about before. And you're like, "This sucks. I want to go like uh sell this all and go run a donut shop." >> I want to go back to when it was just like me and my two friends. You're like the person who has been uh you really liked the process of just dating women normally uh walking up to them, saying hello, and then seeing where it goes. And now you've been forced into like uh checklist hell through all of the dating apps, and you're trying to date like 17 new women every month to meet your metrics and KPIs, and you're just like,

1:57:30 "Ah, this sucks." >> I think it's usually the reverse, isn't it? Where a lot of women are are putting a lot of dudes through the ringer, right? Um, >> yeah. I I was just flipping that one because it's like uh we've done a lot of sexism on our last episode and it's like let's just pretend let's pretend that women aren't doing this bad thing for this episode. Just toss them alone. But >> again, for me, dude, you know, one thing I I have to emphasize and I think this is actually a really important thing, which is look, good and bad is in some sense, yeah, there's an objective element to it, but maybe most of it's subjective. Like what is good? What is bad? Like is it really bad that >> I will say man this is like a thing that only evil people see. Is that right? >> Like no good person like no good person is ever like yeah man like good evil you

1:58:17 know killing innocent people. >> There's there's likeing supply and demand. >> There's a lot of there's a lot of elements to it where like okay I mean I'm talking about the borderline [ __ ] I'm not talking about obvious crap like you know obviously you should never >> but that's the thing man like no one ever thinks their thing is the dude like very few strikingly few pe it will surprise you how few people actually think they're evil. Um, this is like uniquely a thing that I don't >> I won't say it's uniquely a thing that evil people say, but it is a thing that like no good person is ever like good, evil, you know, who really in general I'm just doing what the invisible hand of the market tells me. In general, when you're evaluating the zeitgeist or talking about culture or the the way

1:59:02 that the things move in the world and how people behave or whatnot, look, I they're driven by so many different factors oftent times outside of the control of the individual as well, right? Like you don't know what the underlying motivational layers are, how the incentive structures work. So I guess my macro point is less about good and evil. that but what are the motivations or the intentions behind somebody doing what they do? That is extremely fascinating and for my the way that I think about the world is I think about it in that dimension which is you know why does this work this way? You know why is the culture this way? Why is this individual behaving this way? Why are these people getting Botox at, you know, 17 years old or whatever, right?

1:59:48 And look, do you think it's you could potentially think that it's really bad to get Botox at 17? And some people might think it's very good. I don't know. I don't know what the right answer there is. Maybe preventative Botox is real and maybe preventative Botox is a thing and it actually does prevent wrinkles or whatever. that that's kind of like the canonical way that I frankly like to evaluate the world, which is what what, why, and how more than like uh you know, let me be a a judge or let me judge this really quick, you know? >> No, and I I agree with what you're saying. Like obviously I'm kind of, you know, messing with you a little bit. Um I I think it's like I think what I would say is usually you can tell when something's good or bad. And I think

2:00:33 good people generally don't think about or aren't always like being neutral. But I do think it can be very useful to think about things and not arbiter like instead of saying hey is it good or bad that this person's doing this just remove the veilance from the equation and just more think you know why is this person doing this what market forces or like what forces are leading them to do this what are the downstream consequences of that etc. >> Can I ask you a question? Is it naive to think that the world is generally good? >> Um, I think that's like almost >> I almost just got confused by that because I think I've kind of internalized what SAS said earlier, which is that like uh you can't really like you just have to

2:01:19 think about like why the thing is happening as opposed to like whether it's good or bad. >> Well, that's my macro point, right? It's like, well, >> yeah, >> but but I'm just saying I think generally my perspective is that it's unclear to me. [ __ ] I'm getting a I'm getting a phone call. One second. Uh, let me just kill it really quick. Um, okay. Sorry about that. Um, I guess I guess my macro thing is it's unclear to me um how to evaluate, you know, in a very objective way. Obvious things aside, um I'm not sure if I'm able to >> But I think like I think preventative Botox is like relatively obvious to most people, >> which is what bad? Is it bad? >> I think I think 90 95% of people would

2:02:06 be like preventative Botox to 14y olds is probably bad. I think I think it's less about whether or not it actually works actually in this case and it's more about the fact that uh there's a large series of health products where you can sell I I was asking someone someone recommended that I take lactopherin the other day uh and I asked them okay so what what does lactopherin do like what what have you noticed from it and they're like dude like it's not it's not like one of those things where you notice something from it right like you guys always want this to like do something right but it's like it's not where those supplements are talking about this and I just started hysterically laughing like Luke is just being like innocently like so have you noticed anything and then the guy goes like no it's like what do you mean and

2:02:53 it's like you always want like some kind of like effect from the cause man like have you tried just taking supplements for the hell of it >> well and then and then I asked and he said >> and I just we both started laughing isn't this a canonical placebo effect of anything, right? Like there's >> maybe but he he sent me an email. >> No, but he's not even noticing a circle, right? >> It's it's like a step further than that. >> He had a circle and then this circle had 87 other circles and all the other circles touching it. The middle circle said lactopherin and then the other circle said like gut health like brain health, endocrine like all you know just like all of these other things. And he's like this will explain it. And I was like dude like and then I was like so what would happen if you stopped taking it? And he's like, "Well, I don't really know, but like presumably like I would

2:03:39 gradually have like a worst immune response or something." And I was like, "This is the potential worst sales pitch of all time." Like worst to ever do it. I don't know if I've ever felt less of a desire to buy a product. >> I I think also with the health stuff and like I I think just in general whenever people feel like 14year-olds feel some kind of societal pressure to take something, they feel that's bad. I think a lot of the the beauty stuff is um like it's a zero- sum game, right, in a lot of ways. So, that's also bad. Um and then like Botox is certainly, you know, we can argue whether it's like bad for you or not, but I don't think anyone's arguing that like Botox is like good for you healthwise.

2:04:25 >> I could argue 95% >> you you wouldn't I don't think you would be convinced by it, but I could do it with a straight face. >> Go on. I think you you could sort of >> No, I want to see I want to hear it. Lucas, let's do it. >> Well, I I just think in a lot >> Lucas makes the case for 14-year-old prebotox. >> Well, so what I I >> That should be the headline of this podcast, by the way. Although, damn. >> Selling Botox to 14y olds would go really [ __ ] hard as an episode title, dude. >> Jesus Christ. >> We would get >> You guys are You guys are engagement maxing now, bros. >> Oh, yeah. No, but I I think that I would have to go about it from a functional angle and say something like uh I mean basically right now everyone has some form of structural uh tension from

2:05:12 either sitting all day or some other [ __ ] up posture thing, right? And it's like we have tried getting people to stretch, right? We've been like, dude, like every day we got to wake up and do your runner's stretches and nobody does it. Like it just does not happen at all. And as a consequence, there's a cascading rise in tension through certain muscles, right? It's different in every person, but most office workers have a pretty similar area that winds up being very uh in in constant tension, overstressed, has a bunch of muscle knots, stuff like that. Uh presumably, you can just hit this with some Botox and say like, "Okay, there you go. You no longer have to stretch." Yes, you've become a less functional human being. And if you ever try to play tennis or pingpong or something, uh it's over for you. you won't be able to use half of your back, but like just think of how how good your posture will be naturally

2:05:58 when you sit at your desk chair next time. You won't be getting >> I don't know if that's the most compelling sales pitch, man. I'm going to keep it real with you. >> Well, then I guess I just have to sleep you. If you guys aren't convinced by the uh words, we have to use the action. >> You look the sales pitch is like, you're going to take >> The sales pitch is like, I have a like 1,000cc syringe behind my back. And it's like one way or another, this is inside of you. >> A lot of a lot of dudes are getting Botox now. Like I think I was talking to somebody who was working at that startup P or that's not even a startup but Peachy and stuff. And they were like, "Oh my god, the rise of men getting Botox is actually non-trivally high." Which I I found and they're they're actually straight men, not gay men. So

2:06:44 >> not anymore. They're not. >> Well, okay. I'm just relaying what I heard. >> No, don't. We're we're we're big we're big fans of the homos out there. Like we we're more on the homos saying like >> that's kind of like saying dude like my >> husband who's like super straight really wants to go to San Francisco in like the 1960. Like my husband who's super straight really wants to go to the bathous in San Francisco. >> Straight guys cannot get Botox. And it's just well I mean the joke I'm going for here is like you know like there's some degree of like you're not fully aware of the full picture and some people might be trying to hide things from you. Uh there's also like another joke which is like everyone's just gay

2:07:30 nowadays. Tinder and all these things was originally Grinder, right? >> The entire modern app even Snapchat. Snapchat started as an app for for uh like basically gay gay hookups. You go from Grinder. You gota you got to take them off of Grinder because they don't want to have the pictures there and you send the pictures over Snapchat. >> So I've heard >> Yep. Snapchat used to be >> uh I I love hearing about the stories of it's it's insane how many early how many products started out as like effectively dating products um or or like much more sexually explicit versions than the word. >> Everything on the internet is basically a dating product if you put your mind to it. I guess people ask other people out on LinkedIn. >> Actually, in in many ways, you could say the point of all society boils down to

2:08:16 this, right? >> I have this post. It's like LinkedIn is the only place where hot recruiters will message autistic men and get left on rag. >> That's not true, man. I I have to counter signal here, too, man. What's What's I >> I think uh I think autistic men are in like world historic demand nowadays. Um, why? >> I think a lot of people have realized that like autism is not necessarily a bad thing and having someone um I I think autism is like very useful for a lot of secondary things like in a world where you have to be your own doctor and be your own mechanic and be your own IT guy and be your own whatever being autistic is is very powerful. Um, and then I think all the autistic people

2:09:02 have also figured out like, oh, I don't have to like minmax my computer. I can minmax my looks or I can minmax my like pickup game. And so they've started to like inadvertently become it's like an autistic guy who's like my special interest is people or like being really good at talking to people. >> Yeah, there's a lot of very uh I don't know. My my thought on this is that we're doing the gradual uh Asianification of everything like Asian and sorry uh Asia and all of its dating uh problems, issues, dynamics, whatever you want to call it. Uh they're they were sort of the first pioneer for a lot of these problems that the West has in general. Uh and you can consistently look over to like Korea uh and see kind of where the future for America is. Now they obviously put their weird Asian

2:09:47 spin on it in ways but I >> um do you guys think the uh outcomes will also follow in the west the Asian country outcomes which is like low birth rates low relationships >> all these things are going to proliferate across the western culture. I guess they already are but at scale I suppose. Yeah, I think yeah, I don't know. Like we can do the whole birth rates conversation or whatever, but it just appears to be like uh like we know a lot of the factors that are going into making this the way that it is and none of them no one's going to roll back any of them, right? >> Yeah. This goes back to our earlier point, Lucas, which is like there's no point in talking about um you know uh relationships or birth rates or whatever. I mean, these things are I think nominally cooked uh however you

2:10:33 want to phrase that. And um if it's a cooked dish, it's not really that interesting anymore cuz you know it's like what what's what's the point? I want to talk about like things that are like >> we're going to debate like the Hungarian fertility policy or something like that and like oh well what? So I will say update on the fertility. Apparently Korea's fertility is like going up a lot going up a lot mean it's like not even >> it's very high in a percentage wise. It's just that they're they're very low. Turns out I don't think I read that it wasn't even statistically significant the change. Uh >> and so >> like >> they're at such a low level of fertility that it's like oh my god it's a 30% candle 30 and it's like okay they're still like 60% below the replacement rate. >> Okay, you guys want to know one other

2:11:19 thing is I don't think you can actually create an engaging white pill podcast or anything white pill that's engaging like no one no one's going to listen to it. >> You you make everyone create like some wacky sort of white pill. >> Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Why Why would they listen to it? I mean, again, obviously, it's a joke before people come out. >> I think you can create like some kind of like wacky white pill that's like less a white pill and more like here's this one weird trick that no other podcaster wants you to know about how to inject Botox into your your like muscle, your jaw, >> white pill content. >> Um, >> yeah, you can always be useful, right? Like you can always you can always tell them that your three hot tips. provide actual value. Boo. Boo. >> Yeah. This Hey, um the tagline for this

2:12:06 podcast could be uh we don't provide any value. >> Zero's wrong. >> Zero value inside. Zero value within. Uh so what I'm curious about is do you think that uh looks is sort of like a zero something where like imagine that uh like how basically how do you think the intersection of uh like supply and demand works in a dating market if all men gradually like if they lose weight and become more attractive uh does this just does this mean it none of them got more attractive effectively or does it mean like is there some baseline under which people just say like uh supply and demand doesn't matter. We don't want you, right? Like you're so [ __ ] up. >> I have I have a take here, but I'm curious what what you have to say.

2:12:52 >> I mean, look, I think generally like what is attractiveness for a man? Like what what is it like what is the what is the canonical >> Oh my god. Holy black pill nuke like signal just comes in with like can men even be >> No, I never said that. The point I'm trying to make is like how do you how do you how do you process attraction? Look, in history, attractiveness for a man, like for example, the past kings and you know, whatever were fat and really ugly. Um, lots of men. >> Okay. I don't know if they were ugly. >> I No, no, no, no. We have to restart. We have to re I've clearly [ __ ] up this whole hypothetical. Instead of saying all men get more attractive, let's say all women society are raised like three

2:13:38 points in attractiveness. I mean that's already happening Lucas like that is the like what what did the underlying >> well but what he's asking is not is this happening or is this not happening he's asking like is this good does this lead to >> better no what is the effect on the supply right is like uh are there women who were previously undatable by men or does that not exist men adjust what they are willing to date based on the market supply or do they literally have a random rock bottom where it's like below this point it just doesn't even matter biological impulses have said that I can't even reproduce with you. Like [ __ ] doesn't work. Can't get it up. Not happening. >> For dudes, it's not about the availability. It's just that whenever they're ready and the time, you know,

2:14:24 there's there's probably an inflection point for a man where it's like, I need to settle now. And therefore, >> I kind of you just pick whoever you're with and or you find somebody good enough and then you call it a day. Um, and so until that until that inflection point happens that that that it's not a it's not a process of finding the right person. It's for dudes it's a process of finding the right time. >> Um, for for women it's the process of finding the right person. Which is why I mean if if if if a girl is active on a dating app for example uh she'll be going on you know five, six, seven dates a week or something like that. Obviously, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but you you see this happening in New York all the time. And so, at that point,

2:15:09 >> I think it's a really big exaggeration versus like the median. >> Um, you know, look, I think I'm talking about like big city culture like New York City or LA or something like that. >> I don't think that's I think these are these are actually >> almost certain that's not normal, but >> I think Okay, maybe maybe a little bit further than that. >> I don't think it's like some crazy statistical outlier to be clear. I don't think it's like the top 0.001%. But I I don't think the average >> the average woman has used hyper gam to go on 127 dates per week. And >> it's just I mean the numbers don't add up at a time, right? Like there's not enough >> one guy dating the same 300 women like it's like one of those sushi buffets where like it brings you the >> Did you guys ever see that? >> Yeah. >> You guys know about West Elm Caleb?

2:15:54 >> Wait, hold on before we go before we we'll swap the topic. But I think my take is this. I think it depends a lot what you mean by all like people become three points more attractive. That can mean a lot of things, right? That can mean like, oh, we just give like UBI like universal Botox, right? And so it's like the top women maybe don't get a lot more attractive because they already didn't have wrinkles, but the bottom women maybe get more attractive because now they don't have wrinkles anymore. Versus like if it's like a 10 becomes a 13 and like a four becomes a seven. Um, I think in that case we probably don't have better outcomes and everything stays the same because we all adjust to what like a woman looks like now. And if you look at like I mean if you look at like a protohuman like a a proto homid

2:16:40 like these people were having sex debatably like much more sex than us and like you know like where are the virgins compared to these people and God knows that like they were not very good-looking >> but also but also that was before that was before the human race turned gay. That was before the human race turned gay. That was before testosterone levels were decreased by 92%. >> This is also true. >> You guys know Do you guys know how much it costs? Do you guys know how much it costs to do like a testosterone check >> at Lab Court? >> I have no idea. >> I think it's like 40 bucks or something, right? >> Dude, it's $500. >> What? There's no way you're getting adversely selected. >> I swear to God. >> I'm going to keep it real. This is like you just walked in and you're like, "Dude, do you know how much it costs to [ __ ] get a drink?" And you're like, "Cost $100." It's like, dude, yeah, man.

2:17:25 I literally went in for my physical and I asked my doctor. I'm like, "Hey, I want to get my testosterone check. >> It's very high." >> Do you have like a normal doctor or do you have like a special doctor? >> A normal like a primary care. I have one medical, >> dude. I just got my full I just got full blood labs. They took like six vials of [ __ ] for like 180 bucks and they took near. >> Yeah, man. I went to lab like >> signal. I'm like I just think there's a 0% chance that you go and see like an average doctor. >> Wait, what? I just think that the >> you think I'm I'm going to like a really high-end doctor that's like tonier. >> Remember how we started this podcast and we were like, "Hey, maybe you want to find a smaller room so there's less echoes." And you were like, "I don't have any small rooms, right?" I >> Yeah. Wait, can you tell us? Can you tell us? Let's make him say it. So, you come into the podcast and it's like

2:18:11 slightly echoey and we're like fiddling with audio and like saying hi and talking a little bit about the format. What exactly did you say when I asked, "Do you potentially have a room that has like more things inside of it or is smaller?" What did you say exactly? >> I I mean, I think I don't know. I don't remember, but I said something like, "Uh, I'm so sorry. This is going to sound douchy, but I don't really have like a small room. I I only have I only have 17t ceilings, guys. Jesus Christ. Sue me." Okay, sue me. >> 17 foot ceilings. signal lives in some like modern like Greeko like transhumanist Greeko like type like AI generated dude >> is it actually 17 ft ceilings that's like uh >> it's I would say most of the house is

2:18:59 that but then I think some of them probably are about 12 to 13 feet maybe >> I can't tell if it's or not I legitimately can't tell >> that's I I like high ceilings Thanks guys. >> There is 0% chance that you go to a normal doctor signal. Like actually no, no, no. Even this is the other problem with this. Even if you do go to a normal doctor, by going to them, you transform them into a scammer doctor is what I'm guessing, right? You could go to the most normal doctor in the world. And they're going to be like, "Yeah, that testosterone sample that's going to be like uh like checks, notes, like $4,000, bro." The doctor the doctor like keeps like saying prices that feel outrageous

2:19:45 signal and then signal keeps like not even blinking and the doctor just like walks into a back room and like smacks his head and goes like stupid stupid like no I could have made so much more >> funny it's like a it's like a white person traveling to like a a third world country where they automatically jack up the prices or whatever as soon as it's like oh Mr. It's Lucas. It It's no longer It's no longer 10,000 rupees. It's like 50,000. >> I paid like >> And then Lucas also feels like he got like a scam bargain. >> No, they they will make Lucas feel so good about himself because he he will feel like he got a deal cuz they they typically the price. Okay, a normal person that price would have been like 500 and then they're going to tell Lucas it's going to be like 10,000 and then and then when Lucas says [ __ ] you. know,

2:20:31 they're going to be like, "Oh, you can have it for 5,000." And it's still a, you know, he'll feel good about it because he feels like he got a deal. And then the person feels really good about it because he just totally scammed the [ __ ] out of it because he just increased that price by 10x or 12. >> I had my purchasing moment in uh in Taipei. There was this guy who had uh a price for I I I was buying like a computer or something like that and I just walked in and I said, "Yeah, I'll take that thing." Uh, and then he starts like haggling with me over the price and I was just like, "Dude, just let me [ __ ] buy it." Uh, and I I didn't even realize what was happening, but like after like 30 seconds after I was like, "Oh, god damn it." Like this was such an exorbitantly high price that he expected me to like barter with him over it, but

2:21:16 I was just like, "Just give me the [ __ ] thing I'm willing to pay." And I like completely he was and he gave the worst part is that he gave me a second shot, right? Like he tried to tell me what was going on. >> He's like, "No, dude. You don't get it. We're supposed to go back and forth." >> One of my ex-girlfriends uh we were in Morocco and um I remember we sort of got into a little bit of a fight because um she went to go to a shop and she just she was like, "Oh, I love these little leather sandals or whatever." And uh the guy was like, "Oh, this is XYZ price." And she was like, "Okay, here you go." And I was like, "Wait, what what are you doing? It's not how it works here. Like we have" and she was like, "No, I don't care. I just want to buy them. I don't want to deal with anything." And I was like, "Wait, that's not how it works.

2:22:01 You're you're violating >> you're violating >> you're violating you're violating like Somalian commercial law." Like >> it's like probably extremely rude. It's like you're kind of flexing on somebody if you don't >> negotiate like >> go back and forth once or twice, right? It's like disrespect. So I was like wait I mean this is it was remarkable and her entire world was never about bargaining and or you know haggling and whatever. >> Women hate this [ __ ] Women absolutely are like uh at least western women they like I I had a lot of people who came from >> feels really icky for western women to do this. >> Yeah they they came from the US and they would visit Taipei and they would Okay. So, when I was living in Taipei, I didn't have a bank account in Taiwan. And so, you can't without a bank account

2:22:47 in Taiwan, you cannot use uh PC Home24, which is like their version of Amazon. So, if you want to buy something, you frequently just have to go to the store to get it, right? But like, uh they don't have like the place where you go to get text uh tech supplies is this tech bazaar like Guanghao Digital Plaza, I believe. Uh, and you literally have to go and barter with people in this like sevenstory building over like a screen protector for your phone or something, right? So, you have to go and it's like a 30 minute cab down there and then you have to go up to story 4 and then you have to barter with this person and their whole thing is like it's hyper optimized for just tech bazaar bartering because they assume well if you're

2:23:32 coming here you want to barter like you want the experience, right? because otherwise you would just use Taiwanese Amazon and you're not doing that, right? So, you're just trapped into this thing of infinite bartering over like $4 items whenever and it's like you can't just go and buy the USBC cable, right? Or like the weird HDMI adapter. You need to go barter with somebody. It's like the worst part of every month. >> We should at some point shill Zcash and Poly. >> That's the thing. Yeah, we do. We do got to talk a little bit about uh we've I mean we've talked some about poly market but you know signal I could just come out right and ask you uh how do you feel about prediction markets? Have you used them? Have you played with them? What do you think their net effect on society is? Uh and if you had to get gigar right

2:24:18 now, how would you use them? >> That's [ __ ] hilarious. First of all, I think you know a lot of people a lot of people have like a a potential negative perception of prediction markets. >> Signal is so perfect for this. I love >> he's like the perfect guest. >> I mean, my perception is um if you want to know some >> is gambling good or bad? Who can really say? >> Yeah, it's great. >> You know, you know, I' I've always been a person where I've had some crazy um uh like I never was in the middle. Like I would never be in the middle about anything. I would just have a you know left or right type perspective. But in some sense like okay the thing I like like poly market is actually really interesting because um

2:25:04 man like the essence of what is truth with an incentive structure is actually kind of cool from a [ __ ] pure >> well it becomes an oraoros right like it's like you you can actually change the future by making the market on it in a way that somebody is willing to invest on right like >> yeah I mean there's all sorts of trade-offs and downsides here right it's not perfect there's a lot of things you can you know whales can move the [ __ ] bits whatever uh direction that they'd like uh manipulate it's not open there's insider trading all that stuff exists I think generally um you know prediction markets are very fascinating from a pure incentive structure perspective and I like incentive structures and if there's a right incentive structure it reveals some cool things for humanity like in

2:25:49 this case potentially the truth before the truth actually happens and uh I find that fairly interesting as far as the gambling and the other ship I don't really care for it. I don't really particularly trade on it, nor do I like participate in it that much. Um, >> I also really enjoy that uh Poly Market has exposed the average person to an understanding of incentive flows in a way that they've never really thought about before because you actually like once you put money on a thing, you you actually do kind of care more about it. And you have this funny situation where like I on any given geopolitical event, you can actually have multiple different political actors all participating in different directions on the same market, right? Like you can have a market for will America have boots on the ground in

2:26:36 Iran by this date, right? And you can have you can have like Heg Seth and he's trying to make money inside or trading this, but like Heg Seth doesn't even know because actually Trump is overruling him so that Baron can win the market, right? And so like you have this infinitely scaling ladder of insiders and they all think that they're right and they all think that they have an edge, but in the end like you actually might be better off as just like a random detached outsider uh who has no idea what's going on with this just like going trading on your balls. I think I I think one of the things about these markets is like there there are certain markets and you know maybe it's survivorship bias, maybe I'm an incredibly intelligent person, maybe it's luck. Um I I think there are sort

2:27:21 of markets that do feel like free money. Um I'm a big believer that like two or three times a year there's just like free money lying on the ground on the market if you're already both of them this year >> and it's not even it's not even >> we we have nailed both of them. So maybe it's like we don't we don't maybe maybe there >> there's no more free money. We already >> Yeah. Yeah. I am curious. The other thing, and this is also a sponsor, but I think we're like lucky enough to have sponsors that are very interesting and have like interesting products. Do you know what Zcash is? Uh, have you like thought about privacy, like private money at all and whatnot? >> Are you talking to me? >> Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. Of course, I know what it is. Uh, I mean, this is like the holy grail of um uh in some sense uh

2:28:07 moneyaundering, right? I don't I'm not saying moneyaunderings have Zcat. >> This might be the This is the greatest >> sponsored by Zcatish. >> Please. >> No. I I mean I like >> Don't Don't [ __ ] say it. >> We'll definitely leave some parts. >> If this out, you mean clip this and then promote it with exceptional effort. >> I have a I have a >> If you mean cut this from the episode and put it elsewhere. Yeah, for sure. >> I mean, look, private money is really like private transactions are really interesting. Like there's there's no um is Zcast really that private? I don't know. Didn't they break it? Some people >> I think it's it's it is really private. Yeah, because you have the shielded

2:28:52 >> you have the shield. It's like the one thing that everyone kind of agrees is is private actually. >> Okay. Anyway, the point being is uh there's no other mechanic for like nonkyc transactions, right? >> Um there's like a few mechanics depending on how deep you're willing to go. You can always huge pain in the ass. >> P2P stuff. >> Yeah, it's just a huge It's like you have to go meet some random guy in some part of the city that you don't know and it's like all like off of like word of mouth trust and stuff or something. >> Fairly sketchy. >> You give them the briefcase, they give you the private keys like uh >> insane. >> They don't they don't actually give Listen guys, I swear to God. If you ever if you ever go about an OTC transaction and you're trading the private keys, you

2:29:37 should reconsider. Anyway, uh >> that's ridiculous. Um >> yeah, there's definitely like things not to do here that people do. I I think uh >> I'm not a crypto guy at all and uh I I I uh I like the technology behind crypto, but I don't like the communities of Tik Tok. >> Not a huge speculator. If it makes you feel any better, there's literally nobody in the face of the earth signals who is a fan of the crypto community >> selling AKs in uh in Iran, who can really say if that's good or bad. Crypto disavow would never touch it ever. You know, the worst thing that has ever happened on earth. >> Crypto is has the single biggest concentration of scammers and bad

2:30:23 behavioral people. >> I I think that might be changing. I think it might be shifting towards AI now. >> I think it's it's got to be in an AI now. Also, >> what the hell are people doing in AI that's grifting like other I don't I don't get it. >> Dude, we're not that's not a serious Okay, stop. Stop. We can go over to that in a second. We can go over to that saying that we're not doing that right now. That's unreal. Unreal signal. Unreal, bro. Unreal thing to say. Um, that's a clip. That's like a clip right there. God, I hope I hope every AI stock tumbles like 50% tomorrow and we can flip that, >> I guess. >> Um, but I I will say like I think the thing in crypto is that there's a ton of scammers and grifters. I think one of the things that's interesting about crypto is like a lot of the people who

2:31:08 are buying scam or whatever products in crypto like you're buying some token that like clearly has no value acrruel or whatever, they know that that's the case. And so I think it's actually this very interesting thing where like people are kind of walking into this people. Dude, dude, you would be s people are walking into this like proverbial casino and I think they do understand. I think it's just the scale of it and the productization of it where it has been like insanely productized. I mean, there's money, there's companies that literally make hundreds of millions of dollars a year off of productizing this, right? Like your pump funds, etc. Um, I think the other thing that's very fascinating to me about Zcash and like following some of the incentives uh threads that we were pulling on earlier, I think it's it's um we often think about technology as this

2:31:54 thing that only goes forward because we think of technology intrinsically as like the iPhone or information technology. And I think there's also things like social technology and we were kind of touching on this in directly in the conversation where like some ways technology uh like you know Tinder or dating apps which is like a information technology has maybe been bad for social technology and for social cohesion etc. And there's like some ways in which we lost some forms of social technology by improving information technology, right? Like your average 20-year-old is probably less sociable than they were 10 or 20 years ago pre- Netflix, pre Tinder, pre, you know, Tik Tok. Um, I think one of the places where we don't think about that is you used to be able to live a much much much more private life. Like even things like the travel rule, like the idea you can send

2:32:40 you can walk into the country with $10,000, you know, that's from like World War II. Like $10,000 back then was like a million bucks right now. Like imagine if the US government was like, "Yeah, you can walk in with a million bucks, no question to ask. But if you have more than a million, you have to answer a couple questions." Like that seems much more reasonable than like being questioned over like walking into an airport with $10,000 is kind of questionable, man. Like I travel around for months at a time and like $10,000 is just not that much money in 2026 for better or worse. >> Carrying $10,000 >> $10,000 was like >> Yeah. Um I I mean it's just like very interesting the way in which uh like people have much much much less privacy and much much much less agency over uh

2:33:25 visav's like the the control that the government has over you and the the insights they have into you. It is kind of interesting where the government has these things into you in kind of a spiky way. Um, like I don't think the average person needs to be worried about privacy, but then like maybe randomly some random person at the CIA hates you and like makes your life hell over some random thing you did. Um, it's it's pretty interesting. >> Signal, are you aware that pumpf fun was actually the fastest company to a billion dollars in revenue uh in like the history of the human race? Yeah, I actually know uh Alon or um I I mean I I I I I do know this fact, but I'm not sure where you're going with this. Go on. >> No, I I I I was just asking because like

2:34:11 a lot of people uh in general tech, >> a lot of the AI people are unaware of some of the revenue like the sustainable revenue making a million dollars a day. the idea that crypto has revenue and makes money. Um, of course, dude, Coinbase is a publicly traded company. And >> yeah, but some of this is like more sustainable than other stuff, right? >> Look, >> everybody assumes that crypto revenue is like this thing that appears and then you grab it and then if you don't it disappears, right? Like >> it's a very transient thing. What what value are they adding to society? >> In the case of Oh my god, it's literally the meme where signals like AK-47s to

2:34:56 Iran. Who am I to say what's good or bad? Uh selling crypto to willing consumers at willing market prices. What value are you adding to society? You piece of [ __ ] You disgusting crypto. >> Hey, I never I first of all, [ __ ] you guys. I never said the Iran thing. All right. Hi. >> No, the episode title is Signal endorses child soldiers. >> And and pre-teen Botox. >> Okay. You did say that Botox. You >> I I didn't say I didn't say anything, but I just said that there is some of this stuff going on. I to what extent, I'm not sure. >> You said specifically, I think something to the effect of who am I to say if this is bad?

2:35:41 >> I'm not to judge. If a parent wants their child to go get Botox at 14, who are you to judge? Like why why would you ever get in the middle of that? >> He's got a good point, SA. >> I just have a take that is like very contrary to normal people, which is I think judging is good. I think judging is like a law of social technology. >> Judging is so much fun. >> I think a lot of the problems we have is because like judging is presumed to be a bad thing. I mean, I >> I think I think it got uh I like to do things that other people are not doing. And I think too many people are judging. So, I'm not going to judge anymore. >> I think too people too few people are judging. >> What are you talking about? Everything on Twitter, every single post is effectively a judgment against somebody's behavior and or >> it's a take, but it's not judgmental.

2:36:27 Like, people do the thing where it's like, "Oh, this seems pretty crazy, but who am I to judge?" Right? Like that. I mean, the exact same thing you're doing with a Botox, right? Like everyone has takes, but I think very few people, like for example, we'll put it one way. I'll put it this way. Like uh the other day in this group chat that we're in, um a bunch of people started talking about like, yeah, I think uh like only fans managers should be, you know, we'll we'll bleep some of this out. And I was like, it's really insane that you have like that like you believe that very strongly, but you don't seem like would you say that about like the guy who made only >> like what like what about the guy who made the whole platform? Um or like what about a guy who owns a strip club? I think the way in which people judge

2:37:13 things is very strange nowadays. And they're almost always willing to be like, well, this is crazy. But then they stop themselves short of being like it's good or bad. Well, it's because the way the way in which they decide who to direct their anger at is not like how do I solve this problem like what is root cause source of this problem as much as it is like uh which group is in group >> which group do I dislike or which group is like a safe assailable target here right >> it's just yes >> look I man it serves no functional purpose like what is going to get you other than >> whature other than just pure like I don't know agony agonizing. I don't know. I I look >> I think it's society useful at times. I think it can be societ

2:38:01 like >> well I would say more than what we're doing now. You would you know you would maybe think less. >> I think I think it's like if everyone is allowed to do everything and we descend into some sort of like Mad Max meth utopia. I never said that that would I I'm not >> You're doing the thing again. You're not judging. I'm not judging it. It's like uh the thing the thing standing between us and Mad Max meth utopia where you can do like instant youth in Asia is definitely like some degree of judging, right? Like it's it's a social shame thing. >> Uh I don't I I don't think you can really attribute it to anything else. Uh and I think most of the time people complain about like social ills they're experiencing now. They're also things that were previously held in check by just giga shaming. Uh obviously you can

2:38:46 totally misallocate shaming to the most ridiculous things possible, right? Uh but >> isn't there isn't there a massive meme in the uh one of the what is it? Uh don't kink shame or something like where everything is completely accepted no matter what. And um I guess my thing is man I have a limited amount of bandwidth in terms of like what I can think about and how I can think about it and whatnot. Like I I can't really have a judgment on everything. Like I just it's just like whatever. It doesn't really matter. >> Appeal the time f I'm so tempted like halfway like to really hold I'm not going to do it but it it would be so funny to like continue being like telling like force you down a pathway where you had to admit a judgment on these things. >> Dude, I would I mean if this I look

2:39:31 >> you have to dude this is our job as as posters is we're here to sell the takes bro. Like if someone asks me about furries they either have to be the best thing in the world or the worst thing in the world. They can't just be like medium like fries are medium bro. You you and I are you to a certain extent you and I are in the engagement business although I'm not monetizing but uh you know >> you are indirectly though right kind of >> I mean look >> I mean I'm sure it's useful for signal like your your product stuff right >> yeah but that's a side effect that's not a that's not an end that's not the reason for why and nor like any revenue that I make is inconsequential uh it's not optimiz anyone started out doing this and I sorry I I don't think any of the good or influential posters

2:40:16 started out with the intent to uh influence anything or monetize. Like I think there's a specific type of person who >> you guys think the X is better with monetization, creator monetization, or worse? >> It's obviously just much worse as far as I can tell. Like it I'll give you I'll give you my take. My take is like it's worse, but the reason why it's worse is because um the team is unwilling to do basic things that would curb almost all of the downsides. >> What's a good example? >> Like I I think there's very small things you can do. I think it's pretty clear who's engagement farming and who's not engagement farming. I think the team has done a lot of things that have inadvertently been bad and then you can say, "Hey, you know, move fast and break things or not." But like for example, I

2:41:02 think one one that anyone would be hardressed to argue was like a good thing is when that one account posted like a photo of Steve Jobs's daughter and then Nikita Beer gave him like $10,000 for getting 80 million uh views on that. I think he regretted that. >> Um and then that guy lost his mind forever and only ever got like five like tweets after that. >> Dopamine consumer is doing fairly well again. >> Good for him, man. Um, but like I I think that was bad. I think that was like probably a pretty bad >> and it also made Yeah. I mean, this is just the big problem is like when you when you write somebody one of those big cartoon checks in a very public way, you have to just understand that everybody is going to copy what they're doing. And it's like,

2:41:47 do you want everybody posting pictures of billionaires daughters and just saying like, "Wow, dude, she's so [ __ ] hot." on your platform. Like, is that what is that what you want to have? because it >> yeah I think another problem is that X has an identity I think X has an identity crisis >> um where like it is very beloved as a text focused site um by a relatively small group of people that monetizes on the fact that it's used worldwide like X is used very prolifically worldwide but it was really valuable and very particularly beloved and special like there's people who use X basically the same way that people use Instagram or Facebook but I think there was a very specific group of people in finance and tech largely who used X in a very

2:42:33 particular way and it was very very very beloved for that by incredibly powerful and important people and it was very valuable as a tool to shape discourse. Um, I I think that is one thing and then I think X is struggling to reconcile that which is almost like a vanity project that's very expensive but it's like buying a newspaper with the fact that now X apparently has a $44 billion valuation right it was it was valued at 44 billion then it was absorbed into XAI now it's absorbed into SpaceX um and so now it's like okay we actually do have to like make a certain amount of money and we have certain KPIs and so I think it's very hard to balance those two things. Um, my probably my biggest thing for X is like I wish they would bring more SIM cluster stuff back. I think I

2:43:19 think the boosting of the inroup sim cluster was very powerful. Um, and I think that being diminished is very bad and I think it's I think I am not even uh aware of how it's bad entirely because I think the people who it's worse for are people who are starting new accounts. I think starting new accounts in the era of like slotbacks is really tough. I also think they have some tough headwinds which is like AI content is obviously you know difficult for them to deal with and they're one of the top places for AI content to go. Um and one of the top places where it's hated. Um so I I think there's you know there's a lot of difficulties and they have an identity crisis. I think there's certain things that they've done that I would like say were pretty clear at the time it was a mistake. There's some

2:44:04 stuff that maybe, you know, I'm like looking back on it and and saying it with the benefit of hindsight. Um, >> do you guys like that I turned the table and got you guys to give judgment? >> Yeah, but we're happy to give judgment, man. That's our whole thing is judging people. That's what we do. >> Um, >> that's that's we're professional judgers. >> Well, okay. >> Anyway, guys, we're going to wrap it up there. Thank you for listening to another episode of Plausibly Deniable. Remember everyone, if you made it to the end, you are spiritually obligated to subscribe. Uh, Godspeed. We love you and good night. It >> was fun. Uh, if you want, Lucas can send you a transcript. We'll cut off the stuff. All the stuff where we talk is straight up going to be like, if you actually read this thing, I will be so [ __ ] amazed. You would be shocked the

2:44:50 amount of text that you can generate through like one hour of talking and it's like >> done it. >> You think I read [ __ ] Lucas? I just [ __ ] feed it to Claude or something and I'm like, "Hey, find anything interesting where I'm like look like a [ __ ] or an idiot and cut it out." >> Yeah. Good luck. Good luck with the context window, sir. >> Oh, you guys don't know. I have a special model that has a infinite context window, bro. >> Oh, the employee model. The the Claude Opus 4.6 anthropic employee model.