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Modern Wisdom

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  • Mainstream Media Still Moves Elite Decision Making
    • George Mack argues mainstream media is underrated because elites still react to BBC, Guardian, and major outlets even as ordinary people mock them.
    • He says policy conversations inside UK government still shift around headlines read mostly by older insiders. Transcript: George Mack Peanuts and that’s always a risk yeah i have a question for the group i wanted to ask people on um bullish or bearish on certain trends so i kind of want to know um that are big right now in Society or aren’t big right now that you think should be bigger. So just give me things that people may be particularly popular about right now that you think don’t deserve to be and vice versa. Chris Williamson Overpriced and underpriced. George Mack Okay. Chris Williamson Are things overhyped at the moment? I want to say AI, but then it’s probably going to change the fucking world. I just feel sick of hearing about it. I’m kind of sick of hearing permanently about how it’s going to be the end of everything or the beginning of everything. And there’s no one that’s in the middle. There’s no one that’s like, yeah, AI is pretty cool. It’s people who are complete doomers or just like David Friedberg. Like there’s only two ends of the barbell, but I would quite like AI to chill out a little bit in terms of everyone talking about it well i guess we’ve never lived through a mania like this George Mack I guess the nearest one would have been the internet crypto with nfts was a little bit but it was crypto with nfts was fucking hard dude that would have been top of my list but i think a lot Shaan Puri Of sensible people were skeptical about NFTs for sure, aspects of crypto. Whereas I feel like AI right now, even the people who are doomers, they’re not saying AI sucks. They’re saying it’s too powerful. It’s either this is so powerful, life is going to be amazing. Or this is so powerful, life is over for us. Nobody’s really nobody really like hey this is this is a flash in the pan like in the early internet there’s famous articles where it’s like the internet won’t amount to anything this Is a fancy fax machine there’s you know there’s articles you can go pull up now and mock people i feel like with ai we kind of all know what about you what do you think i’m getting really into George Mack Um metaverse real estate it’s it’s the place now’s the time to get in so i’m buying up a lot of land i’ve got a place next to snoop this feels a little bit like kicking a dead body whilst it’s Chris Williamson On the ground and saying that you killed it do you know i mean you can’t say the metaverse is overhyped when it’s already dead you know that simpsons meme where it’s like stop stop he’s. He’s already dead. I don’t see you hanging a bald ape up in here, do you? So there you go. Why don’t you talk about your crypto? George Mack You know, here’s actually a weird one that I was, I did all right on that toad. Did all right on that toad, baby. All right. You can look it up on Shane as well, actually. So there’s no, there’s no fraud there. There’s no lies. You can, you can verify my NFT activity. Good sir. You know one that I’m weirdly… Because I was thinking about, there’s lots of stuff you could say where it’s almost trite, right? So you go, AI is going to change the world. And it’s like, most people will probably agree with that. So therefore, it’s kind of a neutral statement. And I was thinking, well, what are people… What’s cliched to be bearish on right now? And then what’s the bullish take for that? My two big ones are number one the mainstream media i’m ridiculously bullish in the next five years on the very the mainstream media has um which is like the oh it’s kind of like don’t go To college kind of statement whereas it’s kind of saying almost the opposite now of go to college mainstream media in particular this is it’s almost like they have the highest value Audience in the world because nobody I know listens to mainstream media, and that’s kind of part of the joke, except Donald Trump, except Kistama, except Macron. Like we was at dinner the other night, we wouldn’t say who, but we were somebody who used to work in the cabinet in the UK. And one of my favorite questions to ask people, apart from that question previously, is when you meet somebody who knows a lot about the industry of, you’ve worked in this thing for ages, What do layman’s like me just not appreciate that’s really fascinating on the inside? And he paused for a while to answer the question about what it’s like being inside number 10. And the thing he reiterated was how much of the conversation is shifted by what’s on the BBC or what’s on the Guardian. And you kind of see this with Trump a little bit now when he’ll address, he’ll know like each news reporter by name. And it’s like, meanwhile, nobody reads this, nobody consumes this, but it still has such an impact on policy. You’ve got little rivalries with, oh, that’s such and such from the lame times or whatever. Chris Williamson And I’m like, what the fuck? Yes. George Mack And likewise, number 10, the amount of reactionary time just goes to what’s on the headlines that nobody’s reading really, apart from a few geriatric 65-year Therefore, it’s kind Chris Williamson Of weirdly underpriced. Well, there’s always going to be prestige in the mainstream media because there’s a limited amount of time and a limited amount of space. Anybody can make a YouTube channel, which is awesome and subversive and rebellious and whatever. But also that means anyone can make it. So there’s no prestige associated with doing it. There’s only 24 hours in the day on CBS. So if you get 15 minutes of that day, implicitly you’re being given something. There’s a kind of prestige with it. That being said, has anyone ever watched Discovery Life? You ever seen Discovery Life? Discovery Channel Life? No. So I’m fucking training in the gym, and there’s so many different TV screens. Brand new gym, so apparently everybody needs to watch. It’s like a three-year playing subway surfer whilst watching TikTok at the same time. So fucking screens everywhere. And I’m looking over, and there’s a lovely lady on TV, black lady, like nicely dressed, floral outfit thing. And she is having one of her own fingernails extracted from behind her own ear, like at 10 a.m. In the morning. Discovery Life is an American cable television network. The channel primarily focuses on reality programming, dealing with life events. It’s programming targets, female audience, blah, blah. It is fucking medical emergencies at 10 in the morning. And I’m watching this like five inch long pair of tweezers extract this very nice lady’s fingernail from behind her own fucking eardrum. I’m like, I’m trying to do bicep curls. And it cut from that to the next one. And it was someone’s ribs being punctuated. Fucking 10.30 in the morning. Only in America would it be, like healthcare’s become basically a competitive sport now that you can fucking broadcast on the internet. So I don’t know. I feel like this is the sort of thing you would have watched at an after party. No, I’ve never seen that. I had this realization. George Mack I’m trying to find it now, but I wrote about it ages ago, which was, I was once similar to you in the gym working out and the news was on. And it was just like, this number of people have died in Ukraine today. This number of people have died in Gaza today. And then take these pills. And I imagined it of like, if this was a bloke that was in the gym that was saying this, or it was a friend, I’d be like, I’m never speaking to you ever again. And it’s like, when you begin to personalize it like that, it’s just, you view it so differently. Chris Williamson Except it would be a guy that was shouting it to the entire room. Yes. He wouldn’t even be saying it to you specifically. He’d just be saying, this black lady (Time 0:05:50)
  • Mental Health Became Both Overused And Neglected
    • Gary Faust says mental health discourse got stretched so far that ordinary flaws, severe illness, and identity all collapsed into one vague category.
    • Chris Williamson adds it is both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed, leaving some people untreated while others build identity around labels. Transcript: Gary Faust This is- What was the question? Don’t think you should make fun of people like this though because it’s not really their fault that they’re being sort of conditioned to have this obsession with mental health that’s Shaan Puri My theory that’s exactly that’s exactly like you take dei dei starts from a good place hey we should include more people we should be more equitable everyone should get a fair opportunity To shot but then these movements can get hijacked. And the movements can get hijacked and stretched and to the point where it doesn’t really resemble where it started. You guys see this thing with the Canadian politician who was using the LGBTQ acronym? Yeah. But it was like 14 letters long. Chris Williamson It’s, what is it? Murdered and missing women and children, indigenous women and children. M-M Did you see this? It’s a full sentence long. Shaan Puri No, listen to this. She’s giving a press conference and she stands there and she just with a straight face says she wants to express her like, you know, condolences or whatever to the M-M There’s a number In there. 2-S And she just says that with a straight face. And then people were like, what the hell was all that? And it’s like, it includes like murder victims, murderers. Chris Williamson Murder, missing, women and children, indigenous people, like two spirit. The two is for two spirit, which is like, yeah. Double song. A is in there, which is asexual. So here it is. Gary Faust Holy that’s long was released i was shocked to find out that prime minister carney is cutting seven billion dollars between indigenous services canada and crown indigenous relations They provided zero dollars to deal with the ongoing genocide of mmiw g2slgbtqia plus that’s impressive that’s that was honestly really actually yeah you she runs it back indigenous Chris Williamson Women across this country indigenous women girls 2s lgbtqia plus it’s fucking wild she’s not reading off anything no she’s off the dome yeah that’s eminem she’s like she’s like the Fucking harry mack of coming up with acronyms you know that dude that he’s like shout out three words and it’s like umbrellas steaks shoes and he like freestyle wraps an entire thing George Mack About it the jay-z and they’re serious about this too that’s not even a joke you know that’s what’s it’s not snl but on your mental health point i if this is why this that it’s but i think What ends up happening is you end up with these swings you can then have a swing so far the other way over where it’s like i mean everybody’s somebody’s taking their own life right like It’s a that side of things is like serious totally the problem with a lot of these things is you get to like a lot of the root of human experiences which is like ironically a little bit of That but so much of it is around the language that we use. And within mental health, you bundled up so much that you bundled up 7 billion individuals, and it’s become such a black and white term. Whereas I always use the example, diabetes is quite an interesting one, right? Because you have type 1 diabetes, which is a genuine medical condition that somebody’s had from birth. And then you have type two diabetes, which is a little bit more, it’s a lot more your choice in your environment. And it feels like you don’t have that kind of nuance around. Chris Williamson I’m going to try and just speed run my diabetes. This is getting better, by the way. Yeah, actually. It’s getting better. Try it again. Coke on the nuts. Yeah. Before we continue, most people in their 30s are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in. They sleep better than they did in their 20s. Discipline is not the issue, but recovery feels somewhat different. Strength gains take a little longer. The margin for error starts to shrink. 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Best of all, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee plus free shipping in the u.s and they ship internationally and right now you can get up to 20 off by going to the link in the description Below or heading to timeline.com/modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout that’s timeline.com/modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout you do have um like of George Mack These language hacks that exist. I always joke that cybersecurity, nobody takes it serious as an industry because the naming’s just awful. And the biggest thing the cybersecurity industry could do is no new technology if they just branded it as CTIs, like taking it from STIs, like computer transmitted infections. All of a sudden, I’m like, I feel a little bit more dirty about it and likewise the homeless problem right now how many people who are um homeless is that the main cause it’s often it’ll Be some ironically some serious mental health issue that’s going on oh yeah so like the language that we use i’ve interviewed so many homeless people dude half of them want to be homeless Gary Faust And i’m and to be quite frank i don’t really blame them if you want to go live in the woods as long as you’re not murdering and raping. Why would somebody want to be homeless? Because they’re not being tethered to this system that we’re all living within that is currently kind of going down the drain. I mean, I don’t really blame them. That thing that we just pulled up, though, is exactly why people aren’t taking mental health seriously anymore, though. Because there’s a fucking, in that, what’s it called? The DSVM-3 or whatever. There’s a disease for everything right you know so like for example when i was growing up i got diagnosed all sorts of shit but really i was just a little asshole and when you when you start Saying i got adhd or i’m bipolar i got borderline or you got this or that or whatever you know i got a i got a crutch i can lean on for every single fucking shitty thing i do to somebody which Chris Williamson Is awesome there’s a there’s a great a great line that someone said to me which was mental health is both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed there’s people who don’t have it that just Live through it dude and don’t know and people who don’t have it that make it their entire personality all the people that actually have serious mental health problems that I’m at least Gary Faust Friends with are mostly undiagnosed and they’re just kind of, you know, wandering through life. Chris Williamson Yeah, dude. Seriously. I agree with you. And I think it’s easy to be like callous or whatever, like flippant about the people that have been diagnosed or self-diagnosed or found their sort of mental health become more fragile, They don’t want to be fucked. They don’t want to be that fragile. They’re just trying to hold on to some sense of certainty. And the certainty has now come from their diagnosis rather than their agency. They just can’t make that thing happen. They’re in a world that seems to pedestalize. I mean, there’s even a trend on Instagram of people having (Time 0:19:05)
  • Gary Faust Says Kratom Addiction Sneaks Up Fast
    • Gary Faust says kratom, especially 7-OH products, feels deceptively casual because it is sold at gas stations while acting on opioid pathways.
    • He describes drinking extract daily, not realizing how high he was, then melting down over a missing ten-dollar kratom shot. Transcript: Gary Faust Yeah, so the first thing I want to bring to the table for today is Kratom. Kratom is something I’ve been looking into because there’s, I think, sort of an epidemic happening. And there’s a video we got here that I can have pulled up. This is the guy I’m working with who I wigged out on the other day because he didn’t buy me ten dollars a kratom and i quit the doc because of that yeah this stuff’s strong yeah like so what He’s talking about for to contextualize all this is 7-oh is 7-hydroxymitrogene which is one of the um i i guess it we could just call it a chemical it’s in here i don’t know the science behind It We’re going to go actually interview a chemist about this stuff. But basically, people are taking kratom, which is sold over the counter at gas stations and head shops. And there’s even kratom shops. But it is a leaf that’s from Southeast Asia that sort of mimics the effects of certain stimulants, but also opioids. It acts on your opioid receptors and SSRIs. And I think, I know a handful of people that have gotten very addicted to it and they’re saying that it is, the withdrawal is worse than heroin, which is pretty unbelievable given that Heroin withdrawal is horrendous. And that’s it there? Yeah, man. I should have brought some for everybody. Shaan Puri But you’re just drinking that. Yeah, this is a lower dose than I was drinking. You’re telling me it’s worse than heroin, but you’re just casually. So here’s the thing, though. Gary Faust So there’s a difference between, and I’m still in the process of figuring all this out. Literally. Literally, yeah. So I was drinking a bunch of this stuff every day for the past month and then I sort of wigged out on my documentary partner because we got, yeah, it’ll be in the doc, but there’s, we were At a head shop and I was like, hey, dude, let’s get some of this credit. I want to test this stuff out. And there’s these things, there’s 70H pills which is it’s like almost like percocet basically and it’s sold over the counter which is nuts i mean i’m not i’m not bashing it necessarily But it’s interesting it’s sort of the wild west of this drug and it’s not it’s not like it’s a new thing they tried banning this in 2016 the reason i’m bringing it up is because we’re doing Chris Williamson This documentary and i think that we’re on the verge of potentially an epidemic with it yeah this has been i’ve seen this in austin since i basically got here so there’s a few uh small glass Vials you know like a five-hour energy yeah and there was a company that was making them and one of my friends had another guy who’d been addicted he’d had whatever the addiction gene Is addicted to every different drug throughout his entire life there’s even YouTube channels of these people and they’ll say, which drug fucked my life up the most? And they’ll just list every drug because they tried everything. They’re like, well, coming off LSD was actually not that bad, but I had this theory where I was on MDMA every single day for like two months. And that was really, really rough because my serotonin and da, da, da, da, da, da. And he said of all of the things that he tried the hardest to get off of was kratom and then he knew so much at six in the morning the sunrise minimart on whatever fucking south on our street Or something he was outside like waiting like waiting for this and then this company had taken their uh the kratom content without changing the bottling from five grams of whole leaf To two and a half and he knew and as soon as he had it he was like my fucking kratom’s been stepped on he like felt like from the mini mart yeah the sunrise mini mart it stepped on it or whatever The company that was making this because these people aren’t treating it like a supplement that it’s so psychoactive and okay the one thing i guess i didn’t explain very well is that Gary Faust There’s a difference between like the pure kratom leaf powder and the stuff that has the 7-OH in it, which is the synthesized version. And the reason I didn’t explain that very well is because it’s kind of confusing, but kratom leaf itself, I mean, you can still get addicted to it, but the 7-OH stuff is what’s fucking People. For reference, just because I know somebody that’s addicted to Kratom is going to watch this and be like, that son of a bitch blasphemed my Kratom. So that is- But the 708 is the really gnarly stuff. Yeah. So I’m going to get some of those pills and start taking them. But yeah, drinking Kratom extract with the 708 is basically drinking liquid heroin. What’s it feel like? It’s very interesting. It’s very sneaky. So I was drinking it for a month before i really realized how high i was on it have you done heroin oh yeah i’m from ohio dude so um how how do they how do they compare like oh seven oh if you were George Mack G r-i if you if you was if you was personifying them as people like what how do they how do they compare the two? Shaan Puri If it was a party. George Mack Kratom to heroin? Gary Faust Well, I mean, I haven’t done high levels of the 70H stuff yet, but comparatively, the kratom drinks that I’ve been drinking are called Club 13 150 MIT MIT, which is mitragynine. That’s the drug i guess and i was drinking two of those a day which is it turns out it’s a lot for that but there’s not a lot of 70h in it from what i understand how it works so i don’t have the Full scope yet for you but i would say that heroin is you know you’re you’re you you get really high you feel great you get that warm feeling you’re something you’ve taken painkillers Before right No, not really, no. Okay, well, good on you, dude. You’re better than me. Yeah, no, no, no, no, don’t mean it that way. Top of the moment. George Mack Are you conscious of the experience as you’re doing it? Gary Faust Yeah, you know you’re high. So I guess the primary difference would be that when you take Kratom, or when I have been, I’ve been, I just didn’t even realize how high I was on this stuff. Like, I was kind of just in a daze, but you get sort of that euphoric feeling. And I will say that in low doses of it, it’s sort of more of a stimulant. And then you take more and you’re getting more of an opioid, you know, the painkiller sedative. Chris Williamson Isn’t that interesting that the curve, how much you take almost inverts the effect? Gary Faust It’s a nuanced drug. And I’ve never really experienced that before, which was one of the things I was going to say that’s sort of sneaky. But the other thing is, and maybe this is just me, but I didn’t really grasp that I was high as hell on this stuff. And I was going in sort of thought loops about things. Like we had to get like a video done, right? And I was just sort of pacing around my house, which I pace a lot already when I think around on the phone. But I was just sort of going in these thought loops where I was repeating myself, like kind of even talking to myself. I was losing it a little bit. Yeah, dude. And I didn’t realize that this drug was that strong because it’s sold over the counter. And that’s already, I already knew from a number of other people who have gotten addicted to it. Cause I did some, you know, I put some feelers out there to talk to people. They already told me like, Hey, be careful. You’re going to, it’s going to sneak up on you more so than you think. Are you scared as somebody who’s pretty experienced with drugs? Chris Williamson Are you scared of the potential of putting yourself into this particular, you’re going to try this seven OH thing and it’s going to be amazing for the (Time 0:27:26)
  • DNA Testing Made Personal Patterns Feel Legitimate
    • Chris Williamson and George Mack say DNA testing felt useful less for surprise discoveries than for validating patterns they had already noticed in themselves.
    • George learned he absorbs magnesium poorly and may respond dangerously to morphine; Chris got genetic confirmation of obsessive, stress-sensitive tendencies. Transcript: Chris Williamson Can’t take as many and uh if if that was like if it was not so painful for me the cost-benefit analysis of drinking would be completely different but we did both me and you have done a intelex Dna which by the way this is the fucking sickest shit. IntellX DNA, a company that’s based here in Austin, but you can do it anywhere in the US. You spit into a tube, not affiliated. I just think they’re fucking sick. Spit into a tube, send it off. They’ll give you your full allele genetic profile and they’ll compare you to the population. Hey, you clear caffeine more slowly. You have a protective gene that’s good for late onset Parkinson’s. You have one which can be a risk for autism or for this or for that or for the other. And loads of behavioral stuff like this has been associated with people who have addictive personalities. So I have the COMT gene, which is I clear dopamine more slowly. That means that I don’t deal with chaos and stress particularly well. But once I start doing something, I get completely fucking obsessed and I lock in and I can’t stop. It’s like literally one of the descriptions was may struggle to stop tasks once started. It’s like just the gene of an obsessive person. That sounds pretty cool. What’s sick is once you do it, it’s like three grand or something. Maybe three grand? A roundabout that. It’s expensive. Three, four grand. It’s not cheap, but it’s like they’re never going to change. This is my genes and my genes. Shaan Puri I always wonder with this, did you learn things you didn’t already know about yourself? Yes. Yes. Because that first one you would know, like, yeah, I don’t handle this well, but I am able to obsess over tasks. George Mack So I’ll give you, so the way I view these intellect stuff, and it’s like very early days, and they’re only going to get better and better, is have you heard about the Air Force study in the 1950s, where they took like 600 Air Force pilots who were already male, certain height, certain build, and they tried to build the average cockpit for all of them. They tried to make the perfect cockpit by aggregating all of the proportions of the pilots. And when they went to test this perfect cockpit that they built, it fit zero. Because essentially averages are completely bullshit. No one is average. Only, I think, so it was 12 things that they measured, and only three of them hit 3%. So you can see it here. And even that 3%, it’s with a wide range. So the 3% that hit the range, for example, it would be between five, nine, and six foot, like that level of range. So then they realized, and obviously it’s so obvious now, but it’s way better to just build a customizable cockpit. And I think we’ll look back at everything, like how we’ve grown up around the way people talk about studies and magnesium and vitamin D and vitamin C is just absolute horseshit. Because what Gary should take is very different to what I should take and likewise with Chris. So to give you some concrete examples, one, I found out I was in the bottom 10% of magnesium absorption for my genetics. So I was like, oh, I’ve got to take way more than if I was to ask anything. I have a specific gene that I found, which was if I have surgery and they give me morphine, I’m very unlikely to wake up with a regular dose. It will probably kill me. So I’ve got to let doctors know that beforehand. I’m like, oh, that’s already paid for the test. And then everything- So let’s look at that example. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sleeping great. Chris Williamson So yeah, the specifics that you do learn is actually pretty fascinating because then everything gets built on top of what let me give you this uh the thing that it did for me i didn’t learn A tremendous amount that i didn’t already know through experience but it made all of my preferences feel way more legitimate right give you permission yeah because i’m like oh this Is why i like deep house music because it’s quite calming. So one of the coolest things, both of us did it, put it into your LLM, put all of your labs in as well, and it gives a different context. The coolest thing that I did, kind of useless, but again, made me feel more legitimate with my life direction. I was like, I’ve just done it again now to my ChatGPT project. Imagine that you know nothing about me. Erase all of the information that you have exclusively based on my DNA genetic test. What sort of a person am I? And it comes back and it is fucking banger. Your baseline personality, high drive, high stress operator, your dopamine and stress genetics, COMTA, DBH, SLC, da, da, da, da, da, da. High baseline dopamine and adrenal tone, faster mental processing, strong pattern recognition, but low margin for stress before overload. You become productive, intense, goal-oriented, slightly on edge most of the time, but also prone to overthinking, easily tipped into anxiety and to sustained pressure, sensitive To uncertainty and social evaluation. This is not a calm, content temperament. It is a perform or perish nervous system. And it just runs that for everything. Motivation pattern, I need to do off and on. I can’t do constant low level stress. And I was like, I already knew this, right? Because you learn things about yourself. Both of us have zeroed in on doing meditation. Both of us have zeroed in on relatively early nights, even though both of us have been in previous industries that were way different. And I’m like, I kind of, club promotion should be fun. Like I should be in a chaotic environment. I should be in a highly unpredictable environment but i didn’t end up there and i always felt a little bit off and as i’ve zeroed in more and more so what it did was i think especially for People that are maybe looking for more justification about why they’re in the lonely chapter they’re struggling to get through and they’re like fuck like why don’t i fit in is there Something wrong with me not at all like this is just your predisposition right now the problem that you can have and it’s kind of cool that this isn’t as widespread as it might be exactly The same as once you have a name for it you’re going to live by it uh this could very much become destiny right both ways yeah exactly i’m way less intrigued in that kind of cold reading description George Mack I’m way more interested in like it’s like oh you know it could have it could have been like virgo says this right um but what i’m fascinated by is so what’s the strange thing i’ve people Have always said i’m very very similar to my granddad we have like similar hair i like sometimes find myself like closing my eyes during meals and he did that like it was weird things you Did that your birthday on monday and i did um and i then i then put in the thing i got i asked the thing i go if i’m like trying to not die here like what are my most likely causes of death and they Go well your two biggest health concerns are one in glaucoma so you’ll just kind of gradually go blind which won’t kill you um or you’ll die of a stroke my granddad glaucoma. Phil Collins. I was going to say it. And stroke. And stroke. Wow. Yeah. Chris Williamson So if you’ve got the money to spend it. It’s sick. And you can have it interpreted by a clinician or whatever, but you can also just do it here. So I’ve just done the same thing. If I was likely to die, what are my most likely causes of death? Cardiovascular disease. Chronic stress mediated breakdown. Ooh, that’s exciting. Neurovascular neurological issues because of high signaling. Environmental sensitivity. I just fucking got popped by milk. Gary Faust They’re going to clone you. Yeah, that’s true. That is for God. They don’t need to. See, I don’t need a test like this to know how I’m going to die. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve got agency… (Time 0:38:10)
  • Feet Photos Turned Uber Eats Into A Funnel
    • Chris Williamson describes an Uber Eats driver who boosted tips by including foot photos in delivery drop-off shots.
    • He frames it as the Uber Eats to OnlyFans pipeline, where small sexualized rewards teach people to monetize attention fast. Transcript: Chris Williamson So there is a woman who does Uber Eats and has started including photos of her feet in the picture of the food drop off and her tips have gone up by a ton. Not mad about it. I mean, as feet go, they’re perfectly fine feet, but did not realize that this would blow up fast. And this is the OnlyFans pipeline. Like, as soon as you post something and start to get free money for it, you’re like, well, if I put my cash app in here, and if you scroll down a little bit more, she says, get a rotisserie Chicken or a pedicure, first rotisserie chicken allowance. There we go. This is the fucking Uber Eats to OnlyFans pipeline that no one is talking about. Gary Faust Yeah, I mean, there’s like an old joke about how long does it take for a, not a bottle source girl, a strip club waitress to become a stripper? Two weeks? Hasn’t ever heard this? Yeah, basically every, not every, but a lot of strip club bartenders or hostesses, they just end up becoming strippers. Maybe that’s just a niche thing that I know because of my vices. Penchant for strip clubs. Yeah, I guess. Dude, I used to have, you know this, I think I’ve told you this, I used to have this pickup line when I would go to strip clubs where I’d be like, hey, you look just like my future ex-wife. And they’d be like, oh, ha, ha, ha, because they’ve heard that a thousand times. I’d be like, no, I’m just kidding. I’m like a horrible person. I’ve got a felony. I’m not allowed to see my son, so you don’t want nothing to do with me. Chris Williamson And just- They lean in. Gary Faust Every time wow it’s crazy isn’t that the fucking craziest pickup line not really i mean american women have been conditioned since the 50s to be into like the bad boy i mean first of all Shaan Puri It was a two-parter so that already was sophistication i was yeah the old one too unbelievable that That’s Gary’s life hack, by the way. Gary Faust Oh yeah, yeah. He asked me for a life hack. That’s what I came up with. Chris Williamson That’s Gary’s life hack. Jesus Christ. Damn. What have you got? Some fucking notes app. I don’t want to hear about that. (Time 0:49:34)
  • The Analyst Who Verified Hormuz By Going There
    • Shaan Puri recounts an analyst who flew to the Strait of Hormuz, bribed locals, and literally counted ships to test whether the waterway was closed.
    • The trip showed tankers were still passing while major media reports and market assumptions were overstating the blockade. Transcript: Shaan Puri Did you follow this Citrini analyst number three story? No. You didn’t see this? No, no, no. Have you guys heard about this analyst number three? No. What’s this? This is amazing. This is just like a guy doing a legendary thing. So the Strait of Hormuz is blocked and there’s the war part of it, but then there’s the financial part of it. You’ve seen like oil prices going up, down, the markets are swinging. And so there’s this research firm called Citrini. They basically do research reports, sell them to hedge funds. And so the hedge fund guys want information. If they get better information than they’re getting from the news or from the newspaper the next day, that’s worth millions and millions of dollars to them. So Citrini, they’re trying to figure out what the hell’s going on with this blockade. And so this guy has this idea, high agency story here for you. One of the guys in the office is like, what if I just go? And they’re like, what do you mean where you go? He’s like, what if I just go to the, to the straight and I’ll just count the boats? Like, what do you mean count? He’s like, I’ll just see like how many are going through and we’ll know if it’s like blocked. Cause basically there were people trying to figure out, is it blocked? Is it not blocked? And the gas, oil prices were going parabolic and then they were thrashing day day over day and so they had to figure out what was going on so this guy basically one of their analysts they Call him analyst number three and he wrote this field blog so just i see this it goes and i read this and this sucked me into the story he goes the front desk informed me there’s two gentlemen From the cid downstairs to ask me questions. CID in the Gulf is like the CIA. I checked my phone in a safe, grabbed the burner because they had seen tweets about analyst number three. Thanks a lot, James. And then it says, I went downstairs in my pajamas and slippers. There’s a piece of OPSEC you learn when you’re an Arab speaker. If things are sticky, you only speak English because Arabic opens the door you don’t want opened. The possibility that you’re a spy, a sympathizer, blah, blah, blah, basically play dumb. So I’ll go downstairs and I say, hello guys, how are you? I speak English. The hotel receptionist, the same man I’ve been chatting with in Arabic all day, turned to the agents and goes, this guy speaks perfect Arabic. So this guy blogged his entire thing. So he basically left the US, went to the Middle East. They show his briefcase of what he took. It’s pretty hilarious. So this is what he took for his field trip. His anxiety body. He’s got two sins. He brought cigars. He brought a pack of clothes. And then he had a pair of meta recording glasses. And so he goes, and this guy makes it all the way. So he gets to Oman. He bribes a guy. They bring him in. And they’re like, he’s crossing the thing. They’re like, you’re not trying to do any journalism or anything, are you? He’s like, journalism? No, I’m an adventurer, explorer. You crazy? And they check his bag. They don’t notice that the Ray-Bans are the camera ones. He gets through. He bribes this guy to take him on a paddle boat to get into the strait. And he has footage of himself on the strait, smoking a cigar, watching like the oil, one of the oil tankers that got attacked and counting the other boats. And he realized that all the mainstream media was reporting that the strait was closed. He’s like, dude, I’m here. I see them. I see them going through. It’s not fully closed. And they were figuring out what was going on. It turns out like, actually the Iranians were checking, like, if you’re not US affiliated and you brought, you pay us a toll we’ll let you through and that’s why like there hadn’t been This huge oil shock because actually the tankers were getting through but nobody knew everybody was using these like the tracking data from the boats but he’s like he’s some of the boats Aren’t going to be tracked yeah they’re just like hey hey watch this they just turn it off like we don’t want to be tracked they don’t want us saying that we’re going through so no problem Turn that shit off and they would go through and so this is this epic story of this guy who made it back he got thrown he got like thrown in jail for a couple days and he like got out and uh you Know because of the cia no he’s just part of a research friend in new york he got caught because they held him and they were like we’re gonna check you out yeah and then they couldn’t find Chris Williamson Anything cid is the Middle Eastern equivalent of the CID. Oh, okay. Gotcha. And they popped it. That actually, that bag is the male equivalent of an anxiety bag. Yeah, that’s what I said. A full pack of Cubans, two Zins and a pair of pants. Don’t trust. Verify. (Time 0:55:45)
  • Gary Faust Escaped Arrest With A Bizarre Ruse
    • Gary Faust tells a college story where police arrived after he and a friend threw trash and furniture out a window while drunk.
    • They got naked, accidentally convinced officers it was a gay domestic dispute, and were told to clean up instead of being arrested. Transcript: Gary Faust Speaking of the Gulf CIA, I got a story about a time i accidentally did a a cia field strategy so to speak if you guys want to hear it when i was in college in santa barbara my buddy and i were Absolutely hammered just wasted out of our minds and we had just run from a cab and uh some other shenanigans had occurred and we got back to my my apartment which was on the second floor Of the spot but it was on a hill so it out the window was like a huge um it was it was like probably 60 yards to a pavement to a parking lot behind a chase bank and we were hammered and we were at This place the electricity had gone out so all the food in the fridge was bad and it smelled like shit so we just started throwing it all out the window because we thought it was funny and Then we started throwing bottles out the window and then like some furniture and stuff and uh somebody somebody called the police and we’re sitting there we’re all fucked up and we just Hear do do do do santa barbara police open up and we’re like oh fuck we the cops and he looks at me and he’s like dude get naked and i was like what he’s like trust me and i was like all right so We get butt naked and i’m like oh we’re definitely going to fucking jail so i i immediately went to the bathroom because taking a shit in jail sucks so i was like i’m gonna go force out a turd Wow so i’m in the bathroom and all i hear is this like thump noise. And then I hear the door open. I hear a creak like, and it’s just a cop. And he goes, what the fuck? What are you doing? And I hear, I hear like feet stumble around. And then I hear my buddy go, sorry, officer. I must’ve forgotten my pants. And the cops are like what the fuck are you talking about and uh they’re like put some fucking clothes on so the cops come grab me and uh naked and they realized well they thought they realized That we were two gay dudes in an argument so we faked a homosexual domestic violence situation and they were like they were like oh shit these these are two gay dudes and uh yeah so they Just ended up making us go clean it up because they felt they felt bad because they thought that well and my buddy was a lot bigger than me too so now i’m realizing telling this story that They probably thought i was just getting beat up by this guy but anyways um so years later uh i’ve told this story a couple times before to people and you know it’s funny haha but years later I find out from this guy jack karaku cia dude yeah that this is like an old cia strategy that they employ all the time i didn’t even know play the play the video here headquarters says we Shaan Puri Want you to pretend that you’re gay i said oh come on no we really need the information you gotta pretend that you’re gay i said okay i’ll, I’ll do it. I’ll do it for Uncle Santa. So I called her and I said, hey, I have two tickets to this show. And I was hoping maybe you’d be free. Maybe we’ll grab some sushi afterwards. He said, yeah, I’d love to. So we go to the show. He thoroughly enjoyed it. And we go for sushi afterwards. And we go out again. And he says, why don’t you go over to my place some night? And I’ll make dinner. I said, great. So I go over to this place. He made a lovely dinner. And then I thought, well, I have to invite him to my place. So I told my wife, you’re going to have to like get out. So she left. I made dinner. I removed all the pictures of us together and we had just gotten married. So we had like our wedding picture up and everything. At the dinner, he leaned in to kiss me and I instinctively backed off. And he said, oh my God, I’m sorry. I thought you’re gay. And I said, oh no, I am gay. I’m not into hairy guys. And he’s like, oh, okay. I said, I’m sorry. I think you’re great. I’m not feeling it. You didn’t kiss? No. Gary Faust And I think there’s another, there’s, I don’t remember if it was him, but there was another person who used an example of faking they were gay to like get out of trouble. Chris Williamson But yeah, just that’s another life hack for you. Just get naked. Yeah. I mean, could you not just appear gay rather than be naked? Because who fights naked? Two gay dudes banging. All right. Okay. Okay. Okay. The idea that you were so small that they thought, oh, this guy’s a world-renowned power bottom. You can’t believe he’s getting fucking pounded from every angle. Gary Faust God, yeah. It’s not a good look looking back on it. Why have you got trash in your truck? Well, I got another life hack for you, Chris. Remember to take out your trash cans. Yeah, I got a couple of bags of garbage in the back of my truck that he commented on when I pulled up. And he’s like, why do you have like four bags of garbage? And I was like, well, I forgot to take out the trash two weeks in a row. So there’s just a bunch of. Use it in the bed of your truck. You just carry it around as additional. Yeah, it’s just in the bed of the truck. Damn. There’s a dumpster behind a movie theater that I’m going to go throw it out in after this, actually. Thanks for reminding me. (Time 1:00:20)
  • Use Flighty To Reduce Airport Chaos
    • Chris Williamson explicitly recommends Flighty as a travel tool because it surfaces gate changes, inbound plane status, baggage carousel data, and connection timing faster than airline apps.
    • He says it even updated his diversion to Houston before the pilot announced it. Transcript: Chris Williamson But the one that I’ve been the most especially because I just got back from tour it was in Australia New Zealand and Bali is an app called flighty so flighty connects with your email and When you book flights it automatically pulls it over and it tells you everything that’s going on with your flight what gate you’re going out of where your plane is inbound where it’s Going to go when you’re on the journey as well it tracks everything. So it pre-downloads the map so that when you’re flying in the air, even without wifi, it knows sort of how long the journey is going to be. It can give you information about what the wait time is going to be like at your future destination, connection times, gate to gate, what a carousel your baggage is going to be at. And it lives in just a little island at the top, you know, the floating island thing at the top of your iPhone. And it just fucking rules, dude. Like the number of times that there’s been some last minute bullshit change and because I’m not watching the board or I’ve got my AirPods in, you’re just in an airport doing your thing. It’s just on your phone. It’s quicker than the app. There was one flight that got diverted from Austin because gale force winds got diverted to Houston. And I was recording with Andrew Schultz that day. It’s like, like i need to get back this better not be laid and blah blah blah and i thought it was great and then the plane just did like that took up again as it was coming into land and i was Like oh it must be coming back around for another one before the pilot even came over the tannoy it updated and said like you’re now basically you’re landing in houston and i was like oh So in some ways it can be disappointing before everybody else knows but uh it’s fucking great flighty and it’s like 30 bucks a year and you can have friends on it as well you can add friends Flights to it so if you’ve got a your missus is flying in you don’t need to do it it’s fucking epic a quick aside look you know sleep matters but let’s be real most nights you’re probably Not getting the sort of sleep that’s actually restorative eight sleep pod five fixes that It’s a smart cover that you throw over the top of your mattress that actively cools or heats Each side of the bed up to 20 degrees. They’ve even added a temperature-regulating duvet and pillowcase so you and your partner can sleep at your preferred temperatures covered head-to like some temperature-controlled Mummy. Plus, it’s got upgraded sensors that run health checks when you’re asleep, tracking things like abnormal heartbeats and breathing issues and sudden HRV changes. There’s a built-in speaker for white noise. The autopilot feature learns your sleep patterns, makes real-time adjustments to improve your sleep. It even detects when you’re snoring and lifts your head a few inches to help you breathe better. That is why 8Sleep is clinically proven to add up to an hour of quality sleep per night. And best of all, they have a 30-day sleep trial. So you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights. And if you don’t like it, they will just give you your money back. (Time 1:05:23)
  • Default To Skepticism When Someone Says Studies Say
    • George Mack advises defaulting to skepticism when someone says studies say, especially in psychology and self-help claims.
    • He argues many viral claims come from tiny, weak studies that get inflated into sweeping truths by media repetition. Transcript: George Mack My life hack at the minute is it’s more kind of a philosophical stance to some extent. I think of a lot of gibberish that comes up where it’s probably in the last 20 years, there’s this particular discourse that happens online, but also in books where you’ll see, they’ll Make a point and then they’ll go, so this study says, or studies say, and I think what happens for me for a while now, previously I would default to whatever this person’s about to say now Is completely true. But often my new default is whatever this person is about to say now is complete horseshit. Because first off, my friend Billy made this great point of, do you know anybody who’s been in a study? Have you actually ever inspected a lot of these studies? So I think previously, what people used to do nine out of 10 times, they would believe the study’s true and one out of 10 is gibberish. I actually think the policy is much better the other way, that nine out of 10 studies that you hear about particularly psychological studies guess what physics doesn’t need a study Physics goes here’s how it works and you want to always opt like it’s kind of the deutsch argument you always want to go for good explanations rather than studies of psych grads with people That had a specific hypothesis they wanted to confirm beforehand and you’ll you’ll often see these things that go viral on twitter that get four million views it’s like 15 participants Of like college males that are then making… Then the Daily Mail covers it, the Telegraph covers it. Huge sweeping generalizations. It’s one giant scam. The other one is… My favorite one is Science Says, or Science-backed, or Trust the Science. And my new default is, if somebody says this, they’re about to say something that’s completely unscientific. Because by definition, oh, sorry about that. By definition, if something is science-backed, I didn’t invest, there we go. If something is science, if something is- Fucking Etonics has research-backed ingredients on the side of it. Gary Faust Research-backed a little bit. George Mack I can say firsthand, this shit definitely works. I guess the question is, but then actually investigate what the research is essentially saying, which most of us, we just default to this is true. Chris Williamson So I read Adam Mastriani, Experimental History. Everyone needs to subscribe on Substack. Fucking rules. And he posted today, there was a wonderful one-two part of living fossils that Rob Kurzban does. And Experimental History had these two things about the replication crisis. And Adam’s entire point is that psychological theories don’t ever be killed. They just become embarrassing. So power posing being completely disproven, but has now just been sort of retconned into, it’s like expansive posture science and stuff. They’ve just it. Growth mindset, total bullshit, totally does not replicate. Ego depletion, like willpower stuff, total bullshit, does not replicate. What about retard maxing? Retard maxing actually is at the forefront of cutting psychological science. Shaan Puri If it doesn’t replicate, do a 360. Moonwalk out of there. George Mack The problem with the replication stuff is that it goes back to the conversation we had around genetics that actually some of this stuff may work for certain people depending on their Specific genetic set. What you may have is 10% it really, really works for and 90% it doesn’t do anything, which is a way more fascinating conversation. But as soon as you just default to, it feels like I have a point that disagrees with Gary now, and I’m just going to say, well, studies say, and I’ve won, And there’s never any critical conversation Around, well, can you explain the specific variables here that causes this outcome? It’s just studies say, I’ll let me tell you about this study. Chris Williamson So increased skepticism, is that what you’re saying? (Time 1:08:07)
  • The Game You Choose Rewrites Your Motivation
    • Shaan Puri says picking the right game matters more than being a great player because scoreboards quietly decide what you want and who you become.
    • His examples range from philosophy rankings rewarding niche papers to games like poker and charades shaping identity differently. Transcript: Shaan Puri Would that would basically prevent me from doing my job uh i have a quote that I love. This is a little more positive. I feel like we’ve had some conspiracy, some darkness, some getting in trouble. I want to bring a little positivity here. All right. So I saw this quote from Blake McCoskey, who created Tom’s Shoes. I don’t know if you guys have seen this, but he’s like, I’ve had this on the wall of every office. He says, a master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he’s doing and leaves others to determine if he is working or playing to him. He always appears to be doing both. And I just like that to me has just been a very useful, I don’t know, guidepost or like, oh yeah, like that is the highest calling. If you yourself basically don’t differentiate between your work and your play or, you know, are you, is this something that you have to do or you should do or you want to do, the more those Blend together and the less you sort of bucket things, I think the more you solve the problem of balance that I think nobody feels like they have. And so I just thought this was awesome. And I’m going to put this up in my office wall. Chris Williamson This seems similar to what Michael was talking about of the childlike thing. You remember on the first episode that we did and he quoted some scripture, he said, be childlike my children or something like that. I think one of the problems that you have is working for yourself sounds great because it sounds like choose whenever you want to work. But for most people, what it results in being is just work all the time because there’s no one to tell you to stop. And a great idea to think about if this doesn’t feel like play to me, scrutinize it and maybe try and get rid of whatever I can from this particular area of my life. But when you’re compelled by, oh, well, I just want to be more successful and more well-known, that is rewarding in and of itself, but it’s not the type of reward that you want. So you need to almost be skeptical and discerning in the rewards that you get too. This feels like play, but it might actually be just shallow juvenile status seeking, or it might be me playing the game of accumulating money when I already have enough. It’s that line from James Clear where he says, if you already live a good lifestyle and you sacrifice it in order to make more money, by definition, it’s a bad trade. And I think sometimes people are bad at distinguishing, determining what is and is not play, what is and is not just more like limbic rewards. That makes sense. Shaan Puri So there’s this book that I’m reading. It talks exactly about this. It’s called The Score. You guys ever heard of this book? It’s basically this guy who’s a philosophy professor, but he loved games growing up. He only plays games. He uses games as this analogy. And I think in general, a far more important thing in life than being a good player is picking a good game. Because it’s very easy to be, you know, you were talking about Joey Chestnut earlier, right? And like, you know- The philosopher Joey Chestnut. No knock on him, but like, just generally choosing to be a competitive eater, not the best game to play in life, right? Like you could choose many things to try to be great at. There are some that are better and worse. Every game comes with a scoreboard. The scoreboard is very unique in that it basically programs you, it rewires your mind for what you now want. The game dictates what you want, right? Because it says that’s how you win. This is the scoreboard. So therefore I’ve implanted a desire. Your behavior changes appropriately. And then it tells you who you need, and then it changes your identity. Who do you need to be to win this game? So you play Call of Duty, you better be a psychopathic murderer, right? You gotta be ruthless. You play charades, you better be a team player, a great communicator. You play poker, you better be great at the art of deception. And so the game you choose will not only choose for you what you want, it’ll choose your motivation, it’ll end up dictating your identity. Who do you need to be to win that game? So he talks about he became a philosopher or philosophy professor because he loved answering the big questions about life. That’s what got him into it. Then he got there and he realized there’s a ranking system for the professors nationwide. And how do you go up? So he’s a competitive person by nature, like many of us are. So he started trying to win the game. Now he had a scoreboard. The scoreboard said, in order to get more points, you have to write more peer-reviewed published articles about these niche topics. So then he spends two years winning that game and then basically feeling miserable because he’s like, this is not what he enjoys about philosophy. So he made himself miserable winning the game. And he talks about how there’s something called value capture. Value capture is basically when the game gives you the metric that is super simplified, easy to digest, but it may not have been what you want out of this. So for example, we’re on YouTube, right? YouTube gives you one big score, views. You can make a life-changing episode that gets half the views of another episode, but it doesn’t know how to measure life-changing. It just measures views. And it’s going to keep giving you that metric. And I mean, let’s be honest, how many YouTubers don’t just respond to views, right? Like it’s like a very, very powerful motivation because it’s in your face, everybody sees it. And that’s the scoreboard that determines success or failure in that game. (Time 1:18:00)
  • Engagement Metrics Distort What We Actually Enjoy
    • George Mack says likes and view counts pre-bias experience, making people judge content by social proof before actually consuming it.
    • Chris Williamson connects this to the McNamara fallacy, where measurable metrics crowd out harder-to-measure qualities like depth, taste, and soul. Transcript: George Mack And yeah, this is one of our favorite fucking, you hit one of our trap cards. Like there’s a, weirdly part of the thoughts I was thinking about this week was going down like how, is know that Marshall McHugh line that we like shape our tools, then our tools shape Us. It’s a great example of Nietzsche. Nietzsche used to write by a hand, and then his eyesight began to go, so he started to write in a typewriter, and his writing completely changed. He went way shorter, way punchier, like he almost completely changed as an individual. And I’ve been thinking about that with a lot of these tools where so i would like one of my life hacks at the minute is what i call boom scrolling so rather than doom scrolling i go on a treadmill At like 15 incline three and i’ve got share believe on loop playing i’m spinning around i’m having a fucking great i’m just sending links to people if you if you are either in his contacts Chris Williamson High on the top of his list of iMessage contacts recently because he’s’s got massive recency bias, so he only sends it to the people that he can see. And if you’re in Lifetime on South Lamar and you walk downstairs and you see him, it’s you with something from the 80s, some hair metal or some big pop star from the 80s. George Mack And he’s just furiously sending fucking links to people. How social media, I think, is supposed to be consumed. If you’re at 130 beats per minute, if you’re at 130 heart rate per minute, you just forget about it. All the new stuff goes, and I’m just in these holes finding stuff. But one of the reflections… Chris Williamson You’ve managed to find a social media flow state. Yeah, a flow state for social media. George Mack Boom scrolling, it’s coming back. Boom scrolling. One of my one of my actual realizations when i was in this high was one thing you when you become when you’re in like a flow state or when you’re more mindful you begin like the a lot of meditators Describe it as the frame rate of reality completely slows down so it’s kind of going from a standard definition tv to a hd where everything’s a bit clearer everything’s a bit slower and I started to notice this thing in my head i was really embarrassed about, that when I would scroll, I’d see a tweet or I’d see a post and there’s this little thing in me that just looks at The views it gets and then determines if I’m going to consume it or my reaction beforehand. And it’s almost like, imagine what we’ve created for this memetic algorithm. Imagine before you ever heard like a piece of music or you ever tasted a bit of food. It’s like people clapping or people going, that’s a bit shit. And that’s your whole, you don’t actually ever experience social media content. So one of the two big changes I’d like to see is one, could I just turn off all engagement metrics? And I’d be fascinated to run a study and compare the two and see like the impact that that would have. And then the second one, because I’ve thought a lot about this, which is your point, Sean, around the depth metrics, that it’s very hard for us to measure depth. It’s very easy for us to measure width. Right now, one of the problems with social media is you can only kind of pay with a like. That’s the currency. If you have a thought experiment, if you imagine the world where the only currency was one dot, like a $1 bill, and you can’t pay more than $1, what would you have? The dollar store theory. You’d have dollar store everywhere. It means you wouldn’t have Michelin star restaurants. You wouldn’t have like luxury brands. You wouldn’t have all these stuff that you’d, those are actually shit examples because I hate them, but you know, stuff that you would actually want to pay more money for. And I thought even just as simple as like YX, don’t just implement like a golden like, where I only have one per week. It’s completely meaningless, but I have one per week and I press it. And then I can also go on the golden like feed. I can go, this is the thing that Sean says out of everything he’s consumed this week is the best. I think the change you would have in terms of content. Chris Williamson The worst thing is that you, you proposed this to me over dinner, what, five years ago or something, probably? And I was like, fucking stupid idea. And then YouTube brought in hype. Have you seen hype? No, what is that? If you’re a channel with under 100,000 subscribers, you, as a user, are allowed, I think you’re allocated about 1,000 hype points per week. And you can only spend it on videos that are high performing. I think it might be videos over 100K on channels less than 100K, something like but it’s uh like non-fungible the limited right so the bitcoin of your likes right and it’s fucking great And i find myself oh wow using it on videos that i really want to and here’s a small creator that’s nailed it with some great documentary explaining why the whole the straight of hall moves Is hard to get through whatever fuck and i’m like i want to send the the hype thing michael smoke is had one video that broke through and i wanted to do it for his thing so yes you’re right Other thing mcnamara fallacy you familiar with that no okay so uh mcnamara was the guy that was in charge of working out what was going on with the troops in the vietnam war and his issue Was that he was measuring the wrong metrics. So the McNamara fallacy or quantitative fallacy is the mistake of making decisions based solely on metrics while ignoring qualitative and measurable factors. Named after US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, it assumes that if something cannot be easily measured, it is not important or does not exist. So the issue that the McNamara fallacy had was that enemy body count metric is taken to be a precise and objective measure of the success or failure of the Vietnam War, but it wasn’t at All. It was domestic casualties, domestic injuries, and the far more important, what’s the vibe? What’s the tone around it? The soul. Precisely so uh the line is we end up intending to uh measure what matters but instead what we can measure just ends up mattering yeah and everything else is disregarded so you could like George Mack I say how um obviously golden like idea like is there any ways you guys are like for yourselves whether it’s for the actual platforms themselves or just for you as an individual have found A way out of this? Shaan Puri There was one I heard that I didn’t do this, but Hormozy had a thing with this where he starts getting popular on YouTube and then he hires a team and they’re like, Hey, let’s, let’s punch This up. Let’s do this video. Let’s do this video. Oh, people will love this. Do what you’re eating. Do what you, how you guys met do this right he started as a business channel and then he’s doing everything and of course things that are you know there’s not a lot of people who want to understand How to do better cold calls in sales right like that’s a super niche topic but like don’t be broke is a bigger topic and then bigger than that is going to be harsh truths about being a man Whatever right like so those are pop those get two million views so why make those shitty 20 000 views about you know um how to how to improve your sales funnel or whatever but he realized Like well what was my mission my mission was like i’m like i love business i want to share what i know about business and so what he did was uh he started selling his book for 99 cents and he Put it in this bio right so he’s basically just used the assumption of instead of measuring the success of these videos based on views let’s just measure it on book sales it’s like presumably Only a business person the type of people i’m making content for would buy a business book about sales or about 100 million dollar offers only somebody who liked the vi… (Time 1:23:16)
  • FTX Missed An Absurd Anthropic Windfall
    • Chris Williamson brings up the Forbes 30 Under 30 fraud list as a running reminder that hype often disguises weak businesses or outright deception.
    • Shaan Puri adds FTX’s Anthropic stake alone later ballooned to roughly sixty billion dollars, enough to repay customers multiple times over. Transcript: Chris Williamson Have you seen the Forbes 30 under 30 fraud list? Oh, wow. Yeah. It’s crazy. Jared? How long is it now? So it’s just, this stinks of you two. This is really some, this is kind of just a gift for you two. But this is the 30 under 30 fraud watch list. So if we scroll down a little bit and you hover over Sam Backman-Fried, you’ll see incarcerated Terraform Labs, incarcerated, Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, incarcerated. We’ll keep going down. There we go. Time served for Martin Scrooge. And if you go to the black bit, where it’s redacted, just scroll over the black text. The real numbers were 300,000. That’s it. Sold a student loan app to JP Morgan for 175 million, claimed 4.25 million users. The real number was 300,000. And she hired a data scientist to fabricate the rest. JP Morgan bought it anyway, then noticed. Oops. If we go all the way down to the bottom, there’s actually a risk list. So this is people who’ve been on the 30 under 30. It’s like a, how would you say, prototypical algorithm that looks at some of the hype around the market. So these are companies that they think is going to be likely to be on the fraud list. So I don’t know any sphere, Cursor, do you know what that is, Sean? Shaan Puri Yeah, Cursor is super legit. I would say Cursor is super legit, but this is the way. They’re not going to come for you. George Mack The crazy one is Sam Bamman-Fried, it came out today- Is that Polymarket there? Chris Williamson Oh, Shane. George Mack Sam Bamman-Fried, it came out today that um um the shares ftx so sam bam and free put investment in anthropic uh that owns claude it would have gotten them out of the it was it’s something Like that no it’s like 60 billion dollars 60 billion which coin bases were 50 billion or something like that so it’s um but the ftx at its peak was 30 so basically he’s one of the had he not Shaan Puri Gone to jail for fraud and had not been using would have been one of the richest people on the planet and he would have been seen as one of the best investors in the world because he was early In Solani. He was early in this. He was early in- Do they still have that position or did they have to liquidate the position? No, that’s the sad part. When they did the bankruptcy, they bring in this guy. He’s a famous guy. He did the Enron bankruptcy, something like Rice or something. I forget what his name is. He’s got a cool sounding name. They bring him in. So what do they do? They immediately freeze all payments. They have a protocol of bankruptcy. And so one of the things is they take all these illiquid shares and they say, we need to sell them. And they sell them by this huge discount right away into the market. Oh my God. And so they sold the whole lot. Do you know what they sold it for? So they sold the whole lot for I, I think like a billion dollars of, like a billion dollars of all the investments that he had made. And so it was like a fraction of whatever it was like worth essentially. And just the one Anthropik position alone is a $60 billion position. Would that have paid off all of the- Oh, multiple times. Many times. Chris Williamson So all of the people who were missing money, had they have just helped, when was the FTX thing? Three years ago? Yeah, something like that. Had they have held the FTX position in Anthropic simply for what? A thousand days? A thousand months? Even let’s say it was like they did it, it was last year, it would have been three years. That would have cleared off everybody’s debts. (Time 1:41:56)
  • Momentum Lets People Get Away With Almost Anything
    • Chris Williamson argues momentum often beats merit because once someone looks successful, people excuse behavior that would sink anyone else.
    • He uses Fyre Festival, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Kanye West as examples of success or cultural power overriding normal scrutiny. (Time 1:47:40)
  • Supernormal Stimuli Hijack Brains By Exaggeration
    • Shaan Puri explains supernormal stimuli as exaggerated versions of natural cues that hijack instincts more powerfully than the original.
    • They connect it to junk food, cosmetic surgery, pornography, and beetles preferring shiny bottles over real mates. (Time 1:53:13)
  • The Burning Monk Changed How George Sees The Mind
    • George Mack cites the monk who calmly burned himself to death in protest as evidence that human mental control can reach extremes beyond ordinary intuition.
    • The image matters because the monk sat in lotus position without flinching, making meditation seem less abstract and more real. (Time 2:00:55)
  • AI Doom Narratives Miss The Problem Solving Upside
    • George Mack argues AI pessimism resembles older reactions to industrialization where people saw the disruption sooner than the eventual fixes.
    • He gives a concrete case where Gemini suggested Nizoral shampoo for his decade-long facial dermatitis after doctors kept prescribing steroid creams. (Time 2:06:12)
  • AI Training Now Includes Human Camera Factories
    • Shaan Puri describes factories in India where workers wear head cameras so AI companies can capture training data from everyday manual tasks.
    • He pairs this with Elon Musk’s idea of robot self-play warehouses, where thousands of robots learn by fumbling through tasks together. (Time 2:13:02)